CJ Fielding
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Chapter 69 Sage Squirrel
🕑 Added 2025-08-01 16:44:55 +0000 UTCAs the dungeon worked on its hive mind project, years passed. As time passed, the radio humans made faster progress than the dungeon. As the years passed the humans learned how to make televisions, which were a gigantic improvement over projectors. The difference between the two was that projectors could only show the film being fed directly into them, but televisions could show any data being fed into them. This meant that they no longer needed film for each projector; instead, they only needed one film to feed a broadcast for each television, and as a bonus, each television took up less space than a projector.
Furthermore, under the dungeon's guidance, the radio humans were able to figure out a way to connect their computer chips to the television. The television was an incalculably better data output device than the random mechanical data output devices they had before. In fact, within ten years of making television a data output device, they began making simple software, and the dungeon instructed them on how to make Pong. Even though Pong was the simplest video game, the dungeon knew of, the computer chips were so primitive it still took two years to make, but the dungeon felt it was necessary to teach the humans that manipulating computer data could be fun. With that, some of the radio humans began developing the first computer nerd culture.
Once the nerd culture developed, it wasn’t long until the nerds worked to push computer software and hardware as far as possible. The thing was that with the dungeon, they were able to make their designs into reality almost instantly. Once they figured out how to make integrated computer chips, thanks to the dungeon's help, they were able to prove Moore’s law wrong. Moore’s law said that they would be able to double the number of transistors on a chip every year, but thanks to the dungeon, they were able to make ten times as many transistors every year, and it only took twenty-five years to have chips with trillions of transistors at just one nanometer apart. Thanks to the dungeon, making computer hardware was incredibly simple. That said, they were significantly behind on software. When the dungeon’s soul was dragged onto this moon Microsoft alone had almost a quarter million employees, and that was one software company among thousands. If the dungeon were lucky, he would have a population that large in a century or two.
Despite the delay in developing good software, having powerful computer chips was a game-changer in both the particle accelerator and fusion projects. With better chips, the dungeon had far more control over the processes, and once the dungeon figured out how to make a magnetic bottle, he was able to capture antimatter and plasma. Oddly enough, the dungeon could not imbue his essence into antimatter or plasma. If the dungeon wanted to store something, he simply needed to imbue his essence into it, then he could absorb it until he felt the need to release it somewhere into his area of influence. The dungeon could also combine the things he imbued into material, magical, or most often biological things, so being unable to do so with antimatter or super-hot plasma was a surprise.
That said, plasma and antimatter were not the only things the dungeon could not imbue his essence into. Any of the energies the mages or their warriors came by with were also out of his ability to imbue essence into, but if the magnetic bottles could affect plasma and antimatter, it was definitely possible they could affect magical energies.
As for the fusion generator, thanks to the computer chips, the dungeon made it work within a decade. Computers were necessary to quickly adjust the magnetic bottle as the fusion reaction took place, and keep it going once fusion became self-sustaining. In the dungeons' previous world, they had never managed to make fusion self-sustaining. His homeworld's problem was that it took a decade to make a fusion generator, a year or so to gather information, design a new generator, and another decade to build a new one. Between building and gathering information, developing fusion power took decades. The dungeon's area of influence allowed it to gather information far more quickly, and thanks to its ability to build anything within its area of influence, the dungeon did not need to build an entire new fusion generator; he could easily adjust the one he made, even while active.
Once the fusion generator was complete, it was a dream. It ran on hydrogen, which was, for the dungeon's intents and purposes, unlimited. Although fission power plant produced a lot of electricity it was limited in how much fuel the dungeon could gather from the air, so although the dungeon would continue running the fission plant surrounding its core, if only because it kept the imp from the core room, all future plants would be fusion, in fact the dungeon went ahead and began making thirty of them, with more planned.
The dungeon, being an electrical dungeon core, meant that the dungeon could turn electricity into essence and grow. The dungeon fully intended to find out how much electricity he could handle, and so as fussion generator, after fussion generator was made, the dungeon did not seem to find an answer, although he was pleased to find out that his area of influence grew more quickly as the electricity he ingested grew. After his influence reached a hundred miles into the sky and fifty miles into the earth, he had to slow things down as it became increasingly difficult to grow his Great Black Tree Labyrinth.
The dungeon was honestly surprised by how easily he was solving some of his world's biggest problems. One-nanometer computer chips, room temperature superconductors, antimatter, and fusion were much simpler for the dungeon to solve than for the people of his world to solve, thanks to his advantages. That said, making a hive mind was incredibly difficult.
The problem with making a hive mind creature was that it needed at least three minds. First of all, each body that made up the hive mind needed their own brains to run the functions of their bodies. The brain controls breathing, heart rate, body temperature, and many other necessary functions, so this hive mind creature, with one mind and many bodies, had to give those bodies enough thinking ability to survive.
The second mind the hive mind’s bodies had to have was the ability to function. For instance, they needed to be able to run and eat at the very least, so although the hive mind would eventually have one mind and many bodies, the individual bodies had to function, or what was the point?
The third mind would be the will of the hive mind. It would direct the many bodies to do what was necessary.
The thing was the only way the hivemind would be worth it is if it could do more with one mind and many bodies, than many bodies with individual minds. As far as the dungeon was concerned, this would only be true if the hivemind could cast spells with the draw essence channels spells. That actually severely limited which creatures would be worthwhile to make hive minds with. For instance, a hundred bears with one mind might be better brawlers, but they would not be better spell casters. The dungeon needed small, fast-moving creatures that could use the movement of their bodies to draw essence channels, or even better, small, moving creatures that could draw portions of essence channels.
The dungeon only had two options. Either small fast-moving birds, or squirrels. The problem with the birds was that birds were designed to fly in straight lines, whereas squirrels were designed to move erratically. Most essence channels were drawn erratically, so squirrels, with metallic hydrogen bones, were picked by the dungeon to be the hive mind. Each individual squirrel should be able to draw essence channels with their body, no matter how erratic the channels were, and thanks to the walking on air ability given by metallic hydrogen, they should be able to draw far bigger essence channels than even the immortals could make.
That said, the dungeon was having a very difficult time making an overmind with the squirrels. The dungeon wanted them to have a shared mind, even if making a brain squirrel might make the process of making a hive mind easier, the mages were smart and would be able to pick up the brain squirrel quickly and ruin the entire hive mind. The dungeon was determined to make the squirrels share an overmind, and that overmind would be the sage squirrel.
Authors note- Sorry for the late chapter. I am on the west coast till next month and boy is the time change throwing me off. I may also be posting wensday instead of tuesday next week, it just depends.
