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Chapter 38
🕑 Added 2021-11-04 06:58:19 +0000 UTCCharacter Screen
Name: -
Gender: Male
Level: 2
Class: -
Race: Undead Giant-Ant
Title: Dungeon-Reject
Health: 150/150
H-Regen: 0.16/sec
Mana: -/-
M-Regen: 0/sec
Stamina: 160/160
S-Regen: 0.15/sec
Basic Stats
Strength: 14
Wisdom: 5
Vitality: 17
Intelligence: 5
Dex: 14
Willpower: 5
[Undead]? What Was that supposed to mean? The Core wondered that for a brief moment before looking back at the creature which bore that title. It stood on nothing but stilts at the moment, no flesh holding anything together, the only reason for it still standing being the very obvious veins of Mana holding it together. There was nothing natural about that, no way that the energy could normally interact with physical matter in such a way. The creature was not quite alive yet not quite dead. It was in a state of in-between. It was… [Undead].
And the title spoke of caution, the Core never having seen it before. It had been a [Dungeon-Born] mere minutes ago yet had turned into an [Dungeon-Reject] instead. The title refused to explain itself, the creature resisting the Core’s prods more and more as time went on. It was growing angry, slowly becoming more and more berserk. The whistling of air moving through the exoskeleton increased in intensity. There was nothing stopping that damned sound, the tinge of Mana in its creation making it deafening for the Entity. It just wanted it to stop.
But it didn't. Instead, the creature did nothing but advance, its steps being janky at the start but slowly itself out as a fearsome runner, closing the distance between the first enemy within a moment’s notice. The Core, fearing that the Black Mana could spread, stopped any impacts from starting up. A piece of Physical Arcane was created at a moments notice, reinforced just barely and then swung right into the enemy’s skull. The acceleration wasn't there yet but the constant push given by the dungeon allowed it to dig right through the dead tissue.
Yet the creature didn't stop moving. Its life had barely been hit, the hole in the head doing nothing by angering it further. The Core was able to hold it down, refusing to release it from the spear embedded into the ground. It trashed around as much as it could, attempting to free itself without any preservation. More damage to it was done to every move that the [Undead] made. Yet it was quick enough. The black Mana was oozing off the creature. With time it could hit the others. It needed to die.
A single spear didn't hit it, the loss of a single part of its body doing nothing. So… everything needed to be destroyed. Using the power of a large stone, the Core manifested two hundred kilos worth of Mass just above the creature, letting it then fall and crush the [Undead]. While it might have stayed in the path of movement, even in its later minutes of unlife, the destruction of the body was seemingly enough. The [Appraisal] brought up nothing but shards, leading the Entity to truly believe that it had succumbed to its wounds.
Absorbing all the Mana flying around, just to make sure that nothing would hit the creatures at random, the Core made sure that everything was purified before trying anything else. There was nothing else on its mind, the Entity lacking any desire to repeat the previous scenario. It had required so much energy to kill one. If even two more were hit with the process, and if it turned out that it could truly spread among the creatures with ease, problems of a massive calibre would arise. It would be a fight worth writing down if possible. Not that the Core thought it would be able to since it was most likely a fight it would lose.
… This was what the title meant, wasn't it? [The Queen of Hollows]. That [Undead] had certainly been hollow while also being so much more powerful than the alive variants. A whole army of such beings… It was more than a little frightening to think about. The Core understood that was likely what it was up against, yet it refused the notion to some degree. Desperation was like that, trying to make it think happier scenarios, ones where the ability to use the Black Mana was limited to some arbitrary condition. Yet, that wasn't close to the truth, was it now? The Queen had been able to hold each and every one of its creatures by their Core, letting a small amount of Black Mana seep into their Veins. If each was allowed to grow into one of the [Undead], it would be the end for the Core.
And the enemy likely knew that already. It was able to see through the connection, see that the creature took time to be killed. It wouldn’t be surprising if that act was continued in the future. Strategy needed to be had traps needed to be made. Everything needed a counter-move if the Core was to have any chance of getting into the next month unscathed. So long had passed since the last large attack. One could only begin to start thinking of how many more enemies had been created in that time.
The Core was starting to lose that small bit of hope it had left. But that was par for the course, it supposed. How would it continue the attacks if every return implied the chance of another undead slipping into its ranks? The chances of such were high, after all, the Queen already showing off that she could hide the Black Mana down on levels where it took work to notice.
But the Entity had also witnessed another fact. It saw how it grew when Mana was returned to the veins, how it would react instinctively to more power. That could be used, the predictable move creating a balance more even. It would require time to do it right yet… it could be done. The Core could work with this! There was still a chance, albeit a small one, that discord could reign down on the enemy with the Entity itself left to be removed from ruin! Oh, a glorious day it would be where the ideas and foundations of planning would show off their effects. But first… above all else, the Core needed the creature out again. Another twenty-four hours outside would do the enemy a world of bad, progress likely lost.
