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When categorizing monster flesh, great care must be taken to separate “Dungeon” and “wild” monsters. Wild monsters mutated from animals and thus depending on how old they are, portions of the majority of the parts are fleshy and organic. They also always keep some semblance of natural design, most keeping eyes and ears and mouths for example. Dungeon monsters however are created through some unknown processes and often don’t have recognizable parts. We can’t explain how some of them move, for example simply that massive amounts of mana are in play in ways we don’t quite understand. For more tips and tricks join our guild! We offer free hands-on skill training as well as providing cheap life insurance to all our members.

An excerpt from the most popular primer bestiary “Useful Monsters and Where to Find them”

Indecisive Earth tried to change the storage of materials, similar to how he had been shown he could change the expansion. However, even when studying the process as hard as he could, there was simply a wall and then the wall was less.

He had spent nearly an hour now trying to see if he could influence the process but was going to call it quits now. It remained an incomprehensible "Magic" aspect of himself. Sighing as he gave up he finally decided to play around with monsters.

He already had plenty of information from what other cores had done but he also wanted to experience them himself.

First smoothing out the rough cracks and random chunks he had dug out into a wider room, the walls peeling back nearly a meter in all directions, he focused on the only schematic he had – that of the tutorial slime.

The other Cores' monsters seemed to be made primarily using attributed mana, so he decided to see how the different attributes would affect the basic template. Holding a corner of the room firm in his attention, he started focusing first on Earth. He tried making a swirling center of Earth mana and pulled air into it.

A thick grey ball started to form, much much less gelatinous looking than the raw version had been. The air seemed to twist as it grew. Rather than something made out of Air it seemed like a light sheen of tinted glass.

Moving onto the next step he started mixing Silicon and Earth mana while wrapping the center. Instead of a stretchy sheet, this pane resisted him. His heightened control was the only thing allowing him to wrap the center with it, but the entire time he worked away at it, the material resisted him.

It felt like he was going about it wrong, but he ignored that voice in his head in favour of finishing what he had started. Finally, a silvery grey ball floated in the air.

Dropping it, a crack sounded out, as if the entire center had shattered into dust. The outside shell mostly held, but without the rubbery consistency his original slime had, the fall was much more violent-sounding.

He tried adding a spark of life to the ball but after it entered the broken husk of a monster it just sat there and didn’t make a single movement.

Waiting with no reaction to his scrutiny, he let his mana pool regenerate back to full, and then tried again – first finding himself crushing the failed attempt and letting the spark flow back. This time a suffocating memory of being frozen was all that was contained within.

Next, he tried the same combination with Fire.

Focusing on the flickers of mana he had noticed in the surrounding rock; a raging spark of light and energy quickly filled the space. The flames shot out continuously and would barely listen to Indecisive Earth’s attempt at holding them in place. This shell formed easily enough but felt unstable as he wrapped it around the center. Trying to make up for it by continuously wrapping the slime with more and more of a skin, the flaming ball was finally made.

Dropping it caused a wave of heat to rush out and a spurt of fire to fly out the top. This time, after adding a spark, the mass surged into motion leaving a charred line of ash behind it. Slightly disappointed his earth version hadn’t worked despite it being his main specialization, he moved on to Water.

Water took more time for him to figure out. There weren't as many natural sources of it around him, so he didn’t have as good an example to follow. But – focusing on the way the ball sloshed around and consulting his flat and simplified memories – he finally made the shift. The middle portion formed much the same as the original slime but with each section constantly changing and shifting.

Pulling a skin around the ball and dropping it made the whole thing stretch out into a pancake before slowly filling back up to its full height. With a spark, the water slime quivered before gliding across the ground faster than any version he had made so far. It quickly encountered the flaming slime and attacked before Indecisive Earth could do anything about it.

The two slimes ripped into each other, a second later splitting apart into a dense cloud of steam that rose and filled his entire cave. This mist gave the whole room a damp feeling and beads of droplets dripped down the walls, giving the floor a glossy look as soon as the cloud had cleared.

The last attempt he had was Air. Apprehensively attempting to form the core in a similar manner to the streams of mana that curled around in the air, he strained.

This was the first time shifting an element had been actually hard.

