Chapter 5.

Sorting and shifting some things around in my information stat sheet, I had it compile better information.

Status:

Name: Alex Mitchell.

Time: Years: 0. Months: 5. Weeks: 24. Days: 168. 03:10:01

Mana pool: 1100.

Mana regeneration: 1 per minute. Focused: 2 per minute.

Mana efficiency: 99.3%.

Dungeon Mana density: 54%. (Open, static).

Sub CPU: 29.011% used. 70.989% open.

Language: 10%.

Traps: 18, 9%.

Mobs: 1, .01%

Plant: 1, .001%

Automated mana incorporation: 5%.

Calculations and measures: 4%

Formatting: 1%.

Rooms: 21.

The tunnel I had dug upwards was now acting like a great mana funnel, along with all my completed rooms. This increased my regeneration to 60 mana an hour, a lot more than it had been, but nowhere near good enough for my comfort. I also automated the process of increasing my mana pool. The closest thing to leveling I think this world has. When I killed a mushroom, now, if I was at full mana, the excess would be directed toward increasing the size of my crystal. This would dilute my mana in the long run, decreasing my mana efficiency. To combat this, I set an arbitrary point that if my mana went below 95% efficiency, then it would switch to increasing the soul connection to my mana until it was at 100% again.

I used my camera spell on the outside of my entry cave. It took 1 mana every five seconds I used it and only a .1% of my Sub-CPU power to run; the world was white with snow. The entrance was located up a small rocky hill from a forest at the base of a mountain I could not see the top of. No, really, even when I sent my vision to the edge of the woods and looked up, the mountain towered, and the top was lost in the clouds. Not low-hanging clouds, but the big ones. The thing was huge. I knew why Graystep called it the great mountain.

I expanded my influence to the edge of the forest but stopped pushing after a while. I could feel what was on the ground and about knee height on a person, but after that, my influence just evaporated. It would shrink every day, receding back unless I recoated the top layer of the ground. It also did some weird things to the plants; the ones dead and dormant in the snow began to come back to life as they fed on the mana I emitted. So, I let my influence recede until I was ready to claim all the ground underneath, up to the forest.

"Graystep, how long does winter last?" I projected at the elder wolf. The images and feelings I sent were of the snow falling, sticking, and then melting in spring.

"Great thinking heart power, the snow will melt in the safe hunting forest in three more moons."

"Thank you, Graystep. Are you able to use the heart power to hunt?"

"Yes. The power lets me far bite and far claw. I can far tooth as well."

"Would you mind demonstrating those for me?"

"I cannot, around the pups."

"I will open the deeper caves and create small things for you to kill."

"I will show these things to you then." Graystep projected as he got up.

I increased my frame rate and did some quick work. I made the passage back to the first medium cave big enough for him to walk through. I lit the ceiling of the medium caves and large cave with soft light, creating four of the dog-sized spiders in the large main cave. With the known blueprint, their cost was 250 mana each, and the thread of mana connecting them to me took 0.4 of my Sub-CPU power. I held them still, in a line.

Graystep wondered in, eyeing the cave suspiciously. He stopped a few dozen feet back from the spiders.

"Should I demonstrate hunting on these spiders?" Graystep asked.

"Yes, please, the heart power," I said while I portioned off 10% of my Sub mind to analyze the mana in the large cave and in Graystep.

"The long claw." Graystep projected as he raised his right paw and slashed at the air. When he did this, a coil of mana rippled through his body and collected on the tips of his claws. As his paw descended, the mana trailed in the air behind it, launching forward. The slash flew through the convening space between them and neatly split the spider right in half. Two things happened. A tendril of mana connected from the mana in the spider to Graystep; it was hard to tell how much he received back. I received about 80 mana from the spider, but when the slash splashed against the dungeon granite dissipating, I received some mana from this as well.

Graystep showed me his far bite and tooth as well. The far tooth was just a mana bolt he projected from his mouth, but it did turn the spider into little more than a bloody paste. Each of the spells he cast, I do use that term lightly, came from his mana, located near his back middle, then followed channels that matched his bloodstream perfectly, passed through his heart where the mana took on the properties of what it was going to do, then out, materializing in space a few centimeters from the skin of the projecting area.

