It took Team Terra five days to return to the exit from the eleventh floor to the tenth floor. As soon as they’d decided to head back out the situation had turned into an ongoing struggle against packs of seemingly random animals from Earths ecosystems. Bison, Hippos, Rhinos, a savage pack of nearly a hundred chihuahuas that were actually very dangerous. The creatures of the first ten floors were basically normal animals, the Tier 2 floors animals all had skills. And a lot of them could see through Leon’s stealth capabilities.

The ongoing fighting to get out of the eleventh floor demonstrated to Team Terra how much danger they were actually in. On three different occasions Cynthia was wounded severely enough that without Lamia’s instant attention and healing she would have actually died. Farthallahn had had her arm practically removed at the shoulder by a creature that had never made it onto the fossil records but was obviously an apex predator of its time and place. The creature that had attacked her was a snake like animal that had reached nearly fifty feet in length and had a skeletal structure made entirely of cartilage. It did not have teeth in the traditional sense, and it used its massive head to pulverize things before swallowing them whole. At least that is what Identify had told Leon. All he knew was that the monster had been terribly difficult to kill, and it had landed such a powerful blow on Far that her arm had been hanging on by a thread of muscle and some skin. Skill driven healing had repaired her before the fighting was even finished but it had been a scary fight.

Leon had been injured several times as well when he’d come across creatures that could see through his stealth and they’d managed to either bite or claw through his Knull Armor. Luckily for Leon he was rather durable and on top of his natural healing being bolstered by his Mind and Body of the Traveler Trait, he also had Lay On Hands to heal himself with. The scariest fight they’d had though was when they’d confronted a Sauropod. (Long Neck Dinosaur) It had been of a variant that had never been fossilized so humanity had never had an idea of these particular ones either.

Porcupinopod Gigantopis

This Sauropod was perhaps the most overwhelmingly defensive creature of any land bound animal to have ever lived on the face of planet Earth. Which is an oddity in that there was no predatory creature that influenced this development. The Porcupinopod Gigantopis stands roughly 40 feet in height from the base of its feet to the top of its head, and nearly 120 feet long from tail to snout. Their bodies are covered from head to tail in barbed quills that can grow up to three feet long individually. Unlike most Sauropods which were almost exclusively herbivorous the Porcupinopod Gigantopis is an omnivore and will eat anything that it can get its jaws on.

The fight with the giant animal had been terrifying for several reasons, not the least of which was that it could launch barrages of its quills at will. The quills were razor sharp and hard enough that Leon was pretty sure they could punch through steel plates. The fight had ended with Leon, Far, and Cynthia all looking like pincushions and requiring extensive healing. Daisy had managed to avoid everything thrown at her and Cynthia had tanked everything for Lamia who had kept everyone going during the battle and patched everyone up after the fight.

On the loot front, Team Terra had never had such a profitable run. Every time they were attacked, they’d find a chest nearby and Leon would loot it using Instant Harvest and they would move on. By the time they’d climbed the mountain and returned to the tenth floor Leon had looted nearly fifty chests and the team had gained two whole sets of common Tier 2 Elixirs, dozens of high-grade healing, stamina, and mana potions, along with a smattering of quality Tier 2 armor and weapons. And a few enchanted trinkets. On top of all of that even divided between everyone they would all be coming home 489 gold coins richer than when they’d entered the Dungeon.

Team Terra was actually a little nervous as they used their PortStones to leave the Dungeon. The Dungeon was actually dangerous now, and their friends, though well trained and powerful in their own right, were also diving this new floor. Meaning that they could very well return to find that one or more of the people on the island were no longer among the living.

Upon exiting the Dungeon, the group was immediately greeted by Leonardo Hephington, the Mentor in charge of resource processing.

“Hello Team Terra! It’s good that you all have returned unharmed. I am here to inform the teams that there is to be an emergency meeting in the town hall tomorrow morning at sunrise. There are still a few teams that we are waiting on down there. Hopefully they will all be back before the meeting. Also, Miss Malorie FleshShaper asked that Leon go to see her immediately upon exiting the Dungeon.”

“What is the meeting about?” Lamia asked

“You will all hear about it tomorrow morning. Now get on with your daily lives until then.” Leonardo said shooing Team Terra away as if they were a bother. Which admittedly they kind of were seeing as they never made use of his services because of Leon’s Instant Harvest skill.

“What do you think this is about?” Daisy asked

“If I had to guess… It would be something about how dangerous the Dungeon has become.” Cynthia chimed in.

