My cavity is effectively sealed, the pinhole is too small to matter in the scheme of things. If you’re like me, (actually, you are me) you are wondering how the plants are able to survive if there’s no new water or fresh air being added to the system. You see, many space dwellers owned small terrariums; they were common curios. The plants living in a perfectly sealed terrarium never needed to be watered and fresh air didn’t need to be provided. All of the required water was sealed inside from the beginning, as plants uptake water, they also release it through respiration. Gasses are recycled via the metabolisms of the organisms, be they microbes, mesofauna, plants, fungi, etc. I owned one such terrarium, it had ferns, mosses, etc. along with many tiny soil animals such as mites and springtails perfectly sealed from the outside world in a jar. It lasted for years, with the cycle of life continuously repeating. What I’ve got going on here in my dungeon follows the same principle, just scaled up. Furthermore, unlike a terrarium, it is, amazingly, independent of an external source of light.

Speaking of which, how is it that the moths, flies, etc. are able to see in this darkness?

Perhaps mana behaves similarly to light, if so, would it be too much of a stretch to theorize that the eyes of fauna in this world have evolved to detect ambient mana? Even I can see in the darkness! I think the idea has merit, clearly biology can interact with magic, just look at the fire flowers or arcanasynthesis! I’ll need to come up with some experiments later to verify this idea.

Though the water cycle in my dungeon is self-contained, there’s only so much water to go around. Eventually the biomass will hit a limit due to a water shortage. Because my mana regeneration rate seems to be proportional to the amount of life in my domain (and perhaps biodiversity, more testing is needed) I think increasing biomass should be a priority. Also, If I’m being honest, I’m having a blast cultivating this garden, so of course I want to see it expand!

Water and space are currently my two biggest bottlenecks. I can’t do much about space right now because I would have to deposit excavated stone on the surface and doing so would expose me to dangerous creatures who want to see the world burn. Water’s a bit simpler. Working through my pinhole, I can dig some shallow channels in the ground on the surface to direct rainwater into my dungeon. As long as I don’t make a large opening, I should be safe from outside threats.

Now that I think about it, if I was to excavate by cutting the stone into tiny pieces and then telekinetically move the small pebbles through a similarly small hole, I wouldn’t be exposed. Unfortunately, I see two problems with this idea. For starters, it would take an ungodly long time to manually lift pebbles up single file through a narrow hole when I could be doing other, more interesting things. Second, it would take tons of mana to levitate so many individual pebbles. No, I think I’m going to put this off until I can’t avoid it, procrastination at its best.

I proceed with creating some narrow rainwater channels in the ash radiating outwards from my pinhole. There are 6 channels, each one is 3 m long and about 5 cm wide. They gradually slope downwards to the pinhole, each being about 15 cm deep with sloped walls. When the rains come, there will surely be lots of ash washed into my dungeon but there’s not much I can do about that. I’ll just have to deal with it.

I’m not too worried about my dungeon sticking out too much topside because I doubt any people are out and about in that hellscape.

Shifting gears, I take another look around my microbiome. The leafcutter ants have formed an enormous mound of earth with orderly lines of innumerable ants carrying thousands of cut leaves into the depths of their nest. Somewhere in this mound is a queen (or perhaps multiple) because their numbers have greatly increased since I last checked on them. I spend a couple hours regenerating mana and just watching these industrious insects. Leafcutter ants are a species from Earth that use their powerful mandibles to cut fresh leaves from plants, be it trees, grass, etc. They then carry the leaves into their nests where other worker ants begin the process of pulping the leaves and spreading the mixture onto a symbiotic fungus that the ants cultivate in soccer ball sized chambers. The ants tend the fungus by propagating it, feeding it plant matter, and protecting it from pathogens. In turn, the fungus produces fruiting buds that the ants eat. It is agriculture at its finest.

A dungeon core should have control over its denizens, I think it’s high time I resume my experiments.

I begin by wrapping an ant in my sense, I will it to halt. And it works! This will be so useful in the future, I’m glad that I didn’t get gypped with this dungeon ability like I did with absorbing and creating matter.

I spend a moment making the hapless ant do a little dance and then command it to pick up a piece of grass, to great success. At this point I want to try commanding multiple ants in synchrony. I wrap my sense over a wide area and will ants in the space to get into formation. More specifically, I visualize 100 ants in a square formation, 10 ants to a side. It was a flawless success.

Frankly, I’m amazed at how effortless that was. In fact, I didn’t even detect any mana being consumed!

A quick attempt to command a pink and fluffy Elephant Hawk-Moth is met with a similar success.

I have some questions about this ability that I’d like answered. First, am I able to do this with any animal in my domain, or just those that have been “added to memory?” Can I even control animals that came in from the outside or do they have to be born in my dungeon? Does it come with time? I can’t answer these questions until I reopen my dungeon to the outside world, which I don’t see happening any time soon.

If I’m to make the most of my “minions,” I need to be able to set programs and/or parameters for them to follow while I’m not focusing on them.

