Terse Elements

In the sauna worldlet of the Terse Elements dungeon, a blue vine pressed up against the red edge of space. The roots of the vine twisted and dug at, apparently, nothing. The leaves of the vine crowded together and pushed outwards. The vine sprayed water mist in all directions, but any mist that flew towards the edge of space was redirected by some invisible force. As water and mana concentrated in the tips of the vine, a new worldlet came into reality.

*bloop*

The roots of the vine sank into a ground made of fine wet grey silt. The leaves spread out into the cool air of the worldlet to absorb the light. An uncountable number of blue motes floated in the air. Each mote was of a slightly different size and each glowed softly blue. The vine water mist sprayed out and gently stirred the motes in the air around the vine. The entire worldlet resembled a soup of dust motes, floating in a blue sunbeam.

As the vine grew and expanded through the worldlet, vine fruit dropped and spawned dungeon creatures. The first fruit to drop spawned a frog. The frog sat and looked at the floating blue motes for a long while. When the next fruit spawned a beetle, the frog had mostly sunk into the quicksand ground and had to struggle to pull its feet free. Without a layer of dropped leaves to hide under, the beetle scrambled across the silt to avoid the frog. Silt sucked at the beetle’s legs at every step, and the frog caught up with just one hop. A jellyfish spawned behind the frog and began to drift through the motes, following the currents stirred up by the spraying vine. A spider crawled up into the leaves to spin a web while a millipede tried to swim across the ground with its many legs.

Outside the dungeon, spring weather warmed the forest a little more each day. Dormant seeds sprouted and many creatures hatched. Near the dungeon doorway, a small caterpillar inched across the ground toward the delicious looking green vines. As the caterpillar approached the most delectable low-hanging leaf, it crossed the threshold into the dungeon. The system noticed and sent the regular message to the dungeon core.

_ Intruder Detected. Select Automated Response:

Absorb

Banish

Mutate

Claim

Dominate

Ignore

_

The caterpillar paused for a few seconds after the abrupt change in surroundings. It aimed at the nearest visible leaf and resumed its slow travel. After the same delay as always, the System followed the instructions of the dungeon fairy and applied the “Randomize All” mechanism to select the response.

_ Random Selection: “Absorb” selected _

Right before the caterpillar reached a green vine that would carry it to its meal, it vanished. Mana flowed into the dungeon core along with the information which described the structure and functions of the caterpillar. The System recognized the caterpillar as a creature sufficiently simple for the dungeon to handle at the current core level of 6.

_ Spawn Unlocked: Lesser Butterfly _

A ripe spawn fruit in the main worldlet split open without falling. From the open fruit skin, an unnaturally large butterfly crawled out. The butterfly hung on the side of a vine as its wings slowly inflated and dried. The closed wings of the butterfly matched the mottled green of the vine’s leaves and kept it unnoticed by the other dungeon creatures. As the butterfly’s wings finished stretching to their fullest, the butterfly opened them for the first time. A frog on the ground looked up and gazed at the mesmerizing tapestry of color on the back of the butterfly’s wings. The butterfly flexed its wings and launched into the air a moment before the frog’s tongue slammed into the side of the vine. The butterfly flew lazily around the worldlet.

Inside the dungeon core, the plant instincts roiled in response to the information from absorbing the caterpillar. Some of the information from the caterpillar had caught onto a part of the plant instincts and flapped about in the empty mind of the dungeon core. The dungeon core instincts latched onto the flapping information and sent mana into it as it did in response to most abnormal stimuli. The mana from the core flowed across the caterpillar information and struck the plant instincts. The plant instincts pushed the mana out along all the vine branches. Across the entire dungeon, along every vine branch, green buds pushed out and swelled. The buds split open into giant flowers of every color. Five wrinkly petals and five small stamens flared out around a star shaped pistil. The butterfly in the main worldlet settled down to drink from a bright red flower. In the underwater worldlet, the bats curiously circled the air bubbles around the flowering vines. A bat dropped out of the water and onto a vine then crawled toward a purple flower and peeked over the petals to give a sniff. The bat pressed its face down into the flower and stuck its tongue down at the nectar in the bottom. It raised its head and squeaked at the other bats. The other bats looked at the first bat which had a face covered in pollen, then they all raced to claim their own flower and drink the nectar at the bottom.

_ Natural Evolution: “Flowering Vine” Unlocked _

Several of the oldest poison berry vines began to ravenously absorb mana from the dungeon air. As the vines glowed and pulsed with mana, dungeon creatures fled. The glowing vines gave a final pulse of mana and opened several flowers each. The flowering vines each had a distinct color for their flowers, which had the same structure as the flowers of the dungeon core vine, only smaller.

More butterflies spawned across the dungeon. Each butterfly had huge wings and a unique pattern of colors. The acid-aligned butterfly wings had brilliant greens and yellows. The water-aligned butterflies had deep lustrous blue patterned wings but could not fly and would just fall to the ground on their first attempt. Those were quickly eaten by other dungeon creatures. Very infrequently, a butterfly spawned with the “Low Light Vision” mutation and received additional eyes, instead of more sensitive ones. When the eye butterflies opened their wings, two eyes gazed out. The eyes were similar to human eyes and had irises that matched in color to one of the many of vine flowers. The eyes did not blink but would look around and track the motion of other creatures, especially the frogs.