Leon just shrugged, “Not sure, but I need to go find Malorie. I’ll meet you all at home to divide the loot.” He said as he Quantum Blinked away from them and in the direction of Malorie’s Library. Hopefully whatever she wanted wouldn’t take too long. He wanted a bath and needed to start in on making some new minions. The minions would only be Tier 1 for now but soon enough they grow into Tier 2s Leon actually already knew what minions he wanted to create as well. He would make a flock of Fell Beasts, wyvern like creatures from one of his old favorite movie franchises. And on top of that he was going to make several dozen Trolls from LOTR. They would be a disposable force of fighters for him. Large and scary monsters under his command and obeying his every whim. Shaking his head to clear out his thoughts that were muddled by the endeavor he was about to undertake to basically make himself an army of oversized monsters, Leon focused on finding his Mentor.

It did not take Leon long to find Malorie. Between all of his different sensory abilities, unless something or someone was disguised and hidden with skills that were rather powerful, Leon could find practically anything. And so it was that he spotted her sitting behind a desk writing out what looked like an order for something to send through the Telepad system.

“You called for me?” Leon asked as he blinked into her office right behind her.

“By the gods Leon!” She shouted as she leapt in her seat, prompting an involuntary laugh from Leon, “Please just use the door next time. Do you want to give me a heart attack?”

“Sorry. Sorry.” Leon hastily apologized seeing the murderous look in her eyes, “I’ll knock next time. So… what’s up? Any chance you can give me a heads up on what tomorrow’s meeting is about?”

“Oh, the meeting is just about the upcoming battles for control of the town. Founders Period traditions and all that. We actually had to leak the Dungeon’s location on purpose to the surrounding countries this time. Somehow, we’ve been keeping under wraps enough that their spies never realized we were here. But that’s not what I want to talk to you about. I’ve managed to get ahold some incredibly valuable, incredibly rare, Lore books. Along with a bunch of true skill books that grant skills just by using them.” She spoke as she reached into a drawer and retrieved what looked like an ordinary coin purse to regular sight, but in the magical and spatial realms looked anything but ordinary. “I want you to use that skill of yours on this bag. Some of these things have trackers on them that will activate if they are removed from the bag. Though I will warn you. Several of the skills here, as well as the Lore's are from the fifth layer. And some of the information that you will learn from it is not to be shared with others… Especially because it may or may not be highly frowned upon that I’ve acquired some of them to begin with. The contents of that bag could get us in some serious shit with the Guild if they found out.”

Leon raised an eyebrow at that. In all of his time being around members of the Dungeoneers Guild he had head nothing but praises for them, how they stood for justice freedom, and whole host of other things. It was obvious to him that the Guild was trying to get people with the Hero Title indoctrinated into joining them. This was the first time he’d seen any member of the guild do something that the Guild would ‘Frown on’. But the bigger and more pressing issue that had been touched on was the fact that they were about to have to fight for the town! And the Guild had purposefully initiated it!

“What do you mean Founders Period Traditions? Are we about to have a war?” Leon asked, careful to keep his voice neutral.

“Oh yeah, A long time ago the Guild simply took control of all Dungeons. But because the Guild doesn’t lay claim to territory other than directly around Dungeons and the higher ups don’t want to have to control laws and law enforcement everywhere all the time they came up with a bit of a compromise. We don’t really need to control all Dungeons. No nation out there would deny access to their Dungeons to any Guild members anyways, it was decided that during the Founders Period any nation that wanted to claim the dungeon for their own growth would be allowed to send a force of no more than fifty Tier 3 individuals, along with a force of up to two hundred Tier 2’s to try and take the town by force. If they win, the Guild doesn’t really lose anything, but it allows the country that took it over to grow and thrive and more than likely add to our numbers because of that growth.” Malorie shrugged, “There are only two countries that border this Dungeon. So at max we will have to deal with one hundred Tier 3 invaders and Four hundred Tier 2’s. Mind you that those of us with Guild training are at a significant advantage over those people that a small country can bring to bear. Honestly defense of the Dungeon Town is usually left entirely to the Mentees and us Mentors just sit back and watch. The quality of their Tier 3 warriors should be around the same level as your current battle prowess. Honestly there’s only ever been three Dungeons successfully taken over by a country, two of those were because the countries people got there first and managed to set up their own fortifications in time to push us back. The third was because the Viltrim Empire is actually very powerful and advanced, they brought to bear some mighty powerful individuals to take over the dungeon. Luckily the Viltrim Empire is almost a lightyear away from here and not a threat this time.”

