“And would you trust a dungeon?”

-Common saying meaning “Are you a fool?”

When Tam came back he was no longer bearing his staff or rings, though the new spells were still swirling around him. I tried to copy them into the stone, but they were very intricate and I doubted that I would have enough time at my current very slow speed.

When Tam entered my aura I could immediately sense the chalk and metal that I was now familiar with. Tam went to the beam array and I could see his magic twist and interact with it. The threads lifted so that they no longer covered the floor, rising to the just the tiniest bit above it. I wish I understood how that worked. Tam knelt and slowly drew a perfect circle encompassing most of the room. A much smaller second circle soon followed around my stand. Runes were scribed onto the floor on the outside of the smaller circle and the inside of the larger one.

All the runes were still nonsense as far as I could tell, but I did recognize that a few symbols were repeated from his other arrays.

At Tam’s direction the chalk soon burned with light and then cut into the stone. The resulting circular and runic etchings were soon lined with silver metal. Tam had brought a significantly larger chunk of metal this time to cover the increased area. He scowled at the tiny piece left in his hand.

Huh. I wonder if that stuff is expensive? Or maybe hard to acquire? I was certainly hoping so. And that… might actually explain some things. Tam had only been applying the contingencies that were absolutely necessary. He could have had a whole series of them in place to cover every eventuality, or arranged protections that he could turn on and off.

His current option of only applying the precautions as needed was less safe, but it allowed for greater adaptability and a lower cost. If Tam had planned out and put down all the precautions he thought might be prudent, it would no doubt have required far more material. Plus there would have been no guarantee that I would develop like Tam thought.

This was good though. Even if Tam was going to respond to what I was doing right now, he was trying to conserve resources. And conserving resources sometimes meant not applying them when you really should have. Honestly, I had been wondering why Tam wasn’t more proactive with his protections. Hopefully I would be able to work around these new ones.

Tam began the ritual and infused the runes with power; his hands made arcane gestures. Afterwards, as the runes subsided into an enchantment, I tried to determine what they actually did.

I tried extending stone from various places and found the floor impenetrable. The stone would not grow, move, disappear… nothing worked. I could still manipulate the walls, and after a distance of several inches outside the larger circle, the floor. The ceiling could still be manipulated… wait, scratch that. A circle matching and directly above the inner circle of the enchantment was like the floor. I tried extending a tendril of stone into the circle from the ceiling outside it and the tendril stopped as it hit a barrier. The beam array cleaned it up a moment later. Pushing at the barrier from the stone above and below the area I couldn’t manipulate hit another barrier.

Hmm. I might still be able to get out. It would all depend on whether or not I could get out of the area. If it stopped me too, then I would need to rethink things.

Mutters of discontent about being even more trapped rumbled deep inside.

“Oh shut up Exsan.”

Pretty sure he is quieter than he used to be… Eh, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

For the moment I tried to stay calm. Hours passed as I did what Tam expected of me. Small tendrils of stone protruded and tested the barrier and walls periodically. I also continued to sketch out the new spells wrapped around Tam.

Tam was patient and waited for hours, but eventually his eyes started to droop. He finally sighed and cast an a slightly different analysis spell, packing it full of mana to make it last. At the door he stopped and cast a new spell. Spiked and smooth bands embedded into the doorway on each side and stretched across in layers. Sadly the spells were not in my aura and I couldn’t make out the exact details of how they were made.

I was not sure what the new spells were for, but I was guessing that they were some kind of defensive spell. I did not want to test what they did. Well, it didn’t matter anyway, they weren’t in my aura or in the room at all. I wasn’t planning to escape that direction anyway, best to ignore them.

Tam probably wasn’t going to come back tonight, he had looked pretty tired, but I had no way to be sure. For tonight, it was best to just sit tight and not make any assumptions. In the meantime I kept up my practice and also extruded stone into the room at semi-random intervals. Hopefully this would desensitize Tam to the beam array regularly going off.

Morning came and the magical lights brightened casting faint shadows onto the stone. I still wasn’t sure exactly what the lights were. They were obviously magical, but that didn’t tell me much. That was like saying a light-bulb was scientific. You could tell someone that and they wouldn't know anything more about how they actually worked. The lights might be some kind of spell, but if they were they were like no other spell I had seen. The wisps of magic that made them up were gossamer and had not become much more visible when my vision improved. Trying to move concentrated mana around the lights had not revealed anything like the enchantments either. Oh well, they were pretty far down my list of priorities anyway.

