The Illicitous Dungeon

"Good, keep that active at all times, even in your sleep. Next, you will begin sword training."

Therina inspected her shoulder in surprise and poked it with a long, slender finger several times in disbelief. She had never expected it be healing so fast. It simply seemed unnatural to her.

Taking her attention away from it, the dungeon made a large stone slab in the entrance passage where it was brighter. It was the same height as her, but with rectangular holes 3" wide and 1" tall, each numbered in wood. He also created several stone swords with similar weight distribution ratios as the iron sword.

Unsure as to what she was supposed to do, she asked the dungeon.

"Take one of the stone swords. This is thrusting practice. You must thrust straight through the openings with both power and speed. Start by going numerically from 1 to 9. Once you are proficient, we will work with different attack patterns and slashing."

"How Long. Train."

"Until you can no longer hold a sword. Don't forget to maintain concealment at all times. This kind of training never ends."

The young elf woman picked up one of the many stone swords. What surprised the dungeon, was that as soon as she held it, it was no longer recognized as his, so he wouldn't be able to manipulate it, or even reabsorb it into himself. It was now a completely foreign entity.

Therina stabbed the sword toward the first hole but missed by a small margin, the sword sending the vibration directly up and into her arm, causing it to hurt deep in the bones. Despite that, she continued trying her best under the dungeons coaching.

While one portion of the dungeon was focused on training Therina like a gladiator coach, it was also continuing its excavation process which never seemed to end. It had lost a <Lv. 3> and <Lv. 2> miner, but it had gained three more <Lv. 1> ones, so it's monster mining speed hadn't slowed down.

He used the Mineral Detection subskill and scanned the area surrounding his dungeon. With the higher level in Mining, the detection range was much greater and more detailed than before. He spotted a fuzzy galaxy like sea of grey motes of light in his detection range. If he dug directly toward it, he should reach there in just under two days.

The subskill also told him what it was. It was a mineral he desperately wanted…

Iron.

~~~~~

Two days passed in which the dungeon drove Therina to the bone in sword drills. She was forced to keep thrusting her sword over and over again, even when her hands were bloody as the skin tore from all the times she missed the holes.

Despite the damage she did to herself each day, he would properly tend to her hands and still healing shoulder each afternoon, trying to make her feel her own mana network herself, much to no avail.

He was learning new things about her mana network everyday though, and also had to help it close the holes it opened to increase the healing speed. Rather than strengthening the channel walls though, he went back to expanding them and increasing its maximum capacity and flow speed.

He also opened up temporary holes in the network from time to time to allow his tendrils to extend out and examine her body too, a new trick he learned which apparently make the young elf woman feel some discomfort.

He also reached the iron ore vein deep underneath his dungeon. He was now mining and collecting large amounts of iron ore.

The iron ore was then being refined in blast furnaces to create the final, pig iron product. The only issue was that while wood could be used as fuel, he had to constantly spend mana to push air into the furnace and achieve the desired temperature.

It's lucky everything was considered a part of him, and he could control it with a bit of mana, but everything costing him mana limited the number of things he could do overall.

He merely left the miners to dig iron ore while he did the refining process. Using his entire mana pool would allow him to refine 1 unit of iron, which was only a miniscule amount in the grand scheme of things.

It also caused his dungeon to heat up a lot, much to Therina's complaint. He took one miner away from mining iron ore to begin tunnelling a heat vent from the ceiling of a small room the furnace was in, all the way to the cliff face outside.

The miners could crawl on any surface, so digging upwards from the ceiling wasn't an issue.

Now with some iron stock after several rounds of refining, he built a rotary mana engine, which was a course cylindrical machine with a circular iron rod sticking out of one end.

Its internal workings consisted of a mana tank, which had runes and magic circles engraved on the inside in iron. An insulated spiralling mana passage for the mana in the storage tank to flow though, and a basic iron drive shaft which would draw energy from the spiralling mana to spin. There were then several vents to provide an exit for and release any leftover mana.

The magic inscriptions in the storage tank and insulated mana passage were completely different from the space expansion fractal pattern, which greatly aroused the dungeon's interest.

He also made a large ardonite wheel to serve as a grindstone. The stone itself was quite coarse, and also increased its strength by infusing it with mana.

He wasn't satisfied with just iron though. He knew what an alloy was and how to make it. The most important difference between iron and steel was the carbon content. Refining the ore in the blast furnace with charcoal created a high carbon content pig iron. What he needed to do was reduce that ratio of carbon.

He was relieved to learn that moving the pig iron inside himself or a chest didn't break it down and form itself in large blocks. It was sturdy enough to maintain its form of small ingots, which were much easier for melting down again to use than a giant block.

Once all the iron was fully melted, he took it out and allowed it to begin solidifying before placing it on a flat piece of stone and having his shroom gnome hammer it with a large iron mallet.

The crippled shroom gnome had been killed for exp and recycled back into biomass, while Therina had produced two more for the dungeon, giving him a total of three currently.

This process of heating the iron and hammering it was repeated until the dungeon estimated it should be close enough to steel.

He was amused that he could create steel, but not pure iron, which he was lacking several materials to create a proper oxidization process for. He could make wrought iron though, which was iron with a very low carbon content, and technically still "iron".

He created several ingots of steel, dark silver, almost black products which looked quite unrefined.

With his small refinery room, he continued to test several alloys in the steel creating process, including adding ardonite into the steel, and then trying adding ground up teeth from the wolves.

The former created a coarse steel product which was a semi-failure due to the ardonite not being able to fuse with the steel proper, while the latter turned into a complete failure. Perhaps there was a way to refine monster materials to create various products, but this was not it.

He then repeated the process and created two more ingots, but this time splitting some of his mana off and using Mana Infusion during the refining process.

The results were worlds apart from before, and completely out of expectation. Rather than just strengthening a material. His mana infused within the metal. The combination of steel and ardonite fused perfectly with his mana as a buffer.

The mana even altered the metal and created a faint blue tint in the steel. It was much stronger than normal steel, and he could even channel his mana through it unlike normal metals. He determined this to be a mana conductivity trait.

[

New alloy created.

Testing against existing records…

Record already exists.

Award for discovering existing alloy: Manasteel.

+ 100 exp

]

The second trial, which was ground up direwolf teeth used up a much larger amount of mana to fuse the bone into the steel. It created steel that was a little paler and fine bone grains through it created a very rough texture. He wasn't sure of the characteristics of the metal and had no proper way to test it, but it seemed like it would make an excellent grinding wheel with enough of it.

[

New alloy created.

Testing against existing records…

Record doesn't exist.

Evaluating alloy…

Please choose a name for the new alloy:

]

[

Award for discovering existing alloy: Wolfbone Steel.

+ 250 exp

]

He decided to create Therina several weapons out of manasteel, and some simple steel maces and small shields for the gnomes to serve as both her guard and meat shields. It wasn't worth spending all the extra mana and time on weapons for villagers who are likely to die and have them stolen.

He refined several ingots of manasteel before forging them into blade. The first was a longsword with an elegant blade. A shroom gnome did the hammering to save him on mana. They hammered out a long blade, heating, tempering, and folding the manasteel until it was in the shape of a sword.

Sparks flew everywhere as the blade was then grinded and polished on the ardonite grindwheel, which the rotary mana engine made turn at nearly 1,000rpm at full power. It turned into a single edged blade sharp enough it could cut through one of the direwolves with little resistance.

A cheap wooden hilt and short t-shaped crossguard was placed on the blade, creating a finished product. The dungeon also made a matching wooden scabbard, which it engraved with some floral patterns and infused its mana inside of to strengthen it.

It also made a two curved hunting knifes to use if the sword was ever lost, space was too constrained, or for skinning and handling the materials of monsters. Therina could wield one or two at once depending on her preference, but the main reason behind their creation was the dismantling of monsters.

Finally, he also made a handful of small throwing knives out of standard steel. These could be accessed quicker than a bow, and he didn't have to worry about them getting lost.