Leon grabbed a chair and sat down his mind spinning with all of the implications. Why hadn’t they been told about this earlier. Obviously, it was a test of some kind. But seriously, Leon and the other students were going to have to fight off people? Leon had grown numb to killing the animals in the Dungeon. But he wasn’t at all sure if he would be able to fight and kill sapients. The thought of killing another person was still something that Leon did not actually want to even contemplate.

“Don’t worry about all of that right now. Right now, I want you to use your harvesting skill on this bag and then go to your house. Perhaps practice some of the new skills you get from this and come to the meeting tomorrow.” Malorie said as she pushed the bag across her desk in front of Leon.

Casting his doubts aside Leon reaches forward and used Instant Harvest on the bag. And for the first time in his new life, he blacked out.

Leon wasn’t sure how long he was unconscious. But it couldn’t have been very long. Maybe a few seconds. The reason he had blacked out was because of the mass information overload that had surged through his brain the moment he used Instant Harvest. Some of the Lore books from the fifth layer were on subjects that he’d already gained a Lore Title for, but they contained vastly better information, the Lore book on Mana was particularly eye opening. It made Leon realize that he had actually been on the way to crippling himself. Aside from that, his vision was blinking with notifications asking if he would like to learn a few new skills. From the information overload Leon knew that there had been a dozen skills that were summarily eaten by his trait. But at least this time he knew what they were because of the books themselves.

The new knowledge on mana and how it operated was especially important. And unfortunately, it also meant that Leon was going to have to get rid of his helper. Corey was going to have to go. Corey had been an integral part of helping him rapidly develop his cores mana capacity. But now that he was on his way towards Tier 3, Corey was actually going to be a roadblock. Tier 3 mana was the turning point where not only did it become denser. It started to physically exhibit characteristics of its affinities. Because of this, it was also the point at which an individual needed to create a cycling system inside their cores that separated the different affinities into their own “containment blocks”. Apparently, this was necessary to get to the fourth Tier. Creating those separations was something that the Lore book suggested being done at Tier 2. The Lore book also covered that there were no “God Given Skills” that could make this happen, one had to physically do it themselves by literally ripping pieces of the core wall off and using those pieces to create a structure within their core. Each time a new affinity was gained the individual would need to create another containment block within their core. Doing this was supposedly incredibly painful on a level that no pain mitigation skill could counteract. The Lore book even recommended different shapes for the containment blocks. Each block needed to be attuned to a specific affinity. Concentrating on rotating these blocks would increase the draw on ambient mana of that affinity. Leon was unsure of why the book referred to them as blocks when it specifically said that circular shapes were generally better at containing mana.

The information he’d just absorbed made the world feel a whole lot more cultivator-esk than it seemed before. Leon was going to have to physically alter parts of his own soul to make a system that would filter and compress his mana into individual containment areas for each of his affinities. That was a little disturbing seeing as how Leon had most all affinities. And he wasn’t even sure how many that was. The interesting thing about the individual containments was that apparently each one he made would nearly double his natural draw on that specific affinity of mana to which it was attuned. Also even without gaining a Lore Title the act of separating the affinities into their own specific containment blocks unlocked ones ability to specifically use that mana affinity. It was weird.

“Well are you just going to sit there staring off into the air or are you going to go home and figure out what all has changed?” Malorie suddenly interrupted his contemplations of the information that was swimming around his brain.

“Sorry, I just realized a lot of things. I still haven’t even accepted the skills yet.” Leon said as he turned his attention to the blinking notifications in his vision.

“Well hurry up so that I can work in peace.” Malorie grumbled.

Leon nodded and quickly brought up his notification and read over them.

Congratulations!

You have qualified for the following skills by use of skill books: Aura, Aura Perception, Aura Expansion, Aura Contraction, Aura Control.

Would you like to accept these skills? Y/N

Aura skills were skills of the Soul. The skill Aura just made the Soul project an Aura in a certain radius around the individual it was a passive that could not be turned off once gained but used practically no mana. Everything inside of that Aura was simply easier for that individual in influence. Aura Perception allowed one to perceive Auras of others and even their own Aura. Expansion and Contraction were exactly what they sounded like used to expand and contract ones Aura. And Aura Control allowed the user to manipulate and use their Aura directly. The Soul Lore book indicated that there were a lot uses for these abilities and that Auras were an important part of higher Tier interactions. Needless to say, Leon accepted the skills and found his world changing in the blink of an eye.

Across from him Malorie suddenly seemed entirely different. He could feel and see her Aura. It was tightly controlled and beautifully intricate. Leon had never seen something so complex in his life. Malorie smiled at the look on his face.