I command a few ants to walk in an endless loop and then shift my focus away. After waiting a few minutes and refocusing on the ants, I’m pleased to report that they’ve continued to march their circular route. At this point I can’t help but wonder how the ants interpret my intentions. I doubt they are “obeying” my commands because they shouldn’t have the mental capacity to do so. No, I theorize that my subconscious is directly guiding the ants after I’ve made a command. That is to say, if I assign a program to an ant, what’s actually happening is my subconscious is enforcing that program in the background. With a human mind, I shouldn’t be able to manage something like that with large numbers of ants involved, yet clearly, I can. I get the feeling that this new cognitive ability is somehow related to my new-found exceptional memory and existence as an inorganic dungeon core.

That’s a scary thought, am I really “me” anymore? My mind is obviously structured differently from a human, yet I feel… Normal?

I feel like myself, but would I even be able to tell if my personality had changed after my reincarnation without an outside observer to inform me?

Scary stuff…

Why think about disturbing things when I can mess with ants?

To test the limits of my ability, I will all of the able-bodied leafcutters to gather on the outside of their mound and form a square. It takes about 5 minutes for them to all gather but they managed it in the end. You know, it’s really hard to tell how many ants are in a colony because only a tiny fraction is on the outside at any given time. That said, I never expected there to be so many of them! How many are there, you ask? Well obviously, I can’t tell, what am I, omnipotent? What I can say is that they are currently occupying a dense patch of ground of about 1 square meter, partially piled on top of each other. The combined weight of their bodies looks to be about 10 pounds. There are a lot of ants.

The fact that my small dungeon can sustain so many baffles me, but then again, it is absolutely packed with vegetation.

I release the ants from my compulsion so that they may resume whatever it is they were doing and shift my view into the nest. Inside I can see the expected fungus chambers crawling with workers as well as other rooms. Neat, I always wanted an ant farm.

Next on my ability discovering agenda: Creature Evolution!

I’ll leave the ants alone for now and find some new victims. I’ve set my sights on a fungus gnat chilling on the ground near the edge of my cavity. On Earth these flies would lay their eggs in damp soil. The eggs would hatch into tiny maggots that would burrow around looking for fungal mycelium to devour. When the maggots got big enough, they would pupate and become adult flies which would then find a mate and begin the cycle again. These were one of the select few insect species space colonists were intimately familiar with. Somehow the buggers had adapted to 0 gravity conditions. They would infest hydroponic facilities where their maggots would feed on mold and sensitive plant roots. I digress.

My goal for this test is to create a giant fungus gnat! It’s a long shot, I know, but I need to try it for completion’s sake.

I will the gnat to hold still and then, as always, wrap the target in my sense. Now I envision the gnat growing 3 times larger than its current size. Once I’m satisfied with the image in my head, I instantly feel mana pouring out of my core and into the fly! Just as I feel like I’m going to be sucked dry, the flow abates. Exhausted, I look at the fly. I can’t see anything different about it, the fungus gnat doesn’t seem to have changed in the slightest…

I’m not giving up hope though, something definitely happened! That mana has to have done something, otherwise, what would’ve been the point?

I decide to check up on the fly later and begin a new task.

As I turn my attention away, I notice that there is a small stream of dirty water pouring from my tunnel in the ceiling! I shift my view topside and can see there is a slight drizzle of rain! It’s not a full-blown storm, but it’s still the first rain I’ve witnessed since I reincarnated! It’s been 8 days since the caldera exploded, I’m glad to see a change of weather.

Speaking of which, I can’t see any fire elementals or dragons in sight! Was it the rain or time that drove them away? All I can hope now is that they’re gone for good.

With the irrigation situation dealt with, I think it’s about time I put some effort into expanding my cave. I head over to the edge of my domain, here the wall is covered in a carpet of moss, clinging vines, and phallic purple fungi. I’m not going to worry about removing the excavated debris for now, instead I’m just going to focus on cutting into the wall and chopping the stone up into tiny bits that I’ll be able to fit through a small exit when the time comes.

…

I spend the next 28 hours cutting stone. Eventually I’m forced to stop because I don’t have any space left to pile up the rhyolite pebbles without burying my plants. Taking a much-needed break to regenerate mana, I look around my dungeon. One of the first things I notice is several fungus gnats. More specifically, some of these individuals are, you guessed it, triple their normal size! Mind you, they’re still minuscule, but my experiment was a success! I find the original altered fungus gnat standing exactly where I willed it to wait, to my surprise, it has remained normal.

I think I know what’s going on here. The giant gnats are probably the offspring of the original, with the changes I made only expressing themselves after a generation. She probably laid eggs on the patch of ground I told her to wait on.

It’s like oversimplified genetic engineering! And incredibly, the offspring were able to mature in a mere 28 hours! Mana is so broken.

This discovery has given me a diabolical idea.

I have a pile of pebbles that needs to be transported topside and an army of ants who could use an upgrade…