For better or for worse, things were not overly interesting at first. Not that that was a bad thing. Things weren’t boring or anything. She just didn’t run into anything overly exciting.
Her new abilities allowed her to claim the area out to the extent of her sphere of influence, which made it easier for her to sense what was around her. Extending her domain out as far as she could, she found that the stone that surrounded her soon gave way to mixed soil and rock.
In the mixed soil and rock she found other things. Near the edge of her stone deposit, the place that was currently her home, she found a large stone that was different from the others. The stone was big and round, and kind of flat. As she examined it with her mana sight, she found that it held strangely shaped mineral deposits that spiraled out from the center almost to the edge. She was not certain what the strange mineral deposit was, but instinctively she knew what to do.
She absorbed the stone in its entirety, and allowed herself to begin to examine and process it rather than simply break it down for materials. She felt it slip first into a kind of other place, like a storage area that she had not realized existed until that point. First she consumed the normal stone, and what was left behind was a mineral deposit made up mostly of calcium phosphate, calcite, and other fossilized remains.
The deposit spiraled out from the head at the center, with curving spines branching out from the main coil. She became excited as she realized what it was. It was a creature, and enough of it was intact that when it finally dissolved away, she received a system notification message.
Focusing on the notification, she read the following. “Notification: You have gained the following creature blueprint: [Garden Snake] . You may now summon this creature to serve you in your dungeon.”
Ira was excited. It would be impossible not to be. This was a major milestone for her and her dungeon. It meant that she had a creature at her disposal to defend herself and her territory.
While she didn’t have much in the way of organic materials on hand, she knew she could substitute energy for basic missing components, so as soon as her energy pool was nearing full, she began concentrating on summoning a [Garden Snake] .
Being that it was her first time to summon anything, it was difficult at first, and the sensation felt odd. After a few moments though, she felt her energy pool drain as the creature began to form. As it solidified, she began to panic. It was too late though, she felt her mana pool drop. Before she realized that it hadn’t caused any harm she was so panicked that she almost missed the big moment.
However, she pulled herself together just in time to see a snake come into existence. It was big. It was very big. It was wrapped around her pedestal big. It was looking at her expectantly.
A blue box with a white symbol on it, an exclamation point, began to flash in the lower left hand corner of her vision. When she focused on it, the text came into view. There were three notifications waiting for her.
“Notification: Congratulations. You have achieved a Milestone. You have summoned your first monster, [Garden Snake] .”
“Notification: You have unlocked the [Possession] Skill. You may now possess your creatures and see through their eyes.”
“Notification: New Traits unlocked.”
‘Interesting,’ she thought to herself as she brought up her status screen and moved to the traits tab. A new trait was listed on the “ [Available Traits] ” tab now. It was listed as [Possessive] . The [Possessive] trait would allow her to more more easily take control of her creatures. More impressively, it would also allow her to attempt to take control of other beings within her domain, not just her own.
‘Wow. That is a big deal,’ she thought to herself as she looked over the information. It was expensive though. It would cost her five trait points, or 2000 experience. She looked at her status screen and found that she currently had 25 unspent general experience points.
Looking at her main status screen she wondered to herself just how she would go about gaining experience points. Energy was easy. She had an energy pool that filled over time up to its limit. Its upward limit seemed to be tied, at least partly, to her mana rating. Her mana seemed to be both an attribute and a pool of points. When she did something that expended mana, it took time to recover. Mana recovered more slowly than energy, but it did recover quickly enough to be useful over time.
After some time in thought, Ira decided she should use her combination of abilities to explore a bit. She would start expanding, and making tunnels large enough for her snake to move through. She had enough control over her mana to achieve delicate manipulations of the dungeon stone, and could use her [Dungeon Sight] and [Expansive] abilities to search ahead as she created the tunnels.
She encouraged the snake to press its nose up against the north wall of her core room. From there, she created a hole that was slightly bigger around than the snake’s head, allowing it to push forward. She slowly pushed the tunnel outwards, bit by bit, expanding towards the north. Once the tunnel pushed past her sphere of influence, it was still able to grow but it cost more energy to do so. She still had perfect sight within the dungeon itself, but had trouble seeing outside of that area of the tunnel. She decided to stop there, not wanting to risk accidentally tunneling into something she couldn’t control. She made a room at the end of the tunnel, large enough for her snake to curl up comfortably. This meant it could also turn around easily. This experiment had been informative. She now had a better understanding of the limits of her [Expansive] ability. She also realized that, yes, it is possible to expand beyond her core’s area of influence, it is just more difficult to do so.
Now that she knew how large the snake was, she was able to start stretching her limbs, as it were, and tunneling out in various directions. She also experimented with closing up new tunnels as well, letting her know that if she needed to she could close up and redirect tunnels as well. Time was still strange to her, but after what the system told her was about five days she had made a multitude of tunnels weaving around her area of influence like a large sphere.
She also noticed, as the mass of tunnels grew, that her mana absorption increased. It wasn’t a large increase yet, but it seemed that the more open area that she controlled within her tunnels, the more quickly her energy regenerated. While she hadn’t quite reached the threshold yet, she also felt that her mana capacity had expanded somewhat. It was as if her size impacted both how much energy and mana she could hold, as well as how fast she could refill it.
This also got her to wondering more about just how large her area was. She felt small. She didn’t have anything to compare it to, honestly, but she had the impression that her snake, though it seemed large to her, was not very big. But she understood that would change with time. In fact, she was starting to feel a bit full. She had gathered a lot of space and materials. Before she began the process of trying to grow again, however, she decided to create a second snake.
The process went more smoothly this time, and before long she had two identical snakes wandering around her network of tunnels and tiny rooms.
With that done, she waited for her mana and energy to refill, as creating a snake cost a point of mana as well as the energy to generate the materials, and then she ordered the system to begin the upgrade process. When she awoke, she still had plenty of room, but her room seemed a little smaller, and she could feel that her area of influence had grown. A look at her status indicated that she had reached Core Level 2. She knew that two was not a big number, but it was twice as large as one. She also found that she only gained one trait point this time. She decided to wait until later to decide how to spend it. Perhaps new traits would come available.