“Welcome to the world youngling! You’ve just become an adult as far as the powers that be are concerned. You are gonna have to figure out how to control that Aura of yours quickly though. Its rather obnoxious and its considered rude to go around with your Aura all unkempt like that.” Malorie said

Leon concentrated on his own Aura and nearly had a seizure. It was flashing all sorts of different colors randomly and fluctuating oddly. Reaching for Aura Control Leon focused on attempting to even it all out and make it less chaotic. All he managed to do was make the fluctuations slow down. It was hard to control.

“Don’t worry about it too much right now Leon. You just gained a lot of new information. Go start in on what you’ve learned and be there tomorrow morning to listen to the briefing.” She said shooing him away with a hand gesture.

It wasn’t long after that that Leon found himself holed up in his room, deep in Meditation. It was time to start creating his cultivation base. At least that is what it felt like. In reality he was staring at the first truly living thing he had ever created within his own core and wondering how he was supposed to get rid of it. Corey had been with him for two years now and it was practically an extension of his body at this point. It had no mind of its own, all it did was circulate and absorb mana within his core. Admittedly Leon didn’t really need it any longer. The skills that he’d had to get to counteract the overload of sensory information meant that he could do everything that Corey did for him without much effort. Just leave a section of his mind in here to do it and that would take care of everything.

Looking around his Core Leon admired the beauty of the flowing mana and noticed something slightly strange. He’d gained five new skills today, but there were no new Stalactite or stalagmite structures within his core. It was odd. Only skills that got eaten by his trait didn’t show up in here. Why was it that he wasn’t seeing anything for his Aura skills?

Leon realized that contemplating this was just him delaying what he needed to do. Looking at Corey in all of its splendor one final time, Leon popped him into his Utility Pocket. The mana within his Core rushing in to fill the vacated space and then evening out rather rapidly. Leon’s Source, the ball floating at the center of his Core had in all honesty made it so that Leon never seemed to run out of mana nowadays. That little comment in the traits description of ‘Never run Dry’ was very true at this point.

Now that his cores mana was calm and unmoving Leon felt a bit odd. Like he’d stagnated in a way. He would be fixing that soon by creating Containment Blocks. He’d decided to basically just make rings around his source. Technically speaking they would be a Torus shape. Now the only thing that he needed to do was something that he’d always felt like he shouldn’t do. Alter stuff inside his Core.

Leon had always felt like he could alter things inside of his core. But he’d always felt an almost irrational fear of trying to do it. In his mind it was almost like the feeling you’d get when really contemplating cutting yourself or the idea of pulling out your own eyes or teeth. Or trying to bite off your own finger. Technically one could all of those things fairly easily, but a healthy mind wont really allow one to do those things. That is how he’d always felt about altering his Core.

Concentrating on reaching out around himself Leon felt the walls of his Core. The walls of his Core was where he’d need to acquire the materials for his rings. From the Lore books Leon knew that the walls of his core recover fairly quickly from whatever he did to them. But that it would feel unlike anything he’d ever experienced to do this. He selected an area that was far away from any of his skill stalagmites and focused on pulling a chunk of the crystalline material away from the wall.

What happened when he did this was very interesting. And it also opened up a new world of possibilities in his mind. Pulling the material of the walls outwards simply created a pillar that looked just like his skill stalagmites. Only it was missing the little lines and channels that moved mana in specific ways. He knew after pulling it out of the wall like that that he could actually physically make skills of his own if knew what he was doing. On another note, just extending the material into a pillar did not cause any discomfort or negative feelings. What did start to cause a negative reaction was when he started concentrating on severing the pillar he’d made at its base.

There was an odd pain that began to build up inside Leon as he started concentrating on severing the pillar he’d pulled out of the wall of his Core. He figured it probably would have been easier to start with a small amount, but he’d gone with a piece the size of one of his skill stalagmites. You might wonder why Leon had decided to grab such a large amount for his first try, and the reason was that he had a ton of affinities. So, he was going to have to make a lot of rings, meaning he needed a lot of materials. Focusing with all his considerable brain power Leon kept all of the mana in the area away from the material, (this was important because he needed to get it into the space he wanted before exposing it mana which would attune the containment block to the most prevalent affinity in his mana. At which point the material would become unchangeable.) Then he wrenched the pillar off the wall of his Core and unleashed a scream of utter agony as he did so. Pain did not really describe what the sensation of pulling a piece of your own Core off felt like. It hurt… but more like heartbreak hurt… only sharper, more instantaneous, and it throbbed throughout his whole being. It was so intense that it felt physical in a way that transcended the physical. The agony lasted only a few moments before the damaged segment of the wall of his Core smoothed over and went back to being exactly as it had been before.

