Preparing for the first graft

POV: Kunibert

It has taken us 16 days to get to our destination. We moved Eastward through a part of the Viridis Forest, it is a place that has been scouted long ago, about 150 years ago to be more precise. It has a lake of freshwater, it comes from a water source 400 meters deeper into the woods.

We chose this place because it is far from any other human settlement, that way, even if the dungeon frees itself and begins creating a wasteland, it won't impact the life of others too much. But we also chose this spot for the number of animals in the region.

On the forest’s outskirts, there are boars, deers and wild cats. But if you go towards its center, you will begin to find bigger wildlife, as well as all the nasty little things that kept the kingdom from expanding this way. We saw some traces of them, but it seems the animals are smarter than they were credited for. They did not attack us after all, because if they did, we would have killed any that came near enough. Some should have venom, others are venomous, and even some plants have some danger to them.

As a side note, we came here quickly, Samantha casted spells to make the cart lighter and more resilient. That way, Marianne and Esteban could pull it without great effort, but more importantly, without breaking its wheels.

Thanks to that, we made a 29 days journey in 16 days only. Quite the time saver, but it did not make the waiting time for establishing our dungeon any easier. We know it is not the normal kind of dungeon, but our information on how much different it is compared to any other… We don’t know much about it.

During the transport, when we were far enough from Narmis, I deactivated the runes preventing mana from being absorbed by the dungeon. It began to take mana in immediately, but at the normal rate, I want it to get mana at its quickest capabilities. So I began channeling mana inside of it, not much, just the necessary amount for it to equal its best rate.

It channeled mana for 5 seconds before stopping, but the core didn’t understand what I want it to do. “Sam, give me the token please.” I asked her, we were all seated in the cart, except for Esteban who was pulling the cart at the moment. It was Marianne’s turn to rest.

“Can’t you wait for us to get there?” She said while still taking the token out and passing it to me. “It would be time lost, dungeons need mana to work, and the more it gets, the less time it will take for us to have the dungeon make riches.”

Taking the token, I linked my mana to it and sent my thoughts. It is a remarkable thing, this token. Instead of sending thoughts through, it sends the ideas, meanings and emotions through to get the other party to understand what is desired of them. But it takes time for a dungeon to even understand what some of them mean.

Try to make a dungeon understand what eating means, a dungeon does not eat, so it can’t understand what eating is without giving it an example. But it is another matter again, because you then need to make it understand that eating is what you are giving an example of, and it needs to understand what an example is.

Knowing I would need to repeat doing this a lot of time before the core understood what I want it to do, I send my thoughts of it absorbing mana as quickly as it can while channeling mana to it. And to my surprise, it only took 2 tries before it began taking mana in with more speed. It began slowly, as if to test if that is what I asked it to do. I sent a confirmation thought with more mana, the core took but a second to get to its best absorption speed.

And to my surprise, and soon those of Pàll, Samantha and Sarsaw, the core absorbed mana about 2 times quicker than we felt it do before. It is weird that it got to this level without notice, it could have been able to get mana at this speed before, but then why did it not do it until now? Was it hiding its capacity? That would be fearsome, a dungeon with sentience, so young, would be extremely dangerous.

So far, the runes preventing it from controlling mana are working without any sign of overthrowing attempt. And in case it does destroy them, we have the token, it will let us disrupt its mana control enough for us to get it back under control.

With the core absorbing mana, Samantha, Sarsaw, Pàll and I began channeling our extra mana inside of it, it would make it get mana at a speed it would otherwise take years for it to get to. And by extra mana, I mean the mana we regenerate. We keep a small percentage of our mana empty by sending it inside the core. This way we are still nearly full in case we need to fight, and we can get the core that much more mana.

Samantha did not send much, nearly nothing in fact, but she needs her mana to keep her spells active on the cart. As for Nebile, Esteban and Marianne, they don’t have the control it would take for them to get a significant amount of mana inside the core. They are body enhancing mana users, meaning they are versed in using mana to enhance their body’s capabilities.

That means that they never really have had to learn how to control their mana to get out of them. They can do so, but the amount of it and the control they would have over it would be laughable. So they don’t send their mana to the core, they just keep it. Esteban and Marianne are using it to pull the cart easier, so it is not wasted anyway. As for Nebile, she uses it to make her senses sharper, this way she can detect if any danger is approaching us, or if we are approaching the danger.

Back to our actual situation now, I am helping in the construction of the shack we will reside in for the moment. The core is back in Samantha’s bag, the amount of mana it gets by itself increased progressively during our journey. Compared to what it was able to harvest on its own, it now gets mana about 40 times what it was capable of when we subjugated it.

