Therina returned with everything for Styx around midday. The books were placed in a room where he could have one of the more dextrous monsters flip through the pages for him and allow him to read each page.
The moss was also placed in the sa room with the containers open. He couldn't physically touch move them, but he had been focusing on learning ways with how to interact with real object using mana tendrils and shown so progress.
The progress of dungeon expansion was much faster than it used to be, and he had already begun digging out giant cavities in a second floor for research on recreating environnts within them. He still had many areas he was lacking, such as life which can grow underground, and mana techniques to artificially alter the environnt.
One of the greatest limiting factors was sunlight, so until he could overco that limitation, he planned on causing plants to mutate and be able to survive off a substitute energy source. The main energy supplent is intended to be mana.
"How do you know all this stuff?" Therina asked as Styx walked her through the procedures and techniques he would employ to incite plants to mutate.
"I simply do."
"That doesn't answer anything. You have briefly described images and knowledge of a world not of this one. Your point and click thod is from there, is it not?"
"Hmm it is possible. I have knowledge of so things, but most lack the factor of personal identity which makes feel confused."
"Perhaps you ca from there."
"That is also possible, all dungeons had to co from sowhere, after all."
"We are taught that dungeons are randomly born from ambient mana trapped in caves."
"Just in your village, or as common knowledge?"
"Both, I think. Perhaps it is different elsewhere, but that was how it was taught in our village at least."
"Either way, it's wrong. The mana density in the current dungeon is not much different from outside of it, and it was even lower when the dungeon was new. Nothing is born from nothing, it must co from sowhere, whether that is from sowhere else, or from an equivalent amount of energy."
"It is most likely the system which presides over the world's system and manages leveling up which will take energy from sowhere to facilitate the generation of a new dungeon core. I can speculate either I was mixed in with this energy, the mories were, or just the knowledge. For now, it should be just knowledge and mories."
Therina paused at this speculation and tugged on her hair.
"Is there any way to find out?"
"So knowledge appears to be getting stronger as I level up, as if what is making "" is getting larger along with the rest of . We can only wait and see, but there are more important matters to currently attend to."
"What matters?"
"You still haven't brought in any extra manpower. I also need you to scout out the forest for a bit so I can start creating a more detailed map. I would also like to make a topographic map, but that may be being a bit too eager."
"A what map?" Therina asked while tilted her head in confusion.
"Nevermind, just go out there and capture so people for ."
Therina went to have a bath first as she hadn't had a proper one since she left. The cheapest rooms in inns didn't have them, and she was unwilling to use a shared bath with humans.
After cleaning herself, she then headed out of the dungeon and began wondering where she would capture so people for Styx.
Once she had left, Styx turned his attention to his new experintal areas on the second floor. The first room was circular, approximately 50m in diater and 20m tall. The ground was covered in loose dirt and so boulders.
There were several shroom gnos who were building square garden beds out of wood, while a couple others had freshly harvested flowers and other small grasses and saplings ready for replanting. The flowers were because of Styx's affixation to beauty, while the saplings and grass were due to their high resilience and higher likelihood to produce a successful result.
With a bunch of basic oil lanterns resting on the ground and producing a small amount of light in the room, mosses were placed along the base of boulders, while mushrooms, flowers, grass and several saplings were placed in their own garden beds.
There were three different types of flowers he was testing. One was a small pinkish red avora radmis, or so it is called in this world. They were like cherry blossoms, with two or three flowers blooming from the end of each stalk.
There was also a blue lotus, or royal ariches as they were called, and aqua ursula, which were a pure white or creamy-white spider lily that had nothing to do with water as the na implied.
The forest assassins and treant spirits did most of this finer work as they were far more dextrous than the clumsy shroom gnos.
Once everything was set up, Styx took over and first watered everything. He could see through his senses how so of the water was absorbed from the dirt, indicating that the plants were alive and functioning.
They weren't getting sunlight however, so he first used a weak mana infusion, trickling in the smallest amount he possibly could. The plants needed energy and wouldn't be able to photosynthesise, so he had to provide a supplentary energy and have the plants to adapt to it.
Mana was an incredible substance, as not only could the basic form of energy refract itself, but the sa process could happen in reverse and countless other ways.
The plants didn't have a mana network, so Styx created a pseudo one out of mana which began at their roots and extended up through the plant body, ending at every petal connection, leaf, or folds in the mushroom cap.
He constantly monitored the changes in the plants, which were nothing at first but eventually made so changes.
This appeared to be quick, but actually took several days. His attention was so focused that he didn't pay attention to anything else unless he was alerted to an intruder in the dungeon. This was generally just a wild animal or so low level monster, but a small pack of goblins that were bruised and battered had also invaded.
~~~~~
Of the plants that Styx was working on mutating, the moss was the first to adopt changes. The plant finally adopted the pseudo mana network he had built within its structure. He no longer needed to feed it mana as it began to absorb its own from the ground.
This realm, planet, or whatever it was, was large enough to house a seemingly endless number of kingdoms according to Therina, so Styx was under the belief that the mana stored within the earth was theoretically infinite. Even if it weren't, a room full of the moss would taking very little, even if its consumption was to increase by a hundred-fold.
