What to do

‘I’m in deep shit.’ Was the only thought that traversed my mind when the guy with a greatsword suddenly dashed to me, his sword already in position to impale me. How did it all get to this?

It has been several days since I discovered the energy in animal mana, I lost focus for some reason and started having way too much fun assimilating trees. In the average sized ones I could get about 3 months’ worth of mana, compared to my breathing in intake flow.

I lost myself in it, and I am not exactly sure why. It seemed addictiv at the moment, like I was meant to do it, as if it was my secret life goal. At least it made me discover that if I assimilate a big enough area, the spots and lapses that I can’t yet control my mana begin to recede.

I don’t know how to explain the sensation, even less how it works. I still don’t understand what mana is, I should probably think about it, instead of doing whatever passes my mind. Anyway, the simplest explanation I can give is: it is like a giant game of go. Sort of, at least.

What I mean is that if my mana is surrounding natural mana, then mine begin to take ownership of the natural mana. The opposite is not true, I even tested with tree mana, but it does not behave like mine. It does not fuse with other mana types, so my only guess is that mine is different in some way.

Days passed, I tried finding the village, but I couldn’t for all I tried. I don’t know how I managed to get lost, but I did. But the worst of all, I can’t find animals! I tried hunting, but for the last 4 days, all I could get were birds! They give next to none of the energy I want.

It was easy to get birds though, they would just fly and land on a branch of one of my assimilated trees, and I would slap them with my mana. Not a literal slap, mind you, but if I overwhelm them with 10 times or more of their own mana in one fell swoop, they get all confused and disoriented. They then fall to the ground, where I imbed a part of them in the ground to keep them from fleeing, and then I eat my meal, or the spider does. I keep it fed well enough, or else my movements are all sluggish.

To come back to my actual predicament; I felt a disturbance with my assimilated tree roots, so I got in the direction I felt it from. I stopped when I saw them, they saw me not even a second later, all turning to me.

I was quite surprised to see people here, and even more in the gear they wore. One of them was in plate armor! Damn cool looking too. I honestly did not get to look at the others much, my attention grabbed by the reddish brown armor knight.

I started waving at him, after all, looking like a friendly spider would be a plus, right? Well, turns out that no, spiders are not taken as friendly. Because I don’t think that a sword in the head, followed by being impaled in the backside, itself followed by bisecting any joint is a friendly way to say hello.

The fight was over so quickly, I don’t even remember what happened. I know I got the spider’s head to have a new orifice, then it’s abdomen to have two more, finished by it getting a free release of joint pressure. But for what happened, it might even have the spider that reacted, not me.

Anyway, I am now being extracted from the spider’s abdomen’s underside. I realized I should have fled in the ground to get away from those bloody barbarians, but I was too shocked to react.

And now the assassin looking woman with short black hair and sharp facial features is brandishing me like she is some courage warrior obtaining a new item. She killed my first and actually only assimilated animal, I should have made more, I feel stupid again, and I hate her for that.

So without waiting, I begin to assimilate HER! AHAH! I bet she didn’t think of that! Except it doesn’t seem to be easy at all. Even with a year of mana concentrated in a knife-like balde, I can barely enter her body. How fucking much of it is concentrated inside of her?

She seems to have found my attempt out, she is saying something to the others, but I can’t hear anymore. The guy with indigo colored hairs, yeah, that is a surprise to me too, approached and did something with his mana. I could sense it forming weird forms around his arm, then getting to touch the assassin’s arm and me. I tried taking the mana in, but it resisted. I felt weirdly violated by being prodded by mana that is not mine, and I acted on the spur of the moment.

I manipulated all my mana to form a spiral shaped kind of blade, and made it spin to hack at the guy’s mana tendrils. I did not manage to do anything significant to it, but I at least got a frown from the guy. When his mana started probing mine, I got scared he would take it from me, so I quickly ingested it back in.

The woman handed me to the indigo hair guy, and he placed 4 triangle things on me. They moved to get an equal distance from each other, clinging to my surface like magnets. I felt mana in them, forming odd shapes and flows in it, but I was quickly distracted by a painful sensation.

It was like having your skin pricked by thousands upon thousands of needles, they would then move around each other and mangle you deeper and deeper as the time passed. It did nothing to my core, I am quite sure of that, the pain is coming from my assimilated trees and dirt.

I didn’t understand what was happening at first, but then I felt myself losing what I assimilated. My mana was not extracted from the trees, I was just losing my ownership of it. The mana responded less and less to me. I tried using my mana to move those triangle things, but I just lost control of my mana when it exited my sphere.

I can still breathe mana in, but when I try getting it out, I immediately lose any ownership of it. And without mana, I can’t even feel what is touching my body. So I am stuck like this, slowly getting mana in, and getting the smallest flow out of me to feel the moment I can feel the outside again.

