Golem Crystal (1622 words)

Dark, everything was dark and silent around me, but luckily, I could still feel something inside myself.

In fact, that thing I feel inside of me seems to be some kind of energy that is very responsive to my will and intentions.

Malleable, controllable and easy to shape.

That is bad, I don't want for something easy to manipulate to be inside my body where it could possibly be exploited by someone else.

I need to isolate it, encrypted it, and make it mine and only mine.

Pulling the energy inside my body even deeper till I felt it entering what I presume to be my spirit or soul, I start going to work.

Imprinting codes, languages and lot of other security measures into my own energy to bare control to anyone intending to use it against me.

Time is something hard to track if you have no sensory input from the outside your own body, but it hardly matters right now.

With all the fact's at hand I'm already pretty sure that I died and reincarnated as an inanimate object, probably magical in nature, that is if that energy inside of me is magic.

No matter, my encryptiation of the energy inside of my body, which I'm going to call mana for convenience's sake, is finished, letting me calm down significantly.

Now no longer worried of someone using my mana to kill me from the inside out, I instead start to practice my control over it in order to be able to use it for a variety of things.

Something to note is that since awakening as whatever I currently am, my emotions seem to have been damped to a significant degree.

Instead of panicking at the loss of my sense, my death in my previous life, the unknown laying beyond I only felt, very concerned.

Yeah, that might be something to look into at a later date, but right now I got to master the control over my mana so that I can use it to get a better understanding of my current situation.

Time passes and my mastery reached an acceptable level.

With a flex of my mind, I send out a doom shaped wave of mana outside my body.

Everything inside the bubble got revealed to my mental eye as I finally had a picture to look at my surroundings.

The picture was mostly black and white with only occasional bluish sparks and lights coloring what looks like crystals.

A closer examination showed me that I myself also seem to be a crystal which together with tens of others lay nested into the wall of a big cave.

Two paths lead out of the cave, one goes up and the other one down.

Other than that, there is also a small stream of water which converge into a pond directly underneath the wall in which I and the other crystals are located.

Interestingly the water forming the stream too has a weak shade of blue similarly to myself and the other crystals.

It isn't hard to figure out that the blue color showed the presence of mana in my vision and with another few test that consist out of forming tentacles made from my mana this was confirmed as they were entirely blue.

Moving on, going by the different intensity of the blue color in the different locations I presume that it indicates the density or amount of mana present there.

This would mean that I currently am the thing with the most mana in this cave section.

But why be satisfied with that?

Weaving together a new tentacle from my own mana, I slowly stretch it out towards the nearest crystal containing mana.

Upon contact I feel the same sensation as when I first felt my own mana making me a bit excited.

Calming my mind again I proceed to insert my mana tentacle into the crystal.

As mana doesn't seem to be hindered by physical matter I succeeded effortlessly and was rewarded with the feeling of mana covering the tip of my tentacle.

With my tentacle connecting me and the crystal together I suddenly realize a problem.

What now?

Uncertain as to what to do I try to extend my will onto the mana inside the other crystal, but this failed to produce any sort of effect.

A bit annoyed I decide to put the research of turning my mana into something ineffectual on the to do list before opening something akin to a tube in my tentacle.

Through this tube I then start sucking the mana out of crystal towards myself.

Like I first noticed, the mana not under direct control or without protection easily followed along the tube as long as I helped a little with my own.

Upon arrival in my body, I once again tried to project my will onto it and with success this time.

Now with control over the mana, I repeat what I had done to the rest of my reservoir and indoctrinate my security measures onto it.

I continue to steadily drain the crystal off its mana and convert it into my own till finally, nothing remained inside the crystal

With bigger reserves in grasp and plenty of other prey in reach, I retract my mana limb and reach out to a new victim.

After draining five more crystals I managed to automize the process of converting all the mana under my control.

This only left me with moving the mana tentacles of which I now had two and oversee the draining process.

On the seventh victim I also automatized the draining process, this left me with plenty of freedom to work on a way to use my already converted mana as a source of infection to encrypt mana coming into contact with it.

The process was slow but I made progress till ultimately by the time I finished draining all the crystals lodged into the wall I finished a prototype.

I now can convert mana as long as there is a connection to my core, which is what I call my crystal body.

Of course, I immediately put it to test by inserting a ethereal blue tentacle of mana into the pond underneath.

Instead of sucking up the mana in the water like I had done to the crystals I send out a steady stream of what could be described as viruses which are packages that contain a memory and information structure that would indoctrinate a small amount of mana.

Because of how little mana each virus converts I need to send a constant stream of them form my core through a connection into the target.

Currently this was my limit but with enough time to experiment and trying out new things I should be able to upgrade the viruses to the point where they convert the entire patch of mana they infiltrate or be able to create these viruses through my mana instead of my core which would turn my mana into something highly dangerous as even a small amount could completely infect all the mana in reach.

Back to reality, the mana in the pond has been steadily converted extending my reach future which in turn allowed me to convert more mana to my own.

It wouldn't take long till all the mana in the pond is mine which would mean that I need to extend my sight onto the stream leading into the pond.

My thoughts get interrupted by the bright, glaring blue light that suddenly entered my range of view.

I had to hastily modify my perception method and turn down the light effect of mana in order to even see what it was that had this enormous amount of mana which even I couldn't rival.

Half expecting to see a dragon or something similarly mythical by the sheer brightness of the initial light effect I was hardly shaken out of my fantasies by reality.

A bug.

A lowly, dumb bug.

To be fair it was pretty big, around the size of a big house cat but in the end, it was still a bug.

Yes, a bug who had more than ten times my own mana.

Do I really have that little mana even after absorbing all the mana form the pond and the other crystals in this cave?

Shaking my imaginary head to get rid of these thoughts I instead change my point of view onto the current situation.

From the looks of it living things had a lot more mana by default, doesn't that just mean that much larger mana source just walked right in front of me?

My initial shock and depression flipped over and if I had a face a bloodthirsty smile would adore my lips.

Indeed, I doubt this bug has high control over its mana reserves nor does it seem to have any security measures in place to bare others access to its mana.

Following my growing enthusiasm, I channel more of my mana into the pond and from there along the stream to get closer to the bug.

Once close enough I weave together a tentacle which reared out of the small stream of mana infused water and threateningly hung over the bug that has walked along the caves walls directly to the stream.

With no hesitation my tentacle lungs forth and impales the bug.

I watch how the bug continues on its way as if not noticing the mana tentacle connecting it to myself.

Now sure of the bugs lack of control over its own or even awareness of mana in general, I start to jug out a thick stream of viruses from my core on direct path through my mana into the bug.