In the morning Tam canceled the analysis spell before he cast another one. I had anticipated this would happen. I did absorb the mana, but I didn’t let it flow into me, instead I redirected it into my external mana storage.

I was pretty sure I had figured out a way to escape, but everything could still be ruined by Tam keeping an analysis spell on me overnight. I needed to figure out a way to deal with this new impediment.

I watched the spell like a hawk all day. When I had mana available, I concentrated a portion of it around the spell, trying to see if I could glean anything new about it. The answer turned out to be yes. Despite studying the spells passively for quite a while, there was still more to learn. I started to see pulses of mana flowing through it. They were subtle, a slight change in the brightness that was usually not noticeable, and only seen as the mana created a tiny pressure against the mana I was using to explore it.

I gradually gained a sense of how it worked. Most of it focused on different parts of myself, not too much of a surprise there. A strand of the spell connected to where I stored mana. That one was probably keeping an eye on my total mana. Others connected to various parts of my inner web. Those could do anything, but they were probably replicating some version of my status. These strands wove together and then connected to the main spell. And from the main body of the spell a strand of mana connected to Tam.

Hours of study finally let me detect something else as well. The strands would occasionally pulse with mana. The mana would flow upwards and into the spell and then out to Tam. As far as I could tell this only happened when my mana changed. I presumed the other strands would send signals of their own if something else changed, but it wasn’t like my skills were in constant flux, so I couldn’t verify that. Despite my best efforts I never saw any mana flow my direction from the spell.

When night came and Tam cast his spell on me again, I examined it carefully. It appeared almost identical to the one he used during the day. I would have to take a chance. Based on the way it functioned, I was fairly sure that it only reported when changes happened. That meant that if I disconnected the threads leading into me that it would appear to still be functioning. I curled the hooked parts of my aura around the threads and started grinding away at it. It took some time, but eventually the connection sheared and the threads of the spell that disconnected dissolved into mana that I habitually sucked up.

I waited nervously. Long minutes passed, but there was no sign of Tam. Success!

I carefully moved the threads coming out of the beam array away from the feeder. Drawing on the mana in my storage I created stone out of thin air. I had specifically never shown Tam that I could create stone from nothing without touching other stone. In this case, the stone was attached to the feeder and it quickly pushed the activation button. I relaxed a little when it turned on. I had worried it would only respond to Tam. I relaxed my control and a beam quickly destroyed the stone on the feeder. The stone had done its job, the feeder was on and I was not currently being monitored.

I was not planning to escape tonight, but I could now perform some tests that I would not have wanted Tam to see me do. When the mana from the feeder dispersed into the air I used some to create stone inside the circle with my core. I carefully kept the beam from destroying it. When I tried to use the stone to push through the barrier from the inside I had no success. I lifted myself very carefully using multiple tendrils and discovered that I also could not go through the barrier. No luck.

I had seen Tam pass through the barrier just fine. Was it tuned just to me, or was it just tuned to stone and I counted?

Regardless, I had been fully prepared for this result. I started on other tests. My aura expanded from behind each of the aura anchors until it covered each of them. Seeing that I had no problems I also covered the beam anchor. I was careful not to extent my aura even a tiny bit above where arrays were. I did not want to risk Tam sensing anything, and I definitely did not want to risk setting off some kind of alarm by extending my aura farther into the complex. It would be foolish to be this close and then fail by being rash. Not that I wasn’t tempted to be a little rash and give into my impatience. A part of me wanted to escape tonight, but I wanted to have more mana just in case I needed it. I was only going to let myself wait a single extra day though, otherwise I would be tempted to keep preparing.

The lights began to brighten and I quickly shut down the feeder and waited.

The entire day was torture. I kept expecting Tam to notice something wrong. If I had a body I would have been sweating with nervousness all day. Regardless, time revealed its perverse propensity to slow down when I waited. However, eventually, finally, the day managed to pass.

The lights dimmed and I waited a few minutes to make sure that Tam was gone.

I started.

I broke the connection to the spell as quickly as possible, before reactivating the feeder. If nothing else extra mana could only be useful at this point. I was slightly divided about what to do next. I had two plans that were equally viable. I could use the captured mana to effect my escape immediately or I could level up and then escape.

Even without leveling up I was fairly certain that my current abilities would be enough to escape. However, if I gained some kind of additional control over earth, an ability to move, or something else useful, it might significantly improve my chances. However, I might need that extra mana during the escape.

