Ch.49 Sanctioned.

Seeing the Knight finally leave for good brought Malpetios peace, at last!! He now needed to deal with the aftermath. He then remembered the pain of tearing himself apart. With no Pure Mana, he had no other choice but to use part of himself, carving a gaping hole out of his core. He'd gathered all the fragments housing his Sidekick, losing its protection in the process.

Smelling blood, the shadows rushed to the open wound preferring the large piece of meat over the tiny Supporting Core. Malpetios used his mental strength to create a shield around himself, but it had little effect. Unlike the wills he'd fought before these ones were far too coordinated, not allowing him to hold on.

With no other choice, he stops acting tuff, shamelessly hiding in his Mindscape using the system's barrier as a clutch. The sky of his pristine forest turns black, giving out a gloomy atmosphere. The mass of darkness continued on, assaulting the new obstacle. However, the prismatic barrier prevented them from reaching any closer not showing any signs of damage.

Malpetios used boss fusion, sending advice to the Lily sense he couldn't control its material body in here. In this way, he saw the Lily, controlled by Sidekick, nearly stump all over the Knight. He originally thought it would simply level the playing field, but he had forgotten something. As a Dungeon Core, even if just a supporting one, it had a one hundred percent (Mana Conductivity).

Meaning that it could suck the mana out of the Knight, and any equipment in contact with it. On top of all that, his Sidekick was completely immune to the Knight's mana, being nothing more than its food. Malpetios was not sure if it Was because the same elements cancel each other, or conductivity percentages equate to a corresponding resistance?

He would have to experiment later. Now however he needed to regain control of the Dungeon and his body. With his request, the Lily stuck its head thru the broken doors, breathing out a gentle stream of golden mana at my Core. The black water reacted violently to it, morphing into silently screaming faces. At a snail's pace, the faces started to melt, the golden mana clearly having little effect. He decided to speed up the process by leaving his safety bubble and fighting the wills to the best of his ability. This was going to take a long time.

Somewhere in the continent of A'om, in the Holy capital, a space crack appeared in the courtyard of a large manor. Avanlo dropped to his knees breathing raggedly his face pale from mana depletion. The pieces of the (Space Rending Cube) quickly gathered together before dropping to the floor, turning dim. Heavy footsteps could be heard getting close. Avanlo only had the strength to raise his head and apologize, passing out from exhaustion the next second.

The large and stalwart man quickly grabbed Avanlo before he hit the floor. A face full of wrinkles and vicissitudes of life scanned his body, finding no life-threatening wounds. The large and gentle hands removed the partially destroyed armor, stopping on top of Avanlos back. "Finally did something for your son huh," said the man in an aged voice. The tattoo glowed, saddened eyes appearing before returning to its featureless face.

The man stood up, cradling Avanlo in one arm and ordering the servants to move the armor to the blacksmith. Of course, he made sure to take the feathered satchel, sword, and cube. Hearing his command, around four or so well dressed, big-eyed, and long-eared humanoids cleaned the area immediately. Taking Avanlo to his room and tucking him in bed, he places his glowing palm on Avanlos head.

Avanlos tensed eyebrows relax, falling into a peaceful slumber. "Knock, Knock." The man frowned displeased due to the interruption. Opening the door, he saw one of his servants nervously staring back at him, its green skin full of sweat. "L-Lo-Lord Lovan we have guests. High Priest Vultren wishes to see you as soon as possible." Lovan's eyes glinted with malice, quickly hiding it the next moment.

Walking into the guest room Lovan glanced at the pig-like man in white robes. Sitting down, he asks, "to what do I owe the pleasure of your visit, High Priest Vultren." Smiling, Vultren said, "lord Lovan is jesting, I am of course here to check on Avanlos condition. If I'm not wrong, he was sent by the church to destroy this century's Chaos Dungeon. Sadly, it would seem this Dungeon turned out to be a variant."

"Not only that but it was heavily skewed towards traps against larger groups. The total casualties amount to well over thirty percent, even the unbelievers had many deaths." Vultren took a sip of the tea provided to him, frowning in disgust at the green skin slave who offered it. "Putting that aside, don't you think that as the ruling family of the Heavensword household you should get servants of higher standards."

Hearing this, the servant began to shake in fear not daring to lift his head. Lovan replied in a calm tone, "Slaves are good learners, loyal, and more importantly tight-lipped." Lovan said the last one with a hint of mockery before returning to his drink. Vultren momentarily frowned, but he quickly replaced it with a smile. "That seems to be the case. Let's move on with the previous topic. Due to Avanlos failure, the Beastmen have allied with the Elfs and Fairys, claiming the dungeon under the Fairys Army Treaty."

