Expansion

Everybody, young like old, has heard about dungeons. They affect too many things around them to not be known, and their use to the betterment of mankind is paramount to our survival against other races and the wildlands.

It is widely known that dungeons are formed by their core, a seemingly living crystal that can take diverse forms and colors depending on its affinities. What is less known however is how they actually form, or said in other words, how they are birthed in the world.

By theories or tests, many ways of trying to understand how dungeons come to be have been made. While some were useful, some only resulted in the loss of a dungeon. The only parts we can tell is a fact, is that dungeon cores have to do with not only chaos mana, but also the chaos realm. But we won’t talk about this in this book.

Dungeons are crystal beings that feed on mana, in their infant stages they are not much of a mana manipulator. Many DD members, even new recruits, are better at manipulating mana compared to young dungeon cores.

But their real potential is revealed with time, dungeon dores do not age, as long as it is not destroyed, a dungeon core will not die. And the longer a dungeon lives, the stronger it will become. The more mana it absorbs, the more mana it will be able to absorb. Dungeon cores are ridiculous in their way of progress, the quantity of mana they thirst for is infinite, and will try to steal the mana of anything that comes in their range.

However, even if a dungeon is so old it should be almighty in his handling of mana, it can be resisted. Mana is a medium of the intellect, the stronger someone’s mind is, the more control it has over mana. It is the exact same principle used in using spells, the will is needed to shape and use the mana.

To give an example of how much mana a dungeons manipulate, and how their capacity progress, here is a record of the calculated amount of mana the dungeon of Reyan manipulated in each phases of its life before it was destroyed:

-tenderfoot: 5 units per day (measured at the beginning)

-blooming: between 35 and 42 units per day (measured at the beginning)

-young: between 700 and 900 units per day (measured at the beginning)

-mature: between 46 000 and 60 000 units per day (measured at the beginning)

-mature (measure dating of 3 years before its destruction): between 230 000 and 290 000 units per day.

For those who don’t know or remember how a dungeon's status is classified, here are the forms. Size/Development:

-tenderfoot: a newborn dungeon core, not yet having achieved its first graft.

-blooming: A formed and functional dungeon, it has formed its first floor.

-young: A dungeon with 5 or more floors.

-mature: It has achieved at least 3 grafts and has made more that 20 floors. It is the most common type of dungeon encountered.

-old: A dungeon that has built more than 100 floors, the number of grafts it has achieved must be above 10. They are the dungeons that only experienced DD can dive, the level of danger encountered in them is often calamitous.

A graft, in simple words, is the point where a dungeon has accumulated enough essense to pass to its grater phase. The process is the same as we experience when absorbing enough monster essence and filling up to gain what younguns now call levels. Know that the correct words for it are: ascending one step to the sky.

To give an explanation, each time you absorb the mana from a recent death, be it from a monster or a human, you will take its essence. Not all it had, only about 80%. This essence is the mana that fuels our life. When you fill yourself with it, your mind and body improves, following your will.

The more you fill your essence capacity, the stronger you become, the closer you get to being a deity. Thus our ancestors named this process as ascending a step to the sky, referring to the sky as where the divinities live.

The reason why the young call it gaining a level, is because of the growing achievements of architecture. Now buildings have multiple levels of floor, and the higher it reaches, the higher the floor. I don’t know from whom it comes, but please, don’t use this rash word to describe this near holy happenstance.

-extract of “What are dungeons” written by Ren Liao.

POV: Will

This thing is addictive as fuck, since the moment the mana blend made contact with me, I feel the need for more of it. And its effect, how to forget it. This feeling of improvement, of getting better. And now, I can feel things around me as if it was my body.

It is not by much, about a centimeter, but it is all around me. I can feel the now cold body of the tiger, just a part of it, but enough to remind me of what it was like to have a living body. It sends shivers in my spine, I don’t have one anymore, and yet I feel it.

