The Tower in the Shadows

I was forced to continue using Aura Manipulation as my area of control expanded more than I had hoped. The additional cost was slowing me down massively.

The tower base had a spiral stairwell that went up into the tower and down into the ground. The stairwell was located in the centre of the room. I found three more doors in this room as well. There were no windows and four torches on the wall were located on iron brackets. I was absorbing them and replacing them, discovering only cloth, which was highly flammable.

I decided to secure the tower first and pushed my aura up the tower's frame. The tower had three floors above the ground. The following two floors were the same, with four "windows" that were not much more than arrow slits.

I got a welcome alert message during the journey and a bell ringing.

Level Up!

Aura Manipulation has increased to level 2. CP use was reduced to 99%.

I discovered moss growing on the second tower floor but gained nothing when I absorbed it apart from the ability to recreate it. My wine plate had killed two more wasps and several flies on the table. The flies gave me nothing at all. I had been forced to recreate it on the fourth day and every four days after that. My essence count was now at 3% and each point came with a little energy rush. I can only describe it as a tingling sensation. Strange but not unpleasant. Thinking about it, I was coming to enjoy it.

Another thing I discovered when inspecting my character sheet was that my CP regeneration was now 0.11 per hour, up a whole 0.01 from the start. The explanation in my wiki is that the size of my dungeon and core level influenced this, I figure.

That tracked with the stories I had read and games I had played.

"Christ! I am still doing it!" I had been actively trying not to have my mind narrate what I was doing but was failing miserably. It was getting to the point I was just letting it happen and going with the flow.

I did get some good news with an alert that told me that my Aura Manipulation Skill was now level 2 and the penalty had been reduced to 99% from the 100 it had been.

I had been expanding into the tower for eighteen days and it was late in the evening. I had just reached the third floor and noted a new presence in my dungeon when an alert appeared.

"Alert open."

Alert!

A Sharoon has entered your dungeon.

"A what now?"

Shifting my view to the room I arrived in, I called the entry room to find out what a "Sharoon" was.

I found myself looking at a racoon?

It was a racoon but was slightly different. The body was that of a racoon. It was not coloured like one. The bandit mask was not present on its face. It was a light grey with stripes like a camouflage pattern. The fur was grey with darker grey stripes, I think, to blend when hiding in trees. Its design was similar to a tiger's. I noticed it was hard to see the Sharoon fully when it was in a light shadow. It was like the shadows around it were somehow being manipulated.

The thing that stood out the most was its paws. The paws were more like hands than even a racoon. I knew from documentaries that racoons had flexible paws, but this one had paws that were more akin to hands. It's definitely like human hands, thumbs and everything with little claws.

The sharoon was moving slowly into the room from the window, sniffing the air and scanning the room for danger. Whiskers were twitching. The creature's body is tense and ready to bolt at a moment's notice. I reasoned that the smell of the wine that had not dried on the plate was why it came further into the room.

I watched it slowly come into the room, little by little. It was gaining confidence as it found no threats from which to flee.

I change my point of view to get an overview of the table and the sharoon inching towards it. It had crossed the room and climbed onto the table, focusing on the plate.

Had it not smelled the poison in the wine?

I would have thought the sharoon would have smelled it. But as it approached, I think it had not. It reached the plate, still sniffing. It licked at the wine. The eyes were still looking around.

It stood up on its hind legs suddenly, like it heard something. Its ears were twitching.

It stopped, then started again, twitching more aggressively, breathing faster.

The body hitting the table as it died made nearly no sound.

Alert!

A Sharoon has died in your dungeon.

Essence gained!

Sharoon design gained for your dungeon!

The rush of Essence was more intense.

I looked at my character sheet to see what I had gained. I absorbed the body. The urge is there, but again, I can suppress it. This will become an issue for me if I cannot control this. I may one day not be able to control it and something terrible could happen.

My Essence has increased by 3 to 6%, which was good news for me. My skill list also had a change: Aura Manipulation was up to 75% to the next level. That was also good. My levelling was slow but happening, which made me happy.

The next thing I checked was the Sharoon minion status sheet.

Name

N/A

Level/Class

1 – Dungeon Minion

Race

Sharoon

Essence

0%

Health

50/50

Mana

30/30

Stamina

20/20

Corruption

0%

STR

2

2 Damage base

DEX

6

AGL

6

END

2

VIT

5

PER

15

+ 5% Danger Awareness

INT

3

WIL

3

LUCK

3

Skills:

Claw Strike: 1 – 0% (+3 damage) Cost: 2 Stamina

Danger Awareness: 1 – 0% (+ 5% Success chance) Cost: 2 Stamina

Equipment:

Claws: Dam 1 + STR

Perks/Restrictions:

Shadow Touched: +10% to hiding in shadow.

Ok.

It was slightly better than the Grey Striped Wasp. That was obvious, as the sharoon was a larger animal than the wasp. The wasp was faster, but the sharoon had better damage. I had to think about how to have them work within my dungeon.

Looking at the creation cost, my Affintyless restriction would be such an issue in the future.

Creation cost 2 (CP) 1(SM).

I expanded on the SM cost. It turns out that SM stands for Shadow Mana.

"Are you fucking kidding me!" I scream out.

How the hell am I going to do this?

I now understand how Oda hinted at the scale of the problems this restriction would cause me. At the moment, I cannot create sharoons.

God, what a name!

I need to think about this.

## ## ## ## ##

I went back to finish taking control of the tower. It takes another three days. I remove the wine bottle and plate from the table as I feel somewhat depressed at the moment. I leave the wine stain on the table. Expanding my dungeon helps a little with my mental state.

