Chapter Nine: What Lies Below

Magic is not a fix all, you can't just wave your' hands start screaming made up words and make all your problems go poof, Gimble was forced to learn that the hard way.

During his battle with origin he had taken a long hard look at his core, and inside of his core he had found another core; a core-core if you will. In any case this inner-core was compruised of a mix of life force and mana compressed so tightly together they had solidified. He believed that this was where the mana from the creatures he had killed went. Whenever he, or George splatted a monster, both its' life force and its' mana would drift into Gimble's core, but for some reason even though absorbing that energy did increase his life force it did nothing for his mana, which meant the monsters mana had to be going somewhere else in his body. As far as he could see all of his mana was contained in the billions of tiny veins rushing through his core so it couldn't be going there so that meant to had be being solidified into the core. Now to any reasonably minded person making these deductions that would lead to but a single conclusion: increasing the mana in his inner-core increased his level and therefore by forcing mana into his core-core he could jump right up to level eleven in no time. Actually why bother stopping there? He could just kep increasing hi intelligence until he reached level twenty, then level, eighty, then level one-hundred-and four, and then it was all the way up to infinity and world conquest!

Ahh... It had been such a sweet dream.

Needless to say, stuffing mana into his inner-core had resulted in a miserable failure. He hadn’t gained a single level, his mana simply passing through the core before slipping into one of the side chambers that acted as sort of run-off chambers for mana in his veins when he absorbed more than his body could take, allowing the mana to diffuse back into the air. Those run off chambers were also the reason he couldn't just flood his whole core until some of it was forced to condense; the whole process was kind of like trying to fill a swimming pool, or a toilet, after a certain point his core just started to drain away. Thinking about it there was probably a pretty good reason that he had a limit to his mana capacity, he was going to guess something bad would happen if he pushed his body too far beyond its' limits. He'd probably explode or something equally catastrophic. Forcing himself to level up by cheating the system seemed to be a dead end, It was probably for the best really, afterall what sounded like more fun than mindlessly slaughtering hordes of monsters for experience?

Gimble huffed giving George a mental prod; the plant monsters rising unsteadily before lurching forwards on fraying limbs. Raising his level aside he really needed to get around to figuring out healing magic before they both fell apart, although it seemed like George wasn’t losing any more health actually quite the opposite.

[Sunless Moss Horror] - George HEALTH: 28/80

LIFE FORCE: 1/10

It seemed like George was healing naturally. Really he shouldn't be too surprised about that, healing is just one of those things living beings did naturally. Gimble's rate of healing was much slower, counted in days rather than minutes; they could probably find somewhere safe to hide and wait until they were in top condition to take on all the challneges their new environment could throw at them. They could do that, but Gimble was already beginning to get restless after his failed attempts to artifically boost his level. You’d think spending a couple of months in a dark cave with no source of entertainment would teach even a dungeon core at least some modicum of patience, well you'd be wrong, there was no way he was just going to wait around the heal, especially not when he needed to give Origin a good old punch in the gut, or at least the dungeon core equivalent.

George began to descend the little blackened heath on which they had crashed after falling through the floor above thick grey tentacles sliding over dark stones and blackened plants. Gimble had already given the cave, or at least what he could actually see of the vast expanse iwth his bizzare new form of sight a cursory once over, but looking at it now without a fog of adrenalin and a mild shock to shake his awareness it felt like he was watching a British nature documentary, staring out over the vast vistas and wild expanses, just with a healthy dose of magical flare thrown in for good measure.

