The first thing she tried was leaving the tunnel. She’d not intended to go far - not with her gemstone body being killable, and so easily accessible - but it turned out that she couldn’t leave at all. Seemed like sunlight was her bane. The more clearly she could see the sky, the more it seemed like her “self” was withering away.

I am a magic vampire crystal, she thought to herself with a laugh.

It was not what she’d expected, but she had to admit, the idea was growing on her.

Further experimentation revealed a few more interesting details. Anything she wanted to remove, such as when she’d dug the dirt away, disappeared into some sort of space inside her mind. She knew precisely how much dirt and stone that she’d absorbed. Everything she absorbed, she seemed to gain knowledge of, as well. Not only did she know how much of it she had, she understood precisely what it was made of, and how.

She could also put the material back, in any arrangement that she desired. Interestingly, the limit of precision was limited to her ability to comprehend it. She could build the walls of her cave… well, her dungeon, she supposed… one molecule at a time.

That had a lot of potential.

Her fiddling with the dungeon had expanded it to roughly five by six feet, and about three feet tall. She was interested to realize that she felt fatigued.

No, that wasn’t quite right. She was a little tired, but it was more than that. She felt hungry.

But what was she supposed to eat? Sleep didn’t feel right, and she didn’t have a mouth. Absorbing dirt and stone felt nice, but it wasn’t satisfying.

Another approach, then.

She’d noticed that she couldn’t absorb the bugs and roots around the tunnel entrance. There was something about them that resisted her. She could push them a little, but that was the limit.

On a chemical level, it didn’t make sense. There was nothing different about living things than any other assortment of chemicals, other than the fact that they were alive.

So, maybe if she killed them? Could she absorb them, then?

She wasn’t sure how she was supposed to kill them if she couldn’t use her magic on them directly. There were some plants that had fallen when she’d dug out the ground underneath, but they’d take time to die. As for the insects… maybe a trap?

A tiny pit opened up in the ground - about an inch across, and four inches deep. She made the edges and bottom perfectly smooth rock. The ground had been a little damp, so she had a small amount of water to work with. She didn’t need much, though. She poured in about an inch’s worth.

A little beetle was walking near her pit.

Why hello, my lovely new lab rat. Sorry you have to die, but it’s for science! You understand, I’m sure. Well, you don’t, really, but that’s okay.

A little bit of moving air was all it took to knock the beetle into the hole. As expected, the walls were too slick to climb up, and so she waited for the beetle to drown.

Oh! That feels good!

A sweet, satisfying rush of pleasure filled her as the beetle died. Her hunger faded the tiniest amount.

That wasn’t what she’d been testing for, but she’d take it. She was glad to note that her test had been successful, to boot - she could, indeed, absorb the beetle.

It was a delightfully intricate creature. Compared to the rocks and dirt, the knowledge that flowed into her was even more exquisite than the death had been.

With the knowledge and material, she wondered…

Another beetle, an exact copy of the previous, was fashioned from her internal stores. It lived. She watched it move with fascination, and realized that not only did it live, it was hers. She could control it, could command it, as she pleased.

Maybe this was how dungeons were supposed to work. Maybe they defended themselves with the things they created. Not that a beetle could do her any good. But there was another perfectly good idea to test - maybe she could change the beetle!

She poured her magic into the beetle, focusing on making it larger. She felt it pulling on her reserves, but her reserves were lacking. Hmm. Well, she didn’t have any more organic material.

She tried stone, instead. She focused on trying to strengthen the beetle’s carapace. To her delight, it worked perfectly. The beetle was now too bulky to move, but it worked!

Another idea occurred to her to try. If she was magic, maybe she could make the beetle magic, too.

Magic strength, she thought, trying to force the idea into the beetle. Her power dimmed a little, but the stone-armored beetle was now prancing around as though it were light as a feather.

Her hunger was growing intense enough to get really annoying. She needed more death in her dungeon, and soon. She also needed more material to work with.

And she had just the man - or bug, anyway - for the job.

The little stone beetle charged at her command, slicing at the handful of earthworms, ants, and other little beetles that she’d exposed.

He didn’t have an ounce of trouble. The other critters couldn’t bite past the stone, and his enhanced strength made short work of them. It reduced her hunger a little, but even when all of the creatures in her dungeon were dead, she still ached.

