IKD001 - Impact

Dungeon Cores are crucial to every single planet in the universe. They boost the density of mana in their surroundings. They operate as repopulators when a magical or mundane catastrophe occurs, whether it is local or planet-wide. And are the primary source of new paths of evolutions inside the Akashic Records. - The Viridescent Core

I wasn’t conscious during the period I traveled to this world, but my Archives contain knowledge about how the process is designed to work. After travelling through space for an unknown amount of time, a solar system finally showed up within the range that the Seeds rudimentary navigation system could divert to.

I was within the Seed of course, packed and folded dimensionally so that my entire mass of several tonnes was contained in a form the size of a pea. I couldn’t operate in that state of course, so I was entirely dependant on the Seed to get me to the habitable planet that I needed.

The intelligence within the Seed sacrificed itself so that I could reach my destination. I never knew it to thank it for making my life possible, but that was what it was born for. It burned up in the atmosphere of the target planet, slowing my descent to something in the region of 2-5 times the speed of sound. At that speed, my density and relative invulnerability should have allowed me to punch deep into the planets crust. There, I would expand and grow, eventually reaching the surface and fulfil my destiny of bringing life to this lifeless planet.

My first sensory impression was that I was surrounded by a strange type of rock. I instinctively expanded myself into it, noting its structure and adding it to my template store. Now I could detect the hole of my passage, and I quickly closed it off by creating more of the material that surrounded me. Eventually I would expose myself to the surface, but I had not yet extended my flux conduit and started producing mana. I could operate on stored reserves for some time yet.

The next step was to check the ambient mana level. Zero, as I expected. That meant that I was the first Dungeon to land on this planet. I felt a little sad to be the only one here, but I consoled myself with the excitement of being solely responsible for this planets development.

Now I extended my flux conduit. Invisible and intangible, interacting only with the flux radiating out of the planets core. For now, it picked up only the barest trickle, but that would grow as it extended closer to the core. The next step was to expand myself into the surrounding rock. Once I’d reached an appropriate size I would get to work on starting an ecosystem in either a natural cavern or one I created.

It was at this point I noticed the first anomaly. The spherical edge of my expansion encountered the sharp edge of what I initially thought was a natural cavern. To my surprise though, the wall of the cavern was entirely flat.

Even as I was struggling to work out what that meant, I came across an inclusion in the wall of what could only be organic material. It was wrapped around a thin deposit of… copper?

<PAIN>

I quickly withdrew myself from the copper. What was going on? There was some sort of energy contained in the copper that burned me.

Something was terribly wrong, but I didn’t have any option but to keep expanding. I kept away from the copper - it was easy to avoid thanks to the organic coating. I focussed on expanding all around the ‘cavern’ - once I enclosed it completely, I would be able to sense what was inside it. I had the feeling that I needed that information urgently.

There was only one possible conclusion from what I had learned so far. This was an artificial construction! How it had come to exist in a world without mana, I did not know. One possibility was that intelligent life had arisen, but had then thanklessly destroyed all the dungeons that made it possible. Eventually, mana would have dropped to zero and life would have died out, leaving their structures behind.

There was something a bit morbid about finding myself within the grave of a previous civilisation, but perhaps there was a certain nobility to bringing life back where it had once flourished. I put such thoughts aside though, because I had completed enclosing… the room.

A brief impression of the furnishings flitted through my mind. They were similar, but different to the templates I had in my Archives. Updating my templates would have to wait though, because there was a much higher priority.

Intruders! Humans from the look of things. There were two of them, dressed from the neck down in clothes that reminded me of the organic material around the copper. They did not appear to be armed, but were each carrying what I would describe as a ‘box on a stick’. They were waving these around at the walls, but did not appear to be pleased with the results of this activity.

They spoke, but I could not understand them. I would have killed them, but my mind was still reeling about the impossibility of all this. There was no mana! How were they alive?

