Chapter 86

Chapter 86

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The Dungeon, Medea Island, The Kalenic Sea

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When I felt Wave push the monster core up against MY core, I was relieved. Keeping Instincts pushed up against the edge of my core had been getting harder and harder to maintain. For all that it couldn't innovate, it was merciless at exploiting and punishing the slightest weaknesses it could find in the wall of mana I built around it.

FINALLY! GET IN THERE, YOU LITTLE PIECE OF SHIT. I projected, pushing with every fiber of willpower I could scrape together. Suddenly changing tactics from defensive to offensive like that, with no build-up, threw the simple soul. It tried desperately to hold against my advancing mana, to no avail. I had too much mana under my control compared to it, and now that there was somewhere else it could go...

With an imagined pop, the soul named Instincts slipped from the dungeon core and into the monster core.

This entire process took less than a second. Good thing, too, as the monster core fell away moments after it was pressed against the dungeon core. The connection between the two cores was severed, and I was alone.

I had WON.

As much as I wanted to possess the skeletons on the Seventh and have them dance for joy in their traditional manner, I had far more pressing concerns.

I let my consciousness expand throughout the dungeon once again, quickly scanning through the floors. A few things happened.

Firstly, every single sapient Child had a visceral reaction to my presence. They all did one of three things. A decent chunk wept for joy, and the most pious fell to their knee-equivalents as they began fervently praying. The final group started partying. From the looks of things, most of my Children would be part of one celebration or another for the foreseeable future.

Secondly, one being on the seventh floor froze at the touch of my presence on her mind.

The human.

Well. Something was going on there I wasn't going to address at the moment. There was a Child in far more immediate trouble.

I fixed my gaze on Wave, who had collapsed below the stone hands holding my dungeon core next to the now-occupied monster core. The most mana-dense place he could possibly be. His body was immensely oversaturated, and mutations were running wild. Plenty of flailing unnecessary limbs and... other things. Well, I'd wanted to wait for this, but if any monster in the dungeon deserved this, Wave did.

After a few minutes of corralling the wild mana in his body, I pushed my intent into it. I silently begged forgiveness from the unconscious monster as I, once again, warped the very fabric of his being. I merged the ridiculous number of arms and legs into four, the front two doubling as wings. I increased the hardness and density of his scales and bones, then changed his proportions to match his new form while also trying to keep the deftness and mobility of his foreclaws in mind. I cribbed the design of the tail from a certain Night Fury as I extended it to almost twice the length of his torso, which would give him better agility in the air.Follow current novels at novelhall.com)

I tried to keep the arrangement of his horns mostly the same since I had to change the shape of the rest of his head. I added a few more, smaller, horns to the 'crown' he already possesses and one emerging from the tip of his nose. Almost off-handedly, I made him semi-aquatic. Gills that sat flush against his neck in flight could open wide to let him breathe underwater, and some changes to his wings should make them work just as well underwater. The tail would work well there, so I left it mostly alone.

One of the most mana-consuming parts of any transformation is changing their size, so I used the remaining mana to make him as big as possible, ensuring his core was sized appropriately for his body. I didn't want this to happen again, and the easiest way to prevent it was to give him a bigger capacity to handle mana. I threw in an Air affinity and increased his Ice affinity from the low-level one he'd had since his time as a snowbold to a fully-fledged affinity.

Ultimately, I looked down upon the newly risen Wyvern with satisfaction. He was still unconscious, and it'd be best to let him rest. As Paragon approached to inspect Wave's new form, I turned my attention away. I'd talk to the new Wyvern about his new body when he woke up. Either way, that only took a few hours, and my next task was a necessary one.

I still hadWAY too much mana in my core and accretion disk. Dangerous amounts. Wave's transformation had mostly used the mana he'd already absorbed, with a little extra that he absorbed during the process. I needed to get rid of most of this mana as quickly as possible, and I knew just how to do it.

I raised a new island for the future Elemental Isles. This one would be Air. As such, it was more of a spire that burst from the sea. There was little beach, and the Island was mostly hollow, filled with tunnels and passages of all shapes and sizes. I blew some wind through it and felt satisfied at the keening groan it gave off. I made sure there were plenty of chambers of various sizes and gave the Island an enchantment to keep its peak in eternal cloud cover. I named it Zephyr Peak.

The next one would be Terra Island. Not to be confused with Terror Island, which is an important distinction.

For this Island, I raised a massive slab. I had no doubt that this would be the largest of the islands. There was a single, small beach at the base of the vast, vertical cliffs that covered every other side of the Island. These were treacherous cliffs, covered in loose rocks, and their bases littered with sharp, pointy rocks. Unlike Zephyr Peak, this Island had only one entrance to its labyrinthine cave system. An enormous sinkhole in the dead center of the Island. There was no easy access point for this sinkhole. If one wished to explore it, they'd have to find their own way down.