While the Queen ant seemed to have gotten the Black Mana on the enemy without their notice, causing a whole world of problems with it, there was still a very large part of the army that had been destroyed. It might have been less than ten or above a hundred. There was no way to know. The Core only knew that enough had been destroyed to make the Entity reach a whole two more levels. And more would be gained. There would be no refuge in staying at a constant stage of power. Progress was the only way forward.
One of the five ants made to venture out into the wild had been killed. With the extra [Willpower] being attained in the last excursion, this required the Core to make another two creatures for the group to follow. The process itself was not hard to do, though the Core made sure to focus on the fact that it needed to allow the Mana from outside to come in again. The Entrance wasn't as efficient on that front any more, the barrier still slowing down entering Mana to some degree. That needed to be worked on when it had the chance. Until then, there were other instructions to make out.
The group of [Giant-Ants] had shown quite the endurance throughout their travels, to a point where the Core could only look at them as a group of idiots. They were perhaps idiots without intending to be, the faults lie in the way that their bodies adapted to good conditions in the environment, but they were nonetheless at fault for having those bodies to begin with. Luckily, instincts were not above all else when the Core was involved, the [Dungeon-Born] title allowing orders to mean more than the conscious mind could adhere to. The body’s nerves could be manipulated with words, the input being disregarded to some level. When the Entity demanded victory, the creatures would ignore pain to gain the desired outcome no matter what. It was the same principle when the Core ordered them to stop using the constant circulation while outside of its domain.
It was a simple order but one that would give them a better fighting chance on the outside. There would still be deprivation issues, yet the side-effects of it would likely only show later on. At least over a day before it became serious enough to see after the fact. That’s what the Core hoped for, at least, not having tried out the orders before. There was a chance that certain other conditions would force the energy out early on or it could be the energy had properties that forced it to cycle through after a while no matter what. The Core had no real way to tell with personal experience, its way of life forcing the constant movement to begin with. If such a thing came to be, it was likely that the orders given to the creatures would harm them more than cause benefit, only making the more dire consequences sit an hour more out.
With that, however, the creatures were sent out, still having the order of returning before twenty-four hours had passed. The [Giant-Ants] had some innate way of knowing the time, the Core had realized later on. While it personally knew much about what the current time was, since the [Moss] to the side revealed such facts without any hardship, there were still issues with making sure it was precise. And… the ants had no such measurements yet they could still tell it easily. How? There had never been any hints of a circadian rhythm with them, though that might also have been due to the power of the Mana-Environment. With every bit of tissue constantly being held up in its prime state, there was no need to spend time healing it passively, everything already up to code. Nothing was impossible when the Core was around, no matter how improbable that sounded.
There were things that were still out of reach, yes, but progress was clearly moving smoothly ahead. There would be bumps in the road, there would be points where it would seem to end, and there would be loops that made everything seem impossible to figure out yet the Entity knew that the true limit would never be reached. It understood little of the grander world, yet it had known about gods since the start. It knew they were beings of omnipotent power, yet they were still of one mind, just like the Entity was. If they could gain and wield such control over the world then so could the Core do the same with time? That was the goal, at least. To gain control of the God of Wisdom and use their power to let the Core know everything there was. It would be the God of Cores.
But there were still many things that had to be accomplished before that. While looking at progress as an abstract thing, one that worked over thousands of years in a grand landscape of mystical waves and paths that lead nowhere and everywhere, hardly any of that made sense to the Core at the current moment. It was down in a single position on a single path trying to figure out a single issue that could be further divided up into hundreds of even smaller issues, each having the potential to make everything stop before the Entity could reach anything that would even resemble what had even seen earlier in those grand visions.
How was it to survive the Queen’s assaults? How would it make sure that danger would not come to the creatures? What actions would be taken to make sure that any small particles of Black Mana would be allowed inside without the Core’s notice? Matching tht up with the ideas of expansion to make space, it became much more obvious why so many things needed to be done. Without everything else working out as well, it would fall. The chances of the impossible happening with every step, no matter how much time was spent perfecting the game-plan, was so low that the Core couldn't yet comprehend the minuscule size, never having seen anything like it. The particle was relative to another particle. How would that even be described?
The time had come to take some steps, however. Introspection was just as bad as trying to think about the grand paths. The Core needed to act needed to move. Without ever trying, the success rate would be as close to zero as possible. There was nothing more stupid than staying stale. And that fact had been known throughout its entire life. If it had accepted the low chances from the start, accepted the void of no sensations without issue, would it have ever found the magnificent world around it? No, it wouldn't. Instead, it would still be wallowing in pity, sitting in that eternal darkness, no energy being put in or out. The ants passing by wouldn't even have noticed it, so minuscule a presence it had. There would be no changes at any point. Everything would be known in its little world yet the outside would be as foreign as anything. It would have a theory yet never be able to reach out for it, the Core likely finding it impossible to ever truly try.
