Arriving at the new planet was rather uneventful compared to leaving the last one. The planet I arrived at this time was a light grey gas giant with faintly glowing blueish grey rings. Looking down upon the planet I saw grey undulating clouds moving with a strange alien elegance with long white clouds in them. I saw an unstoppable storm lit by lightning and flowing with a beautiful elegance on the surface of this alien world, moving as if it was a single creature that was one with the sky itself. Moving my vision away from the beautiful storm, I looked upon the rings made out of countless particles and asteroids. The asteroid’s size ranged from what seemed like grains of sand to the size of a house. The asteroids took on a light grey with a tinge of blue, some of the asteroids took on a faint glow emitting a faint signs of mana.

I changed my velocity to match that with that of the rings and got closer to them, and looked at the rings close up. The rings themselves seemed to be rather thick and an indeterminable distance wide. After absorbing some of the asteroids, I found them to be made out of ice with faint traces of carbon within them,along with some of them being made out of a strange crystalline substance that I could only assume to be mana crystals as they emitted mana. This mana however seemed rather strange compared to the mana I had gotten used to absorbing over the many months. The mana seemed impure. It wanted to adhere to certain elements and energy, which elements and energy I did not know as I hadn’t had a chance to observe the mana in greater detail yet. While observing the mana crystals I received a notification from what appeared to be the system.

“You Have Taken 1 Damage.”

Checking my status this seemed to be true as I had taken one damage. Seeing as how I didn’t want to be bothered by anymore messages about me taking damage I decided to create a metal shell around myself, destroying the simple propulsion system I had made, and started thinking of ways to directly defend my core, something I had not thought about in the many months I had spent drifting towards this world.

“A.I. is there a way for me to strengthen walls within my domain?”

“Yes, all you need to do is put your mana into the desired part and will it to become stronger, keep in mind that materials have mana limits and if you exceed those limits the material will get weaker until the point in which it will collapse in on itself.”

“Very well then, thanks for the information.”

With this I proceeded to reinforce the metal shell with magic and installed one of the many propulsion systems I had created in Dungeon CAD costing 1537 mana in all. The propulsion system consisted of twenty six cylinders all bounded onto a metal frame. Each cylinder had a metal pipe with an adjustable nozzle on the end, which could release compressed gas in a desired direction. Each nozzle was connected to a machine core, totalling five machine cores along with the three control machine cores required for me to run the vehicle. All in all, the vehicle ended up being rather small and rather difficult to control, however it was easier to control than the previous propulsion system I was using.

Seeing as how I was done with creating the machine, I moved over to an asteroid that had a faint glow and started to study it. After I had made my initial observations I started to carefully remove the ice until all that was left was a fine glowing blue powder. After removing all the ice I looked at the powder again and tried to figure out what it did beyond glow and emit faint traces of mana. Seeing as how the powder didn’t do anything by itself I claimed the space that it took up and started to push mana into it. As I pushed mana into it, it started to create small arcs of electricity between itself and the other sections of the powder. Aside from the electricity I also saw other parts of the crystal powder start creating shards of ice. Seeing this I carefully absorbed the electricity producing powder and the water producing powder and tried to learn how to create them, but I ended up failing.

So I tried again, and again, and again. Only after my fourteenth try did I manage to successfully recreate them. When I recreated them, I also gained some insight on how to manipulate my mana better, as I had to manually control the mana and was not guided by the system.

Seeing as I could now create the powder as crystals, I opened Dungeon CAD. In dungeon CAD, I created a set of three glass chambers with all of them connected together through pipes. In the first chamber I created a decent sized water crystal and created salt while covering the rest of the chamber with heat runes that came in templates in Dungeon CAD. In the next two chambers, I created the electricity crystals. One with a positive charge and one with a negative charge. After I had created the crystals, I tested the creation. I injected mana into the water crystal and the heat runes until all three chambers were filled with water, then I proceeded to activate the electricity crystals using mana, only allowing a small amount of mana through. After a little while I started to see little bubbles form on each of the electric crystals, evidence that my creation had worked. After I had finished confirming my creations ability had worked, I created two more chambers both leading off of the electric crystals to store the respective gases, oxygen and hydrogen. After creating the electrolytic cell, I saw that it was inefficient and that it would be cheaper to create water on my own then it would be to use this method. So, I went back into Dungeon CAD and created a solution. My solution was a cone like contraption in which I would propel in one direction, so matter gets caught in the cone and is funneled into a chamber where it is heated up into water, mixes with the salt to greatly improve its conductivity, and then undergoes electrolysis creating the desired elements hydrogen and oxygen both of which can be used as propellant.

