Chapter 3.

Over the next few days, I completed work on two more rooms, each the same size as the one I had previously made and connected by the four 15-centimeter tunnels, each of which was five meters long. I now had three rooms equal distance apart and The Cave creating a spoke pattern around my small Dome room.

I had surmised that the surface of the world was in the direction of The Cave because the spider had found its way in from that direction. But I wanted to make sure that this was the case because I had no intention of connecting my dungeon to the outside world before I was ready. With my Mana full, I began the process of trying to figure out in which exact direction the outside world lay.

Using my ability to consume, I began to eat the air inside of The Cave. This gave me an entire host of new elements I was able to understand and work with. It also had the added effect of creating a negative pressure room. Before long, my entire dungeon was about half of whatever was considered a normal amount of air pressure.

Focusing on my body, I was quickly able to determine where the little spider had found its way in through. In a small crack in the upper left-hand corner of The Cave room, the air began to stream into my dungeon. Stopping the consumption of the air, I let the pressure equalize and watched as some of the raw wild Mana began to be forced out through the crack and out into the open world.

"Well, I don't want to go that way yet." I tried to say once more and failing. This was getting old. I had tried to communicate with the spider connected to me, with mixed results. The only thought it sent me was food or hunger. I decided to talk to it anyway, well mentally projected to it. Which only resulted in a lot of confusion being sent back long the bond.

"So, Mr. Spider, I had better close the front door. Don't want any more nasties getting in." I paused, confusion radiating back across the bond. "What's that? You think that's a great idea, me too."

I began consuming the air once more and eating the stone that led to the outside world. During this process, I kept to the 15 cm tunnel, expanding it only in the places to consume the area around the crack I was following. 200 meters later, and one smaller alcove cave, I found the outside world.

As soon as the tunnel I was creating, which gouged itself along the crack I had been following. It opened up into a cave that had the distinct signs of sunlight streaming in, I closed a 1-meter section of it. When I broke through, there was no burst of Mana as the density in my dungeon was on the low side, me having kept it there as I worked to prevent such a thing from happening. I guessed the Mana in the area would get denser naturally from my dungeon influence, drawing it in overtime, but I was not about to help that process.

Pulling my awareness back to my entire dungeon, I began creating the same mixture of air that I had consumed. Oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, hydrogen, and helium. When I was done, the air pressure in side was back to normal. This gave me more than a few ideas, as creating those elements was extremely low in mana costs. For example, to return my dungeon to normal, it only took five points of Mana.

I still hadn't found any mercury, so no barometer or thermometer any time soon for me. I had found iron, iron oxide, which is just mild steel as the iron bonds to oxygen and carbon in the air. That was the wonderful thing about consuming; I only needed a tiny amount of whatever it was to be able to then create it. I had found aluminum, copper, silver, and even a fleck of gold. That was all that it took, though, just a fleck, and I could replicate it.

I focused on the room opposite the cave and decided to gather some more information. I dubbed the room material testing. I created a sample size of a cubed of each of the elements I could make, recording how much 1 mana made. They were all in their raw natural state and significant amounts could be created for only one Mana. The higher up the periodic table, the more they cost, but not by much. Mild steel was almost as expensive as gold to make, being composed of iron and oxygen. It seemed the more elements in a molecule, the more Mana it took to make.

With that sorted and added to my info sheet, I began the process of fortification. My dungeon influence provided some structural integrity to the walls, floor, and ceiling of my dungeon, but I could feel it wasn't much. I was going to have to rely on design and materials to strengthen my dungeon; for now, there had to be magic; I had Mana, but just throwing Mana at the walls and focusing on making them stronger was very inefficient. I know I tried; a ten-centimeter area with 25% more durability more than before, for all my Mana, was not worth it.

I set to the task of reinforcing my rooms and tunnels. For the tunnels, I created a square tube of mild steel, keeping the opening at 15 centimeters and thickening the walls to 2.5 centimeters thick. My rooms were solid, but I focused on the floor, walls, and ceiling, channeling my Mana to alter the makeup of the granite. Improving the internal structure of the stone until it was nearly perfect. I did this for 30 centimeters around the whole of the rooms. Making denser and more structurally sound granite.

Days later, I had finished, stopping only to recharge my Mana. The cave room was now a 10 by 10 by 5-meter room, matching my other ones. The tunnel to the outside world had been reinforced and straightened. As the crow flies, it is 200 meters to the outside cave, with a straight section and ninety degrees turn, the tunnel was more than 350 meters long. The tunnel to the outside was only 15cm, giving me a tenuous connection to the end at best.

