First of all, good news, there was a group of four that were giving him a tidy sum of essence. Bad news though, they directly ignored his diversion and looked directly towards the tunnels just like how they instantly realized his little trick at the introductory rooms a few moments after they passed by the hidden tunnel.
Good news again, he had created slime apostles 2-02 to 2-05. They weren't exactly expensive, and he had built up more than 300 mp previously. Then bad news again, slime apostle 2-01 got kicked into oblivion, along with slime apostle 2-02 and 2-05, all by the same sentient... Falc was going to keep an eye on them, that was for sure.
Another bit of good news, the quartet left without any attempts at entering the tunnels. And also another bit of bad news to come with it, one of those four sentients was the one that killed three of his slime apostle candidates. And even more bad news, the sentient was directly besieged by slime apostle 2-01's acid and got out of the whole encounter basically fine. And they weren't even hit on grey acid-resistant parts, they didn't have them!
...At least they weren't taking the time to kill all his slimes for whatever reason, that was nice.
They left as quickly as they appeared, and Falc really hoped that the tunnels had somehow scared them off.
Anyways, ignoring what he had no true knowledge of how to stop, Falc was very much interested in what aspects were. Well, he wasn't exactly interested in what they were, he just wanted to know what affinities were so that he could bestow
Falc was a simple core, or maybe he was just incredibly lazy, but to be honest; if he could somehow not do this, he would just go back to making the best slime apostle 2 prototypes he could without a worry in the world.
But to be honest, he was kind of interested. If he could get more aspects, he could do more interesting things. If affinities were directly associated with an aspect, then the 'Darkness aspect' was a thing. And though he didn't fully understand the ramifications of what a 'Darkness aspect' would be in all honesty, he did know darkness was the absence of light which the sentients seemed keen to remain in.
He wasn't exactly in favour of using the light aspect much however, at least not in the slime plains. The lack of light seemed to be restricting the sentients from noticing things, seen from the fact that when slimes which were basically at the same distance from a sentient, the one that was in the presence of light source would be seen far more often.
'Fire gives of light, so light is probably based off of fire. Though, aren't there also non-fire related light sources?' He thought, a bit unsure.
There were the torches, which was basically just fire. There were those weird floating lights that some sentients made from... Something? He was never really invested enough to take a closer look, it was probably a skill or something, if sentients had them. But that would mean they were made of mana, considering that
technically didn't but also did. Since it was made of mana but didn't use mana, maybe.
He didn't have the greatest understanding of the skill, unlike its far more powerful cousin.
He took a look around, seeing if there was anything producing light which was out of the ordinary. There was the light on the surface, which he could not see the source of. It could be naturally occurring above, he couldn't be sure. There might even be a ball of fire hanging up in the sky for all he knew!
He did know one thing though, that the light of the surface appeared and disappeared in a routine cycle.
Falc couldn't really think of anything that gave off light, so, he took a quick look around. From the entrance to the depths of his caverns, and he found something of interest in mere moments. Some kind of... Shining thing?
Moss.
The shining 'Moss' gave off light, very easily seen from the adjective was. But how? It wasn't fire, at least he didn't think it was.
Moss is not fire.
With that confirmed, the question was how it was making light- 'Wait a second, wait just one second, why am I asking about light?'
Wasn't he looking for the slime aspect and not the light aspect? Falc instantly looked away and turned to something more relevant, at least he learned that there was shining moss close to his entrance, maybe sentients had done something. Maybe they had put the moss there as a source of light for perception?
He knew the water aspect way better than whatever he was pondering about, and at least it was somewhat related to slimes.
So, he took a look at it. And a problem, while he had access to the aspect and could basically use it whenever he felt like it, he had never once even taken a moment to examine how he used it. He wasn't connected to the aspect or anything, and it wasn't inside him or close to him. It wasn't even anywhere, it wasn't in the spiritual realm nor was it in the physical, nor anywhere else he tried to look.
But it was there, he could... See it? Feel it? He could just... Know it? It wasn't even an accurate description to say 'There' since it wasn't anywhere, it just... Was? He didn't need to look anywhere, he didn't need to focus even if doing so let him see it bit more clearly. It was omnipresent, it wasn't just something in a realm he couldn't see. It was everywhere.
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His bra- Mind, spirit, whatever it was called- Felt befuddled just trying to understand what he felt. Maybe his instincts had a succinct and poignant sentence to explain what an aspect was?
...
No, well it was his fault for expecting anything. Instincts instantly dropped from 'Weird wise man in the woods' to 'Smart but demented hobo'.
Not that Falc could blame it really, still, quite disappointing.
Since just brute forcing understanding didn't seem to really work, or at least didn't seem to be as fast as he'd like it to be, Falc thought about what else to try. If he couldn't understand the aspect it self, then why not extrapolate what it was by what he could do with it?
So, then, what could it do? Well, he could make mana mimic the water aspect or use mana along with the help of the water aspect to create normal water or slime water. Though, he wasn't exactly sure whether or not he could create more types of water. He hadn't exactly done any experiments related to creation... Which was kind of a blind spot, even if his crippled affinity did somewhat excuse it back in the day; right now he had become less crippled as a juvenile.
