After setting the critter gang to work, Dexter realized 2 things. His mana started going back up, and he had nothing to do to pass the time.

  A lifetime of easy access to the internet had left him spoiled for easy entertainment, and now he realized that while watching the automatons work for a while was entertaining, that too got boring after a while.

  So, he decided to practice his terraforming while he waited. Sure, cutting out a cube from the wall was impressive, but it wasn't really delicate work. Precise? Yes. But not delicate.

  He just wanted a cube and the magic did the rest. So he started practicing making other shapes. Geometric shapes were surprisingly easy, at least the simple ones.

  Soon he had a little pile of rocks in all types of shapes in front of him. From pyramids to dice like shapes that reminded him of his current body, they weren't too hard.

  Things got tough when he wanted more custom shapes. He tried carving the letter “a” into the wall, and it ended up looking like a ball that someone partially deflated.

  Dexter sighed internally, knowing that he had a lot of practice ahead of him until he got something halfway decent.

  A while later into his carving practice, him having progressed to what was akin to a child trying writing for the first time, he was taken out of his workflow but rocks pinging off of his “body”. Expanding his senses outwards, it seemed that Moley wanted to get his attention.

  “Oh? Finally find something interesting?”

  After receiving some emphatic nods, he looked down to Moleys hand, where he beheld a glowing blue rock.

  With the finding of the rock he realized something else. He didn't need light to see things. In fact, he assumed that his current area was pitch black, but somehow he could see perfectly, along with his automatons.

  Going back to the discovery, Dexter got an incredible sense of power from the rock, and he immediately realized that he needed it, and a lot of it. Other than feeling a strange resonance with it, it seemed that this rock had a similar power as to what kept the automatons moving.

  Knowing that he needed a name for such a new mineral, he decided on “Mana Stone”. Yeah, not particularly creative, but hey, at least it was right to the point.

  Peering into Moleys frankly impressive tunnel, it had to be at least half a kilometer long, he noticed more of the rocks on the far end.

  “Excellent work Moley! Proud of you. Though hum, seems I might need more workers if we are gonna be finding minerals. Cant have the work stopping just to mine out shiny rocks.”

  Moley nodded along emphatically, just to prove a point.

  Looking around at the progress of the Bees, he found all the metals to be stacked neatly in little piles. And the rocks, well, there's only so many ways you can organize a random assortment of rocks. At least the pile was orderly.

  The bees were in a corner, playing what looked to be a rounder of the rocks. Clearly having finished their tasks a while ago.

  Checking his mana once again,

  MANA: 674/2000

  Dexter noticed that it had gone up ever so slightly since he stopped his practice. With the rate being around 1 point of mana per every 5 minutes that passed.

  Summoning a new mole worker, he got a new screen notification, surprising him;

  Use mana or available materials for generation of tools?

  Wanting to be frugal with his already low mana count and, quite frankly, out of sheer curiosity, he decided on using available materials.

  He observed some metals from the pile rising up and going towards the building automaton. Said metals warped and flowed like water, taking new shapes as they went.

  Some turned into the classic mining hat, while the rest went into the pickaxe the worker was gonna use.

  Soon he had a brand new mole miner standing in front of him, looking around with curiosity.

  Moley came over and gave him a hug, then turned him towards the mining tunnel, as if excited to get to work. Deciding to name him later, he turned back to the bees.

  “Uh, what do you guys wanna do? There's not much to organize at the moment, and I kinda feel bad for just leaving you directionless”

  Having been addressed directly, Itsy, who seemed to be the leader of the trio, sent back, well not exactly words, but more akin to feelings of boredom, combined with a desire to explore.

  “Hum, well, I can't really help you with that, we dont have alot to explore…..”

  Looking back at the tunnel, something caught his attention. Instead of like before where he could see with detail all things that were happening inside, all of a sudden, his perception stopped.

  It was like he was standing on the edge of something and could only look from that point onwards.

  He was surprised but this, but reasoned that well, of course his reach wasn't infinite. There had to be a limit.

  “Sorry Itsy, I think you are gonna have to deal with the boredom for a while, uh, why not play around with the rocks? I'm sure you can make like a castle or something with them, that could be a fun thing to pass the time.”

  The bee robot nodded slightly, as if considering his proposal, before turning to the others, doing a little jig which amused Dexter, and the three promptly flew off to the rock pile, which by now took up almost a fourth of the current room.

  Thinking back to the border issue, he called over the Mole duo. Looking at them side by side, he realized that Moley was ever so slightly larger than his new friend. Finding that interesting, though pointless, he moved on.

  “Good work on the tunnel there. Uh one of you can continue mining the Mana stones, while the other can go directly opposite of the current tunnel, and make a similar one in that direction, I wanna test something”

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Moley saluted, then pointed his new friend back at the old tunnel while he took charge on the new project with gusto.

  Anxiously observing the new tunnel take shape, he kept an eye out for the invisible perception line, to when he crossed it.

  Surprisingly, they didn't reach that point before something unexpected happened.

  A few hours later, Moley had only made it around two thirds of the original tunnel when his pickaxe seemed to go through the wall. He looked through the new hole with curiosity before excitedly bringing down the rest of the wall.

  Dexter was surprised to realize that they had found a cavern. Perhaps the bee trio would have some exploring to do after all.

  Peering outside his cave for the first time, Dexter was surprised to see a lush environment. It looked like someone had shoved a tropical rainforest underground.

  Looking up at the ceiling, he saw gigantic Mana Stones, illuminating the whole environment. He mentally salivated at the thought of getting one of those down here, but given the fact that they seemed to be impossibly high up, that proved to be a challenge for a later date.

