I took a minute to think about why I suddenly received that skill. The best that I could figure, I may have gotten very close to a self-inflicted “rock falls, everyone dies.”


    I looked over my core with my meticulous, discerning senses. It was about the size of a human hand and perfectly spherical, not a single bump, groove, or crack marred the surface, even after being hit with a large chunk of rock. The edge seemed crystalline, but the color was an opaque white, giving the impression of a very large pearl with an unusual sheen. In fact, my core was giving off a small amount of light, which only served to highlight it even more. Overall, it looked perfectly fine. Still, I resolved not to drop things on my core again.


    But moving my core?--yeah, that was still a definite priority. At least I knew now that it could be moved, I just had to figure out a better method.


    First, I tried a different method based on common game mechanics for strategy games. I tried to “pick” my core up and move it to a new location. I kept trying it in different ways, including with my status showing and without, and focusing more on my desire as much as I could. None of that worked.


    Next, I tried to use Landscape not to directly move my core. I visualized that my core was part of the landscape of the dungeon itself, and thus a piece that could be moved (just as if it was a statue or piece of decorative art). That did not work either.


    For my next attempt, I envisioned myself taking my mana directly and pushing it out of my core in order to generate magical thrust. I didn’t move, but I did feel just the slightest sensation of something inside my core. I repeated the action and again felt the sensation.


    I did it again and focused my mind on what the sensation was. After some more movement of mana, I had figured out that it acted like a container of mana–a dungeon core version of a stomach or bladder, perhaps–and I could push mana into it. With the mana inside, I could manipulate it just a little bit as if heating up water by agitating the molecules with energy. I kept putting more mana, and more focus on this strange organ, when I started to see the mana start to swirl around as if being stirred. I decided to go with it and stirred the mana harder and harder, whipping up into a furious speed. Then I felt like part of me was burning inside.


    Instinct took hold and I expelled the burning mana out of my core. The next thing I knew, I was flying across the room! I slammed straight into the wooden door and burst through it like a bullet, flying straight down the hallway towards the central staircase. The mana stopped expelling, but I was still going too fast.


    In a panic, I did the only thing I could think of in that moment: I grew as much mass of moss as I could on the inside of the wall facing the shaft where I knew I was heading towards. I hit the moss and the soft material blew off the wall, but cushioned my hit just enough. My core bounced off the wall and fell down the shaft. I dropped down into the bottom chamber and landed with a thud on another bed of moss I had created.


    After almost killing myself, I managed to almost do it again!


    But I had notifications.


    <table style="border-collapse: collapse; width: 25.3366%" border="1">


    <tbody>


    <tr>


    <td style="width: 100%; text-align: center">Landscape 2 obtained.</td>


    </tr>


    </tbody>


    </table>


    That had to come from my hasty and immediate making of my moss. The two clumpings of moss were now softly glowing blue, bringing a bit of color and light to the otherwise completely dark complex.


    <table style="border-collapse: collapse; width: 25.8682%" border="1">


    <tbody>


    <tr>


    <td style="width: 100%; text-align: center">Vestigial Propulsion 1 obtained.</td>


    </tr>


    </tbody>


    </table>


    At least it wasn’t shaded in black, but I wondered what was with that unusual name. Vestigial suggested that what I had was leftover from something before. I brought up the description.


    Vestigial Propulsion 1 - The remains of a lost function that can still provide a limited ability to use stored mana to move the demesne core.


    There was a lot to unpack in that description. First, apparently I had had an ability to move but that ability had been lost. I don’t have any memories of what happened between my old life and waking up in this room, so this fact hinted that there was more going on than. Second, whatever ability I used to have had degraded and I only had what little bit was left and still functional. If it was possible, I definitely wanted to get the full ability back. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    The last part was less mysterious, but potentially useful: it appeared, based on the skill description and my own experience, that this skill had a physical component literally inside of me. And if that component was separate from my normal functions, I may have just gained a way to store extra mana.