Having a new way to gather propellant, I propelled myself further into the ring collecting propellant. I came across an issue rather quickly, I had no way of taking out the mana crystals causing the whole thing to get clogged rather fast. While trying to think of a solution, I noticed something strange in the chambers. It had seemed that I had forgotten to remove all the mana crystals and cut off its flow of mana. Following this realization, I saw that the mana crystals of similar types were starting to slowly fuse together trapping oxygen and hydrogen within them. This causes problems especially when the crystals are still producing water, as water starts to form in those pockets and turn into hydrogen and oxygen due to electrolysis. I however, was oblivious to this fact as the gas pockets pressure in the crystals slowly rose, that is until it exploded.

“You Have Taken 375 Damage”

The explosion destroyed the glass chambers that the crystals were in, sending me into the direction of the planet, a direction I very much did not want to go in. using well placed blasts of hydrogen gas, I managed to stop traveling towards the planet and headed back towards the rings. On my way back to the rings, I saw a strange object covered in mana crystals within a part of the rings that was brighter than everything else, so I made my way towards the object of interest. On my way over to the object of interest, I decided to check my status again.

Machine Dungeon

Name : Atlas

Species : Sapient Dungeon Core T2

Gender : N / A

Age : 9 Months

Health : 1264 / 1639

Health Regeneration Rate : 8 per Hour

Magic : 29 / 2376

Magic Regeneration Rate : 7 per Hour

Power : 22 / 62 Units Used

Inventory : 0 m³ / 3 m³

Titles : Machine Dungeon, Kaladrian Space Pioneer, Voyager, Nomadic dungeon

Jobs : Dungeon Master

Status

Constitution : 54

Perception : 137

Intelligence : 97

Dungeon Menu

As I was going through my status I saw my mana and was confused.

“A.I. what happened to my mana?”

“You used it.”

“But, how?”

“ You spent 1537 on making that propulsion cube as you call it, 750 on those magic crystals and the contain which exploded, and 60 on propelling yourself.”

“Oh. Now that I think about it aren’t magic crystals suppose to be rare?”

“On the planet I was designed for they are normally somewhat rare, and only form in certain circumstances.”

“What would those circumstances be?”

“The circumstances required are, an undisturbed area and a consistent mana flow.”

“That’s all?”

“Yes, also the higher the mana concentration is the faster crystals will form, as in your case you were in a relatively undisturbed area and you were supplying it with a consistent mana flow causing it to grow and meld with the other crystals. Keep in mind that normal beings cannot do this even using the same amount of mana as you did, as dungeon’s mana is naturally purer than other sapient creatures.”

“If I absorb these crystals will I gain mana?”

“Yes you should gain mana as the crystals contain mana in sufficient amounts to offset the cost of destroying them.”

Taking this into account I started absorbing the mana crystals as I passed by them, slowly but steadily building up my mana reserves.

When I arrived at the object of interest I noticed something rather strange, the object appeared to be a space station in disrepair covered in large chunks of mana crystals, and not the asteroid I was expecting it to be. The mana near it was not nearly as dense as it seemed to be drawn to two spires sticking out on opposing sides of the object. The object itself seemed rather large with two metal spires, each around forty meters tall, looking similar to a cell tower without the dishes on it, and had a large metal pipe going down the center of both of them. In between the towers was a cylinder covered in smaller cylinders that were lined up in rows with what looked like two handles at the end of each one. Above the cylinder, but below the metal spire was what looked like four hallways leading to a cylinder in the center and what looked to be a rail system on a ring that was about ten meters long and eight meters thick with an overall diameter of fifty meters. On the inner side of the ring there were the four hallways along with the rails, and what appeared to be sixteen drones docked in small ports. At the end of each hallways on the outer ring there appeared to be a cargo bay of sorts all with their door shuts with the exception of one which appeared to be part way open. On the top and bottom of the ring there are spheres about six meters in diameter with a pipe leading into the station all kept on by exposed supports. On the outside there were the cargo bay entrances, and what appeared to be four more hallways going about twenty meters out, each with rails on them and what appeared to be four robotic arms on each one.

Seeing that there was what appeared to be an abandoned space station in front of me I knew what I had to do, I had to claim it and make it mine.