Chapter Fourteen

Despair, Astral Plane in the general vicinity of Earth, Day 66

As part of his weekly checkup, Despair turned his viewing window, currently looking at a seemingly ordinary part of the Sahara where Europa resided and was working on her insect dungeon, to the isolated spot in the Andes mountain range in South America where Metis resided. Opening another window to view her dungeon, he started calling to her telepathically, and a few minutes later she picked up, “Hello, Despair, How’ve Callisto and Europa been doing?”

“Hello, Metis. Callisto just finished her fourth floor and Europa has started to add a queen to each of her hives. How has your cross-breeding been going?” he responded, focusing the window to look at her breeding chambers to check himself.

“Very well!” She replied as he saw some baby horned apes, “My first generation was born a few days ago, I’m not sure what will result from breeding those monkeys that appeared and imps, but their response to mana seems to be good.”

Pleased, Despair happily responded, “Wonderful! It’s great news that you’re making progress advancing those creatures, we didn’t expect there to be such difficulties getting the species to adapt to mana when we started out.” He paused a moment in regret, “I suppose we should have considered that not having any prior experience with mana of any kind would influence the local biology’s ability to control it.”

Metis chuckled at him through the link, “Yeah, that would have been smart. So… everything is going well over here, anything come up over there? Just a courtesy call?”

“Not really any news here either, we’re still in the waiting game as you and the others spread mana, though thanks to you and your sister’s help, I’m now the second-most prolific miasma provider to our domain, just after Storm, with Sun and then Nature falling behind me. Thank you for that.” Despair responded, looking around the surroundings of the dungeon, “I’m looking around your dungeon, and I’m noticing some more human activity in the nearby villages, they’re still about forty miles away, but look out for that, anything you need before I break the connection?”

Metis pondered for a while, “No, I think I’m fine, thanks for the warning though, goodbye!”

“Goodbye, Metis” Despair said, breaking the conversation and retuning the viewing windows to start scanning the areas around each of the twelve dungeons.

As expected, the ambient mana concentrations had risen across the board, and the ambient miasma concentrations had dropped. The humans around the five dungeons in more populated areas were already showing a decline in rates of illness and improvements of general health, but their ability to channel or use the mana had yet to develop. Until that began, it would be best if they could avoid revealing themselves and the dungeons, though they may not be that lucky.

As Despair scanned past the back alley in new York Three resided in, he noticed that the mana density was only slightly more than the last time he had checked, even though the miasma concentration had continued to decrease. Curious, Despair tuned the viewing window to actually look at Three’s dungeon, trying to figure out what was going on, only to be absolutely stunned.

The most apparent thing was the dungeon’s crippling retardation for its age. While the dungeon was currently expanding out a large chamber, it otherwise only had twenty-seven chambers, with traps and corridors cutting out in the first few rooms of the dungeon’s second and last floor. In contrast, Callisto had 93 rooms up through her four floors. Worse, the dungeon only had one creature, with no other beasts or even vegetation.

Far less apparent, but far more shocking, was the nature of the that one creature. The creature was an enormous feline monster, a true monster tied to the dungeon by a piece of dungeon core, as compared to the mana crystal most summoned monsters possessed. That meant that the monster must be a contracted beast, or in other words, it could wield mana. No other dungeon had yet succeeded in that endeavor. Upon further analysis, he discovered the monster was also a higher being, something otherwise found only amongst humans on the planet. How in the world did Three create a higher being, and this fast? He wondered.

Despair excitedly called a meeting while continuing to watch Three slowly expanding the chamber, noticing the unevenness of its construction, but while he waited for the others to arrive, he noticed, to his shock, that the cat was actually talking, giving Three some sort of instructions in the creation of the chamber. Three had somehow created a being far beyond anything the other dungeons had created, perhaps even beyond the planet’s creations.

Before he knew it, the others had begun to arrive, “What’s up” Storm asked as she arrived, Sun on her heels.

“Take a look at Three over here,” Despair indicated the viewing window before enlarging it, “I don’t know how but it seems it’s managed to do what we’ve been looking for way ahead of schedule.”

“What were we looking for again?” Storm asked, “I wasn’t really paying attention.”

“We wanted our dungeons to adapt native species to mana, develop means of utilizing magic that can be displayed and shared with native humans, and then reveal ourselves to the native humans and become recognized by the locals as gods, cementing our ownership of the domain.” Sun answered, “What did it achieve, all I see is a big cat monster? If you’re looking for that Susan has some too.”

Despair sighed at Sun’s obliviousness, “The cat is a true monster,” when neither Sun nor Storm got it he continued, “Which means that the cat made must have made a contract with Three.” That got the shocked response he was looking for, “More, the cat is a higher being, and it can talk.”

“What cat?” Nature asked, arriving when she felt was fashionably late.

“Three somehow made a super-cat!” Storm replied, excitedly, after confirming for herself.

“Three?” Nature replied, taken aback, “That pathetic retard actually achieved something?” she muttered under her breath, though everyone heard her anyway.

“Yes, have a look for yourself,” Sun gestured at the window, where Three was slowly building out a crude imitation of the alley above, under the guidance of Ms. Winters.

After she got a look herself, Nature quickly regained her more arrogant attitude, “Of course he did! He’s my precious little baby after all, he couldn’t have done it without my help.”

“Oh, really? How did you achieve it? Why didn’t you tell us earlier? This is great news!” Despair replied, giving a legitimately cheery exclamation to hide his sarcasm.

“Of course,” Nature responded without thinking, “Three, uh… did it… by… um… give me a second.” She said, turning away.

“If you’re making a call to Three, make it open for all of us to talk, that’ll be more productive,” Despair said.

“Yeah, I want to talk to the cat!” Storm added in.

“Getting advice for my dungeons would be good,” Sun requested.

Nature grimaced, “Of course, that won’t be a problem at all.” She said, and opened up the connection.