  Going back to the trio, Dexter was shocked to find a miniature castle, made of perfectly stacked stones. Bitsy and Beetsy were patrolling the palisade while Itsy sat in a surprisingly fancy throne for just some random rocks.

  Laughing at the ridiculous scene, he called out to them.

  “Fantastic work on the castle, but now, it's time boys. We have a big new cave that's in need of exploring.”

  All three bee bots perked up, and rapidly flew towards the second tunnel, doing excited loops through the air and everything.

  “If you see anything dangerous or interesting, come back! And try not to get lost!” - Dexter called out after them.

  Itsy looked back and nodded before continuing off into the newfound cavern, intent on exploring it all.

  Some time later, Dexter was once again practicing his terraforming. The mole duo were hard at work at the main mine collecting the mana stones. Things had fallen into a comfortable rhythm.

  Of course, that's when everything decides to go wrong.

  In the edge of Dexter's perception he sees some familiar objects flying towards the entrance to his area at a rapid pace. Surprised by the erratic way they are flying, he shifts his attention to them.

  Bitsy and Beetsy flew into the cave, both carrying Itsy, who looked incredibly damaged, the green power lines flowing through their body sputtering and they were missing the lower half of their legs along with a wing.

  Dexter immediately panics.

  “What happened?! Uh put them down over there, i'll get right to fixing them”

  They carefully lower Itsy into their throne at the mock castle. Then convey a sense of panic, urgency, and warning at Dexter.

  “Whatever did this, is it still following you?”

  Both bees nodded their heads furiously.

  “Seems I'm gonna have to summon a warrior after all, I was hoping to not have to use so much mana at the current time, but I should have assumed there were some hostile monsters in the jungle.”

  Looking into the jungle, he sees a green creature separate themselves from the forest, and start making their way towards the tunnel leading straight to him.

  Quickly, he orders the moles and bees to start piling up rocks on each side of the tunnel entrance, to help funnel in the creature before it gets here.

  After, he selects the warrior option, thinking of a stalwart defender.

  A much larger amount of mana flows from Dexter into the space in front of him. A large form, about as tall as your average adult but twice as wide comes into being in front of him.

  At first he thinks this new automaton is a salamander, but seeing the frills on each side of its head, he reconsiders.

  “Oh yeah, I think it's an Axolotl, I remember reading about them. Xol Axel seems like a nice name for him.”

  Xol, the newly baptised automaton, looked quite impressive. The top of his head reached up to Dexter's pedestal making him basically eye level with Dexter. He was armored like a traditional fantasy knight, metal plate covering any exposed gears or tubes with chainmail covering the joints, though he had no head covering, surprisingly.

  He was armed with a short sword and shield, perfect for defending a cramped tunnel.

  “Xol, we have a threat incoming! Quickly, defend us!”

  Xol gave a salute and ran towards the tunnel entrance, where the creature, which having been able to get a better look David had realized looked like a lizard. Though something seemed off about it.

  By then, the exit was covered quite well with rocks, with only a small opening that only the bees would have a comfortable time exiting through. Though of course with it only being a stack of rocks it lacked any kind of bracing.

  Xol readied himself as the creature approached, and with a resounding crash, it ran into the barricade at full speed. A small landslide of rocks fell off, and the stalwart knight stabbed through the opening, drawing first blood.

  As it pulled back its sword, Dexter saw that it was covered in a greenish blood. And looking closer at the lizard, it seemed to be covered in leaves and vines.

  With a start, Dexter realized that the lizard, which looked like an enraged komodo dragon, was actually made of plants. A few vine-like tentacles started making their way through cracks in the hastily made wall, trying to esnare Xol, who kept slicing and dicing at the chlorophyllic abomination.

  Checking his mana, he realized that he was nearly out, Xol having cost him most of his remaining mana.

  He used terraform on a few remaining pieces of metal to transform them into two spears, though they weren't well made, they at least looked like a spear, which Dexter already considered a great improvement.

  “Quick, moles, grab the spears and go help”

  Hesitantly they picked up the weapons and ran towards the barricade, though at this point, calling it a barricade was rather generous. More like a small hill of rocks, which Xol was valiantly defending, though not at a cost. Several scratches marred his once pristine armor, his shield had seen better days, and the frills on half of his head were missing.

  The moles ran up and started poking at the beast, though they kept their distance.

  The vine lizard, as Dexter started calling it, was pretty hurt, though it seemed that its injuries weren't slowing it down in the slightest.

  With the moles giving Xol some breathing room he was finally getting some better hits in, and the monster was finally starting to falter.

  Not wanting to be left out, Dexter used what meager points of mana he had left to terraform some pillars to disrupt the creature as much as possible, and only stopped after he almost bottomed out.

  Finally, after a long and costly battle, the vine lizard finally slumped over, dead.

  The defenders continued attacking it for a few more seconds, to make sure it stayed dead before grabbing the body retreating.

  “Ok, that was hectic, are you ok Xol?”

  Xol, who took the brunt of the attack, was quite injured indeed. He was even leaking a glowing green liquid from some seams in his armor and he lost his shield along with the accompanying forearm sometime during the fight.

  “Good job everyone. Proud of you all”

  The automatons gave Dexter a thumbs up, then returned to their duties, minus Xol, who stood in front of him expectantly.

  “Oh yeah, you don't have a prior task do you? Go keep a lookout will ya? At Least until I regenerate enough mana to fix you all”

  Xol gave a salute, and set off to the tunnel entrance, stepping aside the massive corpse.

  “Now, what to do with you while we wait?”