Well, surely the smell of rotting insects would attract some new life. The earthworms were the wettest corpses, and seemed best for the task, since the moisture would make their rot more smelly. The stone beetle moved them near the entrance, and she made another little hole to the surface, to improve air flow.

Her next thing to try was sending her beetle outside. She gave the command to leave and come back immediately, since she didn’t want to have her “self” next to the entrance again.

She watched, uneasy, as it marched along. It pulled her power along as it walked, sucking it out of her as it stepped into the daylight. She was still connected, but her magic withered when it was outside her dungeon. The drain wasn’t much, but this was not helping her hunger problem. She pulled the beetle back promptly.

Fine. So hunting outside wasn’t happening.

She’d had enough of waiting. Did she really have to sit here and wait for things to come into her dungeon?

The best she could do was prepare herself in the meantime. She absorbed the beetle and ant corpses. She decided to have one strong defender, rather than a bunch of useless ones. She made her little stone guardian larger, with the material drawn from the other insects.

He was an herbivore, she discovered, as he went munching on the slowly decaying bits of plant matter. It gave her a tiny measure of power, too, and better still, every bite gave her more of that intimate knowledge of construction.

The scientists of earth would kill for knowledge of this intricacy.

She played with her stone pet for a while, and found that her attention was easily split. She watched the entrance as she played, eagerly hoping for something to come in.

It was only a few hours before flies started showing up, just as she’d hoped. She let them land and feed on the earthworm corpses while the stone beetle got into position to pounce.

Only, she felt something change. The flies… some of them were laying eggs.

Oooh. That also had potential. Most excellent. Would life transform chemical energy into… what should she call this power?

Hmm… ah, yes, of course! Mana!

She had her stone beetle launch at the flies, but he was too slow. Despite a valiant effort, he didn’t catch even a single one.

Well, at least she got some eggs out of it. Maybe she shouldn’t have killed everything in reach. She’d leave them to hatch and grow. If she killed them right before they emerged as flies, she’d probably get the most mana possible, before they could escape.

She needed more. She probed around with her senses, and found that she could infuse mana into the walls of her dungeon. That mana came back completely when she absorbed the infused dirt, and even unabsorbed, it provided her with intimate knowledge of what was within.

Her senses really were incredible. She could “see” and “hear” whatever she was focusing on, in a way that wasn’t too unlike human senses, except that her senses were perfectly sharp. It was her “peripheral” senses that were truly astonishing, though. Even when she wasn’t focusing on something, if it was within her dungeon, she knew it was there, and knew everything about it.

Life blocked her senses just as much as it blocked her magic, but beyond that detail, she knew where every single speck of dust was, as clearly as if she could see it. Barring the unpleasantness of her unsatisfied hunger, she was really having quite a bit of fun.

But survival came first.

A fearful instinct was pushing to bring her core away from the opening, but that just didn’t seem like the best plan. She didn’t have a lot of power to work with. Going deeper wouldn’t make her safer - after all, if something came in here looking to kill her, having to go two feet deeper was not going to make a difference.

Getting more power, on the other hand, would. Power, in this case, was knowledge and mana.

So she branched outward instead.

Little tunnels expanded from her tiny dungeon - tunnels that only her beetle could traverse. It seemed mana needed air to flow through, so this was the only way to extend her reach. Range was a problem - the further from her core she got, the weaker her magic was. Rather than going for distance, then, she went for more complete coverage.

The process was building her appetite, but if the view from her main entrance was any indication, this area was full of life. She did catch a few earthworms in the process, which the stone beetle collected for her.

Still, it wasn’t enough. Her hunger grew to the point where she felt faint, and she had to stop. Maybe those flies would rejuvenate her enough, when they matured.

She collapsed back into the crystal. It felt relaxing enough that her hunger was bearable, if only just.

Sleep was apparently not something dungeons did, though. Every few minutes, she popped out to check on her stone beetle and on the eggs. More flies had come in when she wasn’t paying attention, but they hadn’t hurt anything - they’d only added more eggs.

Once it was night, she decided to test her “vampire” theory. She had her stone beetle make a quick dart outside.

It was much easier. He could make it an entire foot outside of her dungeon before she even started to feel the drain, and even then, it was much less.

So, dungeons could send out their critters at night, then. That was good to know. Even so, it wasn’t very useful right now.

