'tutorial...what am I gonna do? I mean, she's annoying but, like, I don't wanna kill her...'

[This is why you listen to the tutorial and never, ever, experiment outside of already established guidelines!]

'sounds a bit tyrannical to me...'

[In order to avoid killing your dungeon pixie, you need to create a mana source! ambient mana naturally collects in a room, so begin further construction of your dungeon! Start by-]

'I got it, thanks.'

I focused my...senses? it was a sort of dungeon sense, I guess...

anyway, I focused my 'dungeon sense' on the tiny cave my core was in. a black wall formed in my mind's eye with a single white block in the center. this was the map¹ of my dungeon, I guessed.

from the map, I could tell the block—and therefore the cave—was exactly 5 feet by 5 feet. didn't know how that happened. dungeon stuff, maybe.

I sucked up the right wall until I'd added another block to the map².

[You have absorbed dirt! You can now create E-grade packed dirt!

You have absorbed rock! You can now create E-grade stone!]

sucking took a lot out of me. so exhausting, I thought about making a mob do it...I can do that, right, tutorial?

[Mobs are inefficient dungeon builders! The weaker they are, the more energy they expend to break through dungeon walls!]

ehhh worth the risk.

I started to say [Spawn wisp] then remembered it's an unaffiliated little bugger. how do I imprint affinities onto my wisps? hmm. maybe I just need to think of earth related thoughts when I spawn them?

[An elemental wisp needs to be saturated in mana affiliated with a certain element to turn into that affiliated elemental wisp!]

oh, thanks, tutorial. you use 'affiliated' a lot though. anyway, I spawned another wisp. it looked sad cuz it didn't have a mana source but then I just chucked it into a hole I'd sucked. I flooded the hole with mana while thinking about dirt and stone and stuff as hard as I could.

after a minute of this, I got an alert.

[Unnamed Wisp has turned into an Earth Elemental Wisp! You can now spawn Earth Elemental Wisps for 3 mana!]

great. they're more expensive. and still with the long names! change it to...to e-wisp! and, hey, tutorial, can I spawn multiple mobs at one time?

[It is in advisable for you to-]

taking that as a yes. [Spawn 2 e-wisps].

The mass spawning took a lot of energy out of me which sucked because I'm sleepy enough as it is.

'hey, you two,' I called to my wisps. they looked at me, all depressed and stuff. 'go eat some dirt or whatever and I'll make the first room your mana source, m'kay?'

They did a sad little twirl and went to join the first e-wisp in throwing itself at the wall and...eating chunks of it? whatever. time for a nap.

Schwab

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