Im A DungeonWorm

by r0e0d999

Note:Uploded From Space Battle

1. 1

I Woke Up As a Dungeon; Now What?

Discovery 1.1

I'd never been a very religious person. I'd never truly believed in God, or in any kind of afterlife. That being said, there had always been a little part of me that had asked 'what if?', that had hoped that the stories of Heaven and Hell were true, that those I'd met who'd deserved fire and brimstone were getting their due (there were quite a few of those), and that those precious few who instead deserved peace and rest were looking down on me and smiling from Heaven.

And that, maybe, one of them was my mother, whom I would finally be able to ask if she was prouder than me than I was of myself.

That is, if I was even qualified to go to Heaven. I was pretty sure killing a toddler was pretty much like buying a one-way ticket to the deepest circle. And if it wasn't, there was probably a laundry list of all the crap I'd done as a Villain, then as a Heroine.

But in truth, I didn't expect to find anything after my death. I expected... nothing. Just oblivion. A loss of awareness, a painless disappearance as my brain shuts down, and then... nothing.

Turns out I was wrong.

Turns out that, after I died, I woke up to find I was a room and a hallway.

No, that last line wasn't a mistake.

--

It was probably only due to all the weird shit I'd experienced that I'd only spent a few minutes freaking out, and most of that was from realizing I was sane again, and that Scion had been defeated, and yet I wasn't anywhere I'd expected to be. It said something about me that waking up as a floating, barely glowing ball of... whatever I was now made of, without limbs, without a face, without eyes and yet capable of seeing, only made it amongst the top weirdest things I'd ever experienced.

I took stock in my situation. I was in a clearly artificial cave made up of a single room and a hallway, both walled, floored and roofed with raw yellowish-brown dirt that somehow didn't collapse under its own weight. The hall was about thirty feet long and ended with the powerful glare of the sun illuminating a short flight of stairs. The room was almost perfectly square, about 16 feet a side, and in the middle sat a simple granite pedestal, barely more than a stone cylinder with a square tile on top. There was a little grey sphere about the size of a tennis ball hovering about a foot above the pedestal, glowing with a light of its own. It was the only source of light down here.

My name was written on that pedestal. "TAYLOR".

Thoughts rushed through my head, not many of them coherent. Had I somehow woken up as a disembodied soul in my own tomb?!

Somehow, I just knew how to move around. It took me a second to rush through the hallway into the harsh glare of the sun, and I got my first look at the lands outside.

The first thing that struck me was the cracked arid ground, covered with dead plants and a thin layer of dust. This land had been alive recently. Piles of bricks, corners and walls of long-abandoned houses, sparsely littered the area. A village, or the outskirts of one. A farm, probably, and not a modern one. There wasn't a sign of life anywhere, except for a small path of packed earth that snaked carelessly past my tomb(?) about a hundred yards away. There was almost no wind, and what breeze blew by carried with it clouds of sand and dust that went right through me.

The hole I'd just left was exactly that; an unmarked hole into the ground without a notable feature marking it. Kind of a weird thing to do to a tomb, come to think about it. Why spend so much effort digging a hole and building a tinkertech tombstone if you're not even going to make it noticeable?

...wellp, I wasn't going to learn anything down in that hole, so I was better off finding some kind of civilization. I made to go towards the road--

--and found myself ricocheting backward like a bouncy ball hitting a wall. It hurt, even though I didn't even have a real body.

A bit of experimentation later, I found that I was, in fact, stuck here. There was a small dome about ten yards wide centered around the entrance to my tomb(?) in which I could fly freely, but if I tried to leave it, some kind of force pushed me back into the hole with a flash of pain. Metaphorically wincing, I accepted my fate (for now) and returned downstairs to explore further.

The walls were featureless and boring. The floor was surprisingly clean, for all it was dug directly in dirt; either this place was brand new, or someone had taken pains to clean it. While they were at it, couldn't they have put stones or something--

UPDATING

And suddenly I had a vision of this same ground, covered in rough stonework, bright red. Something was telling me that I couldn't do it. I didn't have enough... energy? A moment later, the illusion vanished, leaving the dirt ground exactly the way it was.

What... was that? Some kind of visual preview of the change I had just thought up? Then...