The third and final floor of the tower is different from the rest. It is a more open pavilion style. A series of eight wood pillars supported a wood roof covered in more clay tiles. I mould my aura here using the pillars as a base. The shape of the top was an octagon and sightly overhanging the tower walls. I replaced the missing tiles and repaired what needed to be repaired.

I found some more moss up there but little else. I would say I could enjoy the view, but no. This disappoints me more than I thought it would. Everything outside my aura was grey and fuzzy. I cannot hear anything like the wind unless it passes through my dungeon.

I moved back down to the tower base.

Which way should I expand now? I have three doors and the basement. I decided to rule out the basement for now. I will secure the other rooms in this building. I get to work.

I push into the next room.

The next day, after waiting for my CP to regenerate, I discovered the room's function: it was a kitchen and store room. It took fifteen days to occupy the space and do any repair work. On the last day, I got an alert that made me happy.

Level Up!

Aura Manipulation has increased to level 3. CP use was reduced to 98%.

I look back over the room. It was an empty kitchen. The cupboards and containers were all bare. I had absorbed the contents and replaced them. I gained nothing from this in terms of new resources.

I moved to the next room and started the process again.

Fifteen days again to occupy and do any repairs on an armoury. I find several more sets of Cythian leather armour. Each set comprises six sections: arm, forearm, shoulders and one torso section: no boots or helmets.

I also have more swords. The rest of the armoury is empty, apart from some materials used to maintain anything stored here. I was absorbing and replacing the wall mounts and cabinets. I do not replace the armour or swords. I am not gaining anything new from them to add to my resource list.

I am receiving another welcome alert near the end.

Level Up!

Aura Manipulation has increased to level 4. CP use was reduced to 97%.

This brings me to the final room.

I start the procedure of expanding my aura again into a new room. With my Aura manipulation levelling up again and my experience of the other rooms, I could move faster and more confidently.

This room was the living quarters of the garrison that was once here. The room had ten beds located in it. The beds were wooden frames with straw mattresses and looked extremely uncomfortable to my "eyes". Gaining the ability to create straw from the beds. Each bed had a chest at the bottom, a simple wooden thing and all were empty. I had already had rough linen from the torches at the tower's base. I absorbed everything as my aura moved through the room.

However, something happened on the 10th day of my expansion into this room. While expanding my aura led to, the discovery of a small hidden compartment under one of the beds. A thin layer of stone covered it and underneath it was a small space that contained two things of great interest.

The first was a Cythian gold and silver coin. Score! To find this in most of the literature on being a dungeon was a huge thing for me. Gold coins were the most important things I could create. Adventurers love their gold. This was also added to my resource list. The silver was just an added bonus.

However, the second discovered item proved to be more fascinating for me and supplied me with a great deal of information when I absorbed it. It was a broken mana stone and unusable. This stone was used when it was whole to store mana to be accessed at a later date. It can hold only one type of mana at a time and only a limited amount, but it did allow for the replacement of any mana that had been used. So, it was a rechargeable battery for magical energy.

I was greatly excited by the discovery of the stone, but I held myself in check until I had finished occupying the room. As I got older, I learned to focus on getting the job in front of me done before moving on to something else. This lesson served me well in my new life.

By the end of the 14th day, my aura had occupied the room and I found nothing else interesting. The mana stone was a nagging itch in the back of my mind that I should investigate. I knew I still had the basement ahead of me.

I needed to secure this whole building before I could begin to experiment and push what I could do. My limited options for defenders and no traps apart from my poisoned wine still concern me.

I checked to confirm that I had exhausted my CP by returning the room to its previous state with all the beds and chests restored. The room also had a fireplace, but it, too, had nothing of interest, just some old ash.

I'm drifting back through my territory to the tower's base and the winding stairwell that leads into the basement. I have some free time before my CP allows me to expand again, so I'm using this opportunity to go through my character sheet again.

I noticed two differences on my sheet. First, my CP regeneration increased to 0.12 per hour and my aura manipulation skill increased to 85%. I hoped that as I was now expanding into the ground, I would not need to use the skill again. It turned out to be a convenient skill, but the cost was seriously delaying my development.

I used this opportunity to study the mana stone design I now had access to. I spent the next few hours studying the stone, wondering how to fix it. True, it was broken, but concentrating and zooming in on the actual crystalline structure of the stone was interesting. Could I recreate the stone at a later date whole?

Eventually, I had to put these thoughts away for the moment as my CP was restored enough to allow me to begin to push down into the ground. Looking at my character sheet for my CP total, I suddenly became concerned.

"What the hell!" I exclaimed, looking at the number. It turns out that I've been studying the stone, not for a few hours but for a few days. I had not realised the passage of time while focused on what I was doing.

This began to trouble me as I wondered how my new existence would ultimately affect my perception and understanding of time, let alone my own sanity. I did not need to eat, drink or sleep. These things grounded the life of the man I once was, but now I was bereft of them.

In this dark moment, it truly dawned on me that I was no longer human but something else. True, the memories of my past life and that of my soul still told me I was a human being, but….

New instincts and the hunger to absorb were also present that were not part of my previous life. Again, my mind returned to Oda and what he said. At the time, I thought I was getting a reasonably good deal, but now, here in this place in this form, I truly began to wonder.

I spent the better part of another day mulling over this. Unable to find peace as I try to reconcile with the man I was to the dungeon core I am.

With great effort, I put these questions aside, knowing I could not hide from them forever, and focused on finishing the task at hand. But in the back of my mind, the question always lingered.

"What sort of being will Bhaldor be?"