When the stone beetle came back, she decided to see about upgrading him. She had the knowledge of ants, and she wondered if she could upgrade him with their details. She made his mandibles like theirs, but larger and also enhanced with stone. She had to change his head shape a little, because he was off balance.

It brought her hunger to an acute level, but her little stone pet was now able to carry things much more easily.

She sent him to the surface to collect food for her.

One thing she quickly discovered was that killing things outside - a small scouting ant, in this case - did nothing for her. They had to die inside the dungeon. Well, fine. She ordered the beetle to collect all fallen plant matter, and to capture all the creatures it could find.

Her minion’s hunt was somewhat successful, and just barely made up for the cost of his upgrades.

She wasn’t big on patience. The hunger was annoying, but nothing compared to the pain of cancer. She knew she shouldn’t push too hard, but it was difficult.

She had magic. She had access to insanely detailed types of knowledge that biologists would kill for. She could make alterations to living things, and see how they worked in application.

How was she supposed to be patient in the face of all that?

A balance, maybe. She poked her magic at one of the fly eggs, wondering what would happen if she poked it long enough.

To her surprise, after about five minutes, her magic got through. The knowledge flowed into her and she giggled in delight. This had cost her nothing! Or close enough to nothing that she couldn’t tell. Either way, it was time for testing!

She took over one full batch of eggs. She was able to poke as many as she liked at once, and even poking two hundred eggs into submission didn’t seem to take any mana.

Patience was much easier when she had something to do. She eagerly checked on the egg development every few minutes. It was so cool to see every detail of their growth as it happened.

About twenty four hours into her new life, the eggs started hatching. Maggots were disgusting, but fascination won out. She could see their little bodies in incredible detail, inside and out. At least, the ones she’d taken over. She seemed to have just as much control over these ones as the beetle!

Time for testing.

First things first. She wanted to know if she could capture them once born. She poked a handful of maggots, and after about twenty minutes, she got through - they were here. Most excellent!

It did take a little mana this time, though. Oh, well. She examined them.

Interestingly, they were different from the maggots she’d already owned. These ones seemed a little weaker. Maybe by capturing creatures, she gave them a little of her magic?

Next test.

She had the beetle kill one of the maggots from her control group - the ones she’d not touched. As expected, she got a miniscule flow of mana - a tiny fraction of what she’d gotten from earthworms. Next, she had him kill one of her maggots. To her surprise, she got a flow - significantly more than the natural maggot. Apparently, it didn’t matter that it was hers, and seemed to confirm that her maggots were stronger than natural ones.

But she’d made an incidental discovery, too. Her stone beetle had also gained some of the mana from his kill. If she hadn’t been looking so closely, she’d have missed it - but he’d gotten a little stronger and faster.

She’d have clapped her hands in excitement, if she’d had any.

The hunger gnawed at her, but her curiosity was irresistible.

She whispered an enhancement to ten of the maggots she’d claimed as eggs, cringing as the drain on mana felt like actual pain this time.

Eat faster, digest faster, develop faster.

It had worked so naturally with the beetle, after all.

Another giggle escaped her as she watched them start ravenously devouring the earthworm bodies. She could see the internal development of her chosen few vastly outstripping the natural-born.

This was too easy, it wasn’t even fair. All she needed was death, and she had the power of a god.

The fact that her latest experiment had caused her actual pain was enough to slow her down, though. Instead of continuing to experiment, she simply observed the four types of maggots. Control group - the maggots she’d never touched, as eggs or otherwise. Natural-born - the ones she’d taken over, after being born. Mana-born - the ones she’d taken over as eggs. And, lastly, the enhanced - the mana-born that she’d given magic.

The enhanced maggots were seriously busy little bugs. They grew so fast that they molted three times before the mana born had molted even once. The natural born were a few hours behind the mana-born, and the control group lagged even further behind.

Apparently, her development enhancement wasn’t entirely necessary - just belonging to her was enough to speed up growth.

That evening, she noticed that her hunger had ebbed a little. She tried to figure out the source. A little trial and error revealed that living things let off a faint bit of mana.

It was so little that it hardly seemed worthwhile. But, she suspected it depended on the type of life. Earthworms had given a hundred times as much mana as a maggot, on death. Maybe the ratio would hold in life, too.

The control group were only just starting to molt when the enhanced maggots slipped into a dark corner of her dungeon to form a brown shell around themselves. She couldn’t remember much about insect life cycles, but she figured it might be a little like butterflies. What was the term for that stage again? She dredged up the word “pupae” from her memories. This would be the pupal stage of development.

