Chapter 49 Making an Electrical Core (Patreon)

                         It was very clear to the dungeon that the Immortal's visit was a threat. First of all, the immortal showed the dungeon that it didn’t matter if the dungeon somehow killed the immortal; the immortal could come right back. Second, the immortal showed the dungeon that although radiation could affect him he was able to figure out a countermeasure rather quickly. If the dungeon planned on fighting the immortal, this meant two things: the dungeon would first have to get past the immortal’s impressive defenses, and then he would have to somehow stop the immortal from recreating his body. The dungeon planned to avoid fighting the immortal at all costs.

                         The only problem was that the immortal never made it clear why he was threatening the dungeon. For instance, many years ago, the imp made it clear that poisons should not escape the dungeon, but the immortal never said anything about that, although radiation was certainly a type of poison. Maybe the immortal was threatening the dungeon to continue his work, albeit up till now, the immortals had trusted boredom to force the dungeon to continue exploring magic.

                         Since the dungeon wasn’t sure, he decided to talk with the imp who was still outside of the core room. “Are you okay?”

                         “Once I left your core, I was able to heal quickly.”

                         “Will you hold a grudge?”

                         “I cannot. I am a piece of my master's will, and he was thrilled with this new discovery. Since you made my master happy, you have, in effect, made me happy.”

                         “Will you return to your place in my core room?”

                         “No. Unless my master decided to give me the spell that counteracts your radiation.”

                         If the dungeon could have frowned, he would have. That conversation told the dungeon nothing. The dungeon just decided that his long-term plans would have to account for how monstrous the immortals were. Albeit he had to admit the immortal had given him a couple of ideas on how to make his long term plan more successful. But that was for the far future, and he had to make an electric core to develop those plans.

                         Getting back on focus, the dungeon started making arm bears, as they were the dungeon's test bed, and trying to figure out ways to make the electric core. From what the dungeon understood, he would have to create a duel-core creature, and somehow, the two cores would interact in a specific way to make electric essence. Whether that essence was supposed to be made in a core or in essence channels that led to a core, the dungeon had no idea, but it was pretty clear to the dungeon that it was the interaction between wind and earth essence that made electrical essence possible. And so the dungeon began a long list of experiments.

                         During these long list of experiments, the dungeon learned why the people from his home world were so focused on AI. It turns out that slightly adjusting something thousands of times blindly is very, very boring. Fortunately for the dungeon, he had a small but growing population of humans in his dungeon. In fact, in the next few months, he was expecting his next batch of humans.

                         While the dungeon waited to see if his experimental bears developed a working electrical core, he began making books for the humans. Nothing grandiose, just little baby books. All of the humans loved them, especially when the face bears read to them. That said, as the months passed, it was a very odd thing to watch the babies develop into toddlers and constantly change while the adult essence humans seemed to be stuck. It just showed the dungeon the power of the growing human mind.

                         Months turned into years, and the face bear began teaching the human toddlers their ABCs and 123s, with books the dungeon created from its perfect memory. At this point, there were thirty humans. The adults, to the dungeon's surprise, seemed to enjoy their children immensely, and the dungeon was able to reduce the face bears’ role in taking care of the children, turning their main job into one where they educated the humans as the dungeon instructed them. That said, the children were quick to learn weaving from their mothers and building from their fathers.

                         Although the dungeon was looking forward to the day that the humans were actually helpful, the dungeon enjoyed the fact that the humans were not boring. In fact, one of the dungeon's favorite things about the humans it had hidden away was that the dungeon could see them express every emotion. Even if the dungeon could not experience joy, anger, sadness, jealousy, or a whole host of other emotions, the dungeon liked that it could see them on the faces of his humans.

                         Four years after starting his almost singular focus on making an electric core and tens of thousands of failures, the dungeon finally saw a spark of essence electricity. The dungeon was not sure about all the differences between essence electricity and regular electricity, but the first one that came to mind was that this was clearly made from the interaction of wind and earth essence. The dungeon finally saw this essence when he made a spiral of earth and wind essence channels throughout his arm bear, with a neutral essence channel in the center of the spiral.

                         As soon as the electric essence appeared, it did what all essence does, it traveled on an outward trajectory from the essence beast. Although the essence was traveling outward, it was continually being made, and as it left the bear, it zapped it, albeit the shock was very minor. As soon as the dungeon saw the essence escapting, the dungeon added a core to the essence creature and was relieved when he saw the core storing electrical essence.

                         As he studied the essence in the core, the dungeon made a number of observations. One, once the essence was in the core, it acted more like a liquid than actual electricity. Two, the core was storing straight essence. Wind and earth essence were largely created by the transformation of wind and earth mana, albeit much of it was also created by turning other forms of energy either into mana or essence. For instance, the dungeon currently had electricity running directly into it, and the dungeon was using that to fuel its expansion, which in turn meant the dungeon was turning electrical energy into essence and that into mana.

                         After realizing that it took wind and earth essence to make electrical essence, the dungeon had the arm bear discharge the electrical essence. The discharged essence came out as pure electricity, but as the energy dissipated, it turned into earth and wind essence. This told the dungeon that the magical system of this world was built on combining the eight basic magics. Somewhat similar to how the material world was built on protons, neutrons, and electrons.

                         Although the spiral looked similar to how an electric motor worked, it was different. An electric motor worked by spinning coiled copper around a magnet, or vice versa, and thus, the copper part of the generator produced electricity. The dungeon spent an enormous amount of time trying to treat either the earth or wind channels as the copper part of an electrical generator, and that is why he failed.

                         Electrical essence was created by combining earth and wind essence. In fact it worked a bit more like how lightning was made than electricity. Lightning is made due to clouds being negatively charged and the ground being positively charged, and the difference in charge causes creates lightning between the two because the two charges are attracted to each other.

                         With this newfound knowledge the dungeon began making a new arm bear from scratch with more tightly wound spirals. And so for the next year, the dungeon worked on maximizing the essence channels for essence electricity production. What the dungeon found worked best was tightly wound essence channels in opposite spiral patterns for wind and earth, with a straight electric essence channel in between for collection. Wound up, the three essence channels were only about a foot long, but if you unwound them, they would be over a hundred feet long.

                         As for the electrical essence core, it didn’t need three chambers like the earth and wind mana cores. Those two cores needed a chamber in them to allow mana to convert to essence before storing essence and then pressurizing it. With that in mind, the dungeon created a simple two-chamber essence core for his arm bear.

                         Once the basic core was finished, the dungeon created basic essence channels in his arm bear, from the electric core to the exterior. Then the bear released the electricity and immediately shocked himself to death.

                         As the bear fried himself to death, the imp teleported into the room with the bear. Looked over the creature and said, “Congratulations on becoming a tier two dungeon. Now you need to find a spell that will allow your essence creatures to use lightning without dying.”

                         Although the dungeon could not feel emotion, he felt very frustrated. It would still take some time for him to make this world go from fantasy to sci-fi.