Up until now, the action had felt natural...he just had not known how it worked. Now he had some practice changing mana into a bunch of different forms and a clear picture of what he wanted, but actually trying to get the mana to form took every bit of his attention.

Slowly painfully slowly, a spinning ball of slightly more opaque air formed.

After it had finally reached a similar size to his previous slimes, he tried to mix the Silicon and Air mana for a shell... but they just wouldn’t mesh no matter how he pushed and shoved the two.

Trying next to mix Air with different elements, he found he could get wisps to form easily enough from several of the lighter ones but none that would form a solid skin.

Not wanting to let go of his ball of air without making a monster, Indecisive Earth switched tactics. He hadn’t been able to get the “Earth Silicon” combination to act much like a rubber so why not just focus on making a shell? Flicking through the elements he had gathered he pulled out a stream of titanium mixing it with the Earth mana. The mana eagerly entered the metal and while the process made his sheet firmer, the end result still bent to his whims.

Instead of wrapping layer after layer, he simply thickened the sheet while pulling it around his ball. A silvery-grey sphere formed as he smoothed over all the wrinkles he made while bending it.

Dropping the ball, it seemed to float down before resting on the ground. The next action was to give it life. He held his (metaphorical) breath while sending a spark into the ball.

…Nothing seemed to happen for a moment until the whole sphere started to rotate slightly. Faster and faster until the ball was a blur, the spinning menace started bouncing around in a chaotic manner.

After hitting a sharp stone, it rocketed towards where the Core's crystal stood – smashing into the wall beside it, letting vibrations travel to the Core and rocking it slightly before careening off back into the center of the room.

That was dangerous. I don’t think I’m going to ever experiment this close to my core anymore, Indecisive Earth thought, a very real sense of panic entering his thoughts as he realized just how close to death he had just gotten.

Reaching out, he tried to still the ball and push it away. But the sphere was spinning and jumping around too fast to get a grip on it – and after he had given life to the sphere, he couldn’t seem to affect its material enough to break it apart.

Unable to form a wall between his fragile core and the wall – and growing more and more panicked that the next random skid would end his short existence – he turned to the roof.

I have to kill it soon. I can’t let it continue like this so close to my core.

Digging away a few cm into the stone in a crisscrossing manner, he loosened the roof enough to drop a slate down onto the ball. A crash sounded out as the slab fell and broke apart, but a random skid had sent the ball further back into the crack and it was still dangerously skidding around. Trying to remain calm, he tried again, picking a bigger slab to cut, leaving enough of a sliver behind it that he could release the slab at a moment's notice.

Timing it, he suddenly slashed out, digging as quickly as he could and dropping the impromptu weapon. A second crash along with a grinding noise and a cloud of dust billowed out, before he felt his spark return.

Taking a moment to calm down and let his mana recharge up to full, he slowly ate the two sheets of stone before staring down at the flattened metal ball. The metal had grown stronger than it had any right to be with how thin it was, but other than that it looked mundane.

It was only by focusing that he saw the whole thing was completely filled with strips of metallic grey lines. Trying to absorb the metal, he was met with a strange resistance and the process took more effort than it should have.

Bits of mana that were heavily bound into the metal were slowly peeled away – each strip that was removed fell into the stone ground and, rather than dissipating, left streaks of metallic shine in the stone as it sunk into the rock and bound to it.

Trying to pull the mana out of the metal was met with similar resistance and finally, he gave up and pushed it over to a corner of the room where it stuck into the wall and he could safely ignore it.

It's too much to bother... I'll try and figure out something to do with it later.

Before anything else, he worked on creating a second room. Expanding one of his shafts out larger and larger – resting while his mana regenerated – then pushing out once more. He continued to set up this new experimentation room.

I need to figure out how the different elements I have react to mana. I need to be able to predict stuff, so I don't have another accident! That was too close. Much too close. He shuddered while expanding furiously a specific goal in mind for this room.

Once he got the room large enough, he took a look at his inventory which was currently split between “Basalt” and “Waste”. Realizing he was never really using the “rock” as “rock” and all his experiments had been breaking it into parts, he took a closer look.