Finished with fortifying my dungeon, ensuring nothing might burrow up into me, I turned my attention to my eight-legged resident. It had filled the cave room with webs, stringing them between all the mushrooms. Which measured 35cm in height. It had yet to catch anything to eat, being the only living thing besides the mushrooms in the cave room, which was now just a normal-looking room with mushrooms growing in it and drops of water falling in from the ceiling.

I let my original creature continue making webs, some of which were attached to the glorious mushroom smasher. I instead made a new spider in what I was calling my creature testing room. 200 mana later, it popped into existence. Not wanting to wait for my Mana to refill, I picked the mushroom smasher up and dropped it on one. I felt mana rush into me as I absorbed the mushroom corpse. It gave me 20 mana. 10 mushrooms later, I was full once more.

I pushed Mana along the bond I had with the second spider, focusing on making it grow. The 2cm spider began enlarging as I fed Mana into it. When I was down to 40 mana, I stopped. It was now triple the size. 6cm was not much, and it was not the massive spider mob I had envisioned making; this was going to take a lot more Mana.

I left the large spider in the testing room and thought. I was going to have to massively expand or open to the outside world. How I grew stronger was by getting more Mana and using that Mana to expand my mana pool. Even if I smashed all 718 mushrooms and converted them to enlarge my mana pool, it would only give me about 120 more mana and at least 10 days to grow that many again.

"I guess my plan of isolation won't work out quite as well as I thought, Mr. spider." I projected.

This means rooms and traps are the only real thing I can make to protect myself. My only mob being a 6cm spider that, well, it could kill a few bugs, maybe.

I pondered my layout and what the rooms did for me. Mana pressure was not the only thing that affected how much Mana I could recharge. As the volume of my dungeon increased, there was a corresponding ratio to how fast my Mana recharged.

I also realized something relatively important at this point, although I had realized I was not a precious stone but instead a cluster of what appeared to be quartz crystals. Emitting the faintest white light, I did not know what exactly it was I was made from. Resigning myself to the act of self-cannibalization, I hoped that this would not hurt.

I focused as intently as I could on my crystalline core, selected the smallest amount that I could, and promptly consumed it. This gave me the familiar burst of knowledge, almost as complex in its intensity as the mushroom, but I knew what I was. I was a sentient mana manipulation node. I was made from a mana crystal, not to be confused with crystallized Mana. Two totally different things I came to understand from the burst of knowledge.

A Mana crystal was formed when a few terrestrial elements were exposed to enough ambient Mana, combined, and were then energized. Left to absorb Mana naturally and grow. Crystalized Mana was formed when personal or wild Mana was sufficiently concentrated in a spot to become a super granular non-Newtonian fluid. Essentially a liquid that behaves like a solid.

The mana crystal was formed into a manipulation node when consciousness was embedded in the physical structure of the mana crystal. I was a thinking mana battery that had a few altered abilities. By interacting with Mana at such a fundamental level, I was able to deconstruct matter and construct it. The bursts of knowledge I was getting were actually my deep subconscious mind analyzing anything I was deconstructing and postulating possible uses of those elements through simulations. I was a mana computer with a soul, sort of.

I now knew I had three levels of my mind, brain, processing unit? I'm going to call it my mind. Anyway, the top level was me, my sentient conscious self. The subconscious was where I could direct thinking power and kept autonomous functions active. Then the deep mind, this was more like an internet connection with myself. Anytime I absorbed something, the latest information was dumped into a search. The deep mind would them run comparisons of the information against everything else it knew and then postulate the most likely, well, everything. The more data it had, the more refined my understanding became. When I got a headache or blacked out, it was because this portion of my mind needed to use more processing power than normal.

My act of self-cannibalism produced two relatively key facts. One, I was not going about expanding my mana pool correctly, or should I say the most efficient way. Second, was in relation to my giant 6cm spider mob, I would need to use my deep mind a lot more effectively.

I pulled into the blank black space of my subconscious landscape. I formed an image of the original spider and mushroom, and then the giant ones I had made. I sort of focused on having my deep mind compare the genetic structure of each and try and find out what changes had made them enlarge. Then I sent the request off, and the images winked out of my mental landscape; at the same time, I could feel my deep mind churning the problem over.

I sent my view back to my mana crystal, focusing it to where it appeared like I was standing over it. When I had expanded my mana pool before, what I had really been doing was expanding my soul, or more aptly, my soul's connection to Mana. My soul was expanded to hold more Mana, but that Mana was also operating at 100% efficiency; it is combined with my soul and all that. So, I had four hundred Mana, and that was at 100%. What I needed to do was grow my crystal, not my direct mana pool. As my usable Mana went up, my efficiency would go down. At least I thought I would have to test it.