Long grass spread out across the open cave, rising high overhead, at least from Gimble’s perspective; each blade gave off a warm red light from the tips as each needle of hard grey grass burned bright like tongues freshly pulled from a fire, sending up the coasional flurry of sparks which rained down upon the grassy floor piled high with ash and dirt. Scattered trees rose here and there amidst the grass, their trunks slender and covered in thick black, or ocasionally snowwy white, bark long drooping fronds of frigid blue vines and jagged leaves hung from their twisted branches. But the real beauty of the scene lay in the creatures that lived within the grass and all their wonderous absurdities; from bright red toads the size of beach balls drooling molten stone from open mouths to pure white cats that seemed to vanish and reappear of flurries of ice and snow. Packs of fire rats scavenged amidst the darker corners of the glades scurrying around burrows built into hillsides snatching up insects all of which were a beautiful shade of glistening white flecked with dark blue. The Fire rats down here were different than the ones from the cave though, where the rats above were fat and hairless, these ones were slender and sleek with black coats of fur, standing out against dark red eyes, though they still maintained the characteristic six arms. The grass, the trees, the insects even the animals all gave off a strong bioluminescent pulse dousing the cave in light, but brightest of all the beasts were the antelopes. Well at least they looked like antelopes - they were massive, probably slightly larger than an adult horse, male and female alike adorned with a thick set of rigid antlers jutting straight up, black as night and doused in flames. The light danced off their pinkish red fur as they moved galloping across the open spaces moving in hers that appeared almost like a wave of flames washing over the grasslands, the smell of smoke and ash heavy in the air where they passed, the light dimming only when they stopped to feed on the grass. Gimble shuddered slightly, this was the first thing he’d smelled in ages other than damp and moss and stale water. He found it to be a pleasant improvement though he felt like his sense of smell had become strangely acute after becoming a dungeon core just like all of his other senses, just limited to the small area of perception he was capable of summoning. He didn’t really understand it so he was just going to ignore it for now – he had more important things to deal with at the moment.

Gimble paused George grinding to a halt in front of one of the fallen bodies of one of the wood rats that had tumbled down with him from above.

He still needed to found his own dungeon, after all that was kind of what dungeon cores did, and was going to need to raise his level before he could do that. He needed at least five hundred mana, meaning he'd need to gain nine levels before he had enough mana to pull off the task. He wasn’t entirely sure whether level eleven was high or not he really didn’t have enough off a basis to make any assumptions just yet, he couldn’t even see the levels of other animals or monsters, which made things all the harder to understand. Hell other creatures might not even have levels, maybe being shuttled through the space between realities had messed him up in ways he just couldn't understand? In any case if he wanted to increase his level he needed to increase his levelling ability when meant he'd need more monsters under his command to do the actual hunting. Luckily he already had a candidate for his next monster. Gimble looked down at the creature its’ spine bent backwards mouth open revealing row after row of wooden teeth as it stared towards the heavens through an unseeing eye, it was one of the giant wooden rats that origin had sent after him. Gimble had managed to locate one of the beast using his bubble of awareness; but no matter how far he searched he hadn’t yet been able to find its’ partner. Either it had fallen further into the grass than he could search, which he doubted considering his considerable range of just over a hundred metres, or one of the native inhabitants of the fire cave, the arbitrary and very literal name he had just assigned his new home, had wandered along and eaten it. Gimble let out a long sigh regarding the resources he needed to bring the little monster under his control.

[Dungeon Core] - Gimble DURABILITY - [36%]

MANA - [70/70]

LIFE FORCE - [19/60]

There had been no real change in his durability, it was still worrying low. His mana reserves on the other hand had practically skyrocketed after his last level up and the absence of Origin to take all the magical goodness for himself meant it was an awful lot easier to gather the mana he needed (taking a little over an hour for him to gather the seventy mana needed to fill up his tank). of course his Life force was beginning to run a little on the low side especially after his failed attempt to heal George. He sighed George poking at the falen rodent, hopefully his limited life force would be enough to reanimate the monster. Gimble let out a long sigh releasing a cloud of life force before wafting it forwards towards the mangled corpse. The mist drifted down settling over the body of the rat Gimble waiting for the mist to sink in and for a new notification to appear.