I eventually decided on a compromise. I was going to enact the first stage of my plan. If it worked then everything else should work out. The first part of my plan was the part I was least certain about anyway. And if it failed to work it probably wouldn’t leave any evidence.

I gingerly captured one of the threads from the beam array and guided it down until it touched one of the runes on the floor. A beam lanced out and with a faint ping the metal rune popped into the air as it was forced out of place as the stone beneath regrew. I felt a faint wave of something flicker. The runic array on the floor still shimmered with light. I really hoped that was enough to turn it off. I carefully extended a tendril of stone out towards the barrier around me. It was still there.

I quickly tried the other restriction. The floor grew stone at my command. I said a few quick prayers of thanks. I knew there was no way Tam would fail to notice this though. It was either escape or communicate from this point. I lifted out other runes gently from the floor, each time testing the barrier. After three more runes the barrier was gone, though I felt that strange wave two more times.

I quickly sank the stand into the floor until stone finally covered me and I detached myself from the damnable stand. I was free of mana drain for the first time ever in this new life, well... other than the brief moment I tested the barrier yesterday. Hopefully I would be completely free soon.

The feeder released mana into the air and I consumed it. Then I quickly began to drain mana out of my storage area. Mana flowed into me until I was stopped by an unfamiliar feeling. I looked at my status in confusion. Ha ha, I was full!

My mana trap was still about half full. As I had expected, I gained far less from it than I stored into it. It wasn’t like I completely drained an area I focused on. Plenty of ambient mana remained. And I knew I was missing lots of details still. The mana wastage was not my biggest concern for the moment though. I could level and still have mana to spare. That made my decision for me. I leveled.

Your status has changed!

Status

Name: N/A / Exsan

Type: Dungeon Core – Soul Hybrid

Level: 3

Crystal Status: 100% - Undamaged

Status Effects: None

Available Mana: 20/100

Passive Mana Generation: 31.5/Day

Next level: 60 Mana Cost

Subsections Available: 1

Ability Points: 900

Skills: Directed Mana Absorption I,

Limited Omniscience (Dungeon)

Soul Mana I

Dungeon Aura Expansion I

Manipulate Earth II

Learning I

Enhanced Aura Perception I

Ambient Mana Manipulation I

Meditation I

Interdimensional Repository I

Titles: Reborn Soul

First of its Kind

Skill Evolution

Mana Specialist I

I immediately pulled up the new skill

Interdimensional Repository I

Store and retrieve objects within your aura into and out of a personal storage space.

Huh, I didn’t get any ability points this time. Though it looked like my mana regen had gone up again.

My minor disappointment was mostly covered by a sudden surge of greed. Pretty sure that was both Exsan and me. There were a number of things that I wanted to take, now that I had the option. However, for a moment I held off the greed. I did not actually know what it would cost me, if anything, to store things. Well… there was nothing to do but try it.

I extended my focus out toward one of the runes that had popped out of the ground. With a tiny focus of will it disappeared. I examined the level of my mana. As far as I could tell it cost nothing at all. I grabbed the three other loose runes from the ground; again there was no change.

With an inner grin I grabbed something larger, the feeder. It disappeared and this time I could feel a faint thrumming in the threads of my aura. I looked at my status again. Nope, still no sign of mana loss. Perfect. With glee I grabbed the four arrays holding my mana in place, the beam array, and all the remains of the array on the floor. When I was done I had only lost a single mana. It appeared that my storage costs were minimal. With a mental shrug I grabbed what remained, my stand, Tam’s chair, the wooden tree, the box and coins, and all the rest. I even grabbed all the statues, except for one. The recursive statue where Tam examined himself, even as his smaller statue examined me. And I couldn’t resist adding one more detail. I created a copy of myself larger than life and behind and above Tam.

I drained everything that remained within my improvised mana storage and brought my mana up to forty-six. I tried to take the lights on the ceiling too, but nothing happened. Oh well. I would have liked to use the feeder to get more mana for a while, but I knew better than that. I needed to keep going.

I moved away, rushing as far as possible into the stone backwards and away from the hallway. I quickly approached the current limit of my aura and extended more ahead of me. There was a slight feeling of strain that started to happen as I expanded my aura, but I ignored it until I was brought to an abrupt halt.

