Chapter Nineteen

Three, tangentially located behind Pa Pa Jiang’s restaurant, New York City, Day 128

Waking up, still half-asleep, Three was surprised by how great he felt, better than he had ever felt before, only half-aware, it tried examining itself, and noticed miasma. Miasma flowed through its dungeon, entered its core, and then came to rest in its miasma pool without flowing up the link to Nature. But for how long? Three asked itself, only to drowsily decide not to bother worrying and to do something about it instead.

As soon as it processed that thought, it began drawing upon the first thought it had, and not having time to waste, Three reached out for mana and miasma. It drew them out, creating astral prism in the space around its core, but there was so much miasma, so much mana, it just kept making the crystal at a ridiculous pace, filling up its core room, the imitation alleyway, and half of the second floor were packed full of astral prism in moments, the production so fast as to be almost beyond its control.

Unfortunately, before it even got through a fifth of its miasma pool, it felt a lingering connection coming down its link from Nature, and even as it desperately packed the floor with astral prism, its miasma pool was siezed, and drained up the link once again, while Three cursed its creator with all its being, to no avail.

It took Three hours to regain its calm, and then more to completely regain its faculties, which is when it finally thought to check its dungeon, only to find that it had filled up more than eighty-five percent of its volume with astral prism, comparatively shrinking its size to less than a floor, just four rooms. Of which one was the room it had trapped the human woman in, meaning the actual length of its dungeon was three rooms. Why did I use astral prism? It asked itself, since having the stuff was basically equivalent to filling a room with its walls, in other words, not useful. Its mana generation had already increased, but its flow was impacted by the mass of crystal, giving it no net benefit, worse, it had taken up space that used to be the dungeon.

Three was about to start growing its dungeon and rearranging the astral prism into a more efficient formation, but before it began, its attention was caught by Winterfang probing their bond. “Winterfang? I was about to work on expanding, is anything a problem?”

“Three! It’s been two months! What happened?” Winterfang asked, surprising Three.

“Two months? Why? Why was I asleep for so long?” Three asked, though it didn’t expect an answer, setting it aside immediately, “Well, that being the case, how have you been?” It asked, turning its attention from the prism-filled rooms to Winterfang, only to see him and a handful of oversized rats and bugs laying down in the first room, experiencing symptoms of mana poisoning, “Winterfang, you have mana poisoning, you and the creatures, what happened? When did the creatures come?” it asked.

“The mana density is too high, at first it helped me to channel, but as it got worse it started to wear me out, these are the only ones who survived, sorry there were so many more creatures originally, a month ago, now only seven are left,” Winterfang replied, weakly indicating the creatures with its paw.

“Well, the dungeon’s entrance was reduced, so the mana pressure must have increased over time… without me using it, it must have built up to toxic levels, your channeling it is probably the only reason that the levels in the entrance room stayed below lethal levels, good job, I’ll take care of it for the time being,” Three said, “Once I expand the dungeon and build a few more floors the mana density will drop for a while, it should be lower already since I made some astral prism when I woke up. Once I’m done with that, we can work on the creatures together.”

It took Three over a month but in the end, focusing on building, it managed to build out three more floors each larger than it was before, but Three couldn’t control the astral prism well, in fact, the most it could do was break off some shards of it, though he gave up on that a foot into the mass of crystal, instead moving what had been its second floor to become its new fifth floor. By the time it was finished, the mana in its dungeon was exhausted, though quickly recovering. Now it was time to turn its attention to Winterfang and the creatures.