Faeldin thought that he saw faint blue light coming through the wooden planks on the floor of the ancestral hall, but it had to be because of stress, lately there was too much lying on his shoulders.

"Sometimes one has to think that life is a black comedy, more black than any kind of show could have been." Faeldin sighed, immeasurable sadness residing deep in his eyes. He had become a king of elves with absolute power, but all that power could not help the one person he cared about the most.

Her whereabouts were still unknown, he had ordered the Great Trees to be tortured to find out where they had hidden her after the abduction. All they had gotten from them were moans of self-pity and claims of innocence. But how could he trust the ones that had betrayed all of them?

He would have resorted to magical means, but that was the second disaster. All that was based on yesterday's magic refused to function, even structural reinforcements of buildings have failed! He did not want to even think about how many lives that fact alone had claimed. Still the situation for elves had to be much better than for cities like Durkan, the conditions there had to be pure madness, he had already sent all hands he could spare to the border. They would be sorely needed there when the mobs arrive.

And they would arrive.

Faeldin knew that all higher structures in Durkan were bound to fall burying thousands and their secretive magical means to provide food had surely already failed, resulting in a hungry mob of milions.

Who will all these people bother with their demands?

Undoubtedly him, as the population density in their forests was low and the elves would look like the ones that were be able to help the starving refugees. In addition, there was no longer any deterrence and the humans had the strength coming with numbers.

It was a headache, the elves were hard pressed to deal with the blackout of magic on their own soil, they had no capacity to help others.

He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly while looking out of the window at the resplendent trees outside, the only soothing sight he had, as there was little damage caused by the disaster to trees. Pushing his personal issues deeper into his mind, he decided to consult his military advisors again.

With the responsibility he had, he was the king first, uncle second.

* * * *

Toby shut out his cognitive functions for a moment with heavy heart.

There was . . nothing.

At first he felt joy when he had found abilities not designed for dungeons in the [Active Abilities] option that actually could do something about Irwen's reanimation, but later he had found out the harsh truth that he could really use only the abilities of dugeons. He was not even angry on himself because there were apparently coutless races, how should he have known the right one in advance? It was unrealistic.

He felt a spark of hate burning inside him again, but he dozed it off before it could grow. He knew that revenge was meaningless and would not solve anything, there was only one constructive option he had.

If he himself was unable to reanimate her, he had to find someone who might.

He was not as narcissistic as to believe that he was the only one who had discovered a path to magic, there had to be many and every one of them was his spark hope.

He would grow and find someone with the right ability, after all he was immortal, he would walk one step at a time in a steady pace until he one day would reach his goal, no matter how long it would take, he had that time, his inexhaustible resource.

"Just you wait, rotten brains, I swear there will be a time for us to build wonders together again. With infinite time, there is no place that can hold you away from me, even death cannot!" Toby felt hyped to make his first steps.

He threw himself again into the lists of abilities only to find out that he would have to change his approach, the reason was simple. Browsing the many abilities he could buy, it was clear that being stationary would make him much stronger and it would be dangerous to wander around when there was chaos everywhere. Up to this point he had been able to escape the overarching limitation of dugeons and had made himself mobile at the cost of strength, but he did not believe it was still safe nor advantageous.

Turning himself into a landmark would give him the option to actualy make the people he was looking for search for him instead, as he would be able to provide much resources to them as a dungeon. Additionally, the old established powers he had feared should have myriad troubles of their own, not speaking about their strength that had to be reset along with the fall of the systemization of magic. Well, he had still a system, but that was certainly his unique path, others had surely chosen differently. However, he had to avoid gloating with pride and carelessness, the fact that he had some sort of a system did not mean he was stronger than others.

He set for himself a simple strategy, first he would gain the strength to dominate the local ruins, then he would accumulate wealth and offer it in exchange for specific abilities. If his wealth was not too great compared to his strength, he should be able to fight off thieves, while make the stronger factions believe that their losses would outweight their gains if they fought him. That way he should be able to reach many compared to the approach of carefully sneaking around the same way he had done up to now.

His main source of strength should not be what his system could provide him, he could not expect his magic path was the strongest, but the way he would be able to augment his abilities with the resources around him, as others would doubtfully be able to utilize the wide range and volumes of resources he was.

"Fine, let's get started." He should focus on the abilities that made dungeons good in stationary defense and were the meat and butter of the species, if he could call dungeon a species. Although, he should be a little more tactical than just throwing abilities around.

Given the complexity of the new system of abilities, it would take a while to explore it. Toby decided to focus on several aspects, defense, scouting, resource gathering, projecting force and dimplomacy, as he would end up as a small kingdom if all went smoothly.

He decided to skip passive abilities for now, as they looked like being permanent and even though they cost no mana, he was not sure about which one to pick just yet, because their effects were not just positive. The ones he had remembered were. . .

[Soul of Flame] - reduces all costs of fire spells by half and doubles their power, but frost spells now also cause you soul damage in addition to their normal effect.

[Cursed] - All living creatures find you repulsive, but your abilities related to souls are enhanced significantly.

