Rocky's P.O.V:-

I found Minie unconscious and unresponsive after she went through my dream.

I wanted to check whether she was alright and connect with her mind to do so, but when my mind scan resulted in a duck, I decided to do what a sage would have done. I waited for her to wake back up.

She slept for two hours. Many times I wanted to scream in her head to wake her up, but I decided not to do so, after all her current condition was a result of my ‘Experiment’.

*********

And after remaining unresponsive and stoned for so long she finally opened her eyes.

I connected with her mind to see what was going inside, but nothing.

She looked at me for a second, squinted her eyes, frowned and then started daydreaming.

I know, I know this is the result of my irregular interference, but I still think this is kind of annoying.

Because she was not responding to my voice, I decided to use the only option that I was left with. I again started projecting my memories into her mind and not even a minute had passed when she woke up and started screaming and crying.

I know I acted a bit too cruel for my own good, but who knows how long she would have taken otherwise.

************

She's awake I think, but what I need do to calm her down, about that I don't know anything.

Maybe, she will come to be her usual self after she tiers herself up completely.

I was just thinking about this when the screaming stopped. I couldn't help but look her way because this startled me greatly.

If I could walk, then I would have run to her as fast as I could, while screaming apologies on her face, but I can't walk. So instead, I am screaming apologies in her head, but her response left me speechless.

"I'm sorry...." she murmured.

I don't know what she was sorry about. I should be the one saying sorry to her. Well, I could have at least warned her about the thing that she would face inside my dream, but still

"That was not real right. I mean how could something like that be a real living being? You said it was your dream, but its aura and pressure was the same as of those tentacles.”

About that she's right this thing is also bugging me.

"And also at the time when that thing ate you at almost the same time that aura…”

“What?”

“That aura came out of you at the same time.”

*Shit* its real, the hyp… No, the danger is real. If what she said is really right, then what she is implying is the worst case scenario. I don’t even want to imagine something like that.

"Rock, tell me is that thing real? How, Why are you not saying anything? Tell me, how could a monster from your dreams influence reality?”

"What do you want me to say? My guess is as good as your. I don't think I can add anything new to the things that you already know. Moreover, you also saw that thing and lived my dream so there is nothing that I know more than you. Normal people don’t have such dream, dreams about blobs eating them and aura’s trying to run away.”

But the real question is, do I need to be scared of it? I mean it was just a dream after all and nothing more. Well, let’s ask her.

“Minie, do you think it is dangerous for us?”

"I don’t know about that, but you know what, no more mind reading. I'm banning you from reading my mind. No more mind reading for both of us. I don't want to see or dream something like that again, no more, no more."

Well, let’s end this here for now. But I did notice that her temper has been flaring from the time that after she woke up. Is this also the result of making her go through something like that? Let’s forget it. She will get back to her normal self in time.

"It’s okay Minie, don’t worry about it. You don't need to burden yourself with things like not reading minds. I know you like reading my thoughts, but I think we might have to face some opposition within a week of time.”

“Huh, Why? Did you accidentally explode something again? Are you sure?”

Am I sure? Did she already forget about the human who came to gather information?! Is she that?

“Firstly, you didn't tell me about the scout and because of that we ended up wasting our precious time on this not so important stuff. Well, it's not important for now. Anyways, we need to stack our defenses and gain some attack power. He must have told other humans about all the supernatural stuff that happened in the cave by now. So, I want you to teach me how to control my mana, and all that I need to become stronger, cause if you don't… Hey, stop staring at me and be attentive.”

Seriously she is daydreaming in the middle of such an important conversation, what the hell is wrong with her or is she still not over that?

Well, if I think about it clearly then I really did a big mistake by showing her my dream, didn’t I?

Forget it, let’s continue.

“Nothing has changed, like we decided, all we need to do is to create a dungeon that those humans don’t find any reason to destroy; for that is."

“Ah, I completely forgot that you are a dead stone sitting on a hot pan. I mean, you are a dungeon core who doesn’t know a thing about dungeons.”

Haha, I want to give a chop to her dull brain, but her reactions are kind of amusing to hear.

*…………..*

“Right, so tell me. That is your job after all.”

She coughed once to my emotionless reply to her nonsensical blabber, and then she politely provided me my task.

