Seth, generally speaking, didn't care for much aside from his sheep out here on the plains. He didn't have much of a choice, strictly speaking; when a whole tenth of your flock got eaten by the tax collectors each year, everything except keeping enough sheep alive to make sure you and your family didn't starve generally fell by the wayside. Things like buying produce, tending the house, and stuff not directly related to tending the flock tended to fall to Seth's wife and boys. After all, tending the flock sometimes resulted in Seth being away from home for days at a time, so it's not like he could be relied on to keep the house in good condition.

It could be quite reasonably said that Seth and his family were struggling, but then was there anyone who wasn't, what with the bastard currently on the throne? After a few moments, Seth figured that the tax collectors might be doing a bit better if they skimmed off the top, but on the other hand if they got caught doing that...

Never before had Seth ever felt pity for a tax collector.

It was as he was musing on this subject that Seth spotted a large gray object towards the far edge of his flock. Seth was immediately suspicious of this; he knew every inch of the plains his sheep grazed on, and there weren't any large boulders on that hill before now. Determined to prevent any damage to his flock aside from the government-mandated part, the shepherd jaunted over to the object, a feeling going down the back of his neck like he'd been shuffling around in wool socks during winter.

Soon, Seth came close enough to the object to realize that it was actually an utterly massive metal door embedded into the hillside, the feeling of charge in the air only intensifying as Seth got closer. It was then that Seth remembered his grandma's stories about Dungeons, and the troubles and boons one could bring. He also remembered what his grandma had told him to do if he ever found one.

Cautiously, the shepherd removed one of the shining purple beads from his side-bag that his grandma had managed to secretly pass down to him, placed it at the door, and began to silently herd his flock away from the entrance to the Dungeon. After all, while Dungeons may contain wealth, to claim it was to risk one's life. Seth's family couldn't afford anything remotely resembling risk under any circumstances. Not to mention that the tax collector would probably take anything he pulled out of a Dungeon anyway.

Thus, Seth had to make a choice; did he tell no-one about the Dungeon and potentially run afoul of the Drake Guard, or did he inform the Guard, possibly angering the Dungeon enough to send monsters to kill him while he slept? Either way, Seth didn't like his choices.

With the vague awareness I had of the world outside my dungeon, I watched as the shepherd quietly shooed his flock of sheep away from my heavily armored door. The bead that he had left on my doorstep before departing however, was definitely something that caught my interest. Cautiously, I commanded the door to open, before I sent my Basic Clockwork to collect the item. The instant the bead crossed my threshold, a notification popped up, informing me of what I had just received.

Item Profile: Purple Mana Bead: Made by an experienced spell caster, this is a compressed bead of solid mana that can be tapped as necessary, but cannot be recharged. This bead in particular contains 50 mana.

If I'd had a jaw, it would have been hanging open slightly. With a mere twenty mana I had gone from a room and a hallway to a moderately well-defended location. With fifty mana, I had the potential to well and truly expand my horizons. Still, the fact was that this was a finite resource; if my ultimate goal to become mobile were to be realized, I would need some way to re-invest this windfall into a greatly increased mana output.

Needing some more information about possible avenues, I queried my interface "What are possible ways to gain mana?"

Gaining Mana: Mana can be gained in several ways.

-Fully conscious souls generate mana if the underpinnings of consciousness aren't propped up by magic; this is how your Core produces mana.

-Unattended organic material in your dungeon can be decomposed into usable mana.

-Particularly energetic reactions can be harnessed to produce mana, if properly contained.

The instant I read 'energetic reactions' my mind immediately leapt straight past all forms of chemical power generation, and went straight to nuclear power. After all, why bother with volatile and difficult to contain fluorides when you could go straight to good old Uranium?

Still, I'd never actually built a nuclear reactor in real life before, which meant that I would need to do some significant trial and error. Courtesy of the gift I'd received, I could afford to do that, quickly digging a new room to test my reactor prototypes in, slapping an armored door on it marked with appropriate warnings, and getting to work. Now, from what I remembered a good isotope of Uranium for fission had 233 nucleides, but I didn't actually know how many of those were protons and how many were neutrons, or even if this world's physics would allow such shenanigans at all.

Nothing for it, I began counting my way up the periodic table to try and make myself a nuclear reactor. As I did so, I made a mental note to do something nice for that shepherd; he had almost certainly saved me almost a week of progress by giving me this bead, and I wanted to get myself mobile as soon as I possibly could.