~~~~~

Therina continued her training in the dungeon despite all the broken stone swords on the ground and bloody scabs on her hands.

Every night, the dungeon helped heal her hands and body back to new. Even her hands would return to their soft, tender skin by the next morning.

'How does it do it? It controls my energy, or mana, through some mana network in my body,' Therina thought to herself helplessly as she looked down at her bloody hands and discarded another broken stone sword. 'What is this mana network? Why have I never heard of it before? Surely there are others who discovered such a thing before, is it known as something else?'

She constantly tried to feel this mana network and her flow of mana when the dungeon was healing her wounds, but all she felt was warm along with an itchy sensation. She did feel like she may be able to feel something spreading into the wounds, but it was a fleeting feeling, like trying to capture a mirage.

Grabbing a new sword, she began thrusting it towards the holes in the stone slab, starting from hole no. 1 and going chronologically. Each thrust must be in the correct angle and rotation of the blade. It was easy to do it if you went slow, but the dungeon grilled her that if she went too slow and didn't push herself, she would never improve.

"Therina, I have made new weapons for you and placed them in your room. Use the knives to dismantle all the wolves."

Hearing the dungeons voice in her head out of nowhere was a common occurrence these days and she had already become accustomed to it. She even found his voice incredibly pleasant and was elated upon hearing it.

He kept her safe, helped her get stronger, heal, and most importantly, feel incredibly good during their "sessions".

She entered her room and found a new longsword, two long curved daggers, and a handful of throwing knives.

She inspected the longsword first. It was mostly basic, but still nice with its floral design on it. When she pulled the blade out of the scabbard though, she was truly stunned. The blade was like steel, but almost seemed to be glowing blue.

As soon as she held it, she could feel a connection with the sword. She could put mana into the sword and strengthen it. It didn't make the blade sharper, but it would prevent it chipping as easily.

The two daggers were of the same design. They were for dismantling monsters, something she had never done before but had witnessed others do it. In an emergency however, they could be used as weapons, which was why there were two of them.

"How does. Don't know," She said to the dungeon.

This was her way of communicating with it. It didn't understand most of the elvish language yet, so she used distinct words to get her meaning across and communicate with it. That being said, we was truly shocked by how fast it was learning the language in the first place.

"Nonsense. Nobody ever learned to do something by saying they didn't know how to. If you do a bad job, do it better next time. Simple."

Therina helplessly laughed to herself. She understood the dungeons personality much better after spending a lot of time with it, but there were still parts of it she found alien.

She also held affection toward it, which she wasn't sure was a result of whatever it did inside of her, her own gratitude for the ways it had helped her, or something else entirely. She simply didn't know, but her emotional attachment to the dungeon was getting stronger every day.