Saga of the Soul Dungeon

Rule #50 - Though you have entered the same dungeon a thousand times, never assume that you are safe. Dungeons are terrible and treacherous.

- From 50 Rules for Dungeon Divers

Tam did his usual song and dance on noticing I had a new skill. Yes, yes, you’re very pretty, now shut up so I can concentrate. However, despite my disparaging thoughts, I paid him little attention. I was far too busy seeing.

For the first time, I could see what my aura actually was. It looked like a spider’s wet dream, a vast intricate web with me as the spider at the center. It grew ever finer, but even the coarsest strands made spider silk look like rope. Thousands of threads met in the center and congregated inside me. And these were simply the main strands. Countless finer strands, as well as hooks of mana, branched from the main branch out in every direction. And each strand hosted more offshoots and hooks, with more branches finer still in an endless fractal pattern that went past my ability to perceive. Past a certain point, everything dissolved into a faint glittering fog merely suggesting their presence, like someone had made fog out of fiberglass.

My enhanced perception let me see more than my own aura. That was likely a secondary effect. Now, the ambient mana in the air, and stone, was far clearer. My aura waved fine threads in currents of mana like kelp beneath the sea. Amidst the mana currents, I saw glimmering glass threads sweeping about the room from the beam enchantment on the wall. Now, the effect from the other four arrays could be seen too. Inside the room, where my main threads of aura ended, the ends were capped with a construct. Those constructs were each attached to a thread, which left my aura, gradually fading from my perception.

Three guesses where the threads converge, and the first two don’t count.

My aura beat like it was alive. Faint pulses of mana streamed back and forth across it, the faint persistent glow spiking as the mana passed, and currents of mana flowed into the entire web, traveling inward to me.

And then there was me. For all the complexity of my aura, it was a shoddy forgery of my core. Only the coarsest layer was seen clearly, but it was not a few thousand measly strands. There were millions, billions, of threads pulsing with racing mana. Bet Tam would cry for joy to see this. Eh… he would probably do the same if he was my normal aura.

I lost myself in studying, observing. My remaining mana drained away, unnoticed. It’s beautiful. For the first time, I saw something surpassing the beauty of my old life. This kind of discovery and joy was worth it. And it made me feel alive. Perhaps it was silly, but seeing this I felt more organic, more connected to being a living thing. Still miss food. It felt like hours before Exsan’s insistent prodding dragged me away. Exsan cared nothing for beauty, and barely seemed aware of my new perception. I sighed. More a memory of a sigh… just not as satisfying. Back to the grindstone.

I watched, learning how my aura kept mana still. Threads, with their finer counterparts, shifted and wrapped around an area, holding the mana within. In turn, neighboring threads drew closer, their own extremities reaching to help, propagating outward. In the end, threads drew together, their interwoven hooks held in place against the trapped mana pressure.

The structures were far from perfect. Threads poked awry and hooks were out of alignment, creating gaps like misaligned zippers. I tried to command my aura to fix a particular flaw, though nothing happened; everything was an automatic process. When I focused, simply trying to hold the mana tighter, strands slowly bent themselves and hooks realigned. Right, no direct control, like a general rather than a soldier, work on the broad strokes. The aura bent to my will, slowly.

Next time I was ‘fed’, can I get a steak instead… wait, never mind, I would just be fucking sad to see it and not be able to eat it, I used the mana to examine other aspects of both my earth manipulation skills and the beam runes. They operated differently somehow, but I was not sure how either worked. The surface level was the same. The little hooks would gather bits of stone as they formed, holding them together until they were fused, or the reverse for destruction, hooks pulling apart stone that seemed to be crumbling into nothing. Mana pulsed down my aura when I created or destroyed stone. But why! If I use mana to create stone, surely it should give mana to unmake it. Nope. Can mana both create and destroy matter? That makes the energy go in only one direction, down. That would play havoc with conservation of energy. Does that even apply here? It probably, applied, at least, to the normal physical universe. Mana could just be special.

A special pain in my ass.

In comparison, understanding how my aura expanded, when it wasn’t capped, was fairly straightforward. Mana streamed from my core, reached the end of the largest threads, and then, assisted by the smaller nearby threads, the mana was extruded and shaped into more threads. This process continued down to the smaller threads. Presumably, not like I can see them past a certain threshold. In the main room, where my main threads were clamped with mana constructs, I couldn’t even start the process of making more aura. The mana gathered at the ends then funneled away into the runes before the process of growth started. The rune arrays glowed when I tried. Maybe they turn the mana to light?