I don’t know what those people want, now that I think of it, they seemed oddly prepared to fight me. What about the equipment and magic fucking triangle to keep me from owning my mana?

Did they come because I entered the village? Did the villagers call them? What the hell is happening?! I don’t know anything, I didn’t kill anyone, animals are not people, they are not anyone, so what are they after me for?!

I keep getting more and more stressed out as I think about what could happen to me, how I could be stuck in this nothingness with only mana for eternity, I could die again, I could get forced to feel this prickling pain again and again. And I lose myself to my assumptions while I am oblivious to any and everything around me.

Kunibert’s POV:

That is so very odd, this dungeon core obviously newly formed, but it is highly abnormal by any standards. First, it got itself inside of its monster, the reason beyond any of my guesses. Second, it tried to get Nebile’s mana, I think it was what it was doing at least. Third, it interacted with my analyze spell somehow.

My analysis spell is simple, it gets mana to interact with what the end of the spell is in contact with, the information is processed in the spell, and it is then transmitted to my mind. When I tried analyzing the core, I started getting a feel of its mana and amount of territory, but then the mana amount started getting weird, getting to nothing, and then jumping to heights impossible.

I frowned at the anomalous thing, and then placed the mana severing formation on the core. It tried using mana again after that, but it lost control of it, at least that worked. But I could feel that mana around it still getting absorbed, and that is not something it should be able to do.

The formation should be severing any kind of mana manipulation ability, so how can it still manipulate mana to get inside of it? The amount is low, but by dungeon standard, it should be about what a 10 or so years old dungeon should be getting on its own. But if it is this age, then why was it just roaming inside such a weak spider monster?

I share my thoughts with the group, I know Samantha will write it in her booklet. That way I will not have to explain everything when we will need to make our report.

“It was quick.” Says Marianne, joy in her voice. “Yeah, we completed the mission just like that?” Asked Esteban while cleaning his blade. “It was very odd for a dungeon core, let’s get back to the village to inform them of our success. Then we should hurry to Narmis to get our reports in, I don’t know if we will get the core back if we tell them everything though.” I added, looking at my friends to be sure they understood what I meant.

Samantha looked at me, some anger in her eyes. “ We have our responsibility, are you saying we should obmite all those abnormalities from our report? Look at it, it’s still gathering mana. Anyone could feel that, and it would immediately be found out that it is abnormal.” Samantha would be the hardest to convince. I would need to get her absolutely certain that we can get away with it, without having the thing getting back to us later.

“Samantha, good lies are those we can believe in ourselves. It is evident the core is abnormal, you said it yourself, it is still gathering mana. And what is your specialty again?” I said to her, my voice full of content at the end.

Samantha rubbed her nose’s bridge, understandably annoyed at my implications. “Stop me if I misunderstood. You want me to make a formation so it can’t absorb mana anymore, and then get back to Narmis to make it seem as if it was a totally normal dungeon? Did I forget anything?”

Turning a blind eye to her spitefulness, I answered. “Yeah, you forgot something, I told you a good lie should be able to fool us as well. With it being abnormal in its mana usage and methods, we just have to say it has a weirdly good mana control for its apparent age.”

“Indeed we should say that, it is true!” Samantha lashed out. “ We can’t just lie about it, even if we can’t take it as ours, we can at least get compensation, you know?!” Samantha was right out raging at me now. The others tried calming her, which took time.

It was 20 minutes later that Sarsaw talked to me, loud enough for the whole group to hear. “What are you proposing exactly? We know your plans, but why do you insist we falsify our reports?” As usual, Sarsaw is calm and concise. I like that about him.

I thought about how to answer that, it is a delicate topic. “I read the dungeon history, as many have, but I also know some things that are not written in the common books.” Everyone is looking at me with questions in their eyes. I can’t stop with just that.

*sigh* “My mother was responsible for dungeon research, and one thing she needed to know at all times are the DD laws about them. When I was young, I overheard her inside her office, talking to herself how she couldn’t believe the wastelands were a dungeon’s territory.” That got a reaction from them, but I didn’t let them interrupt me.

“I told her I heard, she made me promise to never tell anybody, against what I asked her to tell me why a dungeon, something that obviously wants life to be in its territory, destroyed everything instead.”

“It turns out that it was an abnormal dungeon, it got collected before its first graft, and tutored by DDs. But for some reason, after only 5 years, it was able to kill those who controlled it, and started making rampaging calamities come out of itself.”

“I don’t know any details, but I know that a new law was introduced to prevent this from happening again. And the fact that it can get mana through the formation is enough for it to get destroyed if we get it back like that.” I felt a heavy weight on my shoulders, the atmosphere between my friends and I getting tense.