[Holy Object] - You gain a new resource [Faith] that can be used to power spells, but its value is reset to zero the moment you use [Mana] again and you will have a high probability to be hunted by those from whom the [Faith] resource had been generated.

[Blood Altar] - You can temporarily raise your total mana by absorbing blood up to 300%, but your total mana will be reduced permanently by one third if you fail to absorb any blood for two days.

[Saint] - Everyone will respect and admire you, but you are unable to kill anyone and those who have accumulated any [Faith], or have strong resistance against mind control will not have their mind influenced by you.

The passive abilities were really a mixed bag, he had thought about picking [Saint], but what if he made an enemy that he was unable to kill, but he was not influenced by his ability? He did not want to suffer from any of the severe effects, even though the gains might be significant.

Toby had managed to buy some active abilities resembling auras for rock, dirt, iron and the few souls about him that lingered around the dead corpses. He had also bought [Zombie] using the said corpses.

[One With Earth] Item Description: [ You can sense everything that is touching the earth around you; cost: - / 10 mana per kilometer ]

[Tunnel Sense] Item Description: [ A burst of magic that reveals what is inside the tunnels around you; cost: 10 mana per kilometer / - ]

[Minions] Item Description: [ Impersonate any of your minions gaining total control over it and its senses, the cost increases with its distance from the dungeon core; cost: - / 1 mana per kilometer of distance ]

[Zombie] Item Description: [ Tough and stupid with minimal upkeep cost; cost: 1 mana 1 Corpse / 1 mana ]

. .. yeah and souls were quite useful, he would need mroe of them, he bought [Minions] with one soul. The units used for rock and dirt appeared to be cubic meters, every single unit was a considerable chunk taken from his surroundings into his inner world.

He decide that with his limited information, it would be quicker for now to just explore and look into what could be bought with the materials he would find around him. Hunting for a specific resource would be a folly with his non-existent information network.

Toby began summoning earth elementals and it took him roughly three minutes, compared to the critters he had summoned earlier, the delay was significant, it had to do with the fact that he had to spend two hundred mana to summon a single earth elemental and provide another twenty as maintenance. He decided to try how many he was able to summon and he stopped at sixteen, before the seventeenth summoning failed due to him running out of mana.

That would mean he probably had five hundred mana.

Why was his status lacking this information? Should he update it?

He itched to do so, but decided not to when he remembered how scarce the obedient mana he had used to build his notice board became. There was no need as he knew it now anyway.

He ordered his summoned elementals to clear the cave, the task that was a child's play, given what they were. Shortly, they discovered a metal object floating in the newly excavated hall.

Strange, the occasional flashes of blue light around the object gave Toby the creeps, he would rather not touch the object while he was in the same room with it.

That reminded him, he had not yet attended to his most powerful abilities that required him to be stationary, but he had to change the place first, he had no intention being within the same room with the strange object a second longer. He ordered his elementals to dig down, wondering if they were going to fall down, because their humanoid shape evoked in him the feeling that they would not be able to climb up and down the vertical tunnel.

Both critters and elementals looked somewhat humanoid, but the critters were no larger than a small child, the ordinary elementals having the stature of a big muscular man created by a conglomeration of rocks floating around each other.

Well, the resemblance to a man was an exaggeration, they merely had a similar form.

To his surprise, the elementals simply changed form into spiral streams of rocks glued together with a faint yellow hue of earth magic, clinging to the vertical walls and did not even appear to have slightest trouble to scale the walls. One of his minions grabbed him and they slowly made their way deeper into the bedrock, it was time to buy the only truly useful passive ability he could find.

Not that the ability had no negative effect, but it hardly mattered to him.

[Deep Knowledge] - You can identify any resource that can be found under the ground, but you suffer the same limitations as if you were a dungeon.

Armed with the new ability, he made his way deeper, the only source of light being the faint yellow glow of his minions and Toby looked at the most powerful abilities he had managed to obtain so far.

[Dungeon Presence] Item Description: [Tendrils keep slowly growing out of the dungeon core, spreading through your underground domain, gradually turning your tunnels and chambers into [Dungeon] space. You are granted unlimited vision and stealth detection in your [Dungeon] and allows you to place there your [Auxiliary Dungeon Core]. All progress is lost if the caster moves. ]; cost: All Mana / 50 mana]

[Earth Elemental Auxiliary Dungeon Core] Item Description: [It can sustain summoned creatures of earth attribute in one kilometer radius up to the total cost of 300 mana ; cost: 1 soul 1 rock 25 mana / 25 mana]

It appeared that Toby was finally able to apply the approach he had tried out in the past, but had been stopped by the loss of experience points. Now there was not much to lose, unless his [Earth Elemental Auxiliary Dungeon Core] was broken, but one soul was not that expensive. Yet it was clearly the most basic auxiliary core, the more advanced cores might sting more if he lost them.Toby could even see some other auxiliary cores in his custom shop, but what was the use to even look if he had totally no idea what were the materials they required? There was only a single common material among the cores he recongnized, souls.