It had taken everything Leon had to offer to maintain focus on keeping his mana away from the material he’d ripped off his own soul while he was experiencing such incredible agony, but he succeeded in holding everything at bay while he recovered. Stabilizing himself after that harrowing experience Leon cleared the way to the area around his Source and moved the giant chunk of Soul Material over and began shaping it. He kind of wanted to experiment first to see how big he needed to make each ring but at the same time he was kind of terrified to do that. The Lore book had warned that making a Containment block too small would cause it to shatter and dissipate when the amount of mana exceeded its capacity to hold and compress. And that process was said to be even worse of an experience that ripping parts of your own Soul out, so much so that people had gone insane from it.

After experiencing the existential pain of ripping this material off of his own soul Leon really did not want to have to go through something even worse. Meaning that he was now planning on making each ring much larger than he had planned on before.

Shaping the material was easy it simply changed form to his desires. Originally, he had been planning on making rings that closely encircle his basketball sized source. Meaning that the giant pillar of crystalline material he’d ripped out of his Core wall could have been made into potentially hundreds of individual containment blocks. But now… Leon realized that the size of his Soul and the vast ocean of Mana that he could contain was actually coming back to bite him again. Would only one of these pillars worth of material even be enough for one of his affinities? He wished that he had some sort of reference material for how big he had to make these things in comparison to the size of his mana pool. Assuming that most people only had enough room in their souls for ten to twenty of the skill pillars and usually they only had a couple of affinities. The description of the sizes needed in the Lore book would have to be scaled way up. For most people Leon assumed that it would be Containment Blocks roughly the size of his Source. Scaling that up in his rough estimates would mean that Leon’s Containment Blocks would need to be about the size of one of his skill Stalagmites possibly larger.

A whimper rose inside him as he realized that he was going to need more material even just for the first one. He returned to the wall of his core with the material he’d already gathered and focused on pulling up more material. This time he pulled up a significantly larger amount, roughly three times what would be required to make one of the skill Stalagmites. Bracing himself Leon again ripped out the chunk of wall he’d gathered, and the experience was even worse this time. He sobbed to himself as he desperately held his own mana at bay while waiting for the pain to pass. It eventually did pass. As Leon sobbed his agony out. It felt like so much time had passed, like he’d been there for hours, but the pain had actually only lasted about fifteen seconds.

Cautiously Leon returned to the area around his Source and shaped all of the material he’d collected from his own soul into a single large hollow ring. He took his time to make sure that the ring was entirely even and smooth both on the inside and outside. After surveying his work several times Leon was finally ready to let his mana into the area again. He was afraid that even this would not be enough, but he couldn’t just sit here forever holding his mana away from what was meant to be a Containment Block.

Leon didn’t know how long he sat there frozen in fear of the Containment Block shattering when allowed the mana to touch it. But suffice it to say he sat there sweating it out for long while before he finally released his control of the mana around his core.

Mana rushed back to fill the area and touched the giant ring. The ring immediately started changing color. Going from being a clear crystal to looking like a glass tube that was partially filled with an unidentifiable mass of undulating almost liquid flesh. It got to almost half full very quickly before it started slowing its fill rate, then got to about eighty percent full and didn’t seem to be filling much at all, though it was still filling very slowly. It was then that Leon noticed a notification blinking in the corner of his vision.

[Containment Block {Flesh Affinity} has been created. Stability 236%. Capacity 112%.]

It was an odd formatting that looked different from the normal System notifications. The Lore Book had mentioned these notifications saying that the minimums for Stability and Capacity needed to be at or over 80% for it to be safe to progress to the next Tier. Stability being the measure of the Containment Blocks Strength, and Capacity being the amount of mana that it could store in relation to the total amount of that specific mana type. Meaning that the ring could contain 12% more Flesh affinity mana than he was capable of providing it. which also meant that Leon had made the whole thing 12% Larger than it needed to be. Now that Leon’s core was full of mana, he would never have more mana than he had right now. Only the rate that drew it in at would increase along with its density. Which technically meant that there would be more but with mana and core dynamics it didn’t really work that way.

Popping a portion of his consciousness out of his Core Leon looked at the time and sighed. It had felt like he’d been at this for hours, but it had only been about ten minutes since he’d started. Leon had long suspected that time ran differently when he actively using meditation, but he couldn’t really prove it. He groaned a little internally before he plunged the entirety of his consciousness back into his Core. It was time for a prolonged session of self-torture and making rings of the stuff of his own soul.