I focused on the walls, tried to imagine them reinforced with wood planks

UPDATING

And there it was again! The room's walls were now covered by bright red boards and columns, all of which seemed to have had better days in a past century, and that feeling of lacking came back. Within moments, the red planks disappeared, leaving me alone in the dirt room.

...did I suddenly end up in a virtual reality world? If that was it, then I was going to resurrect Leet just so I could kill him, because this kind of shit was right up his creek.

What is it that I was missing, though? I--

Mana

...this shit was getting old, really fast. Mana. Magic power, extracted from... living creatures, especially humans? Oh hell the fuck n--

ABSORBING

UPDATING

What the FUCK!? Okay, whoever was in charge of this shit game, I wanted OUT. What was that--

And suddenly, once again, I knew; an ant had died from exposure in the stairs in front of the hole, and I'd somehow absorbed it. And somehow, in doing so, I'd become a bit... more?

Ants were familiar territory for me, along with spiders, flies, worms and all the other little critters I'd spent the last four years controlling with my mind. But somehow, even though I'd always had this ability to micromanage every single part of every single insect in my swarm, I'd never before had such a clear perception of what an ant actually looked like, down to the fur-like keratin strands on their legs, to the pores that let them breathe, to the chemical receptors in their antennae.

There was an ant floating in front of me, about the size of a large dog. It was green, and I felt like if I just tried, I would--

The ant was no longer green. It was black, it was moving and real and I couldn't control it. I immediately flew as far from it as I could, dashing across the room into furthest corner. Ants were almost blind, it couldn't have spotted me, right? I...

I was in no danger. I somehow knew this, just as I somehow knew this ant was called 'small lesser ant', just as I somehow knew every other fucking thing in this fucking fucked-up virtual game--

"Okay, I'm done, shut the fucking game down already!" I called out.

No response.

Well, obviously.

So, to recapitulate: I was in a man-made hole, in a desert. There was a pedestal with my name on it, and an ant now skittering about trying to find something to do, I guess? I had the ability to apparently spawn giant ants with my mind, and wouldn't that have been a useful ability before this, and apparently the ability to personalize the room as I saw fit if I got enough energy, which I needed to absorb from living beings, because of course powers can't be fucking nice for once, and I was... alone.

What had happened? I remembered asking... strongly asking Panacea to break my powers. I remembered definitely not asking the world's heroes and villains to unite their power to fight against Scion. I remembered winning. I remembered... things. Bits and pieces, disjointed images and feelings and oh god how close had Scion been--

I remembered... I remembered...

We're so very small, in the end...

I remembered her.

Fucking Contessa.

Because of course that walking mass of human-shaped unfairness was alive after all this shit, and she'd done... had she--

Had she shot me?

Huh.

She had. In the head, too. I guess this really was my tomb.

And my tomb was in a video game world.

Oh my god, if God turned out to be fucking Leet, I was going to kill him, usurp his throne so I could resurrect him, then kill him again.

There was a chitter. The ant was right below me, staring curiously. I frowned.

Well I got the feeling it wasn't going to hurt me (could I even be hurt like this, other than by bumping into invisible walls?), and I had created it, so it was basically my minion, so... Could I control it?

I could. It was as simple as turning on a switch. I felt it willingly submit, felt its admiration through its own body. Her own body. I could see through her eyes, hear through her feet and hairs, smell through her antennae, and none of those feelings felt strange in any way. I guess not actually having a body to be disoriented by was a perk of this whole thing? I was willing to trade it back, though.

I tried to control her into making her leave the dungeon, but the moment her antennae crossed the line, they started losing cohesion. I retreated. No good on that end, either.

I was going to have to wait for things to fall into my lap, like a spider in her web. Damnit.

Maybe I could use the ant to dig other entrances?

No go, I felt. Another thing I wasn't allowed to do. The digging part felt good, though; I guess I had do have just one entrance. One entrance into a hallway, and onto a single pedestal with my name on it... and a glowing crystal...

Hm, if this was a video game thing, then... could I game over? What would happen? Was I willing to risk the possibility that it wasn't a game?