"Gods, this is when a guide would be great, Mr. Spider."

I needed control to determine how much efficiency I would lose by diluting my mana pool. I formed a copy of Mr. Spider in my creature testing room and began absorbing the giant spider I had tried to create. My Mana was brought back to full, and the extra 100 points of Mana that I could not absorb, I directed to grow a small portion of my crystal.

The one hundred points were absorbed by my crystal easily, and a small nub of crystal grew slightly. Checking my info sheet, I had gained 10 mana. I was currently at 410 mana points now. Segmenting a portion of my mind to carefully feel how much Mana was used, I created another small spider in my creature testing room. Best as I can tell, the efficiency of my Mana had only gone down by .01 percent.

Repeating this process several times, I confirmed that one one-hundredth of a percent was my only loss inefficiency. Going to my mushroom room, I began flipping end over end the great mushroom smasher, claiming the lives of my fungal forest.

Seven hundred mushrooms later and an increase of 700 mana, I was done with my crystal growth for now. I left eighteen of the mushrooms alive to propagate once more. During the process, I had noticed that I did not receive the full amount of Mana the mushrooms released, indicated by the corresponding increase in mana density. I would have to test that amount later.

The seven hundred Mana only decreased my mana efficiency by point seven (0.7). That was it. With the new effect now being tracked, I added another section to my info tracking sheet. My stat tracking sheet? Status, go with the tried and true, I suppose.

Status:

Name: Alex Mitchell.

Time: Years: 0. Months: 4. Weeks: 19. Days: 134. 18:34:21.

Mana pool: 1100.

Mana regeneration: 0.2/minute. Focused: 0.4/minute.

Mana efficiency: 99.3%.

Dungeon Mana density: 25%.

Rooms: 4.

Mobs: 1 spider.

Subconscious processing used: 5%.

Mana efficiency was probably going to be important, but from what I could tell currently, there was no drastic effect with the loss. After I had absorbed all my test spiders except for Mr. Spider, I was at full Mana. A whopping 1,100. Keeping the mana density at about 50%, I began to refocus on what I was doing, days, weeks, months ago maybe?

I couldn't remember. ROOM'S, and traps. Traps and rooms. I quickly expanded my mushroom room. I made it 100 meters long and fifty meters wide, and 15 meters high. It was when I had finished my large grow room that my deep mind finally spit out an answer about enlarging the spiders.

By focusing my Mana more on a few transcription factors within the spider's DNA, I could more effectively grow the spider. It by no means gave me a blueprint for a larger spider, but it meant I could grow one faster.

Contemplating that, I set to making a boss room directly in front of the large grow room. 10 meters of granite separated it from the grow room, and it was half the size at 50 meters by 25 meters by 10 meters high. I made eight individual normal size rooms separated by the same 10 meters and in two rows. I connected them with 60cm passageways that crisscross, making anything that came in having to go through each one. From the normal room farthest from me, I made what I was calling a medium size cave, two of them. A 5-meter-long opening connected the medium cave to the standard room. The second medium cave, 30 meters long by 10 meters wide and 10 meters tall, is connected to the first. Their connection is a small gap in the rock I formed. This second medium cave is connected to the main cave that leads to the outside cave as well as to a large back cave measuring 30 meters long, 30 meters wide, and 10 meters tall.

The caves I spent time on, shaping the stone. Making stalactites and stalagmites from the ceiling and ground. Covering the floor with dirt and dust. Rocks and boulders made a twisting path and hid the door to the back rooms.

Each room was connected to me by a vent system of the 15-centimeter tunnels along with their larger opening that would become doors. I strengthened all of the granite in a 30-centimeter thickness around all of the rooms, and between the boss room and me, I improved all of the granite. I called this granite…dun, dun, dun… Dungeon granite.

"Original, I know Mr. Spider."

I made three standard rooms behind the materials testing room. They were catty-cornered twenty meters to the left and one left empty; this was a buffer room. The others; One room to dig up and the other to dig down. The safety measure, well we all know, I know, who knows what monsters of shadow and flame I could find if I dig too deep and greedily, like the dwarves. I wonder if there are dwarves here, wherever here is.

I have nice rooms, nineteen. Twisty tunnels and Mr. Spider. Mushroom friends. No more, no more. Up dig, down dig.

"Open, open, open," screamed in my head over and over. Who was screaming? Was I screaming? No, I couldn't talk, "OPEN, OPEN, OPEN." Fine, I guess I need to open.

What do I need to open?

Open outside, maybe?

I have gut tingles. They say open. I say open.

I dissolved the block that led to the main cave.

A rush, a flow, and I blacked out.