It is still rather slow, but for a dungeon that did not even achieve its first graft? It is ridiculous, and it keeps us, or at least me, wanting to get it to make its first graft. That is why I asked Nebile to search for strong wildlife in the surroundings and to get one here. That way, if we kill it and get its mana absorbed by the core, it should jumpstart its graft.

The way it works is the same as us, dungeon dwellers. A dungeon core gets stronger by the same means we get stronger. When something dies, its mana can’t stay inside of its body and slowly leaks out of it. But it is not the only thing that leaks out, its essence is also getting leaked.

Essence is similar to mana, it can be used to make spells, but it has another use, one that is done naturally upon its absorption. It reinforces anyone that gets essence in his or her body. The way it works is simple, at first the essence will reinforce all of the body. Then it will just accumulate, you could let it reinforce you little by little, but if you get to the point where it accumulates, it won’t reinforce you if you don’t make it do so.

Moreover, while making the essence reinforce your capabilities, you get to decide what it does. You need a great amount of essence for a significant change to happen, otherwise it is unnoticeable.

I need to say that you can’t enhance everything either with the essence. You will not be able to enhance your intelligence for example, but you can enhance your capacity to analyze and interpret information, meaning that you will think quicker. You can also enhance your memory if you want, we are taught that we can get ourselves to never forget anything that way. But it is not that useful for fights, so it is not done as you could make yourself stronger to get more essence instead of using it to remember your mistakes.

What is commonly upgraded to wastfull amounts is our life expectancy. For example, the current Headmaster of the DD as a whole is nearly 800 years old. He lives in the empire, so I never got to see him, but from what is said about him, he looks about 50 years old. It is inspiring, but he is spectacularly strong, even at his beginnings, so we can’t take him as the everage. He is the topmost of the lot.

I read the books Samantha took with us, the ones about how to manage a dungeon. First we need to find a suitable place for it to establish, that is already done. Now we need to get essence to the core for it to do its first graft, that will enable it to corrupt everything that nears it. To some extent at least.

Nebile is searching for beasts to kill for the core, it should not be long before she gets back. If she can catch a predator, it should be enough to fill the core’s essence. When it is filled, it does its first graft, and while it will make the core stronger, it will also make it hard for it to relocate its position.

It is not understood why, but when a dungeon achieves a graft, it roots itself to the spot it is. It then corrupts its surroundings to make it theirs, that way they can regain some mobility. But once it has grafted, if it is forcefully extracted from its territory, something that the core won’t be able to do on its own, it will hurt the core.

It happened multiple times in history, some cores shattered entirely, destroying it and making their dungeon useless. Some resisted, but were filled with cracks. The cores take a large amount of time to regenerate, it takes decades for a core to heal from an extraction.

That is about the drawback, but it has a way more significant positive property. The corrupted region around a core can’t be cut off once it has been corrupted, there are methods to keep a dungeon out of zones we don’t want it in, but once somewhere is corrupted, the only way to get it back is to destroy the dungeon. That or to extract it from its territory.

Another property is that it can absorb mana through its territory, that is one of the best parts, the more territory the core has, said differently, the vaster the dungeon, the more mana the core gets.

Right now it is not much by a dungeon’s standard, but it is only the size of an apple. The size of the core itself, so what will it be when it gets to the size of a village? Of a city? And then to the size of a country?

It is a wonderful prospect, but it will take time for the core to get to those sizes. And it does not expand only on the surface, dungeons are known to like verticality. Some dungeons go so deep in the ground that lava flows freely in them, the deeper dungeons even use enchanted materials to keep its deepest layers from becoming liquid.

I am woken from my antics by Nebile, she is back with what looks like a 200 kg wildcat with an orange fur, striped with black and white stripes. That is some big predator there, it should be plentiful for our core’s graft.

The thing is still breathing, meaning it has not begun leaking its essence or mana yet. Samantha gives me the core, I am the one that will place the core inside the hole we dug for it. Samantha could do it with her spells, but when the core will graft it will absorb any and every mana that is around it.

As I am an arcane mage, I have control over raw mana, making me the only one in the team capable of keeping the core from trying anything nasty while it grafts itself. Nebile throws the big cat inside the hole, I place the core on the now dead cat. I keep it in place with my mana control, and it only takes seconds for the core to greedily absorb the tigers mana and essence.

It takes a few minutes, but the graft begins. The core begins to emit light, the surrounding space around the core distorts and gets thicker, like compacted around it. Making little spiral forms float every which way around it. And then the mana gets sucked like air in a vacuum, like void magic wanting to destroy anything it comes in contact with.

And as it is happening, I smile. We are now dungeon keepers.