Chapter 2.

The wall of The Cave that had the tunnel was a perfect location to perform an experiment. The creation of my first living Organism. I created the blueprint of the genetic sequence of the mushroom and formed the image of the mature state over the mushroom in my internal subconscious map, and projected it into reality. With that image firmly in my mind, I injected my Mana out and watched as 80% of it was instantly drained to create the tiny white mushroom.

This was going to be another problem; my mana pool up until this point seemed like it was of a decent size. But with the creation of one simple Organism, I realized how woefully undersized it truly was. How am I going to increase it? Well, I had a few theories? I could try some methods from cultivation novels I had read trying to expand my mana pool, and if that did not work, I was probably going to have to figure out some method to physically expand my body. And I really hope that was going to work.

I turned my attention inwards and focused on the subconscious mapping space for the place where my Mana was actually stored. Finding it, I watched and observed as the raw Mana that was within my dungeon diffusely filtered into my core. The small blue pearl was, well, just that, a small blue Pearl. Based on how close or far away I made it look, determine how big or how small it looked; unfortunately, that did not increase the amount of Mana that it would hold within the inside of it.

I experimented with mentally projecting my will into the ambient man around me. This had a few notable effects, one of which was that I could actually draw the Mana to the center of my core faster, allowing it to fill at about double the rate previously. Next, I tried focusing on the actual Perl itself, telling the Mana inside of it to expand it.

And what do you know that worked, well sort of. The pearl grew, I had become very familiar with its size over the past few days, and I could tell it had increased in size by .0001 of whatever metric my brain was using to measure the etheric thing.

Focusing and speeding time up, I waited till my mana pool was full once more. This was going to be a common theme until I could figure out a way to get more Mana. I used the entirety of my mana pool to expand my mana pool. This increased its size by 1. One more unit of unmeasured Mana, that was it.

"F'ing hell, this is going to take forever." I moaned in my own head. Still failing to speak.

I waited once more for my Mana to fill and decided I was going to experiment on the mushroom that I had created instead of trying to mindlessly increase my mana pool. Well, at least not yet.

The mushroom had a thin thread of Mana connecting it to me. It absorbed a small amount of Mana from me to stay alive, but it also drank in the ambient raw Mana as well. I sent Mana along the line, just a small amount, and willed it to make the mushroom bigger. After a few moments, the mushroom grew. At first, it was imperceptible, but when I had put 50% of my mana pool in it, the thing was six times the size it had been.

As it was something I created and was still attached to, I could consume it, much like biting off a fingernail. My mana pool went from 50% to 95% in an instant. I also got the knowledge of how the mushroom had been changed, not only on an individual basis but a genetic one, changing its DNA to make it larger. I could create the same small white mushroom and let it grow naturally to that size.

I created one of the young giant white mushrooms, taking 79% of my Mana this time, and left it to grow.

Now I was going to start the process of making my mana core bigger. I focused on pulling the Mana in with my will and slowed time down. My mana pool filled at a steady pace, and when it was close to 100%, I directed it to grow my core, over and over and over.

I learned something very interesting during this process. The larger your mana pool does not equate to being able to draw in more Mana. So by the time I had doubled the size of my mana pool, I only needed to use half of it to get the same amount of expansion that I had been. If I waited until my mana pool was completely full, I would get double the amount, but at the same time, it required double the amount of time to reach full Mana.

During this entire process, I got a good feel for the ebb and flow of the raw Mana and how it correlated to the mana density and my mana regeneration. If the mana density dropped below 20% saturation within my dungeon body, my mana regeneration would significantly slow down. In the same way, if the mana density was above 90%, I would begin to feel uncomfortable And not be able to focus as well. This meant that the optimal mana density saturation level was between 20% and 90%. If I kept the density in between this range, the mana drops became a mana trickle like a small fountain pouring into my mana pool, along with my ability to focus and apply my will to the raw Mana; this increased my mana regeneration rate. Correlating if I used the Mana in my core and reduced it below 10%, I was unable to absorb the Mana as quickly. This meant I had a range for maximum efficiency during my process of expanding my mana pool.

