The caverns are mine. All of it. Every shaft, collapsed tunnel, rusted rail, and forgotten crevice that spiderwebs across the three floors of the old mana stone mine, they now pulse with my presence as my tendrils line the walls right under the surface. The moment the last corridor's stone was claimed, I felt the shift— in my being.
It was subtle at first, a tension deep in my crystal core, like a muscle stretching after a long slumber. Then it hit all at once: a surge of mana, a flood of sensation. My crystalline body thrums as though every facet has been struck by a tuning fork. I'm growing. No—advancing.
I focus inward, inspecting my form. My core was once the size of a large gemstone, barely ten centimeters across. Now it has expanded beyond a third of a meter in diameter. And with that growth comes power. The amount of mana I can store and manipulate has more than doubled. It isn't just a matter of scale—it's qualitative. Sharper control. Faster response. Deeper instinct.
"I must have advanced a stage," I think.
The idea both thrills and unsettles me. Advancement implies some kind of system, a hierarchy I don't yet understand. What stages are there? What comes after this? How many others exist who can grow as I do? Can non-dungeon entities also grow like me?
No answers come, but new questions keep bubbling up like a spring from the stone.
I feel intrinsically that I'm in the third step, that the next will be harder and likely invoke some kind of significant qualitative change. But how did I get to the third step without advancing to the second?
Clarity strikes. "The surge of strength after I woke up from unconsciousness when I overexpended my mana… I was certainly stronger after that. I must have just not realized it since I was unconscious."
"But power… huh? I wonder how far I can go. I'm getting giddy just thinking about it," I chuckle inwardly.
While expanding, I finally claimed the exit tunnel—the one the bats use to come and go. It's narrow, partially obstructed by fallen rocks and support beams. Faint light spills down from the opening, a cold silver glow that turns warm and golden during the day.
I send a flesh tendril forward, curious to see the surface, to feel the grass.
It's a mistake.
The moment the tendril touches open air, pain sears through my mind. Not sharp. Not overwhelming. But dull and burning, like hot coals pressed into skin and left there. My attention snaps to the violated nerve endings, and I yank the tendril back instinctively.
The appendage twitches, sizzling at the tip.
So… sunlight is bad. Very bad.
It doesn't hurt in the traditional sense. Not like breaking a limb or being stabbed. It's more like having a very slow, deep sunburn over every inch of a limb—and being fully aware of every cell as it burns. Unpleasant, yes, but not debilitating. Not even distracting to my strange crystal mind. Just… constant and unpleasant. Enough to grab my awareness, but also enough to quickly burn the tendril to ash if I leave it out for a couple of minutes.
I suppose that's a perk of not having hormones anymore. My pain responses are completely clean—pure data.
My mind curls inward slightly, my core pulsing in thought.
Still, good to know. No surfacing during daylight. Maybe ever, since technically moonlight is just reflected sunlight and I have no idea if there are moons or if there are multiple.
"The current core room is getting cramped with how much I've grown; it also doesn't feel like a good spot anyway. I should eventually relocate to the depths of the caverns. But not just yet," I ponder.
My mind turns again to mana—specifically, how to shape it.
I'd seen something strange a few days earlier: a massive bat with a wingspan nearly eight times that of the others had flown out near the cave's exit. As it glided past a cluster of snakes slithering in the entrance, it released a slicing arc of wind from its mouth—a blade of compressed air that severed a snake's heads clean from their body.
Wind magic!
The sight stunned me. Not just because it proved intelligent utilization of mana in a creature, but because it opened a door I hadn't considered before.
If a bat can do that… Why can't I?
So I try.
And I fail.
For days.
Mana flows within me. I can mold it into shapes, send it into stone and flesh, power my expansions, even absorb and convert corpses. But the moment I try to form it into an element—into air, fire, anything—it resists me.
I try pulling air currents together, condensing pressure. I try vibrating mana like sound. I imagine scythes of wind and walls of air. But all I manage after hours of focus is a breeze. A faint breeze.
Not even enough to wake a bat. Pathetic.
I don't get angry. Not really. Emotions now are like muted colors—still present, but soft. Still, the frustration is… notable.
I watch the large bat whenever it moves. Twice more, it strikes out with mana. It always launches the same attack when threatened—Wind Blade. It's clearly intelligent. Dominant. Probably the Alpha bat in this cave system.
If I absorb it, though… Can I learn that skill?
I don't hesitate once the thought appears, afterall I have all the visual data I need by now.
The plan is simple. Let it return to the cavern after hunting. Then disturb it and bring down the sky once it's in the air.
I craft dozens, even hundreds of stone spikes—long, thin, and heavy. Each suspended above the bat's usual roost using thin stone stems. It takes hours to shape them just right, ensuring they won't fall prematurely.
When the bat finally returns, belly bloated with a night's hunt, I disturb the rocky area it's perched on. The bat takes to the air, and I snap the support stems.
The spikes fall in a cone, starting from the edges and narrowing inward as the bat flaps to escape; it releases a wind blade instinctively, destroying a few in its path—but there are too many.
As the bat gets caught near the center, two pierce its wings. Then one its back. Another through the chest as it spirals through the air to its death.
It drops like a rock.
Probably because it was impaled by rocks…
I feel it die as its corpse rams into the thousands of sharp stone nails that litter the floor of the cave.
The mana absorption is different this time.
Normally, corpses simply feed energy into my core, then dissolve. This one… resists. It has structure. Layers of intent within its flesh. Something the others lack.
Then it unfolds in my mind as I slowly absorb it.
A profile.
Tier 1, Stage 2: Sonic Blade Bat.
It's the first time I've seen a creature's tier and stage like this—like the universe has decided this one is worth categorizing.
I know its biology. The organ that allows it to compress air and shape it. The air sacs that store pressure. The bone structure that supports rapid turning and slicing motion.
So much information… and none of it helps me cast wind magic.
I feel disappointed, but not surprised.
I'm not a bat. I might have a core, but I don't have lungs. I don't have vocal cords or other organs.
But maybe… I can make one.
I turn my attention to the fleshy material in one of the side chambers. It's biological tissue—my own creation—grown like muscle over stone, used to interact with organic matter or test shapes before committing them to summoned creatures.
I try to recreate the bat.
The first attempt slumps to the floor.
It pulses, then collapses into a puddle of shimmering ooze.
Too soft. Not enough structural reinforcement. No skeletal framing.
The second one stands for a few seconds, flaps once, then ruptures.
Pressure organ failure. I need to shape the sound chamber last, not first.
The third tries to fly. One wing detaches.
I don't stop. Each failure teaches me something new. Each misstep is another line in a blueprint that's slowly forming in my mind.
My core-mind, crystalline and precise, has enough "threads" of thought now that I advanced to allocate a few to new menial actions like before.
I was already automating body cleanup. Any organic matter that dies in my territory will be processed and absorbed without my direct attention.
I now began to automate basic tunnel shaping, leaving an "expansion directive" running in the background but prioritizing cleaning up loose rubble, old debris, as well as widening and condensing the stone within the tunnels. This was not absorbing it like prior, but reinforcing it.
I'm not a person anymore. I'm a system, a dungeon. I need to think outside human limits. A neutron star is essentially the most compressed version of Iron to exist, I just need to do the same to stone. Obviously not to that extent… 1 gram of something that dense would tear itself through the floor and likely wouldn't stop till it hit the world's core. Also, the mana required isn't even something I could fathom.. I'm more than content with hard to break walls. Gotta stay protected and all.