"Both sides have already gathered their army. This war is highly disadvantaged towards us, the Beastmen horde would completely exhaust our troops without the lord's power. Let's also not forget the rich mana the dungeon can produce without the Shackles, becoming a playground for those Elfs." "His Holiness has decided to make a deal with the Fairy Army. Our objective is to maintain the Dungeon sealed, not allowing the Beastmen to free it and claim approximately two hundred miles of our lands."

"However, it is unlikely for the Beastmen to leave with no benefits, especially after the ambush of the Beast King fifty years ago." Said Vultren while taking another sip of tea. Lovan already had an idea of what the church was getting to, and their true goal in coming here. Putting his teacup back on the table Vultren said, "now we come to how the Heavensword household intents to compensate for their mistakes."

"We don't ask much of you, the only retired rank nine entity outside the political world, just stabilize the wastelands of Snake Nest in our favor." Although Vultren would have preferred to destroy the Dungeon, both the Fairy Treaty and the higher-ups refused.

Keeping the commoners and lesser nobles happy would be advantageous, but the Dungeon was not an amalgamation spewing disaster this time. The Mage Academy and freelance Warriors would not play nice with the church if they dare to destroy a source of mana for no reason. Their only chance was the first finders grace period, which Avanlo failed miserably at.

"I refuse," said Lovan in a disinterested tone. Widening his eyes, Vultren could not believe he had refused. With the horrendous losses predicted by the church, the Heavensword Household would suffer pressure from all sides. Did he really think that being a rank nine grandmaster Paladin would keep him safe? A simple 'accident' in the Abyss World gates, and he would be pulled out of retirement forcefully. Refusing a second time would strip him of his titles and power, throwing him out of the Holy Capital for his enemies to deal with.

Before Vultren could open his mouth again, Lovan raised his hand to stop him. "I know that the losses are large and even I can't shoulder them, there's no need to elaborate. I'll personally go to His Holiness to pay for my son's mistakes. You may leave now, I will not be seeing you off." Said Lovan, getting up from his chair and leaving.

From Avanlo's room, he saw the fuming Priest stumping his way out of the manner. Retrieving his gaze from the window he could not but scoff in his mind. Do you want me to leave my grandson alone with you bunch of snakes so you can make another unfortunate accident happen?

Sadly for you, my grandson is not as incompetent as his dad was. Lovan takes out what looks like a red wooden carving of a flower bud, scanning it with his aura. Inside it was a small, yet beautiful red gem, covered in rainbow patterns. I don't believe a sacred jewel's value is not worth more than the few cities under the Prismatic Core's influence. After I offer this to the pope, let's see who has the guts to question my rule over the Heavensword Household.

Time went by, passing in the blink of an eye. Back in Malpetios Mindscape, the last few big wills were being hunted. In the beginning, he had just brute-forced his way thru, before getting the idea to use mana. He tried using all the elements he could manifest, including the brand new one he just got. It also came with two new Dungeon skills.

[Holy]: The element created by the gratitude of intelligent beings, and showing goodwill to another. Found mainly in the Golden Garden, and from worshippers.

(Sanctuary): Adds an additional room's worth of space to the dungeon, increasing from ten rooms per floor to eleven. Rooms or terrain created this way are surrounded by a field of soothing mana, greatly suppressing aggressive tendencies.

(Holy Blessing): Grant a willing creature great powers, temporarily increasing all its parameters up to three hundred percent, for fifteen seconds.

The four basic elements were easy to control, with many memories for me to go thru for spells. Nature and Ice were a whole different story, with me having to just spray and pray to little effect. The only ones worth mentioning are Water and Holy. For some weird reason, if one didn't work the other would melt their face-off. After a lot of practice, I found the wills who were unusually intelligent were weak to Holy.

They would use the other wills as cover, seemingly looking for an opportune moment. The rest of them suffered heavy damage to Water mana. I thankfully managed to scrunch up a third circle water spell that hit a wide area, reaping large numbers of them. This worked until the smarter ones began to trade places, literally grabbing the dumb ones by the neck, using them as a shield when needed. It got to the point that it took hours to kill just one of them.

Luckily, a mist of golden mana started to appear behind the wall of wills, slowly melting them over time. With an occasional smart one getting caught here and there. I started experimenting with many things, but nothing much worked. That was when I accidentally use the wrong mana, cursing to myself that it should've been Holy. Only for the water mana to glow in prismatic colors, changing from Water to Holy.