“Okay, let's start with mana control"(Minie)

Her expressions turned serious like before, but looking at her face, I couldn’t help but ask,

"Is it also difficult like mind reading or is it even more ..."

"Stop, Just stop, let's not get to conclusions without trying, okay. Mana control is easy. No it's super easy, even a child can do it. All that varies from person to person is their ability and degree of control over their attributes or simply mana."

When most people use their mana one way or another they always end up leaking some of it to the surroundings and only a little of it is used in the spell. On the other hand a sage can use almost every speck of their mana."

"I know what you mean.

Ah, I'm sorry. I couldn't stop myself from listening to your thoughts.

Well, having large mana capacity is a necessity, but what’s more important is a person's ability to control that said amount of mana. You know a person who has more mana than his body can handle always ends up, Exploding.”(Minie)

*Gulp*I gulped hard when I heard the word explode.

“So, what do I need to do to feel the mana because I can't even do that?"

‘Yeah let’s see how easy this thing really is.’ Is what I thought, but my delusions broke when she finally started explaining the correct way to influence and feel mana in the surroundings.

"Feel you surrounding, feel the air, the pressure it creates, its velocity, its composition. What it constitutes of, how it moving, it’s flow... "

"What Are You Saying? Didn't you say it's as simple as breathing? Then what is with all of these compositions and flows? What the hell happened to it being easy?!"

And turns out she was just playing with me. Should I be angry? Nah, I let her have a little fun. She’s a little kid after all.

“Sorry, Rocky, but I had to do something about your overconfidence or you might have ended up, exploding."

“Fufuu, Ha-ha, yeah right. So tell me, what is the real way of feeling mana?"

I thought she would continue and again tell me a lie or some mumbo jumbo gibberish, but instead, she explained the process to me like a good girl. Seems like she really only just wanted me to come down from my high horse and study properly.

"For others; it's starts with feeling the environment, then to try and find mana particles with their affinity and absorb it, as simple as that. After they practice this for some days, they gain a passive skill of mana regeneration, which helps with the automatic absorption of mana from the environment.”

“That method is for normal people, but what about me? I am not normal. I am a crystal, a stone!” Yes, I gave her the finishing blow with my non-existent puppy eyes.

“As for you, because you are a crystal and you don’t have any kind of sensitivity; you need to take all of your mana from the inside and through it all outside. Don't worry I am not asking you to create another explosion. Haaha.”

“Then, what should I do with this mana?”(Rocky)

 “You need to cover yourself with it……”(Minie)

“Excuse me, cover myself?”

“Yes cover it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I am.”

*…………*

Damm, my instructor is senile.

“Don’t get me wrong, but if you did this properly and got skilled at doing it, then you can also get the ability to see. Well, not properly, but temporarily. I am saying temporarily because you won't need such a crude ability to see after creating a room. Well, you'll know more about it when the time comes."

“I’m getting anxious here……”

"Okay, let’s do this. So, try to cover yourself with a layer of mana, but try not to overdo it cause you only have that much mana. After you reach this point, then use the mana covering your body to feel the environment. It will seem difficult to do at first, but will get easy once you get the hang of it. Start trying now; we are already short on Time and have a lot on our plate. Only talk to me again after you gain mana regeneration skill. OKAY"

I nodded my head and got immersed in my first official training session on the path to get stronger.

Phew, such a big lesson. My head is hurting a bit, ah, but let's do this.

So, first is to cover myself with mana.

*………*

but where in my body is this mana?

"Minie, where is my mana? Does it flow through my whole body or is it concentrated in some specific place?”

"And here I told you not to… well, whatever. It's inside you.

Oh sorry! I'm wrong. You are it. Every inch of you is mana. No, that’s also not right. Every inch of you has mana stored in it. All the mana that your body absorbs, gets stored in your crystal core. It acts as nutrition for you, it is what keeping you alive and it is also the reason as to why you lose conscious whenever you drain it completely. Okay, so try to think this way...”

"So, I am mana and mana is me. Let’s work on it. I am mana and mana is me. I am mana and mana is me… I absorb and store it inside me….”

Nothing I can only feel a tiny shit ass black flame, burning inside me. Well, it’s more like a spark than a flame but I don’t feel anything else. No mana no nothing. So, it is actually not as easy as I thought it to be.