Yet such a time had never been developed. It had pressed on when nothing seemed to work, never stopping no matter how much it hurt to continue, no matter how much its mind had screamed for release. And look where it was now, a domain all for itself with creatures, plants, and materials that it could spend years studying. But before such a time came around, it would have to defend what had been gained. It would need to create more so that what already was could be safer. There were methods in place already. Those threads just needed to be pulled once again. And the Entity was more than ready for it.
What project needed to be worked on first? That was quite the question that could be asked. The obvious answer would be to fix the entering method for the returning attackers. There were worries that immediately letting them get into the main room would be a danger to everybody. So that had to be changed around with an immediate measure of security. In other words, the Core had to start the creation of another room. It wouldn't be the room like the like cavern that the Core had already made for itself or anything. No… it would be on a smaller scale.
And it would have to be divided up into several parts as well to make sure that each returning creature would have a good distance between each other if there came a point where one was affected with the Black Mana. Preparations for each of these separators would have to be made into the shape of the room since the countermeasures for any alarms being triggered would have to be the crushing of whoever was inside that split entry. Rock crushing them from above was the obvious answer to that, though, the mechanisms for it falling down would have to be thought about extensively.
Simply making the stone turn into rubble by taking out larger amounts of Mana at the same time wouldn't be quite the smartest choice, since that would simply allow for the material to splinter to a point where there was a chance that the creature wouldn't be killed to begin with. Instead, a hanging mechanism had to be made, something that held up the rock without being a part of it. The Core just stoel the concept of a coat-hanger and used that, even if… it didn’t know where that- Nope! It wasn’t starting on that now. No time was being lost at the current moment because of that. It refused the very notion. It had ideas in its head that came with peculiar points. They would be used but not questioned. That was the way of life.
These split-up parts of the entrance would likely stand side-by-side working as some tight corridors. It would have to be wide enough for all the ants to stand comfortably inside but not close enough to make it possible to take steps to the sides. The creature needed to be killed by anything dropped from the top, after all. Which… now that the Core thought about it, would have to be at least three meters above the ground. Some momentum was required to make sure they would die, the Core starting to think that the level four [Giant-Ants] had an actual chance of surviving the ordeal. It was low but it could happen. So, overkill was a good step.
What was there to stop the creatures from simply moving forward and back in the corridors? Would there be some mechanism stopping that? The ideas of entrances and exits were quite common to the Core since that had been used so many times before, yet the idea of being able to open and close it without any issues was quite hard. Just how was it meant to make that work? The Entity supposed it could brute force it by making a thick layer of [Stone] appear at each end of the small corridor, yet doing that at ten different places at once would require quite the amount of time and effort to make work. The resources wouldn't exactly scale up well either. Something else had to be thought of. Something actually substantial with larger creations.
Therein came the idea of using Physical Arcane. It was quite the sturdy material, after all. When properly manifested and reinforced, it would use no Mana at all to keep up. What if, some rectangular holes would be created at the start of the corridors. Each hole would be about five meters deep. At the bottom would be a square created through Physical Arcane. It would be reinforced with about Seventy-five Mana, more than enough to hold up a ton or three. Then a large, five-meter tall and one and a half meter wide brick of stone would be set on top. Whenever the corridors need to be closed off, the Core would simply spend Mana making the Physical Arcane push it up. With a whole meter of stone still being in the ground, it would be just about impossible to escape the corridors early. And when the Core then wanted the corridors opened again, it would simply order the Arcane Materials to slowly move down. Would the costs be high? The initial one definitely would, even if it likely would come close to revealing the pure pain that had come from making the panels around the Domain. Though… that would need to be done again with the new entrance. Some minor pain was felt with that.
Moving on with the idea of corridors, the Core was beginning to have the idea finalized in its head. It would be one long end, split into five where each creature could stand. Once entered, Physical Arcane would be used to stop anybody from leaving until inspections was completed. With each being in a separate corridor, it would allow a swift, risk-free killing of anybody infected with the Black Mana. Anybody that passed the inspection, however, would be allowed free access to the Domain above.
The Entity was still happy with the idea of the doors on each end of the corridors. Since they could be independently moved, it would allow for only one end to be opened at a time. That would certainly bottleneck any would-be intruders. And with the sheer thickness, no creature would be able to dig through in the time it would require for the Entity to drop the stone on their heads. It was a foolproof plan.
