Zack needed a break. Between the constant stress of managing his dungeon, along with the new stress that came from the discovery of fairies, he was finding it difficult to focus on anything. He was struggling to find the motivation to focus on things that made him happy—such as experimenting with monsters and building new rooms. But it wasn't like he could just split his attention across multiple projects at once.

  Or could he?

  He had already learned to spread his awareness across the entire surface of his dungeon. There was nothing he couldn't perceive in some fashion, one way or another. Any human limitation he imposed on himself was just that: a human, self-imposed limitation. It was a barrier to his own growth that existed solely because he believed it did.

  Knowing that and being able to act on, it though, were two very different things. Intellectually, he knew there was no reason why he couldn't divide his attention across multiple tasks at once. He was, after all, a dungeon. He had no physical body to restrict him, and was bound only by the limits of his magic. Emotionally, he struggled with the idea that he wasn't subject to human limitations anymore.

  Zack retreated to one of his many labs in order to practice. He chose one that was out of the way from Archie's floor, to give himself the most privacy he could. He didn't even bother with a wisp, seeing as he would be alone for the duration of this experiment.

  "First things first, practice doing two things at once," Zack muttered to himself.

  In theory, this was the lyncpin to the entire skillset. If he could muster the focus to work on two tasks simultaneously, he could expand the scope of those tasks until he was no longer bound by them. Then he could move on to three tasks.

  For the purpose of this experiment, he chose two tasks to work on that were fairly straightforward but equally as demanding: the simple act of spawning a mob. He chose from a long list of patterns at his disposal one of the more simplistic mobs, and set himself to work.

  Effortlessly, two identical horned bunnies appeared in the middle of the room. Zack mentally frowned as the two bunnies sniffed each other and began hopping around the empty room. As simple as that was, it didn't feel quite right. His intention was to practice dividing his focus so he could accomplish multiple tasks at once, but creating the two rabbits felt more like one task.

  He quickly reclaimed the mana spent to create the bunnies, and selected another pattern from his list. This time, he would conjure one rabbit and one stooltoad—a mushroom-toad hybrid creature. This time, he felt the strain on his magic as he attempted to perform the two actions at once. It wasn't an impossible act, but the magical pressure strained the confines of his core some half dozen rooms away.

  Despite the strain, again the two mobs were spawned without issue. Zack watched them hop around curiously before dismissing them again. "There has to be somehting I'm missing about this," he muttered, pacing his awareness through the room.

  Zack paused as he realized what he was doing. He didn't have a body, so why on earth was he pacing? That was a human habit he retained from his previous life, before the Aetheric boom. His awareness was just a focal point, it wasn't truly him.

  "What if I tried having multiple focal points?" He wondered.

  With an exertion of will, Zack divided his awareness in two. His mind, still emotionally attached to the idea of human limitations, perceived the sudden split as though having binocular vision where each eye pointed in opposite directions. But that was the point of such an exercise, to help him work past these self-imposed restrictions.

  It took him a bit of practice, but he eventually he was able to manipulate each focal point individually. He sent one of them shooting off towards another lab while maintaining the other in its original position. This proved to be a bigger challenge than simply dividing his awareness, as he subconciously wanted to shunt both focal points at the same time. It took as much effort to move one point of view as it did to keep the other stationary. His awareness traveled at a snail's pace, where normally it would move like lightning, as he attempted to move one half into another lab while keeping the first in its original place.

  Finally, after struggling longer than he would have liked, Zack had two distinct points of awareness in two different labs. As a way of proving that he was successful, he attempted once more to summon a bunny into the first room.

  To his surprise and frustration, he accidentally summoned a bunny in both rooms. That hadn't been his intention, and he tightened his grip on his awareness to try again.

  Two more bunnies appeared, one in each room.

  "What am I doing wrong now?" He groaned. He went to mentally slap his face before stopping himself. He didn't have hands, let alone a face to slap. That was another human habit he needed to work on.

  Shoving that to the side, he dismissed the rabbits and ran things through his mind again. He had two different points of awareness. He could feel the distance between them like a faint pressure, as though it were two eyes crossing in the most uncomfortable manner. That wasn't right. His awareness shouldn't be connected. He could perceive every inch of his dungeon simultaneously, the focal points were merely a place to focus his attention.

  What if, instead of splitting his awareness, he tried to create new points of awareness?