    I checked my status and saw that I had used four mana, but I wasn’t sure the exact number I had burned to fly since I had also done that emergency explosion of moss.


    I pushed mana into the “vestigial” container until it felt full. Checking my status, I could see that my mana had gone down by ten, meaning I could store an extra ten mana there.[1] I could move the mana out of the special storage (and my mana number went up), which meant that the two were completely interoperable with no efficiency loss.


    Even though the cost seemed high, I simply had to do a few more tests. So I grew moss on every part of the bottom chamber, padding it out for safety. I topped off the gas tank and took my core for a few flights around the room, bouncing off the cushioned walls. I tried to get a feel for the skill and to better control it. After a few attempts, I was able to modulate the power level and reduce my speed a bit. My tests resulted in the commensurate reward of a skill-up. Unfortunately, I was burning a little too much mana so I stopped the fun.


    I really needed to get a better handle on my mana.


    I had an idea–a simple idea, a risky idea, but an idea.


    I absorbed the stone plug at the top of the central shaft that was now directly above me. Sunlight immediately came through the hole and lit up a section of the stairwell. I was now open to the outside world.


    Unfortunately, I couldn’t see the outside world, as my senses only worked inside my demesne. I cut away some of the side walls of the hexagonal well and then built a new platform.[2] I then made some thin lines of iron overlaid on top, and then a triangle jutting out in the center. Thus, I had a sundial.


    My plan was two fold: first, I would use the sundial to get a measure of how much time there was in a day; second, I should be able to get a sense of my mana generation in relation to a measured day.


    It was currently daytime, but I could tell from the shadow case on the sundial, but I suspected, based on the shadow’s length, that the day was soon going to end. Regardless, I waited and watched my status and the sundial. Finally, I saw that the amount of mana I had ticked up by one, and I marked that spot on the sundial.


    Then I waited again.


    Then the sun went down.


    Dammit!


    But then inspiration hit me again. I had a lot of moss around me right now, and it was currently giving off its own light, colored green since it was, well, moss.


    I absorbed a line around a section of moss, separating it from the rest. I then tried to change the color it emitted. That did not work, so I absorbed the moss and recreated it, this time willing it to glow a different color. That worked! Now I had a small patch of moss that glowed a light blue color.


    Then I went through another series of tests to see if I could get the moss to turn off the glowing. Eventually I was able to get it to work. Trigger conditions were required and it seemed I could not directly interface with the moss (I couldn’t, for example, command it to turn on or off). Rather, I made the trigger condition attachment to a mushroom. If I created the mushroom, the blue moss would start glowing; if I absorbed the mushroom then the blue moss would stop glowing.


    What I really needed was a plant that could turn itself on and off automatically in a regular rhythm. If I had the ability to get down into the molecular or genetic level, I felt confident I could make something, but the system didn’t give me that level of granular detail.


    I changed tactics. I landscaped a protrusion of stone from one of the chamber’s walls and then shaped it into a bowl. At the bottom of the bowl I made a tiny hole and then covered the underside with a tuft of moss hanging down. I filled the bowl with water and waited. The water slowly seeped through the moss and started dripping onto the floor. After several adjustments, I got the spacing of the drops to be about one second (through the hyper-scientific application of counting “Mississippi”s). Thus, I had created a water clock.


    I was not going to spend a whole day counting.


    So, I remade the moss so that it turned off or on whenever it gave off a drop of water. I extended it to the wall and connected it to a group of ten different sets of moss on the wall. The triggers were such that they would light up in sequence, one to ten. Then I repeated the line of moss in a row above that would use triggers to count every sequence of ten seconds, and so on for hundreds and thousands.


    Not only did I now have a timer, I also got skill-ups for both Landscape and Trap Creation.


    Now, all I had to do was rest and wait for one full day-night cycle and I would have a lot of answers.