However, there was still the question of where exactly the corridor would lead up to when entering the Domain. The Core had sketched just about everything but that detail in its mind, still not sure where it would be optimal. The immediate thought was to simply have it in the middle, but that would be impractical since the Entity was also-
Oh, how it had forgotten that detail! The Core had still remained in the middle of the room, completely ignoring the reason for those panels being created, to begin with. It was supposed to be done in an effort to let it stay over by the Moss since that would allow a great distance from the entrance. How distracted it had been as of late, forgetting such a vital detail in the plans. If only more focus could be made next time.
Rectifying earlier plans of transportation, the Core ordered one of the [Giant-Ants] to carefully move the Entity over to the middle of the Moss farm, where there had already been created a new pedestal for it. There were no real decorations put on it since not a single intelligent soul other than the Core would see it, but it worked perfectly anyway. The middle was quite deep, making it near impossible for an ant to bite at it without first destroying the sides. There was a thought about just sealing itself off completely yet some instinct rejected that notion instantly. It wondered why but did not question it that hard. Trying to figure out its own secrets was the way to self-destruction. It had seen what happened when it dug too deep into its own thoughts and it knew what the following pain was like. Staying still and accepting its own ideas at face value was the best way to progress.
It wanted to see an oak tree in its domain, wanted to smell it, and around the branches high in the air. It did not want to know why this was and why it remembered childhood filled with memories of brave climbing. It would only lead to pain. Blocking it out was the best option left, lest days or weeks would be wasted away just hoping that it would dissipate.
How much time had passed since the creatures left? One hour exactly, if the [Moss] was to be trusted fully. That left twenty-three hours before the new entrance needed to be finalized. Which did cause some troubles since the Core still needed another detail covered. The excavation-related ways to get inside from outside the Domain.
For it had not truly thought about that detail, instead of having focused so much about the travelling between the room and the domain already in place. It had never wondered how it was going to connect the new room up to the outside and much less where it wanted to do it. There were… thoughts about how to do it in a way that wouldn't simply leave the Core with another entrance that needed protection. But… there were some grander thoughts on how to do it, now that it thought about it.
The first idea was to simply hook it up just beside the entrance already in place. It would stop the Core from having to explain a route that it barely understood itself to the creature that would be returning home in twentyish hours. And the closeness to the original exit and entrance would also make it much easier to understand for all others. Though… perhaps that was a flaw. The [Queen of Hollows] was a smart creature, no matter how little the Core wanted to accept that. With what had been shown off as of late, it was more and more obvious that it was smarter than the Entity as well, able to wield magic barely understood. It could communicate through Mana on longer distances without there being any obvious threads holding the two ends together. How did it work? There was certainly an answer to that question but it was hardly one which would be told easily.
Exploiting multiple openings was something the Core found hard to do in practice yet it was something that the creature known for its attacks was more than likely able to do without any hardships. Splitting up its army in two, as an example, would hardly impede the current from flowing just as normal. But for the Core to split it up in two? That would be just as dumb as giving her a direct entrance without resistance.
No… making the two entrances side by side would be stupid. The queen knew that one was present yet the other could be there in secret. The ant only knew of the Core’s one location and not any others. If it were to dig to another cave close by, the intelligent ant would surely not question another hole in a wall, right? There was little to no reason for the queen to have memorized every pattern close by, making it a far more viable option. With less of a chance to be attacked from that front, the Core would be able to get by by only letting a smaller part of its defence-force stay down there. Though… it would not hurt to have a little assistance as well. Beyond the doors that would lead into the mind part of the domain, it wouldn't hurt to have a layer of [Blood-Moss] covering the entire ground. With how much space was required to move the ants up a whole floor, an enemy would easily be able to fall victim to the Moss before ever reaching the top. It would be glorious.
But first, the cavern needed would have to be found. While the Core might have known much about the cave just beside the entrance already created, it knew little of those beside it and further out. And that was exactly what it did need to know, lest it would never be able to create a tunnel over to it, to begin with. Now… through the power of gathering up Mana, burst-fires weer had, shooting out Mana in every side. It required time and effort, not much able to be seen at first. yet the Core was not one that gave up easily, never stopping in its pursuit. Each burst took over eighty Mana just to see, and much more if the immediate sight seemed interesting. But nothing was without potential at first, forcing the Core to use a hundred Mana per burst. that certainly did nothing but create even more time wasted not being able to do much. Taking care to not overstrain the container which held the energy made it even worse.
Yet time showed its through gain and a cave was found. It was nearly seventy meters away straight out, yet there was nothing but rock in-between. Through the other bursts of Mana used, it was clear that one could get to it quite easily when at the original entrance, though it would require quite the overly complex route. One would certainly not stumble upon it from random wandering, at the very least. The Core felt secure with that choice.
Now came the hard part. Starting out the digging.
