Upping The Ante

78. Tentative Exploration

I leave my pets and Vibrant working on the shortcut tunnel and slowly encroach on the marsh Expanse solo. It isn’t that I don’t think they could fight whatever it is we find in here, I just don’t want to attract unwanted attention. It’s time to execute something I haven’t had to do for a while.

Engage stealth-ant mode.

Luckily, I’m still relatively small for a monster. Remaining unseen is still fairly simple. The plant growth is thick here, reeds and hillocks blocking line of sight in every direction. Cautiously I creep about, all of my sensing apparatus tuned to their finest state, twitching at every shift of a tuft of grass.

I’m tense.

Super tense!

With this stupid pressure hanging over my head, and flying solo for the first time in a while, I’m really feeling the heat. It’s also unnerving to be moving through this swampy terrain where there could be monsters under the water, or indeed, every plant could be a monster! I have my heat detection for the latter. The plant monsters register much higher on that sense due to their peculiar biology than normal plant life, thus I manage to avoid most combat by navigating around the edges of the terrain.

Avoiding the tops of the mounds that poke out of the waters is key. Lest I present my silhouette to prying eyes. I don’t particularly want to have this magnificent form catching the attention of every croc and murder flower in the Expanse. I’ll have to get the best view I can whilst staying low.

This Expanse is freakin’ huge. Way bigger than the Forest Expanse, and that one already pushed my understanding of what an underground space could be. The roof is easily twice as high and through the low-lying mist and trees, I can’t quite see the walls as they widen and curve away from our entrance. From what I have seen though, this place could easily be at least double the size of the forest.

I recall Formo told me that the radius of Pangera was around 10,000 kilometres. Certainly significantly bigger than Earth. The radius of Earth was six-ish thousand… so that would mean the volume of Pangera would be, like… way larger. By a lot…

There’s tons of space in here, is what I’m trying to say. And the Expanses apparently get even larger the lower you go. Some are truly ridiculous from what I’ve heard. Perhaps they would even be a similar size to some countries on Earth if we were to compare the floor area, which is crazy to think about. Still, this marsh is easily larger an Expanse than I expected to find in the first layer of the Dungeon.

This is either hitting the jackpot or a noose around my neck.

Expanses are the juicy goldmines of the Dungeon from what the human queen told me. Stronger monsters, more cores, Mana infused natural resources like wood and stone, all of these can be found in the Expanses. Great opportunity also brings with it great danger. Expanses are great points of conflict, not only between nations of the surface, but between monsters who reside there. The big dogs all want the best territory, and from what I’m feeling, the crocs have moved in and an extremely big dog has set up shop here.

Perhaps the crocs want to monopolise the Biomass being generated in this area? Maybe they aren’t only sending out waves of monsters to terrorise the nearby surface… Maybe they’re also herding the weaker monsters straight into the belly of their parent to fuel the egg laying process…

Bizarre scenes of monsters willingly marching into the open mouth of a gigantic crocodile flit through my head. Surely not… The monsters seem unusually quiet and obedient, but there’s no chance they would just walk to their deaths.

More investigation is needed, and before more investigation can happen, we need to learn all we can about the terrain in this Expanse.

The wide pools of water are really frustrating my senses. There’s enough hillocks of ground that I can hop from one to the next to move around without getting my feet wet. Except I can’t sense any heat sources under the water, nor can I see squat through the murky surface. The result? I’m constantly on edge, my compound eyes giving me superb vision of my surroundings while my mind is also focused on those deceptively placid waters.

The plant-type monsters seem to be right at home here. The trees are dense, standing tall on splayed roots that plunge with their thousand-divided fingers into the waters. Mixed between them are more tree-like monsters, their bark exteriors concealing the hungering creatures within. The Branchies were a heck of a lot more friendly than these punks. I’ll need to hunt down a few to sample the Biomass and try to get a clearer picture of what we’re dealing with.

Some of the natural trees are absolutely enormous. At regular intervals, usually a few hundred metres from each other, these truly massive trees rise out of the swampy water and spread their branches impossibly wide. Giant fleshy leaves the size of a lounge room spread huge amounts of shade everywhere. From below, strange shadows shift about the branches and foliage, so I don’t attempt climbing up at this point. I’ll wait until I’ve managed to scope out a little more info.

Oooo, here we go.

Nearby is a vibrant flower with several dark green pods on vines hovering around the main trunk of the plant. The flower itself is beautiful. Shades of yellow and orange rippling across the petals in a strangely hypnotic pattern, almost as if the colours themselves are moving. I almost feel a… a lull… coming over me… as if… tired…

HACK!

Not today! Vigorously I shake my body to cast off the lethargy starting to wash over me due to the influence of that damn plant. This must be some kind of mind affecting ability. Perhaps caused by the pattern itself or maybe spores in the air.

Thank goodness for a high Will stat!

Ok… This flower is going to get it. To learn about the creatures of this Expanse, I must engage in true diplomacy, monster style. Which of course means killing and eating.

Calling on my sub-brains, I have them weave the water construct from the Mana in my core. I’ve been practicing with this transformation shape whenever I get the chance, whipping it up and then letting it dissolve so I can whip it up again. Practice makes perfect as they say, and my time has been steadily going down. There’s still a long time to go before I reach what I would consider mastery. Though I’m satisfied with my current progress.

Before long, a bright and shiny new construct is glimmering inside my head. My brains get to work operating it, feeding raw Mana in one end and producing the glittering blue energy out the other side. I don’t think water Mana is going to be super effective against this plant, but since I’m practicing it, I need to keep using it in order to become familiar with its uses.

[Mana Transformation (III) has reached Level 3.]

Haha! There we go. Practicing the Transformation magic is definitely reaping the benefits of experience at least. Particularly when I’ve been using it in combat.

All right, flower. Time to get hosed.