Dungeon territory

‘I need to calm down.’ I told myself, it would not do for me to lose sight of the situation here. Those people could probably just kill me if they wanted to, what unfortunate things they did and might do to me, I should plan on vengeance when I have the means to accomplish it.

For the time being, I should comply with their wants. Or at least somewhat, all they do for now is repeatedly use the badge to send me the same corruption thoughts. I understand that they want me to try to corrupt something, but I just don’t know enough about my own capabilities to know what they mean.

For now, I will just pursue my tests. I do so in seemingly random areas, intervals and intensity. By doing it like that, they won’t suspect my intellect, in the case they don’t already know of it, and I gather information on the materials in the surroundings.

All I really get is how the mana type affects other mana types and the matter itself, and to be honest, it does little on its own. It diverges from my normal mana as it needs less focus and energy to mix with any mana it comes in contact with. It feels like it wants to make all the mana, mine.

When I use it at the same time as my normal mana to take in the mana of a nearby tree, it pushes itself into the mixed mana, part mine and part the tree’s, and it forces the tree’s mana to follow my will. I try to change the proportions, but the most useful seem to be one part my normal mana, one part my new mana type, and one part of the tree’s mana. That way I have enough control over the tree’s mana to make it enter my sphere.

I use this new method to get more mana for a while, but the ones watching over me are sending me more and more thoughts of using corruption mana. They eventually settled on sending ‘Other mana’ and ‘Corruption mana’ over and over again.

It is getting quite frustrating to not just hear it, but feel the thought itself. It must have been a good 2 hours already since I started using this new mana. They have been pestering me constantly since then, and I am beginning to lose patience.

To prevent myself from doing anything stupid, I decide to try out the other mana type that was already fused to my knot. And not only the feeling I get from it, but its behavior too, is perfectly described by the word corruption.

As I send this mana inside of the tree, it slowly begins transforming any mana it touches into my mana. It is a slow process, but it is happening. The tree’s mana that is in contact with the corruption mana slowly changes ownership to respond to my will.

When I mix my mana with the tree’s and make the mix come into contact with the corruption mana, it is like the tree’s mana is getting dulled to become more easily my mana. And when I add the other mana type, which I now call absorption mana, the tree’s mana is drowned under the effects.

My absorption mana partially subdues the tree’s, making it forcefully mix with mine. It then gets quickly changed into my normal mana, which is directly mixed again with more of the tree’s mana, making the absorption’s mana and corruption’s one even easier, all in a vicious circle whose severity depends on the amount of absorption and corruption mana I send in.

When the two watching me sensed what I was doing to the tree, they looked at each other, and then they began sending ‘mix’, ‘merge’ and ‘fuse’ thoughts to me. And again, I genuinely did not understand what they were asking of me.

The woman got up and left, leaving my mana control zone. She came back less than 10 seconds later with a crystal the size of a pebble in her hand. But it was not just any crystal, it is filled with mana.

I focus on it, I would need at least a hundred trees to approximate the mana in the pebble sized gem. But it is not the only interesting thing I find about the thing, it also has forms carved in it. I push my mana inside it, trying to use my new mana type method to absorb everything.

But while my mana enters it without effort, it feels like it is passing through the gem’s mana, it is unable to affect it in any way. Furthermore, my different mana types are forcefully fused together inside the gem’s center.

The mana is still mine, but the mixing of the divers types made it change somewhat, and I feel something weird with it. It obeys my command and exits the gem to come back inside me, I decompose it without effort, the mana returning to my normal type.

I send more of my mana inside the gem, one type at a time at first. the resulting mana mix having diverging effects when used to gather more mana using the tree’s. I test and test again, and at some point I inject so much mana inside the gem, it stops accepting my normal mana.

It still accepts my absorption and corruption manas, so I decide to send as much mana inside of it as I can. The trees supply me enough to fill the gem until it accepts none of my mana. I extract it, and while I would normally want to test its effects on the things around me, I directly send the dense mana mix to my core. But instead of absorbing the mana, I feel it fuse with a part of myself.

POV: Kunibert

I swore internally when after 4 hours of repeatedly sending instructions to the core, it did not pay any mind to them and instead took in the flaura’s mana. As if taunting us, it abundantly used its dungeon type of mana with its more ordinary mana to make its mana feast more efficient.

When it finally began using its corruption mana, Samantha and I looked at each other. “I’ll get it” She said before fetching the imbued mana crystal. It is a tool made specifically to increase the rate at which a dungeon develops its initial territory.

It uses the dungeon’s particular mana to form a formation, this formation would then be consumed by the core to produce an immediate territory around the dungeon core. From what I know, it is not entirely understood how the dungeon’s territory works, but we know how to help a dungeon expand it.

All dungeons eventually begin producing a territory with time. If they do their first graft, the dungeon will have formed an affinity with the surrounding fauna and flora. This affinity is what defines what its first layers will look like, as well as what the dungeon will try to replicate. So, moving the dungeon after a first graft, even in a similar region, will mean having the core trying to replicate the environment where it would not belong, making it lose mana to useless endeavors. Slowing down its progress on many, many levels.

After Samantha came back with the imbued crystal and threw it to core’s pit, its attention was quickly lured by the potent mana signature the crystal has. I feel it sending mana in, taking it back and beginning the act all again.

After nearly another hour during which the group ate, the core managed to produce its territorial mana. It quickly used it to make the space around it its possession. It was not much, maybe 20 centimeters all around the core’s surface, but it was enough to kickstart the dungeon’s territory.

That way it would learn how to produce it on its own and expand naturally too. It's known that a dungeon core can make and operate its dungeon even without having a territory, but having one makes it more efficient and organized. Making the possible profits from it bigger since the start.

I look at it draining the surroundings of mana, making the trees its mana gathering units by letting its corruption mana and ordinary mana inside. The things accumulate mana by themselves, letting it gather more mana than it already is. All the mana it gathers is used to increase its territorie’s size. Its instincts no doubt guiding it through the steps to make itself mightier.

We will need to get it some forest critters tomorrow for it to experiment on making monsters, it will need to protect itself and be worth delving into. It will no doubt take years to make it useful for our group, but as I already told myself many times, it is a long term investment. The real profits will come later, way later.