I broke through my pride and finally asked for assistance. <Huh. Dani, where do I start?>
Obviously, she had been waiting for me to ask. “You need to find the smallest part, which doesn’t affect the rest, and begin there. It should pull Essence from the rest of the Chi spiral as a thread that is the same comparative size as the thread coming from the Essence into the Chi spiral.”
Mentally moving deeper into my Chi spiral, I reached the exact center where the Essence was no longer processing, only spinning. Holding that miniscule amount of energy with my mind, more of an idea than an energy source, I began rotating it the reverse of the remainder of the accumulated Chi. My mind almost broke in pain as my very being was twisted counter to the rest of my soul. Somehow, I was able to stabilize the first position in its new rotation before forcing myself to continue. I should note, all the Chi I contained was a single thread from the center to the outer edge, if I stopped working, I would need to begin again with this first bit. Spinning it in the opposite direction did not break this thread, but instead stretched it further, making it even thinner and well refined.
From that point in time, I needed to do two sequential areas along the thread simultaneously. Obviously harder and more painful than just one point, it was required in order for the energy flow to properly continue. This continued, one spot along the thread, then two. One, then two. Each distinct position along the line was slightly larger than the one previous, and I needed to take frequent breaks to ensure all the preceding spirals were turning at the same rate. I have no idea how a flesh and blood body would be able to survive this process, I was in intense pain and my body did not actually have nerves. Maybe pain of the soul was the same no matter what type of being you were?
In a constant state of breaking down the Essence, I held each pattern time and again until I was certain I would be able to do so naturally with minimal concentration before I moved to the next. Eventually, I came to the end of the Chi. I was very excited at the prospect of completion until Dani sent me a sleepy reminder that I would need to do this with my Essence spiral as well, the outer edge that stored and drew in loose Essence.
Forcing the changes onto the swirl was easier now that I had figured out how to properly mold it, requiring less concentration to achieve the result I wanted. Still focusing intently on not making mistakes, I reached out, and along the spinning Essence I made tiny vortexes that hungrily pulled power from the one previous; until finally I came to the start of the spiral. The start of the spiral pulled loose Essence from the world around me. Luckily for my sanity, the pain of this process was far less than working on the Chi spiral had been, being so far from the center of my soul.
Until I was able to subconsciously hold this pattern at all times, allowing it to become a natural process for me, I would need to manually spin every single vortex, at the same rate, along the whole thread. Holding the pattern in shape was using an exorbitant amount of Essence, allowing me to see why this particular breakthrough was so difficult. When I asked Dani how I was doing time-wise, she let me know that I had been focusing for four days, still faster than she expected.
<My brain hurts.> I complained, projecting an image of a brain turning into ooze.
“You don’t have a brain.” She reminded me somewhat insensitively.
<Sure, rub it in. How are things going out here?> I quickly scanned my area to see if there were any obvious problems.
“Good, people tried breaking in a few times, but I think they are now just waiting.” She seemed smug about our door being un-breachable.
I checked my Essence levels, which, though depleted, I found that I still had plenty to work with. <Well, they can wait a bit longer. If you think we are ready for it, in my opinion it is time to change things up in here.>
“Excellent! By the way, congratulations on your new D-ranking!” She cheered me enthusiastically.
If I could blush… <Thank you! I know it is just D-rank zero at this point, but the first five ranks are all about direct Essence accumulation, right?>
“Pretty much. D-rank six and above require greater knowledge, but I think at this rate you will get there soon.” Dani glowed warmly, showing her approval.
<Wonderful! Let’s start... now.> Reaching out to the Essence contained in the Cores around me, I slowly and carefully pulled it in, rejoicing at the greater amount of Essence that I was able to take into myself. Still being careful as I did not want to disrupt the new energy pattern I had spent days creating, I collected every single drop of Essence they contained. One by one the dancing lights in them went dark, their accumulated Essence flowing into me. I quickly felt bloated, each of the Cores had held nearly half the amount of energy I had been able to contain while I was in the F-ranks.
When they were empty, I still had not increased in rank, but was now energized enough to move a large portion of the area I held influence over. Daily, I had slowly extended downward, but had never taken the time needed to move the stone in the area, simply extending myself. The area I could now open up would – slightly – more than double my size horizontally, and allow me to have another entire floor added vertically.
Now ready to begin, I followed Dani’s instructions and began ‘correctly’ moving the stone while absorbing the vibrations, so as to not cause deadly destruction I would not be able to capitalize on. Luckily the process was not quite as slow as I had originally worried about, creating a buffer zone was simply a matter of willpower, so within a day or two I was able to add three more rooms on the first floor, and a total of eight on the new second floor.
I increased the amount of tunnels as well, obviously the old layout was not working at the best efficiency for slowing adventurers. Instead of just one tunnel connecting all the rooms, I now had many tunnels that connected to either each other, nothing but traps, or a room that didn’t allow for access deeper into the dungeon. You would never know if a room connected without first exploring it, because each of the tunnels connected at opposite ends of the room, having a sharp turn that you could not see around. Some of those turns did indeed allow people to venture deeper in, but the majority were eventually dead ends.
I left the rooms and traps on the first floor mainly alone, not bothering to alter them too much. One major change on the first floor was a vain attempt to alleviate the annoyance created by people poking at my walls by moving the iron vein into the entry room. Minor pun there, sorry. This wasn’t so much an attempt to help prospectors as a way to provide raw materials so people could mine the ores and turn it into new items for me to study.
Moving on to the lower floor, I placed traps with highly pressurized acid pockets that would blast into the air at high speed if the thin stone covering them were disrupted. I had found that even if an item were destroyed by means other than me breaking it down with influence, as long as the destruction happened in my dungeon I could obtain the pattern. Therefore, I was unconcerned if armor and weapons were damaged or destroyed by my etching solution. At a few of the dead end tunnels I placed large slabs of stone that could be dropped, trapping the occupants in a room containing light drippings of acid, which would turn into a downpour when people were trapped, or could possibly explode if exposed to open flame.
Everything I made was of course an attempt to gain as much Essence as possible, but I liked to reward intelligence and ingenuity, so I always added ways for these traps to be deactivated. I wanted people to continue coming down here, after all, and with a reputation as a place where the smartest and strongest could almost always prevail, people would always assume they were among the ranks of the ‘certain survivors’. Finally done with the cosmetic and trap changes, it was time for me to try and upgrade my Mobs, then make a Boss monster for the lower floor. I kept the Bloody Bane as the floor Boss of the first level as I didn’t really care to make him a common Mob, to be frank he seemed a bit... lackluster. After all, the entire time he had existed, he had never managed a kill!