Manning

I slowly regained consciousness an indeterminate amount of time later. Unlike waking up from my mana cycling trance earlier, this time my waking felt groggy and sluggish. It took me a bit longer to start processing information than it probably should have.

One of the first things that I saw was a second person in the cave, in addition to Ash. He was a short brown man with floppy ears and wrinkled skin. Currently he was bent over watching a very large beetle squirm. I gazed in on the situation and watched as the beetle swelled in size and the color of its carapace darkened and became more sleek looking. I could feel that it was Cara doing that, not her likely-companion, and was curious how long I had been out.

Next I noticed that I could see almost the entire cave. I knew that I probably went a little too hard when it came to spreading my influence before blacking out, but this was far more territory than I’d expected to have claimed. To that end I decided that Cara must have picked up where I left out, and I was likely out a lot longer than I expected. Fair enough I guess.

“Ash, what’d I miss?” My dryad companion was sitting on a rock off to the side, looking a bit sad and still holding her sapling. When I spoke she perked up and that made me happy.

“Manning! Good morning, you sure sleep a lot.” She was wearing a forced smile and I could still see worry in her eyes. She hesitated a moment before continuing, “I’m sorry I didn’t warn you about mana exhaustion. I should have brought that up before you started, and I am really happy that nothing too bad happened. We should avoid running out of mana again in the future if we can.”

She did not have to tell me twice as I had already been privately planning on avoiding that situation for the rest of my life, which as far as I could tell was probably forever. The pounding headache that I had seemed to reinforce that decision. I decided not to dwell on it too long. Oh! The concern she is showing is probably because she thinks I am angry with her.

“Not a problem, Ash. I should have slowed down, it isn’t entirely your fault and I don’t plan on repeating that anytime soon anyways. So whats next? I see Cara is making monsters over there with her compan-” the beetle they were working on burst in an explosion of ichor and slimy guts “-ion. Wow, that was gross. Do we get to do that soon?”

“Yep! She is working on making her worker drones right now. It’s… a complicated process to get a handle on. Before we start working on that, however, we should decided what direction we want to take the dungeon in. We are probably going to have alternating floors or separate routes from Cara, so you both have an area to work and don’t feel like you’re being stepped on.”

“Hm, yeah that makes sense I suppose. It would be a little weird to micromanage the same monsters as Cara. What kind of themes are you thinking of?”

“Well, that all depends on what you want to do in life, Manning. We can make a giant subterranean jungle filled with beasts, a mushroom forest filled with fungal monsters, a spider forest, really you can do anything. Given enough time you could even fly! I’d heard so many stories of flying dungeons from my mother, and I think I’d love to see the sky again.”

“That just sounds like a stupid idea, Ash.” I saw her crestfallen expression and knew I didn’t phrase that correctly, “Not the sky, the flying dungeon thing. Why would anyone want to fly? It would only draw attention and make it harder for people to get to the dungeon. We want people right? Nevermind, doesn’t really matter. About what I want though… Could we just build a giant forest on the surface? I could do all of those things and separate them and have the biggest forest in the world.”

A number of emotions flashed across Ash's face, too fast for me to register. She opened her mouth a couple of times, but closed it without saying anything. There was that awkward silence again. I think I may have broken my companion. "Ash? Are you good?"

"Sorry, I just wasn't expecting you to want to go up. It's very rare that a dungeon core acts against their initial instinct to burrow as deep as they can get, even for a mature core. Most flying dungeons only do it because they think it's safer, and even then their cores are stored under a veritable mountain of stone.” The light was back in her eyes, and I could tell that she was onboard.

“I can't tell you how happy this makes me. What I mean to say is Yes. Well, I mean that there is nothing stopping us, universal law wise, but we will need to be extremely careful. The other sapient races do not like it when dungeons operate above ground and tend to classify them as rogue dungeons. Rogue dungeons do not last very long. But as long as we clearly define our boundaries and try not to let them know we are a dungeon, it should work out. They will probably think it is some sort of fairy forest, things get weird in those."

“Oi!” Cara’s companion threw Ash a glance and a look of mock-offense before turning to look at the next poor beetle to get modified. His eyes snapped back over to Ash, “Wait, did you just say you want to build above ground? That’s pretty risky, even for a dryad. Names Brick, by the way, nice to meet you Manning.”

“Yeah, Ash said she wants to feel the sun on her again, and I’m inclined to agree. The sound of the sun baking away at the top of my core makes me feel relaxed.”

“Absolutely not!” Guess Cara was listening in now, “We can’t build on the surface! We wouldn’t be safe there, even if we don’t get discovered by humans or elves. Beasts can smell dungeons, and they are just as liable to try and destroy or consume us. We need to build down and hide behind layers of defenders and traps.”

“I don’t recall dying and making you the boss here, Cara. We should have equal say in what happens. Are you really pleased at the thought of hiding away in some dark dank cave for the rest of our lives?”

We argued on for a while, and it became rapidly obvious the conversation was not going to go anywhere. I, however, was not going to back down and just let Cara have her way. Even if her points made sense, I did not like that she was trying to impose her will on me. I really wasn’t looking forward to years of dealing with her as a roommate if this was the way our disagreements were going to go. After several minutes of bickering, Brick decided to interject.