That didn’t happen though. Instead the rat shuddered briefly as if its nerves had just been shocked its body coiling up as slowly it began to dissolve. The rat had begun to crumble apart turning into a pile of sand slowly melting down into the floor below in an almost identical fashion to the acid cloud that Origin had spewed when it founded its' dungeon and tried to off Gimble. The young Dungeon core frowned regarding the scene, watching as the edge of his life force shifted from pale green to a deep black which began to fade as the process reached its’ natural conclusion the last of the rat vanishing from existence leaving only a brief new notification, and the excess life force, in its’ wake. Gimble regarded the messages before sucking in his excess life force noticing he was down roughly five points from absorbing the rat.

ABSORBED - [Lv1 Overgrown Star gazer Rats]

A species of rat found in nature dungeons and dark forests in the dead of night. These rats use their singular massive eye as a focus when casting simple spells, making the eyeball a valuable commodity for most mages and alchemists.

MATERIALS

MEAT: 438 g

SKELETAL STRUCTURE: 245 g

VEGETATION: 201 g

Huh, he supposed this was what this world's version of ‘looting’ but rather than getting a plus-one sword of water resistance he was saddled with a bunch of rodent body parts, which to be honest was kind of killing the RPG vibes he'd been getting from his new world. Gimble paused frowning at the message before casting a brief glance around himself, acutely aware of the fact he wasn't covered in a mass of monster guts. He had just asborbed the rat, or assimiliated it or whatever, in any case It's body parts should have gone somewhere they couldn't have just winked out of existence. Maybe he had some kind of inventory then?

He tried to call up a window using the concept of an inventory as his basis but the notification system seemed unwilling to cooperate on this one. Gimble frowned before opening up his dungeon menu.

[DUNGEON MENU] [CREATE DUNGEON]

[MONSTER MENU]

[TRAP MENU]

[TREASURE MENU]

Treasure menu seemed like the most likely place for him to keep his all of his junk. He clicked on the button and watched as a new miniature menu appeared listing his options.

[TREASURE MENU] [Items]

[Supplies]

[Equipment]

[Currency]

[Materials]

[Blueprints]

Hmm, another crossed out blueprint screen. Gimble wasn’t sure if this was another side effect of his trait preventing him from receiving any reasonable level of help or guidance, or if he needed to unlock it somehow. Gimble zeroed in on the materials option before opening it and finding himself relatively non-plussed. It seemed like his resources were being stored in some kind of inventory, divided into the classic endless number of little blue boxes, however he didn’t see any option that let him take any of the stored items out. In the end he just gave a mild snort before closing all of his notification and sinking down into a moment of quiet contemplation. He needed monsters but it seemed like he couldn’t just turn dead animals into his undead army which left him with two options; either he focused on turning the living into monsters, or he utilised what he already had available and started churning out some moss horrors like some eldritch factory - If he remembered correctly there had been an option in his monster menu letting him create new moss horrors.

In the end his choice was kind of obvious. The theme for this cave had been pretty clearly established, hot versus cold, frost versus fire, it was essentially the feud between the fire rats and the frost snakes from the floor above taken to a whole new level – moss didn’t really come into that equation and if it did Gimble suspected it would be incinerated or frozen solid in mere moments. If he was going to fight in this new cave system he was going to need a new type monster, luckily he had all the plants he needed to make that happen.

Still Grass seemed like an even worse choice for creating a monster than moss, too brittle and too weak, no making a monster out of grass was probably a very bad idea. Actually now that he though of it...

Gimble urged George forward leaving the little blackened patch of earth behind as the moss horror sidled up to the wall of grass proceeding to use its’ more intact limbs to grab onto the grass before yanking it up out of the ground and into the air. Gimble saw a miniature slither of mana and life force slink its’ way from the plant into his core. It didn’t seem like he would be able to just harvest his way to level eleven the increase in mana was just too small, maybe a hundredth of a spiny-hoppers input into his core, but at least he had found a way to speed up the process of gathering Life force now. Gimble nodded to himself, before letting out a long sigh.

He needed a living specimen on which to base his new monster and the only place he was going to get that was by catching one. Hah... This was going to be a long day.