Toby was not able to store any souls yet, so he would have to hunt someone down later, but he should be able to manage. Morality? He considered himself a part of nature now. He would harvest resources to fulfill his needs, but was opposed to wantonly killing anyone. It was a similar approach of ordinary predators found in nature, but not all as some did kill for sport.

Meanwhile, his mob of elementals had arrived deep enough to began with the construction of his dungeon core room, he should have put enough distance between himself and the strange object that was now roughly above him. His sense of depth was not good, as the journey with his minions had been too monotonous, but they had to be deeper than one kilometer.

Toby ordered his minion to place him on a square block of rock in the middle of the room and activated [Dungeon Presence]. Immediately, all the elementals crumbled to dust as he had expended all of his mana at that moment and dark purple veins appeared on his surface. The veins began pulsating and with each pulse, they expanded a lot, digging deeper into his pedestal, worming their way down to the floor quickly. It reminded him of a beating heart and he tried to measure the speed of their growth.

Their growth began to gradually slow down, as they neared the walls of the room. It seemed non-linear even, as their progress was nowhere near the speed when they had shot out of the dungeon core for the first time. Toby had an unpleasant idea that the volume per second that he was able to claim might be constant, which would correspond to the steady upkeep of fifty mana that were being pumped constantly into the [Dungeon Presence] as a maintenance cost. If that was the case, it should have taken almost ten times more time to double the distance from the dungeon core to his dungeon border every time. Being more technical, if the speed really corresponded to the fact that the mana was lineary converted into volume, then if it took him to push the spherical border of his dungeon by ten meter in ten seconds, it would take him almost three hours to push it one hundred meters and a staggering one third of a year to further extend it to one kilometer. Ten kilometers was at the level of hundreds of years and that was the moment when his brain nearly exploded.

Would it be really that bad? Hopefully not, any extrapolations were only as good as small was the distance from the real, tested values.

His mind was calmed down by the fact that the dark tendrils had already bored into the wall of the dungeon core room and he no longer saw their progress. He continued his plans by testing the intelligence of his minions and found out that they could actually remember some commands, but they were not smarter than a crow and were unable to communicate with him at all, remembering a few commands was already their best. He sent six of his elementals in six directions around him including up and down and thought what else could be done with his time.

He decided to make a few sloped tunnels leading to his core room and tried to create the notorious rolling boulder trap. Of course, the trap was not something made by skills or other system quirks, meaning he had to craft the boulder and the tunnel with his minions and kept one critter minion stationed there to remove the stone brakes with earth magic to activate the trap. For concealment, Toby opted to have a thin wall of rock at the corner of the tunnel, where the trap was hidden, the rolling stone sphere would smash through it when he gave the command.

After a few tests, he had to say it worked better than he had expected, the only downside being the mana he had to spend on the critter that waited there on stand by. Not wanting to waste too much mana on the critters he began thinking about a design that would enable one critter to operate many traps at once.

It took him some time, but he finally decided to go with the design that kind of outsourced the rolling boulders to a single critter. The critter had his own corridor with many vertical tunnels along, all it had to do was to come next to the right vertical shaft and melt the slab of rock preventing the boulder from falling down, then the boulder quickly gained speed and was guided to the right place, where it shattered a thin, false ceiling or a wall and did its job.

Ingenious! And all that marvel cost him just two mana of maintenance on the single critter.

Before he knew it, Toby had been consumed in the art of trap-making and tunnel-boring. He felt like something deep inside him began to purr with satisfaction, a mild feeling of fulfilment spreading through his purple, crystalline structure of his dungeon core.

* * * *

. . . . . Short range missile systems operational. Stategic weapons not operational, missing resources for repairs. interceptor aircraft at 40%, two space cruisers operational, one . . .

White fingers were tapping on a smooth white desk, while listening to the rest of the damage report with mild interest, but one could almost see tension in the fingers when one of the items caught the being's attention. Of course that had to be only an illusion, as the presence of any kind of emotion would be against its very existence. Its emotions were always just a program to be used for communication with squishy matter, not a tool to be used in private. That would not be efficient.

. . . disruption field generator not operational, missing resources for repairs. . ..

This was a setback.

Aleph had not expected this combination that had only a low probability to occur. First, the traitor had clearly been able to incorporate some self-repair subroutine in the ward that reestablished the ward only a moment after its malfunction, resulting in the heavy damage she was currently dealing with. The next trouble was that the strategic weapons were offline, limiting her ability to use force on the large scale and now the disruptors were offline as well, meaning she would be unable to bypass the ward and create a stable portal even though they had the proper exit point with the fortress already inside the cluster.

She needed to reiterate the steps of the campaign.

A flood of holographic numbers appeared all around her and she quickly picked a location abundant in required materials for the following build up, it had to be near a star as well, the consumption of the future factories could not be underestimated.

Time was of the essence, the natives must not have the time to discover any of the advanced ether technologies or fully connect to the soulspace that the peak ether-based civilizations shared. Still ,the probability of the second was not high, as this region was still just at the border of the nearest swarm core's influence.

The next moment, the massive half-sphere stirred to life and moved in the direction of a cluster of asteroids orbiting the nearest star.