He'd add it to the list, anyways, how could mana even mimic the water aspect? He couldn't even understand what the water aspect was, what was he using as a basis for the mana's mimicry? Well, the feeling of course. Every core just had that feeling, maybe, he didn't know about other cores. Still, this seemed quite relevant.
He took a meagre helping of mana, and then bullied the singular mp into being more like big brother water aspect.
But how?
He pressed it, squeezed it, contorted it. But he could do all of that in the exact same way without making water mana, he even made sure with another pinch of mp as a control. It was the feeling, he knew it, but what in whatever's name even was it?!
When he looked at the water mana and then at the water aspect, he could see the similarities. He couldn't quite put it into words exactly, but he could perceive the difference in the water mana when compared to normal mana.
With slight annoyance and confusion to clarify, he gazed directly at the water-based air valve. Specifically he pondered while looking at the normal water born of the water aspect, then at the stream of water he had just noted flowing down through the initial stairway and into the first room of the subterranean whirlpool. The two different bodies of liquid were both water, but the droplets of pelting down and the stagnant underground reservoir were both made of water.
They fell under the umbrella of the water aspect, under the purview of the feeling. But they were different in a way, he was certain of it, but they also weren't in others.
He paused for a moment, and took a moment to pause. And just looked else where for something that could pique his interest, with no particular thing in mind he swept his domain for anything even remotely relevant or at least fun.
And he found it, something fun. Whether it was relevant could be seen, but more importantly was this black little thing that a certain sentient once held. Its previous owner had died from a grand fall and had long been cleaned up, though for some reason the black thing called a 'Dagger' seemed to be far more difficult to make disappear with the earth aspect. It was certainly being grounded away at a snail's pace, but still he could recognize it very distinct pointy end.
Though he remembered that it had something around its, what the statistically divergent hobo instincts called, 'Hilt' which was more like a rope than the smooth and resistant black it was made up of at its core.
It was interesting, from his inspection the dagger was made out of three 'Parts' he could parse, which were defined by the obvious air bubbles that made up a sort of rim or line between them. Those being the 'Hilt', 'Blade' and 'Coupler'
The hilt was rectangular with a circular indent in its form three-fourths its length with the same proportion of width as well, while the blade filled that indent and protruded outwards drastically to the horizontal length of the hilt with the coupler connecting the two for some strange reason. Holding the blade in place, probably, if the parts were originally separate.
Though they probably weren't, maybe they were instead made with those air bubbles intentionally? Like, by another dungeon? Those existed probably, maybe one of those gave one of the daggers with obvious flaws in order to weaken the sentients? Or maybe the air bubbles weren't flaws? Maybe they were a feature?
Anyways, one thing was certain, he wouldn't let it just get turned to nothing by his automatic cleaning system. He had no clue how to make more, obviously he couldn't let it out of his grasp. He dug a little hole below the dagger in the kill room, went a few meters down, then filled it all in. Literally, he got rid of all the air inside and perfectly encased the dagger in stone.
...Yeah, Falc felt better now. That meant it was back to work, back to being confused and frustrated.
He once again looked at the stagnant water he had personally created and the slime water that made up an in-production slime, and he mused and contemplated.
And, he came up with an idea 'Hear me out me, what if- What if, the feeling wasn't a feeling, but instead not that? You feel me, me?'
While rough and terribly articulated, it- It felt right. The idea wasn't clear, it wasn't sophisticated, it wasn't even a rare stroke of genius. No, to be honest, Falc felt it was obvious in a way. But also, somehow, weird.
But also, right- In a way.
He couldn't explain it, at least not particularly well. But the idea was clear in his mind, all that was left was to understand it.
'I-Is it uh... M-Meaning? No no no, it doesn't fit, it just doesn't. The feeling isn't a feeling, then what is it?! Uh, um, uhhh, ahhh, ummmmmmm, affinity?
...It doesn't fit! It doesn't fit! It's not control, it can't be, it- It just can't be control either! But what else could it be?!... This isn't working.' Finally Falc concluded his mad mental rant, and chose to do something else that might work.
He took another peek at the water aspect, no insights to be had. Maybe looking at slime water would help? Not really from what he could tell.
...Well, it did hold something that did interest him. Its nature, a non material physical substance, the only one of its kind that he had ever seen. And he himself had created it, he had formed it. Similar to how he created water he created slime water, but... What he wished to create was different, his intention was different, the feeling exerted itself in a different way.
But what made it exert itself differently? He didn't even try anything specifically, it just happened when he was following the schematic. Maybe the schematic included some information about what let him create slime water?
...It definitely did, it definitely did. He knew it, he could feel it- For some reason his feelings had become an expert on many topics recently- Still, it was a bit of a hassle to trudge through all the information and take only the important little bit about how to make slime water.
With the recipe for slime water in metaphorical dungeon core hands, said core started to read through. And, oh man, unsurprisingly it was a bit weird. At least it was something he could parse, it was simple and rough. It said nothing about the feeling or how he interacted with aspects, sadly. But it did give him a bit of data on what made slime water, not much.
The difference was simple, detachment from something. Slime water wasn't weird water that was specifically made for slimes, at least he felt like it wasn't, it was water free of the same restrictions material water was bound to. That was the difference between the feeling that appeared with normal water and slime water!
He understood it now! It made so much sense!
But... Wasn't he looking for the slime aspect?