This solved all my problems as I cast different circles of magic, changing them into Holy or Water as needed. Since I was able to change elements I tried to change spells, and it kinda worked. Changing a first circle (Fire Arrow) to a (Pebble Bullet) didn't work, but changing it to a second circle (Fire Bolt) absolutely worked.

This meant I could take advantage of a spell's fast movement, before injecting mana, changing it into its slower higher rank version. Like from (Pebble Bullet) into (Boulder Toss), before changing it into Holy element. Malpetios had a gut feeling that he could only do this while inside his Life Aura, similar to (Fire Brand) from his [Pyrovine Orb].

Finishing off the remaining few wills, he could finally get out of his Mindscape. The moment he returned, he dispersed his senses throughout his Dungeon, quickly getting bombarded with notices from the System the next second.

[A total of 306 unique lifeforms have perished inside the Dungeon Domain. The corresponding amount of Life Crystals have been condensed.]

[Host has unlocked (Alchemy: Holy Element Elixer.). (Alchemy: Wind Element Hi-Potion)...]

A lot of new unlocks, mostly a bunch of potions of different elements with the Knights Elixer being the most precious. Apart from that were notifications of more slime births, along with the instinctual feeling of mana repairing the Dungeon.

The first thing he did was to check on Q'ills condition. He found her where he left her, sleeping soundly. Although he wasn't sure how long he was trapped inside the Mindscape, he could have sworn it was more than two days. It was alarming for her to not show any signs of waking up.

Turning towards the slowly healing hole on the doors, he saw his Lily dutifully spraying mana at him. Sending an order to his Sidekick, the Lily started to cough up golden blood, his Supporting Core levitating out of its mouth. Returning to his side, it started revolving around him like a moon.

[Supporting Core: ???]

Rank: 0

Mana: 75/75

Holy Element Mana: 75/75

Crystallized Mana: 0

After curiously watching it revolve around him, a status window popped up, introducing something he didn't recognize. So he just asked the good old System.

[Crystallized Mana]: Mana given material form, used for the Dungeons Cores growth. Can be traded to the World's Will for equivalent rewards.

Oh? Is this how I'm supposed to grow to the size of the Jewels, but wait how come I can't make it myself? And what about Pure Mana? Confused, Malpetios requested his Sidekick to create some for him to see. His Sidekick spent fifty of both Mana and Holy Mana to create one unit of Crystallized Mana.

[Holy Mana stone]: A stone created by a Holy Dungeon Core, can be used to store Holy Element Mana.

Capacity:0000/2500.

WAIT! Wasn't this just a [Prismatic Mana stone]!? After a moment of shock, he realized that they were not the same. One stored Mana that was conveniently versatile and for all affinities, while the other only stored Holy Element Mana. This meant my stones are over four thousand percent more efficient.

Malpetios stared at the tiny shard of whitish-gold crystal, before telling his Sidekick to use it. However, nothing happened, making him wonder if his Sidekick was broken. Luckily the System saved him from his predicament.

[The Crystallized Mana must be full to begin integration. Attempting to integrate them forcefully would have a high failure rate. This can cause it to explode.]

EXPLODE!? He nearly threw the thing away with telekinesis. Was this thing even stable? His System assured him it was perfectly safe, it would only be dangerous if it was intentionally mishandled. Since it's safe he wanted to fill it up, so he took a look at his condition.

Mana: 425/425

Element mana: 421,399/421,399 (5,355 per hour)

Pure mana: 0

Mana stone(full): 00/23

He was completely full. This didn't make him happy, however. Two whole days' worth of mana regen was only about half his Element Mana pool, but he was full? This can only mean he was trapped for at least four or five days, yet everything in the Dungeon was as I left it.

This also meant that Q'ill has been sleeping for almost a week, he really started to panic a bit now. He took a look at her, casting a few more water healing spells to no effect. The beauty just kept snoring away. Sighing, Malpetios just fills the stone with Holy mana and throws it to his Sidekick. This time it worked, the crystal melted and covered the whole circular Core. He got the allusion of an onion getting another layer.

Its mana and element capacity when up by one, now seventy-six. Malpetios repeated the process two more times before it stopped working, a familiar error message coming from the System.

[Warning. The Supporting Core can't convert more than double its max capacity of mana per day.]

Seeing this, he was reminded about his own restrictions, quickly making Pure Mana. Malpetios almost cried when he saw the zero jump to eight, it felt like years ago when he had the liberty to make any.

With nothing better to do, he continued experimenting with spells, turning them from first circle spells to second, becoming more adept at it. That was five days ago...

WHERE IS EVERYBODY!!??