Dungeon at the End of the Universe

In the end, I think I did reasonably well. While I left a small part of my mind to the task of expanding my Dungeon walls, the rest of me focused on more interesting endeavours. Like monsters.

For the first time since my rebirth as a Dungeon Core I had more than one type of monster to choose from. Additionally, this new kind wasn’t even something I had designed (mostly) from the ground up. Which meant that the first order of business was figuring out how these Wyld-trees even worked.

Yes, I basically did the equivalent of watching grass grow.

But! Before you go on judging me, hear me out. I think it’s thanks to me finally slowly adapting to my new nature, but I found I could just sort of ‘tune out’ the passage of time for the most part. It’s not quite the same as spacing out, it has more of the effect of a time-lapse to my perception.

Anyway, I watched grass grow. But it wasn’t grass that grew out of the little seeds I had planted. No, it was something much stranger.

They took the shape of… shrubs, but even that’s pushing it. From each seed, many spindly stalks of wood sprouted forth. They grew in all directions, as if trying to get as far away from each other as possible. And the strangest part were the bulbous growths that appeared almost every 20 to 30 centimetres. At first I thought it was some kind of disease that Faellen brought along with the seeds, but I needn’t have worried.

Once the strange plants (presumably) reached maturity, the drain on the ambient mana around them drastically increased. So much so even that I had to make some more to maintain balance. But what did they need so much of it for? Well, the bulbs that so far seemed quite random and inert lit up.

It was quite the spectacle, hundreds (maybe even thousands) of little balls lighting up at pretty much the same time. They even had some variety among them, even if most of them stayed around a bluish-green hue.

With my awe still high, I got to work on something new. I knew now what the Wyld-trees grew into, but Faellen had said something about their shape depending heavily on environment.

So, I selected one of my new bulb lights (name pending) and flooded the area around it with more mana than usual. Other than being interested in what would happen, it was also a good exercise for my Control.

Somewhat unsurprisingly, the glow from the plants bulbs increased, while also shifting into a more bluish tone. Conversely, when I did the opposite and tried my hardest to hold as much mana away from another bulb light, the plant dimmed and took on more of a green tone.

Of course, that wasn’t the end of it all. What I’d done up until then was only see how the plant reacted to changes once it was already grown. But what of a completely new seed that sprouted in these mana rich and mana starved areas?

I got to work on that as well, but seeing as I’d already watched grass grow once before I didn’t focus on it as much and instead waited properly.

My constructs, for all their faults, didn’t react at all to an increase or decrease in ambient mana. This likely didn’t meant they were unaffected, just that I could produce I large enough difference for now.

Which meant that if passive changes did nothing, a more forceful approach had to be taken. Mainly, infusing them with more mana directly.

I had no idea what this could cause, since the constructs were already made in this way. Would it allow me to modify them? Or would they improve themselves? Or maybe it’s just overload their stone bodies, sort of like frying an electric circuit. No use questioning it when I could just do it.

The result were… disappointing. Once more, I could not tell you if it actually had no effect or my power just wasn’t sufficient, but nothing visibly changed about my little magic robots.

Which meant it was back to experimenting on plants. The new varieties still hadn’t finishing growing by that point, so I focused on the good old glow bulbs.

Trying the same on them as I did the constructs, nothing could have prepared me for the result.

Upon the firs infusion of mana, the effect appeared the same as having higher ambient mana – a stronger glow. But why a continuous stream, things turned awry.

The wooden stalks of the shrubs turned sort of fleshy, soft and pulsating to an unknown rhythm. Then the entirety of it expanded a bit, and for a single calm moment everything seemed to fine. Until the plant burst in an explosion of gore.

It wasn’t completely the flesh and intestines you’d expect from an animal, but it also definitely wasn’t plant matter. And worst of all, it stunk. Even to my Dungeon Senses the smell was utterly horrid.

I Destroyed it as fast as possible. Once in my Create database, even the System simply labelled it as waste.

Lesson learned: don’t mess with mana and living beings.

The last thing I managed before my new Wyld-trees finished growing was designing a new construct.

I decided to work off of my first attempt, the rushed and incomplete humanoid. With no pressure from Faellen to quickly finish a quest, I could put in as much effort as I could.

The legs, arms, and head were actually there now, not just little nubs to suggest their existence. Then came the fleshing out. I had to work on not only getting roughly the right shape, but to try and make it at least somewhat realistic. Of course, I was no artist yet and only a beginner at sculpting. Thankfully, Control helped in translating the image in my mind’s eye onto reality.

The result was still far from the hyperrealistic statues of my old home-world, but spark was there. A simple inspection would reveal that a bunch of the proportions were simply wrong, but I was happy with it. And besides, it’s supposed to be a monster, so changes would be necessary.

As a final part of the creation process, I summoned forth an ungodly amount of mana. After all, I wouldn’t be using it just to animate my construct. As I flooded the chunk of Dungeon Stone in the shape of a humanoid, I whispered to the mana. One half, I begged to animate it as usual. The other half, it I begged to fix any small mistakes a made along the way.

Together they worked quite miraculously. The statue shifted ever so slightly, and then moved.

When I moved to check how the System called my new creation, I was pleasantly surprised. Even if I may have felt like the System wanted to add something to it, there was a sort of grudging respect there. It simply said ‘humanoid construct’. No adjectives, no nothing.

Happy, I at last turned to my two seeds that had by then matured.

The mana saturated one took the glow bulb idea to the next level. Instead of many spindly arms that each grew many smaller bulbs, this one did the opposite. At its centre was one big glowing bulb. Almost a ball, or perhaps a wizard’s orb. Its light, too, was different. It didn’t produce the same constant glow as the other plants. Rather the light in the bulb-orb swirled and pulsed, creating all manner of shapes.

In contrast, the mana starved version was almost a normal plant, just a regular bush. It still had the bulbs, but they were shrunken, more like little nubs. It even had leaves! Admittedly, the leaves were red and not the usual green, but I suppose that makes sense. And also serves as a reminder that Faellen really wasn’t exaggerating when it said their form depends heavily on the environment. I suppose the light from the other plant must’ve been enough to change it.

But there was still one last thing to check up on. My outer wall. Throughout all this time I’ve kept one thread of thought focused on expanding it, and boy did it pay off.

Sure, the thicker it was the slower it grew, that was just the unfortunate side effect of existing in 3D space. But even despite that, the progress was amazing. It’s hard to measure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it reached as much as a dozed metres in thickness.

If that doesn’t stop the spacial crack from reaching into my Dungeon, then I don’t know what will.