Yeah, I wasn't that lucky. I was going to assume that having my pedestal thingy broken was really bad. And it was... awfully exposed, like that. I mean, sure, they'd have to climb down the stairs, but if someone did show up, then they'd have a free shot at my glowing thingy without having to cross the hall. If they were a good shot, I was willing to bet it wasn't going to lead to good things for me. I had a feeling that my ant wasn't the strongest creature ever. Something about how it was called 'small lesser Ant'. You never hear about 'small lesser Wuffikins, destroyer of worlds', I mean.

I felt her indignation at that thought. She could hear me? She was smart enough to be feel indignation?

Huh. Interesting. I'd never had smart minions before.

Smart... non-human, willing minions, that is.

Could I block the path--

Ow. No, I couldn't. Okay. There needed to be an unrestricted path between the entrance and the glowy thingy. I figured that meant digging a massive hole between the glowy thing and the entrance--

UPDATING

...huh, that could work, but I needed more of that mana thing to make it, and as I inspected the flat red area in the hall, I noticed there was a walkable ledge that could be used to avoid the pit. Something to note for whenever I got what I needed.

Hiding the entrance was a good way of never having anything stumble inside to die in my hallway, so that was out. Could I move the crystal, then?

I could, but obviously I'd need more room to do it. I needed to dig. And I... had no energy to dig with. But maybe I could use my ant?

Lesser Ant Special skill: burrow

I could! It was going to take a while, and a lot of work, but I felt my ant's eagerness at actually being put to work. So, how was I going to do this thing...

--

In the end, I ended up building a mental map of the room I wanted to make, a room roughly the same size as the one I'd just made, a short distance away. It took a lot of time; my ant could, surprisingly, carry an entire square feet's area of dirt in a single bite, but only after spending several minutes gnawing at the dirt. Then she needed to travel back to entrance, where... well, the dirt magically disappeared. Plus one point in favor of this whole thing being a video game of some sort.

I ended up releasing my control of her after the first trip, and she continued the task with an eagerness that was honestly adorable. Even though she was a black ant the size of a golden retriever, she was actually quite cute.

By the time it was done, the light from down the hallway had gone out and turned silver. It only took a thought to move the pedestal over to the other room, leaving the previous room completely barren. As I did so, I felt some kind of drain, like I was coming down from the world's least intense sugar high. It was like I'd just run a drill organized by a very vicious sergeant. Is this what spending mana felt like? Or was it because I'd spent most of it in one blow?

Discomfort was the body's way of informing you that you'd overdone it. Apparently being a disembodied night light with supernatural renovation powers came with its own limits.

With that, the glowy thing was out of direct danger, but it was still a work of less than a minute to cross the hallway and reach it. At least now they would have to fight their way through my ant first, though. Nothing that would stop someone like me from doing just that with a stick, a bit of motivation and an actual body, but it was a start. I didn't even know if I was in danger in the first place. For all I knew, there could be nothing but animals left alive in this world.

For all I knew, there were tons of humans living here and every single one of them was a Jack Slash. Not something I was willing to gamble on.

I instructed my ant to dig another room. It wasn't like digging cost me any effort, it just worked my minion, and she was happy to help. In the meantime, I decided a break was in order and flew outside.

And I stopped, and just stared at the sky.

Brockton Bay hadn't been the largest city on the east coast; it hadn't even been a particularly large city. But it had been a city, and in one of the most developped place on Earth Bet. Even when I'd gone camping four years ago, it hadn't been far enough from the city to escape light pollution. I had never a sky as unpolluted as this world's. I knew about it, of course; the sky full of stars, the milky way, mind bogglingly large across the blackest darkness of space—but actually seeing it for the first time took my breath away. Staring into that beautiful endless expanse, I finally allowed myself the luxury I hadn't taken since the day the world started to end.

I was... I was allowed to rest, right? To just... unwind, and finally think of everything that had happened to me, and to the world, and to everyone I knew?

Yeah. Yeah I could.

So I did.

The nice thing about being a disembodied night light with no lungs?

You can just keep screaming for a long, long time.

I think I freaked my ant out a little, though.

—

I Woke Up As a Dungeon; Now What?

Discovery 1.2

It wasn't bad, being a disembodied ball of whatever. I'd certainly had worse lots in life. I wasn't hungry, I couldn't get tired unless I used a lot of mana, and I had cute giant ants to play with. Really, this whole thing could have been a lot worse. I also didn't need to go to the bathroom anymore either, which was a plus nobody really thinks about.