I took stock of myself at the end of the day.

My thoughts just aren’t working right. My mind was clear, focused, inhumanly so. I hurt from the clarity of being forced to think at all times, and that constant wearing at me was coming to a head. My emotions roiled beneath the surface like a turbulent sea, ready to boil over. Mixing metaphors there… Technically mixing a simile and a metaphor, ha. It was progressively harder to ignore Exsan… and myself. My thoughts were clear, but scattered, distractions becoming captivating. Nothing stopped me from thinking, but my thoughts became less useful.

Too bad I know what the problem is, since it still doesn’t help! Sleep. I needed sleep desperately. I needed to eat, laugh, and communicate too. I ached with need.

I’m so tired.

Miss touching people. Kill to brush my someone in the hallway. ‘Oops, excuse me.’ I used to touch people all the time, just part of being on campus, or using the elevator. Why did I always try to distance myself, should have been hugging those people, relishing the touch of being human… No, stop, that would have been weird. Like I fucking care! I fantasized little casual things, a quick hug or handshake, a brief touch on the shoulder.

I can sense the walls, and floor, and the damn air, but it isn’t really touch. It’s… like someone describing it. Really accurately, and you have a really clear picture, but it is still distant, removed from true experience. I feel the stone, but I don’t feel, it.

I was not communicating, at all. It’s been what, two, three weeks? Deliberately avoided communication. Torturing myself. Deliberately mute to deceive him, and it was exhausting. Like putting yourself into solitary confinement. The fucking key to get out is right there, and… I… just… NO. Now I know why solitary confinement is so terrible. I didn’t just want other people right now, I craved it, required it.

This was going to make me desperate, already desperate; desperation would lead to bad choices. Trust me, I can make those without any desperation at all. Focus. From there, disaster was almost inevitable.

I was not idle. I looked for a solution to the problem, but I had no real options. The AP store had an option for a body, but it was so incredibly far beyond my purchasing ability that it might as well not exist. Better uses for a body anyway, like eating, or smacking that stupid expression off Tam’s wrinkled, little face, or escaping… Yep, pick my core up in my hands and walk away. Or would it be more like a body built around my core… ‘We are the crystal gems…’ No. Focus. For now, the only thing I had was my own mind. I’m doomed.

I meditated.

I was alone.

Mana swirled about me in a faint but unending flow.

I had no breath, I have no mouth, but… FOCUS.

Rhythmically, I stopped and started the absorption of mana.

Hold, then let mana flow in. Hold, let the mana in. Hold, let the mana in.

The life-giving flow of mana entered, pause, hold, relax to open and repeat. No hurry. I had all the time in the world for this. I could simply… let go. I didn’t have a body to get itchy. No hair responded to faint changes in the air. I could focus. Eventually, I stopped focusing on mana at all, and my thoughts calmed. All my attention went inward. The faintest hint of something lay deeper, but my mind floated above it.Hours passed in silent meditation.

I reemerged.

I... haven’t felt this good for ages. My thoughts were always sharp edged, alert. Meditation dulled them for a moment, easing the strain so I could rest, settle over stressed emotions. I felt rested. Something new to add to the routine.

Now I could think clearly again.

Ugh, been taking things for granted. More I need to find out about, everything, including myself, but not the biggest focus. Time to reexamine the situation.

Previously, I made an assumption, self limiting my capabilities to the human norm. Why did I assume I could only focus on one thing at a time? Great for meditation, but less than ideal for almost any other circumstances.

Humans, when all was said and done, were really bad at multitasking. As in, they couldn’t actually do it. What they did instead, was switch back and forth from multiple tasks. It was possible to do this fast enough to seem like multitasking, but it was usually only surface deep. Most people had a hard time simply patting their head while rubbing their stomach, and that was an incredibly simple pair of tasks. There was a reason talking on the phone while driving was a truly terrible idea. The only way a human actually multi-tasked was to form muscle memory, so that nerves remembered how to repeat an action over and over, with minimal oversight from the brain.

However, I didn’t know if I still had this limitation. I already processed more input than I thought humans were capable of. What if that goes further? What if I can actually split my attention? If a dungeon worked the way I thought they did, admittedly a stretch, they had to handle the task of managing literally hundreds or thousands of adventurers. They absolutely had to process more. That did not even include all the monsters, environments, lighting, traps, and other details that needed to be managed.