Checking the waste confirmed this it was a mess of all the elements that had made up Basalt other than Silicon. Keeping in mind that mana only liked to bond to a single element at a time, he split his inventory to display all his physical elements separate.

Trying to figure out how to classify them, he finally settled for 3 initial categories. His 'Metals', 'Gases' and 'Other'.

He separated out Gases because he realized when 'pulling in the air', it was randomly choosing one of the elements in the air – normally nitrogen.

Metal:

Ti 150.3 g

Al 1017.8 g

Fe 1012.4 g

Mn 23.5 g

Gas at room temp:

O 5419.2 g

Other:

Si 1932.2 g

Mg 512.5 g

Ca 783.5 g

Na 222.3 g

K 84.2 g

P 5.8 g

Staring at it a bit longer, he decided he didn’t much care for the short forms of the elements, so he focused on changing their names. He also rearranged the categories slightly to save space ending up with the following storage.

Metals Other

Titanium 150.3 g Silicon 1932.2 g

Aluminum 1017.8 g Magnesium 512.5 g

Iron 1012.4 g Calcium 783.5 g

Manganese 23.5 g Sodium 222.3 g

Gas at room temp Potassium 84.2 g

Oxygen 5419.2 g Phosphorus 5.8 g

The biggest eater of his space was currently Oxygen.

It was over 5x any other individual element at this point – assuming they all took up the same amount of space ,he was still unsure as to how his inventory was being stored.

Having already noticed that as he dug, the atmospheric pressure in his cave had dropped significantly, he decided to fill the empty space with some of the oxygen for now. Pulling it out of his inventory, he could feel that even though he had organized his inventory based on “pure base elements” it had still been bound as “Basalt” until he started pulling it out.

As the pressure rose a sense of relief filled the Core, an invisible weight he hadn’t known he had been carrying lifted, as the pressure replaced the subconscious action he had been taking to hold the walls in place.

That felt so much better. Is this something every core finds out? Why didn’t Amy mention it?

Confused, he checked the chat.

Indecisive Earth: Hey how has everyone been filling their dug areas with gas?

Xero: Oh have you started feeling the pressure already? Throw some Air mana at the problem until it goes away.

AL: We have to fill the cave?

Indecisive Earth: I’ve been replacing mine with Oxygen to replace some space in my inventory thoughts?

Xero: ...I guess that could work. Damn my inventory is full of the stuff and I haven’t even been mixing it that densely with Air mana considering how easy it is to make. That might have helped me dig a bit further but it's too late now. Ah well, I’m finally finishing my 3rd floor but I’ll keep it in mind for the future.

Indecisive Earth: Good luck

Meh, Xero was still here. Indecisive Earth was less annoyed with him after a few hours had passed, and he knew he was leaving.

He switched back to his inventory, proud he had figured something out. I feel...different. Has anything changed? Checking his status, he realized he was already at level 2.

When did that happen? I didn’t feel the change itself just noticed it later.

Looking around once more he checked his core. He had increased in size slightly yet again, his surface more and more smooth. I really want to know how I’m levelling up – or gaining experience even.

Staring at the experience line, he pulled it off his status and moved it to the corner of his vision making sure it was always visible. Keeping watch on it carefully, he began to dig in a random direction.

His mana fell all the way to zero, and then refilled slowly, but the regeneration value hadn’t changed. Suddenly, as if to prove him wrong, it flipped up by one with little fanfare.

Keeping a close eye on it he dug and expanded again... but this time it didn’t change. Checking back to his status in annoyance that the process wasn’t repeatable, he realized his experience had also ticked up.

Indecisive Earth

Level 2 1/36 exp to next level.

System Access Level 1 0/2 requirements met to advance.

-3+ Floors

-Level 9+

Stats

Mana Regeneration 1.7 unit/min

Mana Storage 36.0/36.0 units

Physical Storage 15% units

Titles

Earth Mana Specialization

Okay. Last I checked Regen was at 1.6… so the increment gave me a point of experience. I’m pretty sure that value is based on how much space I have claimed or how dense the materials in that space are... so expanding does affect experience even if in a roundabout way.

I just wish I was told exactly what was giving me experience and by how much. Is that really too much to ask?

He spent the next 15 minutes searching for a hidden option explaining what everything did, to no avail.