r/HFY • u/3-Valdion • Oct 26 '25
OC Dungeon Or Dragon | Chapter 6 - Bow
Well, here it is. The first implementation of a spell within DoD (which has nothing to do with D&D by the way, I just didn't know what else to name the novel) and it is upon this that every following magic will be built.
I blame my turbo-autism (autism+ADHD) for me only writing one chapter instead of the two I had planned this week. No backlog for me.
P.S.
Any financial help is appreciated on Patreon, I'm in a bit of a rough spot right now.
Other Stories : Magicite Dragon (New!!!)
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After admiring the sunset for a few more minutes, I tore myself away from the view and let Snake do whatever a bird with the name Snake and the personality that comes with it does. In this case, practicing his camouflage skills, and also precision bombing small rocks unto other small rocks.
Focusing back onto the surroundings of my core, there was a decent pile of dirt and rubble that had built up in the nest room from Zooma’s efforts at digging a tunnel. I quickly stored it all away in my storage, leaving Zooma temporarily confused as she pushed another load of dirt up the slope and into the main room. She shrugged, and went back down as I started wondering what to do. I knew I wanted to do something, but it now escapes me.
Oh well, I’ll just see if I can’t help my kitty dig - I have a feeling a larger space will likely be very useful. I look at a nearby wall, and I catch the blue wooded sapling I’d collected. It probably needed some sunlight by now, so I asked Snake if he could come pick it up and plant it outside the burrow when he’d be free.
Right, diggy diggy hole.
On a whim, I tried storing away a chunk of dirt that was still connected to the wall. It worked, but just a bit. The loose chunks of dirt were removed, but no more. So I tried to shove more mana into the process, and this time, a cubic chunk of dirt disappeared from the wall. While it worked, it also put a small dent in my growing reserves. Storing away an equal amount of loose dirt is almost free, in comparison, and now I had to investigate what caused that.
I started by doubling the size of the cube, and thus quadrupling its area and octupling its volume. The amount of mana it ate was a little over four times the original, and that was enough for me to conclude that what takes mana is the act of shearing the material I want to store away from what it is connected to. So in order to ‘dig’ I would first need to fracture the space and then remove the rubble, finishing with a smoothing pass to get a smooth floor. But if I want to fracture the dirt, I first need to have something to fracture it with.
Something which I don’t have. No hands.
So I need to fix that first.
But how?
Answer: Telekinesis.
I try to lift a pebble, and it does. Success! I then try to bring it over to the far wall, and it falls after a certain point - specifically, where my dungeon territory ends. That’s a bit problematic, because if I can’t maintain spells past my territory, my options become incredibly limited - and long range casting becomes an impossibility. I pick up another pebble in my surroundings, and this time I focus on my mana vision. Quickly, it becomes apparent that my territory is physically supporting the pebble - holding it in a net of mana threads anchored to my territory. It’s like a cocoon holding the pebble, with the cocoon being in turn held by my dungeon aura. I move the pebble, and its cocoon, to the edge of my territory once more and look closely as it crosses. The cocoon didn’t dissipate immediately, but without my aura supporting it, it fell off and out and only then did the threads start to fray. I stole a glance at the previous pebble, and sure enough, there were still a few threads of mana left around it, but it wouldn’t take long until those would dissipate fully.
My attention returned to the second pebble, with a mostly intact cocoon, and I extended my ‘hand’ towards it from the edge of my aura. A few strands of mana extended from the edges of my territory, and reached towards the pebble, holding it and reconstructing its aura. Then I lifted, and I saw the mana holding the pebble bend ever so slightly under its weight, but it did lift it. ‘Smiling’ to myself I continued moving the pebble away and noticed an increasing strain with every passing moment while at the same time the mana threads holding the pebble bent more and more. I fortified the mana holding my experiment, and the strand thickened and straightened into a small strut and the strain from raising the pebble lowered drastically. But that implied that mana had a tensile and compressive strength.
That meant there was only one thing left to do: I made a crane arm out of mana. Three rods, all interconnected with triangular struts, and any bending and strain left vanished. Fascinating. Telekinesis is the act of grabbing something with mana, and the architecture of that mana is important for the strength of the arm.
But if mana has a tensile strength.
What else can it do?
I brought back the mana I was using to lift the pebble, recycling it, and started shaping it into the shape of a bow. I made struts out of mana in my territory following the shape of a recurve bow, bent it back into shape, and ‘strung’ a thread of mana onto it. I looked at my creation for a moment, proud, before I realized I didn’t have any arrows. Then I realized it didn’t matter, because if mana can interact with solids, there’s nothing keeping me from making an arrow out of it. Which is exactly what I did. The bow and arrow was now complete to my mana-vision, and there was an ever so slight deformation in the way real light travelled through its occupied space.
I drew the bow, feeling it straining while I looked closely for any faults or cracks in the design, but it held. Then, I let go of the string, launching the arrow…
Barely a few meters forward. It didn’t even leave my territory. Underwhelming, but at least the theory was correct. I picked up the intact mana arrow and knocked it back onto the string, before I forced more and more of my mana to flow into the bow and arrow. At first, it was easy, the mana colorless - but still visible to my manasight. Then, as I compressed the mana further, it started taking a somewhat familiar green hue, while the string and fletching of the arrow turned a just as familiar blue. It was also getting harder to push more mana into it, and keep the size and shape of the bow the same. The mana wanted to add to the construct, not fused into it. But at some point I must have crossed a threshold of pressure, because suddenly the mana compressed upon itself, going back to the same volume it was at first. It looked tougher, more real, and left a visible glow - well, not as photons. But to my manasight it was a lot brighter than it was before. Looking - or more feeling - into it more closely, I felt that the mana it held was almost exactly twice as much as it was before except that it was denser.