Everything could just be automated… Sure, but I need to test anyway.

If I had the capability to handle that much data, then there was essentially no limit to the number of tasks I could do simultaneously. To be fair, no reason to assume I start with that level of capability. Only testing would tell.

Not testing anything until I finish my list of stuff to test, already been too distracted.

Sadly, I would probably get distracted, again, if I wasn’t careful.

What else is worth studying?

Mana restriction could be practiced in multiple areas simultaneously. At the same time, I should continue absorbing as quickly as possible from an ever smaller area.

That area… didn’t need to be a sphere. So far everything had been spheres. Spheres were a great shape. They had the smallest possible surface area to volume. However, I wasn’t certain that was actually a good thing for absorbing mana. Maybe more surface area would actually be a good thing to capture that mana flow. I could try flat disks, toruses, slices, cubes, stars, and any other shape I could think of. It might be worth practicing oblong shapes so that I could extend my focus perfectly around a dense mana source like Tam.

Studying my mana needed to continue, as well as being efficient, since I had so little of it.

I had so much to study. Thousands of strands of mana flowed through my aura from the beam enchantment. If they were going to merrily wave through my aura constantly, I might as well learn from them.

Tam cast spells at me every day. I had been familiarizing myself with the structures simply by force of habit without actually trying to understand them. If I can. I was getting mana now. I could replicate the spells in my hidden area, sculpting the structures out of stone. I had no idea how Tam compared to others. Judging by the enormous amounts of mana he threw around, I was simply going to assume that he was very powerful. How much could I learn from him?

My aura had potential too. I had watched it hold, break apart, and fuse matter. It also interacted with mana directly. A bridge between the material and immaterial. I might not have conscious control of my aura, but what if I could learn that? If I could, I would be able to use my aura to manipulate stone directly. I might even be able to do it without mana. And if I could do that, even if it was very slow, it would be a huge achievement. I might even learn to directly move and alter other materials.

And if I could manipulate mana… well I could do some impressive things with that. There was an enchantment constantly active below me, and another that fed me. Well, don’t really want to break the one feeding me… If I could manipulate, move, or destroy mana constructs, I would have a much better chance of escape.

Mana flowed through me, all the time. It left just as quickly, but what if I could divert part of that stream, use it before it flowed away? If nothing else, I might be able to expand my aura constantly.

What if Tam notices the crystal below isn’t filling up as fast though? Still something to think about.

Now that I could limit the flow of mana, even if it still moved, I should practice where it mattered most, and prevent mana from flowing out from me. Maybe, I could speed mana up, too. Could I make the feeder give out more mana that way? I was already starting to restrict mana flow, and hopefully trap it, but could that go further? Could I move the mana inside that trap, or compress it, and still keep it contained? Put it on the list for later. Mana was my lifeblood. Anything that furthered my control was vital.

Tam, and the crystals that held mana, were still opaque to my sight. Watching them, especially the one on top of the feeder stand as it slowly changed, might give improve, or evolve my sight. Maybe I would gain an entirely new skill to pierce through the interference.

I lived in a world with game rules and commands. What if I had missed some? Cheat code for dev mode please. What other options might be available? It might be nothing, but it could allow me to do far more.

This was hardly an exhaustive list. What can I do with knowledge from Earth? Nothing physical sure, at least not yet, but... some things are purely mental… Like me. I wasn’t going to try all of them now, and I need to finish my list, since I didn’t want to tip Tam off, but there were possibilities.

What skills might I get from demonstrating knowledge of math, cartography, chemistry, physics, and so on? If these show up Tam will know I’m actually thinking, though. Sad, but they with have to wait. There were, however, some things I could do that would make sense for a dungeon. I could make sculptures, art, and traps. It let me smooth the walls before. Sure, I cannot extend anything into the room, but will it let me carve outward? Probably good for my mental health to do something creative, anyway. Art therapy, here I come. I made a note practice art elsewhere, if I couldn’t do in on the walls. Maybe, with enough skill, I could make art out of pure mana. I called the piece, “Nobody in the world can see it except me.” Trust me, it’s awe inspiring. I could think of more, if I took enough time, but for now I had more than enough to start practicing.

If I ended up with a ridiculous number of minds, I would dedicate some to just thinking of ideas for the others to try.