Let me tell you, after 100 days of accelerated time focusing on expanding my mana pool, I was bored to death.

Years: 0. Months: 3. Weeks: 14. Days: 100. 16:34:36.

It paid off though, I had quadrupled my mana pool. Unfortunately, I had also quadrupled the amount of time it took for it to fill completely. This was important because the mana density inside of my dungeon would not increase drastically until I was at 100% mana. Not that it was very important right now, but it was something I would want to keep in mind for later.

What had actually stopped me from continuing the process of expanding my mana pool was a monster. A creature of horror and terror. Eight legs and eight eyes, mandibles, fangs and poison and webs, the things that crawl across to you in the dark of the night. A spider had found its way into my dungeon.

I immediately increased my frame rate to maximum, slowing the world around me down so much that the horrid creature appeared to be frozen in time, barely moving its front leg, having just crossed the boundary to my territory. This was the first moving creature to enter my dungeon and would become my first dungeon mob.

I took control of the greatest weapon in my dungeon; I currently possess the cube of mushroom mashing. I guided it along the walls of my dungeon and up above the ceiling, positioning it above where the spider would eventually walk. Now I didn't do all of this in my fastest frame rate, or else to me, it would have taken what appeared to be centuries. So I had slowed it down to something reasonable, but the spider was still moving in slow motion as I rocketed the great mushroom smasher into position.

When the spider moved into place, so did the granite mushroom smashing cube. I released the cube from the top of The Cave and watched in slow motion as it descended atop the spider. This time there was a definite splat as spider gore and blood were splashed upon the floor of my magnificent dungeon.

A new wave of knowledge, a new form for me to create, and a burst of Mana. Also, holy shit, the giant mushrooms that I had made, and it planted only one of now we're a veritable forest and occupied almost every inch of the subterranean cave. The pool of water was almost nearly dry as well. The interesting thing was that I still was only attached to the original, which was still alive, but all the other mushrooms were growing independent but yet had a faint signature, a tenuous connection to me still as well.

I consumed the original mushroom; it aged rapidly then dissolved into dust. I set my sights on the other mushrooms in the cave and tried to draw in the power of one. It resisted, and I was unable to pull the Mana and life from it, as it was not directly connected to me. My mana pool was full, however, so I created my first monster.

I was loathed to use a spider, but I had to use what I had available. Spider creation 101.

I focused on the DNA, letting my mind build the blueprint of the spider. Eight legs formed, the abdomen and cephalothorax, eyes, and its internal organs. It was black and about the size of my thumb, back when I still had a body. It was venomous, though the venom was only a weak paralytic. With the full mental construct made and the image being supported by my subconscious mind, I placed the ghostly image near the opening to the tunnel I had created.

I slowly filled the image with Mana along a thread that would bind it to me. When I had used half of my currently enlarged mana pool, the Mana solidified, turning Crystalline for a moment before a flesh and blood spider popped into existence. It landed on the ground softly, tasting the air.

Through the Mana connection, I got only the faintest hint of emotion and its basic instincts. I watched it as it began to walk around in circles a few times before scuttling off into the mushrooms. Within my subconscious map, I could easily follow the spider, as it began to follow some innate sense to a spot where it would begin to set up a web in hopes of catching food. It did not understand that it did not require actual physical food to stay alive, the energy it needed to stay alive being provided by the ambient Mana within my dungeon body; however, it followed its instincts to set up a web and catch food.

Turning my attention away from the spider, I began to make a list of some of the things that I would need in order to properly build a dungeon. Scale, the size of things was extremely difficult for me to inherently grasp. In order to fix this, I was going to have to build a physical measuring device in order to have a standard implementation that I could use to determine the size of objects. I was going to have to make a ruler. Next, I was going to actually have to measure how much Mana it took to create certain organic and inorganic things to better understand how much power I currently actually had and how much power I was going to have to obtain. I was also going to have to create a temperature measuring device because thermal variance is very important when creating different alloys or working with different materials. Suffice it to say, I made a mental checklist of everything I had to do, and it looked something like this.