I mean, the view outside was a little boring, and I was getting sick and tired of dirt walls, and I had no one to actually talk to, but those were piddling details at best. I'd still preferred to have a body, but honestly? This wasn't bad.

Two days had come and gone since I'd arrived here. I'd expanded some, added another empty room I had nothing to do with and summoned two more giant ants both to give company to my first ant and because I had nothing better to do.

Oh yeah, there was that one problem.

I was bored.

Which, come to think about it, was a bit of a novel sensation. In the past five years, I'd never had the time to be bored. My mother had died, then I'd been shuffled off to summer camp, then there was Hell High School and my tormentors, then my stint as a villain, then two years getting ready for the Slaughterhouse Nine and the End of the World As We Knew It... And now here I was, almost regretting the days when the only thing I could do was worry about everyone's impending doom or get myself into trouble. Good times.

There was just nothing to do here. I couldn't leave the hole. I couldn't talk to anyone. There was nothing to look at. My ants were cute, yes, but after a while there was only so much time a girl could spend d'awwing at her pets. I couldn't even sleep to pass the time; I couldn't even close my eyes, for I had none to close!

The only thing to do was dig, and there wasn't much of a point to that, was there? More empty rooms, yay.

I guess I could have renovated, but if using mana left me uncomfortable, why would I want to do that? Not to mention I had no idea how to get more of it. Apparently it came back over time, but even when I felt full of energy, I couldn't seem to use those wall and floor upgrades I knew about.

I'd been right on my initial assessment; this was a shitty game.

"You know," I told no one, not exactly expecting a response, "maybe I'd be doing more things if I knew what I could do in the first place."

And to my surprise, I did get one.

ANALYZING

QUERYING

Convening

Suggesting

ACKNOWLEDGING

UPDATING

"What the hell--"

That was all I had time to say before a square box, about a foot wide and thinner than paper, appeared in front of me.

HELPFUL INFO BOX! ( ω )

Topics

Rooms

Room Upgrades

Floor Upgrades

Minions

Minion Upgrades

Traps

Trap Upgrades

Progression Status

Special Abilities

Mana: 6/19 (10 per day, -9 upkeep)

Impurities: 0

Click to expand...

I gave a suspicious look at that smiley face.

It barely prepared me for what happened when I clicked the first topic.

Rooms - Places that do stuff! ヾ()

· Core Room -- can't have more than one!

Don't break this! :eek:

Converts life force into useful stuff and contains your core! Verrrry important!

· Ant Colony Room -- 20 mana (1 impurity to research), 4 upkeep

Makes all your Ants better! \(o)/

Click to expand...

"I have... so many questions."

Observing

Querying

It was like someone had put Aisha in charge of writing an information bank, and she'd decided to release her inner cutesy troll. It was like someone had put six years old me in charge of writing an info bank, and she'd given it her best shot.

CONFUSION

Exasperation

"...Okay, I guess I'll take it." It was still better than flailing in the dark. "So, uh... impurities?"

Impurities

No idea what that is, but Planet thinks it's icky. ( Д)

...somehow, this Info Box just kept giving me more questions.

On the bright side, I wasn't bored anymore.

Sadly, I discovered that even as a floating ball of whatever, I could still experience headaches.

I spent the rest of the afternoon looking things up. It turned out I had already screwed myself over with that upkeep thing; each minion (and apparently special room) cost a certain amount of mana per day just to stay alive. Each of my three Small Lesser Ants (They're small, but they're hardy!) had an upkeep of 1. Because they didn't have a source of food and relied completely on my mana to survive, that upkeep cost was doubled. Each of my rooms, even though they were empty, also had a mana upkeep cost, bringing my total up to nine, eating up almost all of my daily regeneration just by existing.

"Can I destroy rooms?" I muttered to myself. I didn't really need any rooms except the core.

Room information, part 3 - Upkeep and capacity! \(ﾟﾟ )

Each extra room costs 1 mana per day in upkeep, plus the added upkeep of the chosen room function. Hallways have an upkeep of 0.25, but cannot have functions. (*･x･*)

Removing a room costs 5 mana, but releases the upkeep cost. Removing a hallway only costs 2 mana.

Every room adds an additional 3 mana to your maximum capacity. Grow big and strong!

Click to expand...