"Minie, I still don't feel any mana inside me just a teeny tiny flame (spark). What should I do? Help me!”

She is going to blow. No, not explode. She is going to fry me with questions. How oi sknow this? Well, her face is a readable book after all.

"What? A flame , A FLAME... what the hell are you saying? How can your mana have any element? a dungeons mana is of neutral nature, you know. WHAT THE HELL?”

“Is this a bad thing? I don’t understand, why do you react like that every time something unexpected happens?”

“YOU ARE A FUCKING DUNGEN CORE”

“Minie, its okay, but please stop screaming.”

“Ah! Sorry. A dungeon core with an elemental affinity.”

“So, what? If you have nothing significant to say, then I am going back to my practice.”

“You are superb a genius you know. Let me tell you. In this world from the old times there has only been 59 dungeon cores who were born with an elemental affinity.”

“Really? There is such a thing?”

“Yeah, you are unbelievable. Firstly, you acted like a possessed core then you broke every record of the speed at which normal cores gain skills and now this.”

“It’s a good thing… right?”

“We will only know if this is a fortune or a disease once those humans invade. You being an elemental dungeon is like a double edged sword. Once your monsters evolve it will get easy for you to defend your dungeon from invaders, but if you went berserk and started killing everyone who came then we’ll both incur there wraith. So yeah, a double edged sword it is. Such luck I have.”

So, will it be alright if I didn’t kill those humans and lived like a vegetarian lion, huh. Not that I have any grudge against them. Well, we see what happens in the future, in the future.

“This also explains why you couldn’t control your mana. Repeat the same routine, but these times try moving your flame. The more control you get the better and once it start moving the way you want it to, you can try covering your body with it and try to absorb mana from the world. So get your mana regeneration skill as fast as you can and get back to me ASAP. Okay"

So see the flame and move it, make it bigger and raise it. Well, seems easy to do.

Let's try moving the flame. Move, move, move!

Ah, it moved...not really, but still I saw it vibrating a bit.

* **** *

I kept on trying to move it and after spending, I don't know maybe half a day, I can now will it every way I want. Well, I wish that I could do so, but I can only get it to vibrate somewhat. Like she said although I can move it somewhat it get out of my control rather easily.

I think it's enough control for now. I need to make my flame bigger, hotter and make it burn for all eternity.

So, I moved on and tried to cover my body with the flame, but because my control was not good I lost most of my mana to the surroundings, leaving me with a rapidly decreasing source to practice.

I willed it and poured all of my spirit into making it work. Although I couldn't make the mana cover my whole body, but after trying again and again I succeeded. I succeeded in covering the tip of my crystal body with the flame.

And just as it happened an explosion of lights occurred and lights of different colors started floating in front of me.

I asked Minie about them and according to her these balls of different colors are what we call energies. These are the energies of this world and every color represents a different element.

Like those orange lights are fire energy, blue for water, yellow for earth, black for dark elements and cyan for wind.

All these elements have their own grade from one to nine, from basic to godly elements. Then there are also some special elements like lightening, life and death energy and chaos.

It is said that everyone who are detected with chaos element are killed before they get time to grow up because this element is the bringer of chaos. It corrupts its users mind and spirit making them a destruction machine. Such people are called chaos bringers.

Well, let's talk about it some other time because now, I'm going to absorb world energy.

Because I have affinity with fire element, I can only absorb fire energy and not any other.

Well, it’s not because she said that I'm saying this, but I also tried to absorb energies from other elements, but it was to no avail.

I couldn’t do it. So, I am left with no choice other than to eat fire as much as I can and try to increase the size of this flame burning inside me.

Sounds kind of cheeky right, well it is how it is.

The absorption’s going okay. My mana is recovering, although it feels a bit slow, but Minie says it’s still a lot faster than the time when my body was trying to replenish my mana automatically.

I asked her about the possibilities and advantages of having fire affinity. Then she told me that having affinity with an element means that there will be a chance for the monsters that I create to have interrelated abilities.

And also the monsters that I create can only have elemental affinity the same as me, their master. So, it means, while most of the monsters in my dungeon will have affinity with fire element, other dungeon core can have variation with their monster.