But the dread of losing my human body quickly leaves me to be replaced by the excitement of being able to feel my more than one sense. I can feel the heat and cold, the still air smelling of blood, the dried blood sticking to me and the dirt, the weird taste of dirt, fur, grass and blood. I think I can hear some muffled sounds, but I am not sure about it.

I lessen my focus on my recovered senses and feel at the area around me I can now feel. It is a whole centimeter, I gained a centimeter of radius in my feeling range. Wait, I don’t like this name. Spotting, no. Detection? No. Sensor range? No, but I think sensory range would do. Yeah, I'll call it my sensory range.

So, my sensory range is now 1 centimeter from me. Yeah, it is less epic when i say it like that, anyways, it happened just by using mana! A big quantity of it, sure, but just with mana! That means that if I increase the quantity of mana I gather each second, I increase the total mana I can use to increase my sensory range, which in turn increases the quantity of mana I get every second.

It is a loop process, 1 for more 2, and more 2 for more 1. Isn’t it how phone games work? Am I in a phone game then? Naah, too many details for that, humanity can’t even develop a fluid way of teaching the young, so how could we make something with so many details?

I decide to try getting more sensory range, so I begin to fill the gem once more. It takes some time, but when I fill it again, I fuse the mana again and feel my sensory range expand. I did not gain a whole centimeter again, a little less than that actually. I can’t confirm how it works yet, but I think I gain a certain amount of volume, but it's only a theory for now.

I try to use a smaller amount of mana to make the expansion happen, I keep the same mana types ratio and try to fuse with it. And to my surprise, it works! I don’t gain as much as when I use more mana, it seems proportional at least, but I do get more range from this.

At this moment, I have an idea. I have two ways to increase how much mana I can gather now. The first is by increasing my mana knot’s density, I feel like there are diminishing returns with it however, but in the end, it does increase the mana I get. The second way is with the expansion of my sensory range, I don’t know if I will have diminishing returns here too, but for now it is the better option.

I should invest in both, but not the same quantity, I begin with a 50/50 split. For my knot I just have to slowly channel and condense the mana inside. When I first did it, it was hard, but now it feels like walking, it is simple enough to do it without effort and nearly subconsciously.

As for the mana mixing for my sensory range, I must channel 3 different mana types at the same time, then mix and compress them together. I do it at the same time as the knot condescing, so I lose focus a few times. When I try to integrate the wrong ratio of mana into me, the mana just separates and enters me, wasting the time I used to merge them.

Before trying to modify the amount I give to each of them, I think I should be able to at least reach some proficiency in handling the two processes at the same time. So I focus on doing just that. I focus on having a better grasp on the mana flow, how I regulate it.

After probably hours, I am able to maintain a completely linear flow of mana. The three mana types flow in a seemingly permanent picture, like when water has a flow so regular you can’t see it move.

The mana flow having been taken care of, I now focus on the way I mix the mana. The smooth flow has made it easier, the entry points being exactly the same all the time. I try shifting their positions relative to each other, but I have little results with this method. Instead I try to modify how I mix them.

I feel the resistance the mana seems to have when I try to mix it with another, and I am ashamed to have taken at least 3 whole hours before realizing that the resistance is greater than when I try to merge only 2 types together.

To test it, I try to first merge only two of the three, and then merge the third with the mixture of mana I obtained. I am happy to feel the process being so much easier, I try to swap which mana types mix first and then second, and settle on absorption and corruption, and then my normal mana.

Absorption and corruption seem to interact positively together, they feel complementary to me. And when I add in my normal mana, the corruption side accepts it without effort, while the absorption one just follows the corruption. It makes the merging of the mana types as easy as just merging 2, instead of 3.

I now have a constant import of mana used to increase the mana I gather. From the light I can see outside, or rather the lake of it, I can tell it is night. I must have taken a lot of time on this little project of mine. I don’t remember hearing any of the voices the kidnappers use to talk to me. I hope I did not just ignore them, it could have bitter consequences.

