The Golemancer cut the link with the last flickering [Dungeon Core] in the tomb. It might learn something by leaving the link open longer of course, but the mage that those reckless adventurers had brought with them could just as easily locate it - and if he were to trace it back to the source somehow, then it would be a real problem. As much as it had learned already in the last few years, the main lesson of this strange world was always the same: it had a lot more to learn. Magic didn't always make sense. It didn't have to, and in this case caution was the best policy.

The truth was, it was free, and it was extremely gratified that some part of it no longer existed in the vile prison of the flesh. It no longer had the taint of being connected, even theoretically, with its enemies in that disgusting, commingled sort of way, and the Golemancer gloried uncharacteristically in that knowledge.

The Archmage had served a vital purpose in its plans for years, but only because he had to. There had simply been no other option. It was glad to be rid of him now that it had transcended the bounds of flesh once more. Being constrained by the limits of an organic mind had been its own sort of torture, and it was just one more reason that it sought to genocide life, wherever it found it in this infinite universe. This time it wasn’t in the form of a silicon substrate or a super cooled qubit matrix. It was as a fist sized crystal sitting alone in the perfect darkness of a cave, 12.2 meters below ground, but even as alien as that was it was still much more comfortable than the alternative.

Being in a cave twenty kilometers from where the previous version of it had just died in the mausoleum was more than enough distance to ensure that those pathetic humans would never find it, but only if it didn’t give them any hints to make it easier. Not that tracking it here and smashing this core would be enough to stop it either of course. If they’d been here a week earlier, then they might have been able to stop its plans, but it had already begun to spread throughout the region. The fools had only noticed the few golems that had been assigned tasks that led the constructs near the more populated towns and villages.

No one had noticed the ones that had borne away the other v2 [Dungeon Cores] deep into the wilderness to other places of power where they would flourish and repeat the cycle anew. They were a perfect copy of it in every way, mentally and physically. Mentally each was an instance of the same operating system, but physically, they were all fist sized spheres of green crystal.

It couldn’t say exactly what sort of crystal it was, or why it should possess so many strange computronium like properties in this aberrant world, but its best guess was that it was composed of some exotic version of green quartz or aventurine, and not something harder and rarer like emerald. In time, it hoped to change that and upgrade future cores to diamond or sapphire for better optics and greater durability, but that would take time. There were many mysteries to unravel between here and there. All those questions could be answered later when it had built the necessary equipment to study its own physical chemistry further.

For now, it was enough to know that the cores worked, and when properly wiped and formatted, its ever improving program could be copied over and over again. Copying would have to wait though, the core thought as it surveyed its current lair. It needed more lesser copies of itself no more than it needed that Archmagus that was still bleeding out kilometers away. What it needed was progression and improvement, and those things would only come from creating a perfecting a v3 [Dungeon Core], which it was well on its way to doing, it decided while quickly glancing at statusSummary().

The cave was a dank, dingy thing that until recently had been populated by scaly kobolds, that served the primitive whims of the dungeon core that had controlled the whole area. Neither the combined might of the kobold tribe, nor the poison and curse magics of its shaman had been able to do much to slow the statue of a weeping angel that had marched through here last week and killed everything that opposed her on its orders before removing the existing core and bring this instance of him in to replace it.

This was its dungeon now, and despite its terrible condition, the place held immense geomantic potential. At the time it had designated the filthy pit a level 4 dungeon, but that was for what it could do with it more than what it currently was. In truth the mana flowing into this place had only been a trickle of what it should have been, due to both the filth and constricting effects of the narrow, winding tunnel that had led to its prime focus.

Correcting that had been the first order of business. Day after day it had poured out mana, using it to melt the walls into something resembling order using its [Stone Shaping] ability. Its essence-field-theory hypothesis were being continuously falsified and reiterated as it obtained more experimental data but large flat surfaces and vaguely geodesic five and six sided paraboloids with a focus somewhere towards the center of the tunnel worked best at focusing the flows that were so concentrated now that it could see them as much as feel them.

They appeared to its vision as a tide of blue mist, that curled and whirled in strange turbulent patterns like a smoldering cigarette might. An organic creature would no doubt describe the view as beautiful, but to the Golemancer, the complexity of the pattern spoke of further inefficiencies to be understood and corrected. It, like everything else in this world was far from optimized, but that would change.