I switched gears back to Zephyr for a moment. I carved an incredibly steep staircase from the beach around the mountain's base, up at least 200 meters of the mountain. There it met the lowest of the carved caves. I inscribed details, carved out some bricks, and squared off walls. In these carvings, I crafted an intricate story in runes and friezes of the monks who once lived here, seeking enlightenment in how the wind wove through the caves.

He was airborne. He opened his jaws to shout in joy but found another sound passing his lips. Blooming from deep in his chest, then vibrating up his neck, Wave let out a true Roar. The noise satisfied some deep part of himself, even as the impulse passed, and he started whooping and laughing.

He could get used to this.

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The Dungeon, Medea Island, The Kalenic Sea

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I watched Wave fly about with a knowing fondness that came from my memories of possessing Gull back when I first woke up. That first flight, the air rushing past your wings... it was incomparable. I let him be. He'd work it out of his system eventually.

I turned my attention back to Paragon, my Core Guardian, and now that he had my full attention, he said the words I could feel burning within him. "Contractor, I apologize for my misidentification of your symptoms. I spread false information through the dungeon of your situation and beg your forgiveness." I'd have blinked if I could have. He must have caught my incomprehension since he then clarified. "I spread that you were transforming to the next stage of your existence, as manabeings do. I had no idea you were merely spawning."

I froze, then glanced back at the monster core on the ground. I... guess from the outside, it could look like that. Within that monster core, I could feel Instincts raging. It was a soul in the wrong container and had no concept of how such an existence should work. Its natural ability to mimic and crib off of me was useless here as it flailed within the monster core.

I mean, That's not quite correct, but... it's close enough. I answered the manabeing, who was slightly confused but stayed silent. I pushed up the ground beneath the core, forming a stand for Instincts. This one I shaped as three hands, cradling the oval spheroid core from below. The core itself was unfaceted, as all monster and human cores were, instead bearing a completely smooth surface.

I reached out a tendril of mana, attempting to form a connection between the mana in the air and the monster core. I didn't dare connect it directly to my core in case it could ride the connection to return to the dungeon core.

The mana touched the core but then was immediately repelled. I tried again, forming the connection faster this time, and wondered if it'd somehow become immune to my mana. This attempt proved that hypothesis was false. I connected briefly and felt as Instincts violently rejected my mana.

Fine. If it wanted to wallow in its core, it could. It was helpless in there, anyway. I'd check in on it occasionally, but until it was willing to talk, I certainly wasn't going to force it to listen.

Leave my... child... alone, for now. I said to Paragon. It's in a crucial stage of development and needs isolation. I felt a pulse of acknowledgment and suppressed curiosity, then turned back to the dungeon.

In my absence... A lot had happened. From what I gathered from the memories of my Children, the remains of the 'Hero' group managed to get past the Metal Sprite Guardian on the Fifth Floor. They then proceeded to blitz through the Sixth and Seventh, using a stolen map to bypass the exploration of the Sixth. They took advantage of the Drake-kin's inexperience and relatively weaker strength to slaughter their way through the Seventh twice until one was killed during an ambush on the Eighth.

That death split the group. One woman turned back, then was captured by the Isid-Haythem-Clich raid. The Drake-kin supplied them with single-use teleport crystals, which... I had mixed feelings about it.

Yes, the decision makes sense. I can see their reasoning; let the woman out of the dungeon as fast as possible. But in doing so, she revealed that I had placed traps to intercept standard teleport crystals if they somehow managed to charge them after passing through the draining barrier at my entrance. I would also need to impress on them just how much the weapons they made would be worth to the humans to make sure they don't end up in an 'ignorant native' archetype.

After that, one of the two remaining humans was killed when Pyry broke the bridge between the First and Second Peaks. The final human... well, his determination was impressive. Alone, wounded, with dwindling supplies, he somehow managed to get all the way to the Ninth on his own, then survive there for days. It was only thanks to the human's choice to move upstream instead of downstream that he encountered Wave and his little 'monster party.'

Watching the memories of Towers and Aston showed it was a close battle, but even if they were weaker, they were fresh. The human was slow, exhausted, and wounded.

I quickly scanned each floor again for any immediate problems. I reset a few traps, then made them self-resetting. I momentarily let my gaze linger on Kataren but moved on without doing anything. Nope. Still didn't want to touch that just yet.

I let my presence settle on my core again, then started working on the most mana-hungry process I knew of. Atom-by-Atom, I expanded my Core. As the mana density of my core lowered, I drew in slightly more from the accretion disk, but not more than I could work with at one time. It wasn't a quick process; It took at least three days to work through the mana in my core. The mana in my accretion disk was many, many times that amount.

I certainly wouldn't get through this all at once, but I thought I could take a bite out of it. It'd make me feel better, at least. I worked until I felt a certain blindfolded Guildmistress enter the dungeon, followed close behind by her loyal assistant, aunt, and uncle.

I directed the kobold that usually met with her, and the Child was both relieved and worried that I was back. Confused, I scanned her memories.

Okay. I could understand why you let the meeting go on, but did you have to give away so many of my secrets?!

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