How far away are we?

Nearly there son.

Excerpt obtained from a travelling pair of dwarves.

Innearth showed off his knowledge of the internet. He was experienced. His brief time of lurking had made him an expert!

At least he felt like he was. He told his friends which sites to stay away from and which ones to make sure to experience at least once.

He also let his newly ascended friends look at his new material – vague interest from Queen and Amy…huge, almost begging, interest from Doc.

After everyone was settled in – it took longer than you would think without any rush – he asked them all what their current plans were.

FED was planning on extending his actual dungeon and was estimated that would take him at least a year. He would not tell anyone what his R4 affinity was – no matter how much his friends pried – but was presumably using it to spice up what he already had.

Abe wanted to make different boozes and alcohol-related explosions – he had already created a material called “Fireblast Whiskey” that Rutile had become addicted to. It was a spicy alcohol with a side effect of explosive burps that shot streams of fire…A “Side Effect” Abe was happy to call a “feature”.

Amy had already figured out her ambrosia could heal adventurers to an insane degree. As long as an adventurer had even the slightest amount in their system, they could be decapitated and healed to safety – something only high leveled adventurers had access to previously.

They could even be healed after the point they had theoretically “died” – ambrosia strengthening the fading soul and shoving it back into its newly healed body like some catch-all miracle drug.

There was actually a very slight side effect of minor extreme addiction – multiple doses of ambrosia over a short period of time would induce a dependency so strong adventurers were willing to kill each other over a single drop…but that was fine. As far as Amy was concerned “Something something Survivability”, “Something something They will be fine…that just shows how much they like it. Hey if they try and kill each other over it I can just heal them with more ambrosia!”.

She was planning on liberally introducing the material about her dungeon and relaxing some of her safety features… based on the idea that as long as they survived and were healed up afterwards "everything was all good. No harm no foul".

Queen had just advanced less than a day before and wanted to explore her new material. She didn’t have any plans for after that point… but based on the trend everyone else was following she would probably spend some time using it afterwards or sprinkling it about her jungle.

Doc had somehow already gotten a plate of cosmic void Innearth had left in the facility and was performing his own series of experiments on the object. He was barely responding but seemed content for now.

Everyone seemed to think the facility was finally done – but were open to the idea of expanding it at some point in the future.

Realizing his friends seemed content to work on themselves for a while, Innearth returned to his last experimentation point. Somewhat refreshed with the social break, he was ready to throw his all into prying every secret he could from cosmic void and his filter system.

Innearth had already realized the last time he focused here that “using Pure H2O didn’t seem to work as a storage device”. Already guessing the answer but wanting to be thorough, he tried a few more “non-magical” storage solutions. Instead of liquid water, he tried a solid block of quartz – one without crystal mana seemed to work…for a few hours. But then, same as before, crystal mana was suddenly present and quickly began the reaction to convert everything to crystal-related mana types.

Trying to make a vacuum was even worse – the mana was sucked through it into the walls and if Innearth made a vacuum surrounded by nullstone the mana seemed to move about frantically before fading without any matter to stick to.

Innearth focused on trying to store the pure mana not wanting to waste it – he finally figured out a solution but not an exciting one. First, he created a box of nullstone to prevent mana radiation to the surroundings. Then he filled it with the stretchy rubbery pure mana+silicon material and called it a day.

Adding pure mana to the pure mana material just increased the density and over a several hour to several day period, Innearth could make a block of “pure core” quality material to use in monsters.

Again, not very impressive – free source of cores not that Innearth was lacking in mana and counting each drop of it…but at least it felt like he wasn’t wasting it.

Now, while the bottom output didn’t seem that useful, the top had steadily turned into a much more noticeable result.

Above, the “squished” liquid was rapidly gaining less actual mana but more…flavour?

No that doesn’t quite explain it. Mana has an alignment and a concentration – its concentration is a value and its alignment an attribute. You can’t change an attribute’s density it’s just a “thing” that exists.

Similarly, while there were plenty of different environmental flavours in a given area/material at any given time…they were basically never pure. They always had an affinity – a goal.

You “can’t” squeeze pure mana out of mana with an attribute. But that’s what I’m doing…so something had to happen?

Yes. Something had happened and was continuing to happen to the mana-filled water. Mana didn’t like that dense attributed liquid was pushed up against a filter and outputting attributed liquid and pure liquid.

“A => A+B” ? No the mana decided a much nicer looking formula was “A => A’ + B” and decided the best way to reach that point, was to mess about with the A until it reached a suitable A’.

That “messing about” turned out to be changing the matter in the water that represented ‘A’ and solidifying the mix of mana types into a liquid that was unrecognizable from the previous pollution runoff.

Its final existence looked like someone had increased the saturation while decreasing the resolution of reality.

