“The energy of the mind is the essence of life.” ― Aristotle, The Philosophy of Aristotle

  It took most of a day to find the entrance to the burrow, at which point I had a nearly 2-meter-long tunnel, rising steeply to the surface. My hopes that would change the situation, thankfully, were fulfilled, by a steep rise in the mana regeneration rate, jumping from 5/hr to 200/hr. With 52 hours left on the deadline, that meant I could do 8 cubes per hour and 416 cubes all together. That would be just enough to make a 1 m X 1 m tunnel all the way to the surface, if I were diligent. Fortunately, it didn’t seem that I had any need to sleep, as I was going to have to stay on top of things to finish in the time allotted.

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  [Quest Complete: Link to the Surface]; Reward: Continued Existence.

  [New Quest: Expand on Surface (Repeatable)] - Claim a 10 m X 10 m X 5 m zone connected to dungeon; Reward: Lifeform Blueprint, Increased likelihood of visitors from surface.

  In fact, I managed it with a couple of hours to spare, given that the tunnel wasn’t quite 2 meters long and I had the single smaller tunnel already made. The burrowers appear to have fled through an alternate entrance, as I’d sensed nothing from them since I started expansion.

  Stolen story; please report.

  I'll get those little buggers, eventually. Just you wait and see...

  A core room was going to need to be next, apparently, since I’d need it to level up, and to meet the standards of the base quest it would have to be 3 meters cubed. That was going to mean a whopping 3375 cubes, and at my current pace that would take over 2 weeks. Well, I could at least try doing it in larger blocks – with my mana maxing out at 125, 100 mana should get me a volume of 32000 cm3 (I.e., 4 X 20 X 20 X 20) or a cube of just under 32 cm per side. So, let’s try a block of 30 cm per side – that'll break down neatly for the final room – only 1000 cubes.

  *Oh, FFS. It doesn’t scale evenly! Why would I assume it scaled evenly? My 30 cm cube doesn’t cost 100 mana. It cost 37.5. It scales with one side of the cube? So, I can get an 80 cm cube for 100 mana? Or a straight up 1 m cube for 125? Well, that would make sense of my starting storage. Still not keen on being at zero mana, but I could have the entire room made in 9 hours.

  Which means I stressed over the deadline way more than I needed to, because I’m working with zero guidance. I could have been done with that stupid tunnel in two hours. Damn it! Serenity Now! Serenity Now!

  As it turned out, breaking into the open air didn’t really give me a huge amount of insight into my larger environment. Given that my domain covered only a 1 square meter section of the surface, and my limited ability to sense things beyond that domain, all I could really say was that I was in a grassy area in direct sunlight. I was hoping I’d figure out some way to better determine at least my basic surroundings, but nothing sprung to mind, just yet. It was frustrating, to be sure, but I decided I’d need to just take a patient, long-view perspective and keep plugging away (or unplugging away, I guess?) My underlying dungeon instincts seemed cool with a patient, gradual approach, while still hoping to find some creature I could consume.