Things to make:

More dungeon rooms.

I also had a few experiments to run, but I wanted to create some way to accurately measure what it was that I was doing. The only way I truly had to measure things was by the innate since I had of scale from my previous body. With this in mind, I thought about what I knew about measurements from the imperial system in the metric system. I knew that 25 inches converted to 63.5 centimeters evenly. My hand was 8 inches long from the base of my wrist to the tip of my middle finger.

Keeping all of this in mind, I created a thin rectangle piece of iron. I made it exactly two-hand lengths long. I then placed align at exactly center from the two edges. Along the right-hand side of the soon-to-be ruler, I placed another line directly in between its end the line in the middle. That line was as close as I was going to be able to get for now to 1 foot. 12 inches. Creating another thin rectangular piece of iron, I made that one double the length from the left end to the second line, the 1-foot mark. I then placed 24 evenly spaced lines from the left end all the way to the right. I then created a small segment of iron that was the size in between each one of the line Marks and fused it to the end of the ruler, giving me 25 inches or 63.5 centimeters.

Creating an entirely new rectangle of iron that was the exact same size, I set that next to the one I had previously created. I then placed 63 even lines from left to the right, ensuring that to the right of the 63rd line was half the size of all the sections between the lines previously. Taking the other rulers and setting them to the side of my alcove, I created my last and final ruler. It was 100 centimeters long, with half centimeters marked in between.

I carved out my alcove to have a 100-centimeter radius (2-meter diameter). At the same time, I was able to create an evenly angled dome, providing for the most structurally sound roof for my current situation.

Fortunately, and unfortunately, I was not going to be able to make a thermometer or a barometer until I found some liquid mercury, if that even existed on the current planet I was on. So, with my one measuring tool created, I went about standardizing the tunnel that I had created. I had noticed the 20-centimeter opening was providing me just barely enough connection to The Cave room that I had found. Deciding to try and find the most optimum opening, I expanded the tunnel to 60 centimeters in height and width.

This tunnel size provided maximum connectedness to the next room. Any larger had no additional effect, and any smaller began the slight disconnect feeling I felt. My current Mana was currently at 60%, so I decided I would begin my tunneling process in the exact opposite direction of the way I had gone previously. I decided I would make a tunnel the exact distance as the one I had made previously, which measured out to be 508 centimeters.

Beginning the dissolving process, I could now absorb the material in exact measurements. I watched carefully as my Mana plunged as I created a 100-centimeter wide 100-centimeter high and 100-centimeter-long tunnel before I stopped. This amount of consumption reduced my Mana by 10%, leaving me at half full. This meant that for every 1 meter cubed of rock I dissolved and consumed, 10% of my current Mana would be absorbed. My current Mana pool had been quadrupled in size, so working backward, that meant that 40% would have been consumed from my original mana pool. From there, I got 2.5 meters cubed for complete use of my original mana pool.

Taking the information that I had currently calculated, I set a portion of my subconscious mind to track my mana usage. Determining that my original mana pool was equal to 100 and the amount of Mana draw it would take to consume a 250-centimeter cubed tunnel, my subconscious mind was able to guesstimate my current mana usage and amount. Giving me a baseline.

Working inside of my internal subconscious map, I realized something very important. The thread of Mana that attached to the spider I had created connected to a portion of the black backdrop. My new mana bar indicator with a quantity also took a portion of the space along with the clock and the processes that kept it running. Exactly how much subconscious space I currently had was unclear to me, but I also knew that it was not unlimited and that there was only a certain number of subconscious processes I could have running at one time. Experimenting a little bit, I noticed that in this space, when I increased my frame rate, accelerating my own thinking patterns while making the world around me slower, the amount of empty space in the black backdrop reduced significantly. When I increased the frame rate to the maximum amount I could, I noticed that it did not slow the world down quite as much, as the other subconscious processes I had running did not allow for a higher frame rate. This meant the black void was not infinite as I had assumed it might be, but I had a finite amount of subconscious space and processes that I could work with.

