Manning

This was the deepest I’d ever seen the cult come. Unfortunately they found a way around my nighttime visitor ban and managed to collect around the dungeon entrance before the sun set. There were even more of them than usual.

“Look how many of them there are, Manning. You must be getting all kinds of energy from them.” Ash was also watching the collection of her unknowing followers, albeit with more curiosity than annoyance compared to myself. She wasn’t wrong though, just their presence within the borders of my ‘dungeon’ gave off mana of a different purity than I could refine myself. I’d decided that it wasn’t more pure than my own, or even better refined, it was just different. Different in the aspect that I could more easily use it to expand my limits and grow.

“Yeah, must be at least half of the town here. You finally going to make an appearance so they can start carving statues of you?” I had fun teasing Ash. As a dryad who’d grown up in an isolated part of a dungeon, she wasn’t used to much attention at all, let alone worship from an entire town of devotees.

“We both know that they are worshiping you, Manning. It’s your effects on the forest and the bounty you provide them that they think is a god.” Ash’s hair had darkened slightly since bonding with me, leaving it a mixture of orange and auburn like the autumn leaves. That being said, the darker hair color offset her blush pretty well.

“You say that, but it’s your tree that the priest prays to. You’re their god, you just take credit for all of my work.” Ash started pouting and didn’t deign my comment with a response, which was fine because the villagers were starting to do something and I wanted to pay attention to it.

The elf who I’d kidnapped when experimenting with my ‘trial’ stood atop the hill and spoke down to his flock. He gave some speech welcoming everyone and explaining why his god was good and what not, but it was what they did next that really had me enraptured.

A majority of the villagers lowered their heads and began praying, for lack of a better term. They’d done this in the past and released slightly larger amounts of mana into the environment, which I harvested naturally, so I was waiting for this since they arrived this evening. Unlike the usual process, however, they didn’t discharge into the ambient mana around them.

Somehow, having the pear tree so close them allowed for them to use it like a conduit. I could feel a connection to each villager as they prayed to me through the tree, like a much lesser version of the bond I had with Ash. It was disorienting, to say the least, and a little concerning. For more than a moment I believed they’d discovered I was a dungeon and if I had lungs I would have held my breath in anticipation. Then the mana started flowing.

It was sweeter than any mana I’d accumulated since awaking in my gemstone the first time. It felt infinitely more pure and potent than anything I’d gathered from the air, my plants, beasts, or even from the sapients I’d managed to kill. Although it was just a trickle, I was instantly refreshed and starved for more at the same time. Almost based on instinct alone, I pulled.

The trickle of energy flowing to me stalled for a moment and I worried that I inadvertently shut it off, then it blew open and a river of energy came cascading into my core. I felt like my gemstone had been dropped into rapids so fast that it would never settle to the riverbed. Unlike the death of a sapient, I didn’t receive any emotions or memories through the mana, it was just raw power. Part of me felt that I wasn’t receiving all of the energy passing through the tree, but I was too caught up in bliss to do anything about it.

I started to feel like I was more as I absorbed the energy that was being freely offered to me. It’s not just that I felt more energized, or more powerful, I just felt more. Then it slowly faded out and I was left wanting. My mana capacity didn’t fade at all, but the feeling of bliss had dissipated. Looking around the clearing I could see a range of emotions. There was fear, exhaustion, apprehension, and even fervent joy from a few. Mostly exhaustion though.

A fruit dropped from the branches into the priest's hands, practically glowing in my vision as it exploded in mana. I realized that a portion of the mana that was being funneled through the pear tree seemed to have been absorbed by it, resulting in one of the healing fruits being borne for the first time since I’d forced one to spawn ages ago. I concluded that it was too expensive back when I experimented with it the first time, but somehow the process they had put it through was far more efficient for creating the fruit.

The amount of mana I hadn’t absorbed from them was negligent and they hadn’t put off vast amounts in the first place, so the fruit sprouting proved to me that my assumption that freely given energy somehow counted for more. Suddenly this little cult didn’t seem like such a laughing matter. I’d have to start brainstorming ways to exploit them for more worship and expand their following.

“I’ve got an idea, Ash. I think it’s about time you showed yourself to them, I can even bring in some Hedge-hogs for backup if you are afraid for your safety. Just the taste of that worship was enough to get me addicted, and I want them to keep coming back and praying.

“Ash?”

When she didn’t respond right away I had to redirect my attention to her, trying to figure out what she was doing. What I found terrified me, she was lying on the forest floor in a state of disarray, unmoving with her face in the dirt. Without hands to turn her over, the best I could do was redirect the local fauna to turn her over and verify her safety.

I managed to slow my train of thought while the nearest hedgehogs waddled over and started cycling through my other senses. Ash was not moving, but she was still breathing, my link to her felt as vibrant as ever, if not more so, and she seemed to be… brighter? All too slowly I realized what was going on. I may have been joking about them praying to her image, but somehow some of that energy had been redirected to her as well as me and it was having adverse effects on her.

I, a dungeon core, was basically a receptacle for vast amounts of mana and energy. I created, processed, and disseminated it every minute of the day. Taking an influx like that was just a windfall for me, but for Ash it must have been different. The only external mana source she’d been exposed to that I knew of was, well, me. On top of that, I already knew that this faith mana, that's what I decided to tentatively call it for now, was far more potent than what I created and gifted to my dungeon. The only thing I could do now was wait for her to recover, and hope that she was okay.

I started ferrying her back to the clearing on the back of several hedgehogs when I realized something else was tickling my senses. I was getting whiffs of something that felt vaguely familiar from the direction of the town. Not smells, I didn’t have a nose after all, but whiffs of a mana signature. I hijacked the eyes of one the barn owls that had moved into my forest and flew above my canopy to investigate.

The town was aflame, and the ‘smell’ I was picking up on was the death of sapients right outside of my boundaries. As tempted as I was to reach out and claim the town to steal way the memories I could feel slipping through my fingers, I was unable. The river was a large enough natural boundary that I had difficulty claiming it, which I attributed to the ever flowing water. On top of that, the presence of sapients within my confines and in the area I wanted to claim made it near impossible.

I now had a decision to make. From where I was perched on a willow, I could see several skirmishes and groups making their way toward the forest’s entrance. The town was aflame and people were falling left and right. Arrow through the throat there, mace to the face there, it was carnage and a waste of life.

I could either intervene and save the town, or let the new humans take over. I honestly didn’t care one way or the other at first, then I realized that if the town died out I would lose my new worshippers. That was a high I was willing to chance to my final death, so I decided to lend my assistance to the town… for now.

I double checked that Ash was safely tucked away in our little paradise before releasing the barn owl and getting to work, I had a lot of preparations to make and not very much time. Goal one was to preserve as many potential faith sources as possible, goal two was to kill as many invaders as possible. I manually took the reins on my night time forest enchantment and reached out to ask for a little help.

“Cara, could I borrow your attention for a minute or two? We’ve got a little problem up here.”