The liquid beforehand was a slightly pinkish liquid, like someone had dyed a cup of water slightly… but afterward, it looked like paint. Like a cartoonish transparent pink liquid with an excessively large light sheen and a matte “everything else”.

Innearth focused on this side effect for a while – tentatively turning it into the blood of a turtle monster. The shell held the liquid and created a turtle who nearly instantly began casting several skills – flowers bursting from the ground around it despite Innearth not designing the monster to be a “caster”.

A warm basking light floated out. A wave of petals shone brightly. A light that contained laughter and a breeze that smelled of tulips.

The skills seemed a bit weird and less harmless than they should be considering it was damaging other monsters with flower petals…but as far as a monster goes it's interesting enough?

Let's outsource some testing while making more of these filters.

Innearth gave small cups of the liquid to several dwarves in separate rooms to analyze while he got to work plugging the rest of his “taps”.

Essence of springtime. [Potion]

Potion created through an advanced process. Seemlessly corrupts mana in any form or shape into one that alligns with the aspect of springtime.

Warning, Consuming this potion may have strange effects, Existing skills and abilities may become corrupted upon consumption.

Duration 12 hours.

The system seemed quite proud of itself for finally listening to Innearth and giving a description. It had needed several dwarves telling him what it did and then Innearth "storing it in a bottle and designating it as loot" before it cooperated, but now he had a description at least.

Somehow mana had counted the whole setup and scenario Innearth had created as alchemy. Everything from the previous filter system to the output essence extraction tap cumulated into this material the system labelled as a potion.

I thought dungeons couldn’t make potions? Something about disease or material creation spells overwriting it?

The internet was a better source of information than random packets in the store, so it was a matter of moments before Innearth was able to figure out that yes – dungeons could perform alchemy. It just needed to be done through a convoluted process with a series of steps or an “alchemy machine” and in such a way that didn’t include disease-like materials.

Innearth created a few simple essence staffs – just simple earth mana tubes filled with the liquid. On average they showed a result similar to this example springtime staff with minor changes between essence types.

Staff of Springtime. [Tier 4]

Channel mana through this staff to gain personal springtime mana.

Channel spells through this staff for a chance to convert them to springtime spells.

Springtime spells channelled through this staff will be purified and the resulting quality increased at a variable level.

Durability 100/100

…well that’s interesting.

Innearth began properly investing time into making magic staffs. He usually offloaded all his loot design to his dwarves… but these staffs were made as a personal challenge – to see how well he could make them himself.

His designs were iterated with different shapes having different tradeoffs. The “final schematic” he came up with looked something like: “Inner core of essence potion. Completely smooth and straight cylinder of cosmic void surrounding the liquid. The top of the staff contained a corrupted crystal with flavour similar to the essence in the staff. The bottom of the staff contains a sliced-off sliver of the pure silicone core-like material cut into a disk.

The top was “contained” in cosmic void and a final crystal mana focus was placed visible at the tip. The whole staff was then tempered for a bit in the void until its tooltip had infinite durability.

The embedded corrupted crystal increased the capability of the spells cast through it…but was completely contained because "if given room to grow it would instead parasitically consume the spells and grow itself instead of the spell".

The final crystal on the end had a bit of an increase to spell focus – it helped direct and contain spells…but for the most part it was included entirely for the aesthetic. Innearth liked how they looked, and they matched his crystal theme…FED would be proud of him.

These improved staffs were relatively low effort and counted as tier 10-12 (some of the highest quality items Innearth had made on his own) proving as long as you had high-quality materials, less effort was needed to make something good.

The system tooltips for them looked something like:

The Staff of Springtime. [Tier 11]

Channel mana through this staff to gain personal springtime mana. This mana can be stored for up to 24 hours before breaking apart.

Channel spells through this staff to convert them to springtime spells.

Springtime spells channeled or cast through this staff will be purified and their power increased by a minimum of 360% and max of [unknown].

Increases accuracy and longevity of spells.

Durability N/A

Innearth made several elite runic soldiers in the facility who both used the staffs – with skills specifically engineered to work well with them – and dropped the staffs by transmuting them to loot with a % drop rate upon death.

Combining certain skill organs with certain staffs created incredibly strong synergies. For example, most manipulation skills cast through a “The Staff of Armour” let a soldier control an adventurer's defenses – controlling them like a puppet. This seemed to ignore nearly all protections on even the armour of transcendent adventurers in the facility and made fighting them less a brute force solution and more a tactical one.

Most “Overload” type spells cast through a “The Staff of Technology” let a soldierr break the more SciFi related weapons some adventurers used – or at least disable them for a time.