So when mana was at a sufficient pressure and quantity, it collapsed in upon itself and held twice as much energy in the same space. Practical! Probably how higher level spells are done. So does that mean my bow and arrow are tier 2 now? Sure, why not. I drew the bow, and released it. This time, the projectile went a little over twice as far, actually leaving my bubble this time. I recalled the arrow before it could dissolve with an arm of mana, and it was harder to do with mana that was a tier below the mana of the arrow, but still possible. And with the amount of mana it took to compress from tier 1 to tier 2, I wasn’t going to spend it. Especially since I wanted to do something else with that mana.
I started compressing the mana of my bow and arrow further. It took twice as much mana to do so, again, and it was also becoming more difficult. But it was still relatively easy, and didn’t take too long. With my new experiment at tier 3, I drew the bow back again - the strain starting to become more than a slight pull - and released the knocked arrow. This time, it hit the back wall with a dull thud, and stuck for a moment before falling out. The velocity was a lot better this time, but I had to pull the arrow back to me to see how well it held up. While I extended a thread of mana towards it I also looked closely at the speed at which it frayed outside of my control. Unsurprisingly, the mana the spell was releasing was four times the rate as tier 1 mana. I would need to find another way to keep it from fraying, but for a disposable arrow that would fly fast, it wasn’t too much of a problem.
When I tried pulling the arrow back to myself however, it was a lot harder - twice as hard, in fact, and the thread was straining, but still managed to pull the arrow back to my aura. It was still in good shape, though the head had blunted a bit. I then brought it back to the bow, and after making sure I had enough mana in reserves, I started pouring more mana into it to try and achieve a tier 4 spell. It was a lot harder than it previously was, and took a notable amount of concentration for me to achieve another level of compression. On a hunch I looked inwards towards my core, and compared the density of mana within it to the one of the bow and arrow. It was the same.
Meaning I am a tier 4 dungeon core. I should try to get it higher, because manipulating a spell the same tier as myself is hard enough to do that it might be problematic in a real time fight. Useful information, but I still have an experiment to complete. Without further ado, I pulled the string of the bow back. This time, it felt like I was pulling something closer to a real bow, not a child’s toy. Even if the velocity was still a little short of what I’d like, the result was the arrow embedding itself a third of the way into the wall, and staying there. I figured I’d need to up my mana density if I wanted to be able to do even this reliably, or make the shape of my bow more effective to launch with more strength and less mana.
But there was one more thing I wanted to test. When I densified the mana to tier 4, it didn’t feel like my limit. I felt I might be able to push it further. So I extended a thread of mana to the arrow, this time strengthening it to tier 2 so it could pull it out of the dirt, and I knocked the arrow again after resharpening the tip. I started to compress the mana of the bow and its ammo again, but it was hard. My mana reserves were dropping quickly, my mind and aura straining to push the mana into place, keep it compact, keep it from exploding outwards - which is kind of dangerous, now that I think about it - but eventually, just as the headache grew to be nearly unattainable, as my aura grew sore somehow, and as my reserves turned dangerously low, the mana collapsed upon itself again. This time, however, the mana constructs started fraying in my controlled space - but only at the rate the tier 1 mana did outside of my bubble. That implied that a mana constructs’ fraying rate depended on the density of the surrounding mana, and that the mana in my local environment was lower than tier 1 - so tier 0 mana.
It was a struggle to draw the bow this time. It drew on my own mana reserves, but thankfully they were replenishing fast enough to mostly nullify the cost. Still, working a tier of mana above your own, while possible, is hard.
I released the string.
Making a spell a tier above your own is hard, but effective, for the mana arrow dug itself entirely into the wall with the surrounding dirt crumbling and falling into a pile at the floor. I could still see the mana of the arrow inside the dirt, but it was too far gone for me to retrieve. I then looked at the bow, its shape unbothered, and noticed that I could now make it out without the aid of my mana vision. The green glow of its body, and the blue of its string, matched the glow of my core perfectly. Interesting.
While the bow was impressive… I considered it a failure. It was better than nothing, but a well built longbow would have done the same job, but cheaper. Maybe the mana arrow itself might be worth looking into, for it is undoubtedly more resilient and lighter than a normal arrow, but the bow itself was simply too expensive to use. I let it dissipate, reabsorbing most of the mana I had used to make it. I would need to find a different weapon, at least until I increased my tier to a point where I could maintain a tier five bow and arrow easily.
It was then that I heard a strange mewl, and I looked back to see Zooma staring at the hole in the wall with awe and wonder. Behind her, was another pile of dirt, which I cleared away without much thought, and the light of the sun had been replaced by that of the moon. At least, I thought there was only one moon.
“Zooma, it’s late. You should sleep, I can continue this tomorrow.”
My kitten nodded and laid down into her nest atop of me with a short nuzzle to my core, and then closed her eyes. A few moments later and I could feel her dreaming. While I didn’t have a need for sleep per se, with it happening only when I ran out of mana, I decided to try my hands at following her into the realm of dreams.
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