  As soon as he had that thought, the pressure connecting the two focal points snapped, forcing his awareness back to a single point of origin again. That was fine, he wasn't sure he could dismiss his awareness the same way he could his mobs.

  Leaving his focal point in the lab, Zack chose a new location in his dungeon to work in. The manor was as good a place as any, and it wasn't like he was going to be disturbed. With a deep breath of loose aether, Zack forced his awareness into the manor wing, while maintaining the focal point in his lab.

  Unlike his first experience, this didn't feel like his awareness was splitting. Rather, it felt like he had simply opened another eye. Were he able to blink, he would have done so a dozen times. He panned one gaze around the manor, spotting some of the slimes hanging from the ceiling and the skeletons patrolling the hallways. The other awareness remained locked in place, focused on the centre of his lab.

  It felt like his core was being split down the middle. It was difficult to describe, and not necessarily painful, but he could feel the way his magic was dividing itself to accomodate multiple perspectives at once. With an effort of will, he tried to conjure a rabbit into the lab.

  Somewhere in the dungeon, Jean-Claude threw his hands up in Zack's exasperation. Despite successfully dividing his awareness, he was still conjuring two bunnies at once.

  "It's fine, it's fine," Zack told himself repeatedly, once again dismissing the bunnies. "It took me a long time to get this far. It'll be fine if it takes me a lot more practice to get this down."

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  But did he have the luxury of practice time? Somewhere out there were fairies waiting to prey on unsuspecting cores, waiting to devour the magic within them. He couldn't let himself fall victim to such creatures! He had to be ready when inevitably they came for him and for the cores under his protection.

  He tried again, this time focusing his attention on the lab. He let the manor awareness remain at his periphery rather than in focus. This time, he felt the division in his magic ease. He could still perceive the manor, just as he could any other aspect of his dungeon, but it felt more like sleeping with an eye open rather than being able to loosely feel things. If he flicked his awareness to the manor, he could still see everything in perfect clarity.

  Again he attempted to conjure a bunny in the lab. He started slowly, waiting to see if the magical pressure returned. As he built the mana wireframe, he noticed that he felt no different from when he spawned his regular mobs, so he accelerated the pace until all that remained was a single bunny.

  Nervously, he flicked his attention back over to the manor. With the second focal point already set, it felt more like gazing off to the side than physically moving his awareness through his dungeon. After scanning the hallway for any changes, he was excited to note that there wasn't a single bunny in sight!

  "I did it?" He breathed, both in surprise and excitement. "Holy crap, I actually did it."

  The real test was whether he could actually do it again. This time, he flicked his focus into the manor perspective. He could feel his lab perspective sitting in the periphery, and he could easily shift his attention between the two points of view. It wasn't the same as when he manually maneuvered his perspective around. This was instantaneous access to the rooms, because he was already watching them.

  Zack concentrated and spawned a new mob in the manor. It was something that looked like it belonged—a skeletal bunny instead of his usual horned variety. For half a second, he was worried that he had done something wrong and he would find another one waiting for him in the lab. When he finally worked up the courage to check, he was delighted to discover he really had been successful.

  A bit of practice went a long way. Nothing about what he'd attempted was easy, and yet he really had managed to divide his attention in two.

  "Now, how about I try to do two different things at once in these rooms?" he wondered. With an effort of will, he dismissed the two conjured bunnies. This he didn't count, as reabsorbing mobs was second nature to him and required no more attention than passively absorbing aether.

  He decided that a better way to practice performing two tasks at once was to perform different tasks. If he just kept spawning monsters, he might get better at that, but it wasn't enough to actually help him in the long run.

  In the lab, he started to model out a new mob. It was just something simple, a loose wireframe really, but it was enough of an activity to require some dedicated attention. In the manor, he instead started to manipulate the existing strucutres. These were two activities that normally required his full attention, and were therefore worth practicing in a more divided capacity.

  While he sculpted the model in one room, and shifted furniture about in the other, Zack could feel the pressure building in his core. The crystal shuddered with his every mana breath, and its structure was starting to feel uncomfortably tight. He didn't relent, though. He'd know if he was putting too much strain on his core. He didn't feel any new cracks forming.

  Quite the opposite. Despite the tightness in his crystal, he felt better than he had in a long time. It was like the pressure was building on top of his core, rather than trying to burst out. As his magic pressed against the limits of its confines, it solidified into fresh layers of crystal. He was advancing, he could feel it.