Similarly, most general damaging or “attack” skills and spells cast through either “The Staff of Carnage” or “The Staff of Decapitation and Dismemberment” turned into straight upgrades. They usually kept their shape and form but instantly became more dangerous in subtle ways.

“The Staff of Dreams and Nightmares” on the other hand turned lethal spells into non-lethal ones... but seemed to deal more lasting mental damage as a trade off.

A few “combined” Staffs were made with multiple isolated rods containing different essences – 2,3,4,5 different “Tubes” glued together essentially – but Innearth found himself preferring the look and effect of the single aspect staffs better.

Partway through this staff creation session, Innearth became absolutely sick of manually tempering the cosmic void materials each time and put in the effort to automate it.

A series of spinning cosmic void turbines slowly pulled and then pushed the atmosphere through his external bubble. The constant slow push of atmosphere was enough to temper one side and a spinning system made sure anything he put in to temper, got blasted on all sides.

A very brief effort was made to see exactly how high of a level of staff could be made – a middle layer of nullstone carefully carved out and a massive number of runes from his crystal dwarves pushed one staff to Tier 17 (One of the absolute highest quality items Innearth and his dwarves had made to date)

…but somewhere along the line Innearth had gotten distracted.

They were good distractions! Ones that led me to research dungeon potions and find out why they were rare for dungeons – but still possible. I raised the difficulty level of my section of the facility slightly and better used some of the pollution…

Either way, he had gotten horribly off track from his Cosmic Void experiments.

So…for cosmic void what have I discovered? The material – at least the one material I can make easily – creates something I’m going to assume is a pocket dimension completely plugged up with crystalline matter. I can’t hollow it out without breaking that solid world somehow and if too much of it is broken the dimension kind of “breaks off from reality” and the material hosting it dissapears?

Because of the barrier between dimensions, cosmic void materials resist different forces and have an insane inertia…I can push void atmosphere into the pocket dimension and strengthen that barrier…That barrier makes it impervious to physical and most magical damage…but pure mana and soul spells can still get through?

Because of that pure mana point, I can use it to transmute mana pollution – for some reason – and that makes the essence potions…

Is there anything else? I can use it to store pure mana but can’t tell if that’s useful for anything.

Innearth’s testing had slowed down…just when he thought he was finished however Doc came to him excitedly.

ZeMadDoctor: Quick! Make me more cosmic void materials I need it for testing. I’m so jealous.

Innearth: Oh? How did you run out? And stop stealing my scraps! Want to compare notes?

ZeMadDoctor: Of course if it means I can study it some more.

Innearth relayed what he figured out which seemed to have made Doc even more excited.

ZeMadDoctor: ! The closed-off dimension seems to match up with my testing. Fascinating what you figured out with pushing environmental mana through it…Anyways. SO! Most interesting part of my research is that it seems to be an alternative dimension I can portal to. Getting that to work is a tough series of loops let me tell you.

ZeMadDoctor: Basically I have to make one side of the portal singularity ethereal to push it into the material… but the material doesn’t let me push foreign mana into it even if it's already in a spell. Pure mana can move through it but that’s not enough to function as a side of a portal no matter how I try to set it up. What I figured out was that weakening the material weakens the veil and lets me shove the side of one of my portals into it…but when I weaken the material it ends up breaking and disappearing. If I time it just right. I can attach the portal to the bubble before it disappears and then I have a portal to the cosmic void but I don’t like that it passes through the “void” void to reach it and…

ZeMadDoctor: From what I can tell with my experience working with portals it's like…well I can tell the bubble is located right beside reality right? And when it breaks it is cut away from reality? I’m slightly hazy on that part.

ZeMadDoctor: I’m guessing my portal pulls it towards the void when it breaks away but maybe it just does that anyways? If I could use cosmic void mana I might be able to mix it with space mana and make a cosmic portal mana or something to link it safely… but that might not work how I think it does and cosmic void is a mixture anyways not a mana type you can just mix with stuff and…

Innearth: nice findings! How useful is a portal to a cosmic void bubble anyways? Like what could you do with it? What could you make?

ZeMadDoctor: …I don’t know? I did it because I could. And I want to continue to do it to see if I can do it better.

Innearth: Well…fair. I can appreciate some experimentation for experimentations sake. Personally, I try to experiment towards figuring out what I can do with stuff...but knowledge is a worthy goal.

Innearth: I’ll give you some more materials to play with so long as you keep me informed of anything interesting you find out.

ZeMadDoctor: Excellent! Before I forget. Can you imbed anything inside of it? Like build cosmic void around anything? I saw one of your materials had a hole inside of it that the cosmic dimension you made didn’t like – but what about solids? Liquids? Either of those work? I’ll give you a portal endpoint. Try and embed that into it so I don’t have to break the thing to get one inside.