Examining them, they appeared to be healthy enough. Weaker and slower than the humans in my Archives perhaps, but perfectly viable.

I needed to kill a human, both for experience and information, but these two might not be the best choice. Their identical clothes suggested they were part of some human organisation that might come looking for them. As I pondered my choice, they left the room. Hastily, I extended myself out in that direction to follow them.

Evidently they didn’t linger, because by the time I assimilated the hallway, they were gone. Stairs leading upward suggested the direction they went, but I was unable to expand further upwards until I increased my level. Frustrated, I redirected my attention to assimilating the rest of this level.

No further humans arrived for quite some time, so I was able to complete expanding to my natural limit. I discovered several things that were new to me, and my Archive.

First of all, the rooms were unnaturally lit, and the copper deposits were somehow responsible. I didn’t require light to sense what was in me, but humans did, so I should have realised something strange was going on. The copper connected to devices on the ceiling that emitted light. How they worked, I had no idea.

The copper lines all seemed to connect to a box on the wall of the corridor, and from there, a large copper deposit headed outside of my domain. Additional copper deposits connected to small holes in the walls mostly surrounded by organic material. In some cases, devices were connected to the copper through these holes. I deduced that the copper powered them as well. What they did, I wasn’t sure. I was unwilling to try and assimilate them as long as they were connected to the copper as I didn’t want to get hurt again.

The first room I had found appeared to be the living quarters - presumably of a human. I had passed through here on my way to my final resting place, and the shockwave had scattered and burned most of the contents of the room. There were also the remnants of some sort of foam covering everything for some reason.

Having such a mess in me was offensive, so I absorbed all the items, and recreated repaired and cleaned versions of everything I absorbed. The only exceptions were the device connected to the copper. I wasn’t sure how it had been arranged before, but I had records of how humans used tables, shelves and chairs, and managed to arrange everything harmoniously. In the process I gained templates for numerous materials that were completely new to me. I also fixed the hole in the ceiling from my entry, as well as numerous chips and scratches on the walls.

There were three other rooms coming off the hallway. On one side, there was a large room filled with metal devices. They were connected to the copper so I left them alone. On the other side was a room which seemed to purpose built to hold the large furnace contained within. High temperature fire had its own problems for me, so I left it alone. The final room appeared to be used for storage. It was mostly empty, but it had some clothes and containers which I added to my templates.

The next surprise was my discovery of long tubes in the walls. These were much wider than the copper deposits, and contained various things. Some carried a flammable gas - one of them led to the furnace, which explained how it was fuelled. The others went to the upper levels. Also going to the upper levels was water, which was a much more useful resource for me. I tapped a bit, to top up my reserves, but there didn’t seem to be an unlimited supply, so I held back.

The final set of tubes held the real treasure. It appeared to be human waste! Flowing down from the upper levels, it then passed below my level. At least it did until I started absorbing it. Free organic matter in this quantity was a godsend at my level. It also held a large quantity of bacteria, which I took the templates for and added to my Archives. Comparing them to my exisiting templates, there didn’t appear to be anything special about them. Bacteria could survive on the very low levels of mana produced by a starting core like me, so there it was no surprise that these could live with no mana. The higher lifeforms on the other hand…

When were the humans going to arrive? Establishing myself had taken quite a lot of time, and I was surprised that no one had shown up yet. At the very least the human who appeared to live in that room should have shown.

Speculation was useless, so I moved on to preparation for when they did arrive. I constructed a simple trap on the incoming stairway. That cost mana, so I was forced to vent to the atmosphere.

Mana couldn’t be destroyed, only used. The mana I spent creating things was released into the atmosphere, beyond my use, but now available for other lifeforms. Since this dungeon was connected to the surface, it would diffuse outside, but it would still be more concentrated down here where it was being released.

I gave some thought to where I would expose myself. There were no good choices, but I settled for the space under the bed. I moved myself there and extruded a small cage of the smooth stone for protection before exposing my core to atmosphere.

I was ready for my first visitors.