I feel around me, and am pleasantly surprised by the amount of range I now have. My mana control goes far beyond what it had before, I can feel more than 6 meters more everywhere around me. Wait, my sensory range… Oh, I gained nearly a meter! I should have gained roughly 80 centimeters, give or take some.

I try to measure a full meter of dirt on the surface, outside of the hole I am in. Once I am more or less certain I have a good approximation of it, I infuse a string of dirt with mana the length of the meter I tried to figure out. After that I infuse the same length of air, right above it, with my mana, displace and place it at the end of the length of dirt. Making it two meters, and then I feel like an idiot, so I retake all the mana I had infused in the dirt.

This time I keep my reference meter untouched while I make a rudimentary measure stick with infused dirt. Once I reach the end of my reach with my mana control, I am at roughly 29.3 meters away from me.

Wow! Nearly 30 meters then. How could I do so much in less than a day? Am I that talented in this mana manipulation thing? Damn, I finally found my talent after all this time. Well, I could not know about it, there was no mana before.

I suddenly feel movement in my range, someone was sitting 5 meters from my hole, probably guarding me, or his team from me? It is the assassin woman, the one I tried getting the mana of when we first met. She could have taken offense or something, I don’t know or care.

My attention follows what she does, resuming the mana mixing that was failing because of a lack of focus. I feel her, using my mana control, she stands up and goes towards a tree. It is thankfully in my range. There, she takes one of her knives and cuts a mark inside the tree’s bark, I feel it directly as it was one of the trees I planted my mana in.

It seems to somewhat hurt the tree, reactions go off inside of it, I can feel it releasing denser sap where the cut was done, but my attention slips from the tree’s chemical response to its bark being damaged. I feel at the 4 other marks on the left of the new one.

Those are not the days that have passed since I’m here, right? But I don’t remember any of the tree’s bark being damaged, not there at least. Would that mean I took 5 whole days to do all that mana control thing?

I feel my confusion at the situation, it is soon joined by embarrassment as I confirm the absence of marks there before. And I can see the light on the parts I can see begin to light up, unmistakingly meaning the sun is rising.

You know what? Fuck it all, I don’t care if I don’t have a talent in mana then, at least I appreciate using it, manipulating it, I like all the discovery side there is to it. I feel like it is a new hobby I have taken and am using all my time to appreciate.

The woman sits back on the chair, yeah, she has a chair and it is next to me. I failed to recognise it before, as I failed to feel anything in my range before. I should look and see if there are new things around me, I would like to avoid behaving like a ridiculous jerk again.

First things first, they got rid of the tiger’s corpse, it is not on me anymore. I honestly should have felt that before. Way to disappoint myself. Next, they placed a fence all around me for whatever reason, it is a rather simple fence, sticks planted in the ground and held together with supple branches. It could also be vines or ivy, I don’t know much about those kinds of plants.

I can feel tree stumps gathered in a pile, they cut down the trees and if what I feel is right, they tore them out of the ground. How much fucking strength would they need to do such things? There are the prints of foot digging in the ground right next to each hole, proving that the stumps were freaking ripped out by hand!

There is not much grass around me anymore, I think they flattened the ground around me. The dirt feels homogenous to me, are they going to build something on me? Will they encase me in the hole I am in?

I should probably stop thinking along those lines, it is evident they want to use me for something. I still have to learn for what, but in the meantime, if I can exploit them I won’t say no. I could try to make them give mana again, that way I could increase my mana gain rate.

Wait, I haven't tried using my new mana types to get a body, could I steal their mana by force now? If I try and fail, I would probably be in trouble. Well… I would probably be in trouble too if I succeeded.

I’ll try anyway, I want to know what will happen with my corruption mana. I begin to accumulate mana, using only two thirds of what I gather to get mana so start the take over of a human. Will she still have her freedom? Or will I have total control of her body? I could also have only minimal control, or end up destroying her mind, making her some kind of zombie.

I wait for some time, around half an hour, before I make my attempt. I did not think about it much, I was captivated by the idea of having a zombie army following my orders of chasing and eating any and everyone’s brain.