Innearth: …that’s an idea. I’ll test that out thanks!

Innearth made Doc a couple of balls and blocks and plates of various sizes…then moved on to testing his hypothesis.

Starting off simple, Innearth created a block of quartz, then completely covered it in cosmic void.

Pushing through curious, he was pleasantly surprised to find out Doc’s guess had been right – the quartz was locked into the slightly fractalized solid world safely and smoothly.

Testing out a cup of water next, he found the line between what was integrated and what wasn’t… was completely based on how “solid” it was.

That was it.

If he froze the water it would integrate, if he left it as a liquid it wouldn’t. If he tried to cheat by half covering ice and trying to melt one side it broke the whole dimension. If he tried to break it this way after tempering it in the void, the whole thing blew up – wrecking space in the area temporarily with large dangerous-looking cracks in the air that slowly healed.

Testing magical materials next, Innearth found they worked well – but any mana contained within would be stuck to the material they came in on.

That’s fine.

Making sure to remember to surround a portal key for Doc, Innearth returned to his own experiments.

Innearth began making dungeon circuits and surrounding them in cosmic void to see how they would function.

An insanely complicated dream catcher of miniature cores and lines completely embedded in a cube of cosmic void later and Innearth was expanding into and analyzing it from the inside.

Everything seemed to be working properly? The skill that was embedded was a simple self-levitation and activating it levitated the cube surrounding it perfectly…

Innearth took a long moment to realize he had activated a skill himself. He had pushed mana through the circuit without thinking it through first… and activated a skill that needed to be in a living creature to function. Something that had not worked up till now.

…him claiming the cube had made it part of his body and he was technically a living creature.

???????

Innearth was briefly stunned by the implication, first excited then confused.

This was new information! …But he didn’t quite know how to use it.

As far as making traps or similar that he had control over…that seemed like too much work for too little gain. Innearth was quite fond of making plant-like traps instead of claimed ones so he didn’t have to expend as much attention to activate them…but thinking about traps was thinking in a limited way.

This was a way to give him skills! What couldn’t he do that he wanted to do?

I want to draw runes! Do I have any circuits that give the ability to use other spell systems?

Innearth looked through his circuit store and tried to activate his circuit mastery to see if it would help…but found the only real way to make a spell system like runes or enchanting was to give it to a dungeon monster shaped like a creature that could use those spell systems...or creating a completely new creature designed around using those spell systems.

Even making a dwarf without giving life to it and expanding into it didn’t count as a loophole...

Giving up on that "first thought", Innearth finally settled on what he wanted. A way to see outside of his dungeon.

He crafted a vision-based skill and based it on his dungeon sight but pushed outwards…Innearth built it into an archway for his dungeon. Tempered cosmic void and some decorations to divert attention, Innearth trial and errored his way through giving himself the ability to see.

His prototypes kept failing, but his “Master circuit builder” senses saw each setback as a way to learn. Finally, after 5 failed arches he made one that worked just barely how he wanted it to. It wasn’t quite as far of a distance as he had hoped, so a few more iterations on the design were required.

Version 12 was perfect. It sent out an incredibly faint echolocation-like pulse of very soft almost pure mana…then reconstructed a scene of what it saw based on that.

Innearth placed versions of this doorway into each of his dungeon entrances then placed the failed prototypes – he had decorated them after all – into each of his zone changes.

Finally, Innearth was able to see the valley above him for the first time. He was able to see what he considered “his city”.

The buildings had matured over the past few years. There were strips of towering buildings easily a couple dozen stories tall – each with so many defences his sight only saw the outside of them.

There were bright strips of commerce with sapients of all shapes and sizes rushing about either by foot or on hovering discs. Signs promoting business and magical items of all shapes and sizes – quite a bit of Innearth’s loot was being sold in the market place but there were also young crafters of all sorts peddling their wares. These smaller buildings and street booths all had vast arrays of items all made with the same processes but doing vastly different things.

A street over there were more expensive shops. These were staffed by multiple people and contained more focused and themed items – a store of clothing, a store for kitchen appliances, a store of swords, a café for food and drink. Deeper into the town brazenly set up in the back alleyways were more nefarious shops. Human skulls with runes carved all over them. Dried elf ears in bottles. Suspicious potion shops staffed by wrinkly old women and hooded figures offering “deals” and “contracts”.

Innearth saw wealth and poverty, saw homes and families. He noticed a cheerful air seemed to surround everyone – even those who had nothing seemed determined to “make it”. There was hope and…it was nice. Innearth liked what he saw.

Innearth spent a few days just watching the city above him before returning to focus on himself once more.

I think I’m going to finally expand my dungeon. I have plenty of dug room to start. First things first. I need a room after the hard mode crystal caverns!