The Need to Feed

With Rachels help it wasn't hard to get the Enchanter to the prison and the other Adventurers body into the confines of the Dungeon proper.

Of course, it was only then she considered the question of whether Racheps presence would interfere with the item collection function of the Dungeon, but Taylor gave a mental shrug and went ahead.

After all, she wasn't about to kick Rachel out and if she stuck around sooner or later she'd be in the Dungeon when she needed to clear it up.

Better to find out if it worked now rather than later.

The absorption went without a hitch.

Well, close enough.

It automatically avoided the prisoners clothes (even if it did claim the dagger and books the Enchanter had on him) and Rachel was completely excluded.

On the other hand she was now 215 MP above the cap again.

"Forgot about that," Taylor muttered to herself.

"What?"

"The Dungeon gains Mana from absorbing bodies. I'm back over the limit."

She considered her options. It would be possible to bring her Mana back under control by placing more rooms, but that was a slow process and she didn't want to just ignore Rachel while setting them up.

But it wasn't as though she could set a second floor into construction while already building one, was it?

Except, as it turned out, she could.

She selected the option as she spotted it, feeling the drain of 200 Mana as the new floor started construction.

This left just 15 MP above her capacity, which was easily dealt with when she considered that the Crab Castle might not count for "monsters to be defeated" and placed another room beyond.

And with that done she set aside her Dungeon interface (including the item notifications she hadn't been paying attention to) and turned her attention back to Rachel.

"Better than some places I've slept," she commented, and it took Taylor a moment to realise they had made their way to the 'private area' of the Dungeon while she was sorting out the threat of Mana poisoning, and Rachel was talking about her room.

"Yeah, I don't exactly have access to a lot of furniture," she responded awkwardly. "I guess it's not the sort of thing a Dungeon needs…"

"I just said it's better than other places I've slept, why are you taking it as criticism?"

"I know my limitations?"

Rachel gave her a strange look.

"And where are the kennels?"

"Next door, through here," Taylor responded more happily. "The Dungeon… doesn't work with rooms next to each other well, so there's the shortest corridor I could place between them."

Rachel just led the dogs through, much closer in attitude to how she was when they first met than she had been.

"Seems serviceable," she declared. "Not big enough for them to exercise." She gave a set of whistled commands and the dogs left her heels to start claiming areas of the room to rest.

"Outside should be safe for now," Taylor decided, "but I should probably set up a room for that."

"Before you get distracted again, where's the kitchen?" She looked at Taylors blank look. "Food? What I spent most of my pay on?"

"There… isn't one," Taylor said slowly. "I… don't think I need to eat anymore?"

It was a scary thought, but one that fit the evidence.

She had spent a week inside the Dungeon before Damiens party attacked, without any food inside the Dungeon.

If she'd needed food, surely she would have starved by now. And the spiders definitely hadn't needed food, unless she'd missed a lot of respawns. But chances were that whatever protected her and her creatures from starvation wouldn't extend to Rachel and her dogs.

Especially with the prison having an upgrade to supply food to the inmates.

"I'll see what I can do," she assured Rachel. "The prison already provides food to the inmates so-"

"I am not going in the prison," Rachel interrupted.

Taylor blinked. "No, that wasn't what I meant. My point was that the prison proves thr Dungeon can create food. I just need the right room. There should be a kitchen…"

She checked the available rooms list.

The Dungeon room list, as it had from the start, had only 'basic monster rooms' available, with the option to determine their shape, (plus the greyed out 'Spider Puzzle Room' and 'Crab Castle Room') while the private area list just showed the throne room (greyed out), prison (greyed out) and bedrooms (which was what she'd used for the kennel).

There was no sign of a kitchen.

"I don't understand," she muttered to herself, "the last time I needed a new room like this the system made it available…"

"You'd better have some solution other than the prison."

It came to her.

"I could only construct the prison after reading its notification!"

Taylor brought the notifications back up. There were… a few she had to read.

You have absorbed [Common Leather Rogue Armour Set] X 7! 280 DP received!

You have absorbed [Low Quality Iron Dagger] X 5! 50 DP received!

You have absorbed [Katana of the Betrayed]! 80 DP received!

You have absorbed [Katana of the Betrayer]! 80 DP received!

You have absorbed [Common Iron Sword]! 40 DP received!

You have absorbed [Wooden Mask]! 10 DP received!

New items available in store!

You have absorbed [Fire Magic Primer]! 100 DP received!

New Magic Field options available!

Miscellaneous items absorbed! 60 DP received!

Achievement earned! [Apprenticeship]! 10 DP earned!

