Cara

"’ees awake, jus so ya know"

"Good for him. Hope all that beauty sleep was worth it."

As much as Cara appreciated having Brick here with her, she couldn't help but be a little frustrated by the little Brownie. He was extremely knowledgeable, but seemingly had more fun picking at her nerves than he did actually helping her construct the dungeon.

"Ya really should be a lil' nicer to em, ya are stuck together for the foreseeable future afta all."

That didn't even dignify a response. Still he had a point. She watched Manning as he started generating Mana and extending their influence outwards. As always, he took no time to get up to speed and started trucking along instantly.

Turning back to her own problems, she was having a bit of trouble planning out the dungeon. After a conversation with Brick a few days ago, they decided they would start her dungeon off as if it were a second floor difficulty. It made sense because adventurers would have to get through Manning’s forest before they got into the mineshaft.

That’s what it was after all. It took a little while to figure it out, but it seemed that they had been dropped in a really poorly made mine system. The tunnels were extremely unorganized, and there weren't any carts to speak of, but it was definitely supposed to be some sort of mine.

So far Cara had learned the pattern to seed Copper and Tin veins into her mine, as well as a very low grade dark purple quartz crystal. Brick assured her that along with adventurers, craftsmen usually popped up at new dungeons to get materials cheaply and practice their trade. She had a few plans to lure them into the dungeon where they might fall on their pickaxes, or you know, fall to some other freak accident.

Back to the issue on hand however. After creating her Crunchers, that’s what she was calling her rock eating beetle drones, she started to have dungeon block on what kind of monsters she wanted to populate the dungeon with. Looking at the list of typical Dark monsters she had a few paths to go down. She could do some sort of mutated giant spiders (gross, too many legs), or maybe find a snake and have some fun with serpents (not enough legs), or have some dire-beasts that lived in her dungeon.

What she really wanted to do was to play with skeletons, but unlike most other monsters those didn't really breed and were extremely costly to craft without bones to play with.

As she sat there waiting for her crunchers to finish digging out her first floor and contemplating her way forward, she looked back up at Manning. It had been several hours, and he had expanded their territory extensively. Not only had he done that, but he had already made his drones!

She couldn't help but feel annoyed because it had taken her two days to come up with and successfully create her beetles. Cara really couldn’t understand how it was that a common man with no training in magic was acclimating and thriving in their new situation so much better than she was. She resented him, but couldn't help but admire his motivation at the same time.

* * * * * * *

Manning

I came out of my trance just as the sun started to warm my domain up again. I couldn't see the sun yet because it was outside of my domain, but I could feel the effects of it’s' warmth on my plants and use the angles to track its movement through the sky.

To my great disappointment, I didn't have any dreams that night. I didn't know if it was because I hadn't blacked out like before, or if it was for some other reason. I felt for Ash and sensed that she was out of range, somewhere to the north of my territory. Thinking about it I realized she was probably at the stream she told me about. I should work in that direction and claim that too if I can.

With nothing else to do for now, I decided to check up on my little rodents. With no time wasted, it looked like the female had already succeeded in getting impregnated overnight. I'd have to watch them for a bit longer to be sure, but I guessed that her pregnancy would last a little over a week, and that she was carrying 14 or so babies.

Over the next couple of hours I began systematically claiming all the insects and small plants in my domain until Ash finally showed up.

"Good Morning Manning! I see that you are already up and about doing the dungeon grind."

In the light of day I was able to observe her a little more clearly than when we had first met. She was wearing a dress that looked like it had been made of a tree, with a bark corset attached to leaves woven together, fashioning as a skirt. Her hair, which was wet (looks like I was right about the river), was a mixture of a dark red, bright orange, healthy green, and a pale yellow.

"Welcome back Ash, how was your swim? Also what do you think we should do next?"

"Well I was thinking our forest could use a little more variety, and whereas I'd rather not leave the forest for too long at a time I have an idea. You should work on claiming some of those birds today, and send them off in search of plants and tree seeds we don't have yet."

I had been considering that since I first saw the flying feathered rodents yesterday, but having confirmation was always nice.

Since claiming the plants and drones, I noticed a large increase in the passive mana I was able to absorb without cycling. Combined with the fact that my Mana pool maximum seemed to expand the farther I extended my domain, I had little trouble working up enough mana to start claiming the birds.

I spent a few hours claiming the few birds that landed inside my maple tree copses, and the one that was roosted in the Oaks as well. It was a bit more difficult, because unlike the hedgehog who froze when I started claiming it, the birds seemed to get startled and flew off. I'd lost more than a couple because they took off and got outside my boundaries before I could dominate them. On that same note, I'd also accidently killed one by trying to crush its' mana barrier too quickly.

By the time the sun was directly overhead I had two dozen birds, consisting of three different species. 17 of them, not including the one I accidently killed, I learned were called Finches. They were smaller than my other birds, but also a bit more agile and I thought they'd be able to avoid predators a bit more easily. Half a dozen of them were just called blackbird, but the one I was most proud of was the one I'd caught sleeping in the oak trees.

It was called a great horned owl, and looked to me to be a natural predator. It cost significantly more than the other avian I'd claimed and I was sure it was the prize of the day.

Not for the first time I considered the combat abilities of the birds for my dungeons, but I ended up writing it off again. I just didn't think they would be the most effective under the canopy of my forest. I did however start thinking about how I could use them for ambushes or in the clearings I had planned.

I ordered the Owl to move its' nest into one of the closer oak trees just past the hill where my Ash was, and then had the other birds depart the forest with orders to return within a week, and to bring plants and seeds that we didn’t already have here, or anything else of interest they could carry.

I'd exhausted most of my mana and decided I could cycle for an hour or so while I waited, so that I could build up enough mana to try and claim the oak tree my owl was now roosting in.

I looked down into Cara's half of the dungeon to see how she was doing. It seemed that she was going to capitalize on her birds too. I watched as she claimed a few furry birds in a cave system that her beetles had broken through to. Bats, they were called bats and weren't birds after all but were closer to a squirrel with wings. I thought about trying to claim one for myself, but figured we had seperated our cores to give each other space. She wasn't up here stealing bugs and trees from me, afterall.

Oh well.

"Ash, I think I've saved up enough to try and claim one of the trees now. How should I go about it?"

Unlike the smaller plants, just chucking mana at them didn't seem to claim them. Plants didn't have the same thin barrier I saw on bugs and animals, but seemed to have their mana shielding running through the entire thing. I figured out pretty early that I could drown out the blades of grass and most of the flowers around by pure force of mana, but the trees and bushes were far more resistant.

Ash looked extremely excited and stopped weaving the long blades of grass I'd seen her playing with. She set aside her little crafts project and ran over to the Oak in question, put both hands on the trunk and leaned into it.

"Okay Manning, remember when I explained how plants get their water?"

"Yeah, you said they drink it with their feet."

"Their roots, not feet. They function like the veins in your mammals do, transporting water instead of blood. You need to saturate the soil around the roots with a far more concentrated amount of mana. It will probably take a while, but as the trees absorb nutrients and water, they will also infuse themselves with your mana until they are eventually claimed."

I could already tell that it was going to be far easier to grow my own trees than to try and claim these ancient plants. Still, I started filling the soil like she was talking about.

With nothing better to do until my birds returned, I reached out and claimed the rest of the female hedgehogs and a few of the voles. I figured I'd spend the next week claiming all the small creatures that entered my small slice of land and work on expanding outwards ever so slowly until I got my first river.

And so that is what I did.