  A quick glance at his stats revealed exactly that. He was shooting up in levels, more than he had from any other activity. The sheer act of attempting to push himself beyond his human limitations, of becoming more core than man, was strengthening him in ways he didn't yet fully understand.

  But he would. If this is what it took to protect the things he cared about, then he was willing to go however far he needed to.

  As he finished creating the model in his lab, he allowed himself a moment to rest and examine his stats sheet in more detail.

  [Name: Zack]

  [Core type: Dungeon]

  [Level: 24]

  [Integrity: 117%]

  [Mana: 102/150]

  [Upkeep requirements]

  [Influence: 110 mana per hour]

  [Monsters: 25 mana per hour]

  [Advanced Spawners: 45 mana per hour]

  [Aether intake]

  [Influence: 85 aether per hour]

  [Ambient: 80 aether per hour (+55 aether per hour from harvesters)]

  [Recovery: 15 per hour]

  [Aether recovery and upkeep requirements have reached a stable equilibrium. Growth increased.]

  Five whole levels, all from trying to push himself past his normal limits. He always knew that cores didn't progress the same way that people did, but this was more progress than he could ever have imagined. Especially since he wasn't doing anything outside of the norm. He'd just been trying to more things at once.

  He dismissed the half-finished model in his lab. He wasn't entirely sure what he was trying to make, he'd just been making something for the simple act of creation. The manor he returned to normal, much of the furniture having been displaced as he practiced. This felt like good, progress for today. He was curious to see how much his core had changed, and was about to shoot his awareness off toward his core room when he paused.

  Why not just make a new awareness instead?

  It took him a few moments to manage, as the concept of having three points of vision pushed against the boundaries of self-imposed human limitations. When he finally succeeded, though, he was met with a stunning sight.

  His core was significantly larger. If he had to guess, it had gained something like twenty percent of its previous mass in size. Where once Zack had been a fist-sized chunk of rock, he was now closer to an orc fist in size. The thought of Greg's meaty digits clenched in comparison was enough to make him chuckle.

  Zack was still nowhere near Matt in terms of size. It would be a long time before he suspected he could surpass the sky palace core in power, but what Matt had in brute force, Zack was making up in control. He didn't think any of the other cores even knew about perspective dividing in this manner, and he wasn't entirely sure he wanted to tell them. Though, if any of them knew, it was probably Glitch. The portal core was already a fusion of two different perspectives, and the nature of their portal network was as close to a dungeon as any of the lesser cores came.

  Curiously, Zack tried to create a few more points of view. His goal was to have one in every major room in his dungeon. He didn't need to be able to see everything at once—he could always maneuver the perspectives around if necessary—but he wanted to be in every wing at all times.

  The manor was already a part of his growing network of views, so he created another in the forest and the meadow. Again, he could feel these perspectives sitting on the edge of his vision. If he stared through one point of view, he could just faintly see the traces of the others. The act didn't award him another level, but that was fine. He was probably at the limit of growth for this kind of act. Maybe if he got better at acting through multiple perspectives at once he would gain some more levels, but for now he wasn't going to worry about that.

  By the time he was done, he had a point of view in every single wing of his dungeon, as well as an extra one in his lobby. Curiously, he pulled his focus away from all of the, and instead tried to take them all in at once.

  Eight distinct points of view. That was how many he was presently maintaining. It was interesting to see them all at once. Zack felt almost like a spider in the centre of a giant web. Or, perhaps more accurately, a security guard staring at a wall of monitors. He was aware of each point of view at the same time, but he could really only focus on one or two of them at a time. With practice, he suspected his control would increase. For now, this was enough progress for him to be proud.

  It wasn't the same as preparing for a fairy incursion, but it was advancement. Zack had seen tangible benefits from stretching his abilities and practicing them in new ways, and it felt encouraging to see real progress for the first time in weeks. Core levels were vastly different from human levels, so he wasn't entirely sure what this meant for his abilities. He hadn't gained any new powers that he could identify, but he still felt stronger.

  "I need to find ways to gain new elements," he declared to himself. That was his current biggest hurdle. Elemental control offered him more options for dungeon creation. "But first, I think it's time to expand again. I think an upper level to the manor could be an interesting change of pace…"

  As he worked, Zack couldn't help but hum a tune.