Dungeon core ownership

Narmis, dungeon dweller’s office. “Here is the core, as well as the owner badge. It is already linked to the core, you only have to link to it to use it. Do you want a manual?” Samantha is at the reception, getting the core and taking care of the official process to become a dungeon core owner.

“It passed the tests” whispers Pàll to me. “It seems so.” I answer him, not talking any louder than him. I turn my eyes to look at him, and I find myself amused. “You seem to be sweating a lot for an ice mage.” I tell him, the corners of my mouth moving up against my attempt at remaining serious.

*long sigh* I look at Esteban, his sigh having taken my attention. “How many times will you make this same joke, Kun?” He says, a smile on his face, his eyes trying to make a look of exasperation. “You are not fooling anyone Esty, who doesn’t know you like bad jokes?” Marianne comments.

“Stop fooling around.” Says Samantha, she has finished with the reception and has joined the group. “In case you forgot what Niloofar told us, we have a trip to prepare and report to then found our very own dungeon. I’ll take care of planning the transport and logistics with Nebile, if you are willing to help me.” She says, making it seem like a help me please, while in reality it is a help me or I will make your life horrible.

She give us a list of what we will need, namely tools to build a shack to have somewhere to sleep and be safe while we wait for the building team and the merchants to come. We will also need a cart to transport everything, our packs and arms would not be enough. Seeing the budget, I am happy to see we got the organization to bak us up. The cost would strangle us otherwise.

POV: Samantha

The process of getting the core back, as well as the information we would need has been smooth. I have never been so stressed in my entire life, that is not really true, I should say: I have never been so stressed by something that is not a monster.

I asked for our team to be present during the core’s tests, but the others didn’t come in, they chose to stay at the ground floor and just wait. I felt awkward, being the only member of my team attending to it.

It was interesting, seeing Niloofar and some of her assistants using various tools to measure the core’s characteristics. They were surprised to see the mana density the core reached, but it is far from the densest on record, they took note and proceeded to the other tests.

To the surprise of everyone, the tests revealed the core's peculiarity: instead of specializing, like the vast majority of cores normally do. Instead of rejecting most mana-types and absorbing only the typeless and one type of mana, this core absorbed any mana-type the test-team gave it.

Be it nature, death, life, fire, water… Any mana-type they had, it took. They waited to see if the core would reject some of those it had taken. It is known that opposed mana-types are destructive to one another, and if kept inside somebody, it would lead to mana burns. Those are nasty things, they are painful and can lead to death.

Dungeon cores are not like anything else, the closest living being to them would be the crystal golems, but these are still different beings altogether. They are not free from conflicting mana-types, there are theories about dungeon cores being the only things capable of keeping opposing mana-types together. If this core kept all the mana it was fed, then it would be a confirmation of that, but again, it could also be an outlier among the cores.

While they advanced in the tests, they confirmed it to be an outlier. Be it mana density, conductivity, ramification, control lignes or anything else, the core seems to be above the average. Not so much to be considered much, about 30 to 50 percent above average depending on which.

Normally, a core would have 3 to 5 times the average in a category, 2 times the average in 2 or 3 others, and below average for all others. This one seemingly refused to have a specialty. “Well, this is jack of all trades, but master of none. It's funny to see a dungeon core with such properties.” Said Linoofar while inspecting the core’s color.

Its outer layer is totally black, the darkness is so pronounced that when Niloofar put it into the box of darkness. A box whose interior does not reflect or propagate light, making it the darkest possible. The core was visible only because of its smooth and reflective surface, aside from the reflections, where the core begins and where it ends in the box could not be seen.

“No doubt about its color then.” Said Niloofar, writing on her paper. She then approaches me. “That is about all we had to do. We just need to make an ownership tag and then it will be given back to you. You can choose to keep it sealed for as long as you want, you can give it to anyone if they have the qualifications required to take care of it. But if you want to use it to create a new dungeon, you will have to look for a proper location and then inform the nearest DD quarters and see with the one responsible there for accomodations, help and the planning of the dungeon’s graft.” Niloofar gives me other potentially useful information before she returns to the core to make the ownership token.

I thank her as she begins her work, and I go to reunite with my team. Usually they would be talking crap about anything that came in their talk, but when I see them, they are glancing at each other, stress obvious in their expressions.

I tell them how the tests ensued, how when the mana control seal was released, the core absorbed a normal amount of mana for 8 minutes straight, instead of the 1 minutes their tampering would normally last. The success of our plan was met with sighs of relief, and my friends began to act as usual.

I was explaining to them how we could give it our own mana to make it develop more quickly than normal when the receptionist called, the whole procedure is at its end now. I go and do all I need to get the core and any information we would need to influence the dungeon core and get it to obey. The ownership token being at the center of that, it is linked to the dungeon after all.