I strained to move farther and was unable to do so. I quickly tried moving up and down. It was possible, but I started to curve back towards my former room. Ugh, this could be bad. I experimented a bit. When I extend the aura in my former room towards the hallway I was dragged backward. It seemed I could only so far from the edge of my aura.

I tried extending aura farther in front of myself. Maybe if my aura was larger I would be able to move farther. My aura extended just fine, but I was not able to move forward any more. Eventually my aura refused to extend forward any farther and I found myself unable to move all. Damn it! Are you kidding me?

I tried to pull my aura back into myself. No luck. I also had no luck simply ordering my aura to disperse, disconnect, unhook, or bunch up towards me. I felt like something happened as I tried, but I didn’t have time to learn a new skill now.

I did my best to calm down. Did I have any other options for escape? I could only think of one, and it would likely be a horrible idea even if it worked out perfectly. I quickly checked for anything I could buy. Useless, either too expensive or not relevant.

I considered for a moment. I might, might, be able to go back and put everything back into place, but there was absolutely no way to conceal that I had gained a new level and a new ability. That meant the only real option if I went back was to communicate with Tam and hope for the best. The other option… well, if it didn’t work I would hopefully be in good enough shape to go back. I really hoped I was not making a terrible mistake.

About a dozen feet behind me, I started to gather the waving threads of my aura. I condensed them down into a circle as much as I could and then began to twist them so they formed a tight spiral. The strain started to vibrate through me. I pushed harder, even as I started to feel like I was overextending a muscle.

Stop.

Looked like my alter ego Exsan was not happy with what I was doing. I could feel an instinctual caution warning me. That warning faded away when the threads would not condense down any further. I paused for a moment, making sure the threads were contained even as I tried to pull my aura back into me again. Nothing. Great… well here goes nothing. I directed the hooks in the spiral to start grinding against the other threads.

Pain. STOP!

I had not felt any pain in weeks. It was shocking, brutal, and Exsan howled in my head, mixing with my own instinctual need to try to stop the pain. I kept going but I was pushed to the edge, pressing on against two sets of instincts.

I felt like blood should be spraying as my aura sawed against itself. Snap! Threads ruptured under the continued sawing. The outer threads went first, lashing away like whips and hemorrhaging mana. Crack! I could feel something inside me cracking. Crack! Finally the last of the threads snapped apart. I felt a wave of something pass through me again, even as I could feel my disconnected aura for a moment longer as it slowly started to drift down and away. After a moment the mana stopped gushing from the cut threads. A few notifications interrupted me.

Warning – Negative Status Change!

Crystal Status: 62% - Structure Compromised

You have forcibly activated a new skill!

Aura Mobility I

You may freely move within your aura. You may also direct areas of your aura to dissipate. Attempting to move outside your aura’s established boundaries will automatically dissipate your aura, except for a limited mobile sphere of aura centered on you.

Well… I can’t say that the pain wasn’t worth it, even if I was a little worried about that crystal status. Just like the ability said, my aura had reshaped itself into a sphere. It was about fifteen feet across. Not huge, but more than sufficient for my need to get away. Since I now had the means, I continued on, moving raw stone around myself like a ship parting the sea.

Shortly after that I ran into a problem.

There was a wall.

Not made of something as insubstantial as stone. Of course, I wasn’t that lucky. Nope, it was a wall of mana threads which shimmered in the characteristic way I had come to recognize as an enchantment. My aura extended far enough to sense a faint curvature to the wall. If I had to guess it was a sphere. Looks like Tam had another defense after all. The threads that made up the wall crisscrossed each other in different directions. It was not a perfectly uniform structure, but I still could not see any gap large enough for me to simply slip through.

Great. Resigning myself I followed the wall in a few different directions, looking to find the biggest gap that I could. I did eventually find a gap that was larger by a reasonable degree, but is was still too small for me. Gingerly I hooked the threads and began to pull them apart. These threads were unlike the beam enchantment. They were stiff and obviously meant to stay in place. It was a constant strain to pull them apart.

Gradually the stubborn threads moved farther apart. Just another inch and I could slip through. A bright thread from an active spell passed no more than a few feet from me. Shit! Tam had to be searching for me. More threads of spellwork trailed along the interior of the wall. At first it was only a few, but it quickly grew into a multitude. I frantically guided the many threads around me while still trying to open up the wall. The strain on me was mounting and I felt my crystal crack further. A few interminable minutes passed amid the sound of my core cracking as I heaved at the threads. Finally I slipped through the barrier.

Free.