New recruit acknowledged. [War Council] required for connected options.

Achievement earned! [No Longer Alone]! 20 DP earned!

Room Type: [Kitchen] has been unlocked!

Room Type: [Dining Hall] has been unlocked!

Room Type: [War Council] has been conceived! Blueprint added to stock!

[War Council] construction requirements not met!

Taylor blinked.

That was a lot of information to work through.

First though…

"I was right, I needed to go through the notifications to get access to a kitchen."

"What are you waiting for?"

"For it to finish constructing," Taylor answered.

She had assigned the Dungeon to place the kitchen opposite Rachels room and the kennel.

A look at the room as it finished construction left her disappointed.

There were a few shelves and a couple of open fires, one with a spit above it and the other holding a large metal pot, and that was about it.

There was a table, of what looked like stone that had been polished smooth, presumably to prepare ingredients, but there was a distinct lack of said ingredients.

True, she hadn't expected a modern kitchen, or even something like a Victorian era one, but she had expectef to at least get the ingredients for cooking!

"Well," Rachel growled out, and Taylor took a moment to realise what she was asking about.

"The kitchens done, but it's a bit… empty. And it's not as though the Dungeon has access to some kind of larder…" (she quickly checked the notifications for the room, just in case. Nothing)

"So we need to go out to get food. It's one way to exercise."

Taylor shook her head. "It doesn't make sense. I mean, tye prison can provide food for the inmates, why not the kitchen?"

"Seems pretty advanced, a prison that keeps the prisoners fed."

"It did require an upgrade," Taylor nodded, before freezing and slapping her forehead. "I didn't check the kitchens upgrades. One minute."

She opened the upgrade screen.

Kitchen Upgrades:

- Have ingredients spawn appropriate to the number of Dungeon inhabitants thrice a day - 50 DP

- Have Kitchen automatically cook meals up to three times a day when ingredients are available - 20 DP

- Have meals automatically transferred to Dining Hall when fully cooked - [unavailable - requires Dining Hall]

That went some way to explaining things, and Taylor quickly purchased the first upgrade, automating ingredient production, and watched the shelves start filling with meat and vegetables.

She paused before buying the second upgrade.

By the sound of it, the kitchen would use all the ingredients available to make meals fit for her and Rachel.

"Well, I've sorted out the ingredients issue," she told Rachel. "Just… the kitchen has an option to automate cooking."

"Does it give an option to make dog food?"

"Not that I can see-"

"Don't get it."

Taylor blinked. "Well, that's what I was about to ask. So great, we have the kitchen set up."

"Good. I need to sort something out. I don't trust that they gave the dogs suitable food."

Which left Taylor alone and needing something to do.

There was the obvious option of spending Mana to improve the Dungeon, but she'd already done some panicked expansion, and for all she knew was about to receive extra rooms from something.

What else could she do..?

Well, she had dropped the new prisoner with her current two, hadn't she?

{}

"Physically he looks fine," Valerie reported to Garrett, her examination of… their new guest complete.

She didn't want to remind herself of their current situation.

"Might have fainted," the rogue responded, still trying to use one of his tools to chip away at the material holding the walls together.

It was something to do, he'd explained, a way to avoid feeling like he'd just given up.

"Maybe," she accepted, trusting his experience. "But what caused him to faint?"

"That would be me," a unwelcome voice answered.

The mage turned slowly to see their captor, once again in the rooms viewing area.

"You. Here to gloat?"

The Demon Lord sighed.

"I didn't gloat last time I was here. Why would I now? I was hoping we could talk. It has to be better than sitting around with nothing to do but make fruitless attempts to escape."

There was a frozen moment when Valerie feared her surviving party member was about to be attacked.

"I'm not going to stop you. I imagine it must be helping keep you sane."

"If you're that worried, you could always let me out. Not even the kingdoms prisons keep you underground the whole time."

"Except if I let you out you'd be obligated to try to escape and tell everyone where my Dungeon is, at which point they'd attack me and I'd have to defend myself, people would die, and all because of me letting you out of here," she answered.

"And yet the presence of your new guest suggests you've already been found."

She hesitated. "Technically yes, but they were tracking you and didn't report the Dungeons location."

"And so you killed them."

"I'm pretty sure one of them killed the leader actually," the Demon Lord corrected. "If it was an accident he probably wouldn't have been so calm when he cleaned the knife."

"So you killed the rest."

"Only after they attacked me! Or my friend. Or him."

Valerie just stared at her, disbelief clearly visible in her gaze.

"What sort of Adventurers would attack their own?"