I ordered the others so we could get everything done in a day or two, we would be getting to developing our dungeon in 2 weeks if possible. The most time consuming activity would be the transport. We will need to have many kinds of things with us, the dungeon can create things from scratch, but it is quicker to have items for it to analyze and then produce and modify.

Me and Nebile will have to take care of searching for suitable locations to establish the dungeon, it is important as it would lead to becoming a city later on. Niloofar would probably have provided me with available spots if I asked her, but I want to look for the best spot we can. This dungeon core is abnormal, I don’t really have anything against Kunibert’s actions.

He has always been like this, keeping secrets to himself. He does things behind our backs, but I think he considers us like his family. He would have accepted to join a better team by now if it wasn’t the case. We all know who is the strongest among us. ‘Him playing hidden guardian is annoying though.’

I take my mind off the distraction and concentrate on examining the map that is now in front of me. “What kind of place do we need?” Asks Nebile, already leaning over the map. I tell her what we would need to make a settlement, the requirements for it to be livable and comfortable. While it does not need to be suitable for a large population yet, the dungeon would modify the surroundings anyway, so we begin to search while exchanging what we think of each one we find.

POV: Will

I don’t like it, they did things to me. I felt pricklings, weird sensations assaulted me from time to time, and I have no way of knowing for how long. I have nothing to tell the time, it could have been a day since I got captured, as much as it could have been a week or two. My sense of time was already fucked up when I woke up as a Crystal sphere, and now it is even worse.

It has been a time since the weird sensations happened, I would say hours, between 2 and 5 hours, I can’t get any more precise I fear. But on the plus side, they deactivated the thing keeping me from getting mana in. If I begin to breathe it in, by thus absorbing more, they immediately activate it again. I tried once, and they took some time before opening it again.

I accumulate mana, slowly but surely. But I don’t have much of anything else to do, I tried meditation, I don’t understand how people could say anything good about it. You are just there, being bored as hell and doing nothing. So instead of doing nothing, I decided to try and move the mana inside me.

I do accumulate it, I can take mana in and out as I want, but when the mana is inside me I don’t really feel it. I have some measure of how much I have, but I don’t have control over it when it is inside me. It is stupid to control just what is around you while not having any control of yourself. So I focus on that for the moment, losing any track of time without noticing.

When I feel myself, I feel my spherical shape, its smoothness, but I also feel something else. It is like spaghettis tangled togethers, except the spaghettis are extremely fine and long, each tracing intricate forms inside of my body. I guess I should refer to my sphere as my body now, it IS my body, now that I think about it.

The spaghettis things are the mana I have, I think. It feels like mana to me at least, each and every line feels different from the others, they are all joining at the center of myself, but the feeling I get of it is strange. It is like each line has a purpose that only it will be able to do.

When I focus on the center, the knot, I get the feeling of it being full, but I am constantly getting mana from outside, and I feel the knot absorbing and converting the mana. But the knot in itself does not change, and I can’t trace where the mana is getting. When I feel the lines, I don’t feel any one of them getting mana from the knot.

To get the proportions of this structure, I would say that the knot is the size of a basketball, while the lines are as thick as a hair. And I am not talking about a thick hair, but a fine one. There is an absurd amount of lines, what I called spaghettis, and now that I focus on them, I can tell they are different. Like the knot, I can feel some kind of fullness, except the lines are not full, the vast majority seems to be empty while others have a smidge of filling up. Nearly nothing, but still something.

I am happy to have found out this part of me, but I still can’t control neither the knot, nor the lines. When I try to move it, it feels like pushing a metal bar grounded by a mountain, it just won't budge.

I still try every line, there could be one that is able to be moved, and none does. I try to make them vibrate, enlarge, shrink, anything I could think of, but nothing works. It is like trying to grab the end of a thread by pinching it between your nails, but not succeeding because it is too short and your fingers are too thick.

I take my time, switching between the lines, which I will call mana-threads I think. They feel like mana to me, and I will call the center as the mana-knot. Simple as I like it. After some time, which could be days by now. I discover something.

If I try to compress my mana-knot, I feel the knot itself beginning to increase its density. But if I do that, I get the feeling that the knot is getting emptier. It is the same kind of feeling as when I first started breathing in the mana. I felt more and more full, but here, I get the feeling of emptying myself, using the mana to compress it.

Fortunately, I have a lot of mana to use. The amount I needed to fill the knot, I think it is what I filled originally, is nothing compared to what I have in me right now. So I try to push my mana inside the knot, and feel the knot slowly filling up. I try to force the mana to get inside with more speed, but I can’t. The knot can’t take mana any quicker. ‘Well, I guess I will need to be patient.’