“Why don’t you guys just splinter?”

There was a pause and then both Cara and I replied at the same time. We didn’t say the same thing, that kind of thing only happens in stories, but the gist of both of our replies was ‘what the abyss is splintering?’

“When dungeons get too large, they tend to split off a piece of theirself with a percentage of the Mana and Processing power allocated to it. In a regular dungeon, this is usually only done by extremely large and old dungeons to do micro managing. Stuff like managing ventilation, or interacting with dwellings of sapient followers.” It sounded almost too good to be true, but also exactly like what we needed.

The process wasn’t nearly intuitive as cycling mana first felt for me. It took a few hours to figure out, but once the first minor crack popped up on the surface we slowed down and re-evaluated what worked and how to move forward. The entire time we worked on splintering, I was filled with dread and a deep fear that we were going to crack open and die. I pinned this on dungeon instincts trying to stop us from splintering while we were so small and moved on, I really wanted this to work.

When it was finally time to move on with the process, both Cara and I tried our best to pull off into seperate sides of the core. The goal was to split it down the middle and have our mana pools, and hopefully therefore our consciousness, seperated with the gem. Once again, there was no guarantee here as we were in uncharted territory.

Nothing happened.

Or at least, that’s what I thought until Ash walked over and plucked up the top half of my core. The only half of my core, actually. In that moment I knew that it had worked because for the first time, the other half of my core felt more like a fixture than part of the dungeon.

“Can you still hear me Manning?” Cara’s voice rang out in my head.

“Yeah, that’s weird. I guess it worked out though, huh? I can’t really feel your emotions like I used to, so I guess we are mostly separated?”

“Sure looks like it. There was a little bit of overlap with our mana pools I think. I still have access to some nature mana and I feel like my dark mana is slightly smaller than it used to be.”

“Well that’s probably a good thing. Communication is key. I don’t think we are going to go very far and we should be able to talk if we are co-located.” With that said Ash started to walk up towards the surface. She was practically skipping and talking very quickly about how excited she was to finally put roots down. Plant her sapling that is. As we finally exited the entrance of the mine system where Cara’s domain ended, I felt something I hadn’t felt since becoming a dungeon core.

Pain. This was the first time I'd felt pain since coming to consciousness a little over a week back. All my other senses went dull, and eventually faded out. No longer could I see our cave, or feel the delicate hands that were cradling me next to a tiny tree. I couldn't hear my dryad companion, begging with me to tell her what was wrong. I couldn't feel anything but pain.

After what felt like years of twisting and burning. Of a never ending screaming, which I eventually came to realize was my own voice, filled with horror and torment. After what felt like years, I finally blacked out again, devoid of mana and devoid of the will to live.

When I awoke, the first thing I felt was nothing. A blissful, non-tormenting, nothing at all. As I basked in the fact that the pain was finally over.

The breeze. I opened my senses and looked around me as soon as I realized that I was still feeling that breeze. To my excitement I found that while I was not in that forest, I was also no longer underground. Nuzzled between the base of a young sapling and the ground below, I found myself with a much nicer vantage around me. Although the imminent vicinity around the sapling seemed to have been cleared of grass, as if it had recently been upended and then replaced, I could see a veritable bounty of green grass in the not so distance.

"Ash! We're above the ground!"

Ash immediately hopped down from where I'd seen her, resting seemly weightlessly in the branches of this sapling I was under.

"Good morning, Manning! I’m so sorry that I hurt you again. I didn’t realize you were still attached to the dungeon, and we stepped out of the influence. You had me so worried. We didn’t go too far and it looks like you instinctually spent all your mana trying to re-establish connection with the dungeon, although from what I can tell it wasn’t a very good exchange rate.

"I'm so sorry, it wasn't my intention to scare you like that." I was touched that she seemed genuinely concerned for my safety, and I immediately felt guilty even if my bout of sleep wasn't entirely my fault or under my control. I did not like seeing Ash so distressed. "What did I miss?"

"Well, Brick and Cara have started carving out their first floor under the forest, with the help of their drones. We have a little bit of catching up to do, and I still have to teach you how to convert your own worker drones, but first we need to check up on your mana capacity and start extending your influence to the surrounding area, and establish your domain."

I gazed internally at my core, and felt at my .. mana pool. I'd decided to call it a mana pool because every time I felt at it, it seemed coalesce like a body of water. Anyways I looked at my mana pool and I was shocked at what I saw. Not only had my overall natural mana capacity dropped by almost 10%, but it was also only about 30% full. There was also something different mixed in there.

After some thought I came to realize it must be the small sliver of Cara's power that she said went missing during the seperation. It felt squirmy and a bit gross to handle. I decided almost instantly I'd avoid using that mana whenever possible.

First things first, after some contemplation I realized I was only pulling my mana from the dirt. I closed my eyes and I found that it was much easier to pull ambient mana from the grass and sapling than it had been to pull it from the rocky floor of my cave. Ash explained that was because I was actually pulling earth mana from the stone and using a dungeons instinctual ability to convert it over to my base mana of nature. Now that I was actually pulling from something directly tied to my school of magic, it was much easier and felt far more rewarding.

After a bit of deliberation with my beautiful and knowledgeable companion, we decided the best course of action would be some good old fashioned mana cycling and influence spreading.