One characteristic that Styx discovered was the moss started to take on a more silvery blue color, which was a bit more vibrant at the tips of its leaves and capsules that grew atop its stems.
Just like the moss, the mushrooms began to adapt to their mana networks very quickly as well. They also grew larger, much larger, than they were before. They were originally about 4 8cm tall, and now they were a giant 10 15cm.
They also had a strange emission from the gills as occasional blue phosphorus motes of light drifted down briefly before vanishing. Even the gills themselves were emitting the faintest of blue glows from the cavity between each one.
The grass and saplings were two polar opposite. The grass didn't die, but was still struggling to adapt to using mana as an energy source. The saplings took to a mana network quite well, but they all died without fail for reasons Styx couldn't fathom.
The flowers had struggled quite a bit too, nearly 90 percent of them simply dying. The remaining ones were beginning to show progress but were yet to beco fully independent. They appeared slightly more vibrant and a bit larger, but what was most surprising was how they ejected mana into the air.
The moss, grass and mushroom absorbed mana from the ground and would emit so into the air, but it was only tiny, miniscule amounts. The flowers on the other hand would output more mana than they absorbed. This was the main reason why they couldn't beco independent. They would emit too much mana and very quickly wither.
With the moss and mushrooms no longer needing his support, he focused on helping them grow and proliferate while spending his mana elsewhere. He had a treant spirit collect so of the wheat and cotton seeds Therina brought back from the village months ago.
He planted a small field of each, focusing on the sa mana infusion thod while creating a mana network inside each seed.
As they were seeds and not actual plants, he was unsure on the best way to create a mana network, so he created various different nucleuses inside the seeds. There were a hundred seeds of wheat and a hundred cotton, so he designed ten different nucleuses and gave each to ten wheat seeds and ten cotton seeds.
They were growing from seeds, so the process and verification would take much longer than the other plants which were forced to adapt or perish. Affecting it at the seed level was the most effective thod for forcing it to adjust to environntal factors as it would grow into it.
Styx felt like this was a good opportunity to level up again. He had an abundance of experience but had been restraining himself from levelling up until he had filled up his potential.
As a dungeon core, he was unsure whether his mana network differed from a living person such as Therina, another human or any other exotic race. He couldn't view his own mana network or any internal structures of his core, and his levelling up was different as well.
He could voluntarily level up or not as soon as the experience threshold was reached. He could even store additional experience points and even level up multiple tis at once should he choose to.
.
.
[
2,193 exp used to level up.
Lv. 7 -> Lv. 8
Accumulated skill experience bonus:
Mana Control ->
New Subskill: Mana Vein Creation
Dungeon Control ->
Basic Dungeon Construction ->
Trap Construction ->
Internal Resource Storage ->
Mining ->
]
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[
Species: Dungeon Core (Dungeon Master: None)
Na: Styx
Mana: 880/880
Exp: 3,477( )
Level: 8
Abilities:
Dungeon Creation
Mana Control
Mana Infusion
Mana Vein Creation
Dungeon Control
Dungeon Facility Construction
Biomass Converter 100 mana
Breeder 50 mana, 20 biomass
Storage Crate 10 mana, 10 physical material
Blast Furnace 100 mana, 20 stone
Storage Tank 20 mana, 20 physical material
Rotary Mana Engine 40 mana, 10 stone, 1 iron
Material Refiner 150 mana, 10 stone, 2 iron, 1 erald, 1 ruby, 1 athyst
Alchemy Table 200 mana, 5 stone, 10 iron, 1 ruby, 10 quartz
Basic Dungeon Construction
Scan 10 mana/m3
Blueprint Creation 5 blueprints
Blueprint Manufacturing 5 blueprints
ntal Projection 1 mana/min
Trap Construction
Bait 5 mana, 5 biomass
Spike Trap 20 mana, 10 stone
Pitfall Trap 10 mana, none
Arrow Trap 20 mana, 10 stone (5 on reload)
Weak Poison Gas 50 mana, 1 stone, 1 biomass (expendable)
Chaotic Space Trap 200 mana
Crushing Wall Trap 30 mana, 20 stone, 2 iron
Internal Resource Storage (49,977/102,400)
Physical Material Stone (30,000), Dirt (10,000), Biomass (785), Ardonite (1,200), Manasteel (37.045), Wolfbone Steel (11.988), Wood (114)
Liquid Material Water (7,829)
Mining
Basic Material Identification
Mineral Detection
Auto-mine
Overdrive
Resources:
Biomass 785
Stone 496,145
Ardonite 89,334
Dirt 112,055
Clay 72,400
Wood 114
Water 7,829
Manasteel 37.045
Wolfbone Steel 11.988
Monsters:
16x Miners ( x1, x4, x8, x3)
12x Shroom Gnos ( x1, x4, x7)
6x Stonerats ( x1, x5)
8x Forest Goblins ( x2, x6)
3x Forest Assassin ( x3)
5x Treant Spirit ( x1, x4)
Titles:
Level Suppressor, Lusty Dungeon
]
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[
Lusty Dungeon
Effects:
Reduced burden on host in breeding
Born monster stats 15%
Subject to random bouts of lust
]
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