From what I could tell, Graystep's spells operated much the same as my dungeon. He just had a limited amount of places he could materialize the mana, needing to be projected from nodes in his body. There had to be more to it, but until I got more data, that was going to be the best I could do.

The three months passed quickly as I worked. I claimed the area in front of my dungeon entrance and into the forest. As long as I had a good two meters of earth claimed my connection to the area was permanent but was still only able to claim the air up to about knee height. I did not change anything around my entrance, deciding to wait until the dire wolves left to do that.

I worked on creating mobs at this time. My spiders bore the brunt of my experiments. I tried to increase their mana pool with explosive results. I increased the size of one spider until it was truly giant. It was almost double the size of Graystep. I was able to force impregnation on the large Queen, having her claim the large cave as her own. She hatched dozens of baby spiders a little smaller than the dog-sized ones that spread out into the medium-sized caves. And so, the cannibal wars started.

The new spiders would grow and then fight each other, becoming larger and more powerful. The male spiders that won their fights moved back into the Queen's large cave, taking their place as mates and food for the Queen. As disturbing as this was, I let the spiders run their evolutionary course, which ended two months later.

Six smaller spiders, about 2.5 meters (8 feet), took up residence in the medium cave outside the entrance to my dungeon tunnels. Four medium-sized spiders, about 4.8 meters (16 feet), filled the second medium cave that connected to the entry cave. In the Queen's large cave, three 7-meter (22 feet) spiders became consorts. Smaller dog-sized spiders were left to wander and breed, acting as food for the larger.

At the entry tunnel to my dungeon rooms, I placed a dungeon stone pillar with a large iron bowl on top of it. Iron was the most mana insulating material I had, lead might be more so, but I had yet to find any of that. This insulation was important because my dungeon influence could not directly interact with a being from outside of my dungeon. About 30 centimeters out (1foot) was a field that protected the life form. Sort of like their own dungeon influence. The iron bowl insulated this effect, so if adventurers were standing right in front of it, I could still absorb whatever they put in the bowl.

I placed the bowl so adventurers would have to place one of three items in the bowl if they wanted the door to the tunnel to open. A rare plant, blood, or knowledge of some kind. Things I could use. On the pillar was a plaque, and when I finally learned whatever passed for language in this world, I would put a pithy rhyme on it. "Into me place one item of three, plant, the blood of beast or knowledge you will need."

The plants Graystep had brought were created in the grow room. Two species of trees, an evergreen pine variant and an evergreen oak. Creating one left a mana connection to me, so I was able to affect changes in the trees. I accelerated their growth but did not change anything else about them. The pine formed cones that held seeds, but instead of hanging from the branches, like on earth, where they would then open to having their seeds go spinning off into the wind, these cones grew on top of the branches. When they were ready to spread, a small mana pocket under the cones would burst, sending the cones flying a few meters (3-5 feet) in the air. It would then burst open and project the seeds out and up, letting them helicopter in the air a greater distance and was not dependent on the wind. The oak had the same gene signature as the pine when it came to leaf loss. It used much the same method to project its acorns, sending the single seeds away from it with a higher velocity. After one seeding, I had dozens of the tree's sprouts growing.

This led me to have to expand the grow room; on the far side that led into the mountain, I increased the size 25 meters back from the wall. A new 100-meter by 100-meter (110 yards) section was formed, with the ceiling set at 30-meters (100 feet) high.

The mushrooms grew, along with the other plants Graystep had brought. Bushes with berries that grew, two edible and one poisonous. A vine that was flexible and strong that I had used in a trap. Wildflowers that stabilized mana, herbs that both tasted good if my deep mind could be believed and could be used in a healing poultice. A compound in the herbs acting to accelerate cell division and growth. The rarest thing Graystep brought me was what I was calling a mana rose.