Understanding that, I compiled all the information I currently had into a basic HUD and info sheet for me to reference easily.

Name: Alex Mitchell.

Time: Years: 0. Months: 3. Weeks: 14. Days: 101. 8:04:26.

Mana pool: 400.

Mana regeneration: .139/minute. Focused: .28/minute.

Mana density: 80%.

Dungeon influence: 22.86 meters long, 6.1 meters high, 6 meters wide.

Rooms: 1.

Mobs: 1 spider.

Subconscious processing used: 4%.

A few things happened while I organized my information sheet. One was the subconscious processing power reduced slightly by formatting everything into a single process. The second was that I spread my influence out in a rectangle. When I dissolved stone and created an open space, my influence would naturally attach to the created space. By pushing my influence into the rock around me, I could increase my dungeon influence area but not increase my overall volume. This increased the amount of raw wild Mana that was absorbed into my dungeon, increasing the mana pressure faster. If I expanded my influence too far without having enough dungeon volume to balance out the influx well, I would more than likely create a situation in which I could not survive.

From one end of my finish tunnel, 5 meters long to the other end of the opposite cave was 22 meters in length. Currently, my rectangle of dungeon influence was too large and was beginning to draw in ambient Mana at too high of a rate. So, I created my first dungeon room.

Room creation it's nothing special, and I decided just to stick to a standard size for the foreseeable future. 10 meters by 10 meters and 5 meters high. This created a space that used 200 of my self-measured Mana and gave me a generous size room to work with. The 60 by 60-centimeter tunnel opened at the bottom of the floor along the wall facing my core wall.

I was really going to have to figure out directions for here soon. A compass, perhaps?

First, I had an experiment to run with my dungeon connectivity. Waiting until my Mana was completely full, I created a thin sheet of cords crystal over the tunnel to my room opposite The Cave. Immediately after the thin sheet of quartz crystal materialized over the opening, I began to lose my innate connection to the area I had created.

It appeared that I had to have unimpeded access to my dungeon core in order for me to stay connected to my dungeon influence. For my next set of experiments, I created two 30 centimeters by 30-centimeter tunnels and connected them to the same room. As well, I created four 15 centimeters by 15-centimeter tunnels.

I blocked off the 15 by 15-centimeter tunnels and the large 60-centimeter tunnel with the same thin sheets of quartz. My connection stayed the same to the room through the 30-centimeter tunnels. I covered up one of them. I felt my connection decrease by more than half to the room but not fade completely. I repeated the process covering the 30-centimeter tunnel and opening up the 15-centimeter tunnels. These provided the same level of connectivity as the large 60-meter tunnel and the two 30-centimeter tunnels.

My trial with eight of the 7.5-centimeter size tunnels did not yield the same results. Even by adding more of the tunnels, I still was only able to gain about a 75% connectedness to the room. How did this differ from my wider dungeon influence? The best way I could describe it is, my rooms are like muscles; I have direct control over them. The area my influence permeates is like other organs; I don't have direct control but still have some influence over it.

With the optimum and safest size of tunnel determined for my rooms, I filled In all of the tunnels except for the four 15-centimeter tunnels. Next, I filled in the main tunnel to The Cave and connected it with four of the 15-centimeter tunnels as well.

Replacing the stone barely cost any mana at all, almost like when I consumed or dissolved the stone, it went into a separate storage space and then was able to be used again. Wherever it comes from, I was able to create the specific stone from a specific place for much less Mana than it would cost to create an entirely new stone. This brought up my next problem of fortification and determining which direction was out. Because I was going to ensure that I did not go that way for a while.