It was kind of cool to watch them dissolve into goo inside of their shells, and begin to take the shape of a fly. The process was so fast that she was entirely content just to watch. She was glad that she could watch all of her toys at the same time, but the enhanced were fascinating enough to draw the majority of her attention.

Six hours later, and the brown shells began to split, revealing flies.

They looked almost nothing like the flies that had laid their eggs.

These creatures were smaller, but only by a little. Their wings were proportionally larger, and their mouths were… well, actual mouths. Instead of the little proboscis that she’d seen in their parents, these guys had chompers more like their maggot selves. Their digestive systems, too, seemed to be partway between a fly and a maggot. There were also signs of magic within the digestive system - maybe her command to “eat faster” had accidentally had this result?

Fortunately for all parties, it was nighttime again, and so she was able to send her little monsters out hunting.

They could eat anything. They flew back with large mouthfuls of plants and insects alike, finishing them off within her domain. One surprised her by chewing through some wood as easily as he had eaten through an ant.

Her monstrous flies grew so fast weeds would be jealous, and within an hour of their emergence, were already larger than their parents had been. She had them hunt aggressively, leaving her stone beetle to guard the maggots.

Her recovery was slow, but steady. When using magic became merely uncomfortable again, instead of painful, she decided to resume her own hunt.

Magic returned to the little tunnels she’d fashioned the day before, and she began to seek out new life. She kept her search slow, so that she used mana no faster than her hunters gathered it for her. It was probably midnight, so she had several hours before her hunters had to withdraw.

Two hours later, she felt a faint resistance to her magic that could only mean the presence of life. Something much stronger than an earthworm, too, by the feel of it. Or maybe a bunch of earthworms in a pile?

She carefully dug below it. Fortunately, it wasn’t far from her core, so it wasn’t too straining. She did need to widen the tunnel to her core, so the mana flow was intense enough for the job.

Beneath the creature, she dug a pit and lined it with stone. She wasn’t sure how big it was, but she figured, best to cover all possibilities.

In addition to some water that would drown insects, and the slick walls that had captured her beetle, she created some exceptionally thin spikes. They’d break, but ideally, they’d break inside flesh. The thinner they were, the sharper they were. She also made tiny hooks along the sides, so they’d lodge into whatever flesh they found.

It was ready. She began digging upwards in excitement. Her magic fizzed out before the ground broke and she grumbled in frustration. Apparently, her inability to directly affect life, or anything near life, wasn’t something she could overcome with mere willpower.

She glared at the soft dirt above her trap. What was waiting for her there? A mouse? Probably something big - she could affect the ground directly beneath insects, and whatever this was, it stopped her magic before the ground was even too thin. Maybe a rat?

She thought fondly back to the rats in her old lab. Furry, clever things they were. Some were so friendly. Obviously, she couldn’t get too attached, since she was testing the effects of whatever her lab had been paid to study, and generally, those studies ended in death. Still, she’d found a balance, where she could appreciate the creatures even as she killed them for knowledge.

Sighing, she returned to her task. So she couldn’t dig it out directly. If she dug out horizontally enough, the ground would collapse under its own weight eventually. Hopefully, the ground was thin enough for her spikes to work, since the needle-thin spikes would break on impact with rocks. She made a few of them thicker, just in case.

It was hardly a minute of digging before the ground burst open in a sudden flurry of moving legs. She was startled and pulled back, briefly frightened, before a shrill scream filled the tunnel.

If she had a heart, it’d have been racing.

And laced with a little guilt.

Instead of the mouse or rat she’d been expecting, she saw a rabbit squirming in pain on her spikes. Blood was everywhere.

She couldn’t even put the poor thing out of its misery. Even her enhanced flies couldn’t bite through the fur - it was just too thick, and they’d be crushed in the rabbit’s death throes before they got through.

So she waited awkwardly, and was rewarded for her efforts with a surge of pleasure and warmth. It was easily a thousand times as much mana as the earthworms - ten thousand times, maybe.

Her hunger was nearly sated - she almost felt like she could relax.

But she noticed that her mana was flowing into the rabbit’s tunnel. She followed the trail, and found forks in the tunnels.

This wasn’t just the tunnel of a single rabbit. This was a rabbit warren. There were dozens of the delicious creatures.

Her mana problem had just been solved.