The mana rose grew on a bush much like a regular rose. It looked the same as well. The thorns had a neurotoxin that would be shot into anything that came too close by small needles housed in the thorn. The toxin was powerful but not the most interesting thing about it. It absorbed a lot of ambient mana, hundreds of more times more than the other plants and even the trees. When the buds formed, they were tight concentrations of blazing mana. They unfurled just like a rose, some silver in color while others were a light sky blue. When the petals finally dropped, only one at a time fell. When it hit my dungeon floor, I absorbed it, and a flood of mana washed into me. 200 mana flowed into me, and my automated growth routine activated, increasing my mana by 20 (1,120). The petals dropped steadily as the mana rose absorbed the ambient mana in the grow room. I only created one of the roses to wait and see how it multiplied. Plus, with six blooms that gave no signs of stopping their petal divestiture, dropping a petal every ten minutes or so.

This would yield me a 2,880 mana increase a day if I did not use any of my stored mana and just grew. That was nearly impossible to do with all the changes I was making. Mob creation diminished my mana growth by a large factor.

The pups grew fast, and by the end of three months, they were the size of large dogs. Running and playing in the snow and making a general nuisance of themselves.

I had eleven animals I could work with to make mobs. The animals were only close approximations to those from the earth, but they were; Foxes, squirrels, dire wolves, horned deer, bats, buffalo, cows and bulls, horses, and black hawks. The first room got three medium-sized dire wolves, the second a bull, while the fourth got two of the horned deer. I covered the floors with dirt and grew grass, and placed boulders to give a more natural feel to the rooms, but at 10 meters (32 feet), they were not large enough to maximize the animal's potential.

The snow had melted some, and spring was fast approaching when Graystep Bounded back into my influence, moving at a dead run. He had been out hunting. "Pack, many two legs come, one bright light away, with sharp fangs and flying quills. We must take the young ones and leave." Graystep's voice rumbled through the cave and my dungeon.

"How many?" I sent back.

"Many, double the number of the pack, including the young."

"Dam it, at least 30 then. Go Graystep and take your young; I hope to meet you again. But do not return to this cave; many two legs will live here by next winter, I believe. I will search your sent on the wind if I need to find you."

"Thank you, great one, for letting us shelter our young pups within your cave. I will listen for your voice and shall not bring the pack close to this cave again. Strong power and sharp fang great spirit." Graystep projected as the pack left the cave. I watched through my camera spell as they loped off between the trees. The young pups running excitedly in the center of the group, flanked on all sides by their parents.

It looked like I was going to get my first humans, well, two legs. Mabey elves, probably not dwarfs.

I quickly absorbed all the remaining remnants from the pack left in the entry cave. I widened the halls leading deeper into my spider caves, making them man-sized. Some of the dog-sized spiders filtered into the entry cave and even ventured outside. I made a few more of the dog-sized spiders in the entry cave for good measure. That's when I learned something useful if I had created a mob, I could sort of take control of it, receiving all its sensory input. I didn't get sucked into it; it was more like I grew an extra finger that processed light, sound, smell, and feeling; and could walk around independent of my body. If it left my area of influence, the thread of mana would begin to draw mana from me, keeping the connection alive and the creature.

I was pretty sure it would not just dissolve or something if I cut the mana thread. Instead, it would go back to being a normal flesh and blood spider. Which meant I would not be able to reform the connection I once had to it.

I sent a few of my new appendages into the trees and one running off as fast and far as it could. At the tree line, I could see into the forest that flattened out around my entrance, not far but a good distance. Those three spiders only drew a few drops of mana to maintain my connection.

The spider I sent running quickly left my area of influence. The pull began immediately. First, it was 0.001 mana, then 0.01, then 0.1, and finally, at 1 mana a second, I had it stop. By my best estimation, the spider was 800 meters (half a mile) out. Having the spider run back decreased the cost quickly. Over 750 meters out, the cost increased exponentially instead of linearly. I also did not want to set the spider free and have it start reproducing, turning the forest into a spider den nightmare.

I waited and let my mana recharge fully.