"They seemed closer to bandits to be honest. Unless you gave another party something so they could track you."

There was a snort of laughter from the rogue.

"You saw our leader. Do you really think any Adventurers were willing to put up with him if they didn't have to? There were some just waiting for him to die in the wilderness somewhere so they could kill his zombie."

"That isn't right," Valerie disagreed, "he might not have been good with people, but he still tried to do the right thing. He could have stayed home and done nothing for the kingdom, instead he came out here to be a hero. How many other parties, Rhett, would have been willing to take you rather than leave you to serve your sentence in jail?"

"And he never let me forget it," the rogue snapped. "Neither of them! Whenever we didn't have anyone else around, they would always find some sodding- some fucking way to bring up my sentence! As though I'd chosen to become a thief! It was that or starve! But mister 'paladin wannabe' and 'lady' 'holy pain' refused to accept that!"

He stopped, panting.

The tool he'd been using to attack the wall fell from his fingers.

"I'm glad they're gone," he finally admitted. "I can't help but feel that, even if I'm trapped here, it's worth it to know they're gone. Do you know what it's like, having 'teammates' who are blatantly judging you for something that isn't your fault?"

"Yes."

The prisoners attention turned back to their captor.

"I might not have made the best decisions," she admitted, "but given what I knew at the time, they seemed the best choice. If I had my time over I would have found a better path, but nobody expects a child to make the right decision, do they? That's why they have adults to guide them. Help make the right choice, rather than steal credit for their accomplishments and drive them into the hands of criminals."

Valerie shivered.

"Damien reminded me of him. Of someone willing to cripple search and rescue, the efforts to keep casualties to a minimum, in order to claim the glory of single combat against a foe he couldn't defeat."

"That… doesn't sound good," Garrett admitted quietly.

"It isn't something I like to think about."

Valerie shook herself.

"So just because you told us a sad story we're supposed to consider you a hero for living through it and ignore the people you've killed? Just sit here and wait until you grow tired of us?"

"No, just accept that I'm human. Was human. To accept that I try to do the right thing, but don't always manage to- wait, did you say something about people rising as zombies?"

"Uh, yeah, there've been enough necromancers around that it's become common for improperly disposed of bodies to come back to life. One of the churches duties is to make sure people don't do something stupid like bury the body of a loved one, only to end up killed by them later."

"So there isn't some big religious problem with the Dungeon absorbing the bodies of dead Adventurers?"

"Dungeons grow stronger from killing people?!"

"Apart from that."

{}

There wasn't much hope for conversation with the prisoners after the reveal as to what happened to the bodies of their comrades, so Taylor left quickly.

At least she could reassure herself that the enchanter was safe.

And she could keep letting her Dungeon absorb the bodies of Adventurers.

Without any other options to pass the time, she decided to work on populating the second floor.

The first room, with one of each crab, she added a couple of shell crabs to, alongside another three toxin crabs.

With luck, a party that found them would leave the evolved crabs to their magic users and let the toxin crabs close to the point they would poison the Adventurers.

The next room, with the steel crab, left a lot more work to finish.

She placed a couple of ice and toxin crabs, before turning her attention to the next room.

Hopefully the spellcasting crabs would distract magical Adventurers from the others.

The triangular room, she decided, could see the toxin crabs clouds of poison forced deeper into the room if they were killed in the corner, making it a good choice to place a few more than the other rooms.

Four of them, she decided. Plus doors to keep the toxins from spilling out.

Three shell crabs, with stealth upgrades, finished the room off.

This left the second hidden room from her original plan.

Three ice crabs would take people by surprise, she decided, given how much less common she was making them in the rest of the floor. Plus a couple of shell crabs for protection.

She checked her current Mana.

168 out of her 235 cap.

Ready for the daily refill.

But she still had upgrades to assign, and hadn't she added another room?

The doors to her throne room slamming open startled her.

"Time to eat," Rachel declared, holding what she presumably considered their dinners. "I've seen what Lisa came up with after forgetting to eat. I'm not trusting you with my life if you don't stay properly fed."

Taylor felt her mouth twitch towards a smile.

This wasn't something she'd expected from Rachel.

But it wasn't bad.

AN: If anyone is wondering why Taylor seems to have a new perspective on Armsmaster, remember that this is more a copy of her mind from her Shard. As such the conflict driving side is more readily apparent. As a side note, it's easy to forget just how many villainous acts Armsmaster performed.

You may note that Taylor keeps forgetting about her magic. This is because she doesn't have any real experience with something like that to draw on. This hasn't stopped her from accidentally using a new spell without noticing.