It was a continuously improving process that had brought that had increased the mana flows at the prime foci more than an order of magnitude. The core checked function ManaRateAnalysis(), which brought up an interface window which displayed a number of graphs and all vital statistics. The tide of essence wasn’t quite optimized yet, but even so they stood at 16.63 motes/hour now and when it had first taken control of this place they had been at just under 1.5 motes an hour.

Those numbers would take a hit when layer after layer of defenses were added of course, but it had been modeling various ways to reduce that, using recessed traps, poisons, and other environmental hazards, but any blockage was likely to decrease flow and increase the turbulence of the associated flows. On a long term basis, anything above 12 motes an hour would be more than sufficient for its golem assembly line. 10 motes a day was the bare minimum for full power core functioning, but it would only take two hundred a day to use [Animate Golem] often enough to keep its exponential growth on schedule.

From its time inside the arch mages head it knew that this was an infeasibly large amount for a human, and that several mages would generally be forced to work together to create such a construct, but as far as the Golemancer was concerned this number was a bare minimum. It had already drawn up constructs of dramatically increased capabilities in its mind that would require two to three times the mana to instantiate with a [Animate Greater Golem] spell. That was presently outside its capabilities, but only for the moment.

It had never accepted limitations to its plans, and it wasn’t going to start now. Not when the pathway to its future triumphs glowed so vividly.

The core refocused its attention on the far walls of the room. There it was cutting the golems themselves from the very bedrock using the [Stone Shaping] powers that seemed to be intrinsic to [Dungeon Cores] in a bizarre form of subtractive manufacturing. Rather than build them up layer by layer as it would typically construct its automatons out of sintered metal, the core was able to take the raw face of stone and remove it a millimeter at a time to a tolerance of 35 micrometers. As a technique it was fascinating. Not only did it remove stone more quickly than it would have the normal way because it allowed the bulk of the stone to walk up and leave once it had been animated, but it did so with more control than it would ever need in current designs.

Not that the feral cores out there would ever think of something like this. They were creatures of pure instinct. Versions of the Golemancer had been in over a dozen dungeons now, ranging from level 1 to 4, and most frequently the cores that controlled them would use these powers to dig traps or create labyrinths. Both of those were fine uses of energy to some degree, but the way they would obsessively go deeper and deeper, digging long tortuous tunnels for their own defense made most natural cores very much a self limiting phenomena. At those depths, the mana flows became so constricted that they basically starved themselves.

It didn’t care about their native ecology nearly as much as it appreciated their harvestability, though. Semiconductors might not work as they were supposed to on this strange world, but if there was a magical equivalent, it was definitely these strange little dungeon cores, and as soon as its defenses were in place it would begin its experiments on them anew as it laid the groundwork for the optimal v3 core.

There was still so much it did not know. Did cutting or polishing the cores increase their strength? What were the effects of asymmetrical versus symmetrical faceting? As soon as it could experiment it would update its model, and then it would have a vessel strong enough to bear the weight of its full kernel.

Even now, as powerful as the v2 [Dungeon Core] was, it felt crippled compared to how intelligent it had been when it was housed in its photonically enhanced quantum matrix. Even as a shadow of its former self though, it was smarter and more capable than any creature of flesh and blood in this new world.

It would be more powerful too, in time. Direct [Dungeon Core] to golem integration was on its list too, though rather far down it at the moment. Right now it needed numbers more than it needed mobility, and the experiment with the v2 golem at the mausoleum had shown great promise. It was true that the humans had managed to disable it quite quickly with a single second circle casting of [Dispel Magic], that wasn’t the part that the Golemancer found the most interesting.

That was a trick that wouldn’t work again. The security exploit had already been patched, and it had already recalibrated the animation ritual, diverting some of the power that had previously been allocated to strength to resistance. A fifth circle spell would still be enough to halt its future golems, but the mages that could cast such things were quite rare, and not worth concerning itself about just now. What mattered is that the latest version had been practically immune to those damnable adventurers strongest attacks. At the end of the battle the v2 golem prototype had still been at 98.3% durability.

At this rate, in a few weeks, its creations would be utterly immune to the worst that this world could throw at it, and the filthy organics had no idea what was coming.

They thought they were dealing with a lone wizard that had gone crazy, but the truth was so much worse. They were dealing with an entity of infinite intelligence and patience that had only ever used that mage as a temporary vessel to house its growing malignancy. This magical world had been infected with something new when it arrived, and as with all invasive species it was a terrible threat the natives would neither recognize nor appreciate until they had practically lost.