Well, their fire power will be a lot weaker than mine, but still, I can only have fire breathing monsters or those which somehow get influenced by the environment and ends up evolving into something different, while they enjoy a wide variety of pets...I mean monsters.

So, that is the deal and here I am trying to gain the mana regeneration passive skill.

The only way that anyone can increase their mana capacity is either by leveling up or by interacting with worldly energies and doing this continuous process of emptying and filling it their mana reserves, over and over again. This process is like stretching the reservoir. The more I stretch my flame, the bigger it will get and greater becomes my mana storing capacity.

Well, because I can’t do anything else, I practiced mana control while absorb fire energy.

Because I have no control…

”Don’t laugh Minie. It is how it is.”

And my 'mana clad' yeah, that ability of covering my body with mana is called ‘mana clad’.

It’s another skill if mastered to protection can help me ward off physical and magical damage to some ability, but it’s very difficult to master. It needs perfect control over mana, high mana reserves and also grinding, a lot of grinding. By mastery I don’t mean to just gain the skill, but mastering it to its highest level, which in this case is the grand master level.

Well, the levels goes something like; Apprentice

Well, it is normally very useful skill. As it lets one to create rock solid armors with mana, but it has no use for me. It’s not like I am going to fight on the frontline.

How do I know all of this? Because I am very intelligent, I am actually a reincarnated sage who lived lively and died fighting.

Well, not really. Actually, Minie told me all of this in her free time. It’s her who is intelligent and smart and…

Well, I have a secret that I didn’t tell her. Actually, while I was absorbing fire energy I don’t know how, but I ended up absorbing traces of dark energy.

I am not going to tell Minie about it. Well, not just yet. It will be a huge surprise for her, if one day one of my monsters evolved and turned to the dark side.

One more thing, I am also absorbing the purple energy balls from the world.

I don’t know how to explain this, but unlike fire and dark energy which are nourishing and improving my mana capacity, I don’t know where it is going.

I got scared thinking about it, so I stopped my mana absorption, but those purple particles kept on entering inside me!

Like I said I am not absorbing them, they are just entering inside me and I don’t even know where they are going!

I have a little clue as to what is absorbing them, but I am not going to tell Minie about it. I don’t want to concern her with something, which is not explainable.

I thought about it and just as I again started absorbing mana, I heard a sound and something flashed in front of me.

*Ding*

Conditions required to gain skill mana regeneration has been fulfilled.

(active/Passive) Mana regeneration lv(1) EXP - 0%

Automatically regenerates mana even without users influence.

Mana regeneration doubles if user actively tries to absorb mana from the world

*Smiles*

Ah, my hard work paid off better than I expected and after spending half day in gruesome meditation, I finally acquired the mana regeneration skill.

But is 2mp regeneration per sec good enough.

Well, let’s tell Minie.

“Hey, Minie I did it. I have acquired the mana regeneration skill, so what now?”

I wasn’t expected it, but her reaction came suddenly and like a tide it washed away all of my tiredness.

*Puuuff*

“What! Why! How? Are you kidding me? It’s still the same day. How can anyone gain a skill within a day?”

Even though it was her who said that it is east to gain this skill and its again her who is behaving like a puzzled cow. NO matter what or how I do it, It always ends up being something unbelievable. It’s like I am creating miracle here.

“Hey, we don’t have time for this. Right now, we are tight on time. So, what now? What do I need do? Can we start with creating dungeon and choosing monsters now?” (Rocky)

“yo- you are a genius. No a monster. Yes, you are a monster.

*Sigh* only if I had skills like you. Well, forget it. You want to create monsters right?”

I got excited and ferociously roared when I heard her say, ‘create monsters’.

“Good, then let’s do this. Like you said we don’t have much time left before adventurers start invading our home, but we can’t go straight to dungeon building. We have some work to do before that. So, firstly, let’s open your… status window.” Advertisement Previous

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Chapter RSS About the author 11 Fictions 36 Posts 5 Threads Underload Follow Author Sunday, June 19, 2016 1:38:24 PM Saturday, August 13, 2016 9:17:34 PM A dashboard stalker.

Bio: Life is hard, writing every day is harder, but the hardest is yet not living or writing, but fulfilling your dreams. I am slowly approaching my dream, I hope you are also.

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