So removing rooms cost mana too? Didn't that mean it was possible to drop my upkeep higher than my regeneration, without having the ability to destroy rooms to free anything up? What would happen then?

Probably nothing good.

I had enough mana to destroy one of my rooms, but doing so would cost me 5 mana, bringing me down to 1. At 2 mana regeneration per day, would take me 3 days to come back to the quantity of mana I had right now if I did that.

I hesitated for some time, but decided to let things as they were, in the end. If I did nothing, I would eventually climb back up to the max. It wasn't like there was any hurry.

The info box contained more stuff I could do, but it was barebone. I could apply a couple upgrades to my ants—improve their digging, make them bigger ( () ), or faster, or better armored, but everything cost some of that impurity stuff that I had no idea how to get, and which the info box was superbly out of information about.

The traps section contained the pitfall trap I'd seen earlier. It also had a tripwire trap, which based on the description was a fancy way to say "an ankle-height rope meant to trip people up". I had no upgrades for those; I assumed it was because I hadn't built one yet.

The Progression Status helpfully informed me that I had no acquisitions in progress, whatever that meant.

The Minions section was Interesting, though.

Minions - Your loyal servants! ()ゝ"

· Small Lesser Ant – 2 mana, 1 upkeep

The small, the brave, the loyal! (･ω･)ゞ

Special ability: Burrow – Ants can be used to dig hallways, rooms and other holes

· Small Lesser Bee – 2 mana (0 impurity to research [-100% familiarity bonus!]), 1 upkeep

Hard-working, hard-stinging!

· Small Lesser Wasp – 2 mana (0 impurity to research [-100% familiarity bonus!]), 1 upkeep

Always angry, all the time! ( 益）三ヽ ( д )ﾉ

Not very scary though!

· Small Normal Spider – 3 mana (0 impurity to research [-100% familiarity bonus!]), 1 upkeep

Sneaky-sneaky webless-crawly!

Click to expand...

That was… interesting. So how did I research these? Did I just need to think about it?

Congratulations! \(*)/

Bees unlocked!

Wasps unlocked!

Spiders unlocked!

…apparently so.

Going back to the main menu, I gave a look at the final item in the list.

Special Abilities - Superpowers for a paraDungeon!

· Hidden special ability --

( ) Shhh! Top secret, no tattling!

· Insect Mastery

All basic insect minion research is decreased by 100%.

All basic insect minion upgrade research is decreased by 90%.

All basic insect minion room research is decreased by 90%.

Three randomly selected basic insect minions have their acquisition progress completed!

All Insects have double value for specialization bonuses!

You really like bugs!

· Control Mastery

"Control Minion" can be used without mana cost

"Control Minion" can be used on many minions simultaneously

"Control Minion" disorientation debuff duration decreased by 100%.

You're basically really good at controlling minions! (_)

· Move Core

The Core Room can be moved to an empty room. Costs 5 mana multiplied by the destination floor. Can only be done once a day.

Click to expand...

…

Those abilities could not be a coincidence.

Passenger? Is that you?

Wait, parawha—

The box disappeared. I felt a presence, as if someone was right next to me, but I was deep in the hole, and no one was—

The Entrance

I rushed out, entering the main room just as someone's leather-covered feet started making their way, slowly, nervously, down the stairs. Step by step, the young intruder appeared, her body bent in half to look down the hall before getting all the way down. She was wearing a long brown knit wool skirt with beige lining, a simple beige top and a dusty shawl that hid most of her face, but her slim hands were doubtlessly a woman's. She had a pouch on her left side, hanging from a leather strap, and the handle of a knife peeked out from her right, within easy reach. Her skin was brown and her eyes the same kind of almond shape as Miss Militia's; middle eastern. They were dark, and open so wide in shock her entire irises were visible.

I didn't think she was a threat. Or, at least, not one I couldn't take with three Ants.

"Hey!" I called. "Can you help me?"

She didn't react to my presence, even though I floated right up to her.

Her mouth was open wide under the transparent shawl, and moving like a fish. Finally, she seemed to find her voice.

"Druids be blessed… it's a dungeon."

"A what?" I asked. "Hello? Can you hear me?"

"Oh!" She startled. Had she heard me?

She hadn't. She reached into her pouch and pulled out a handful of flowers, which she dropped on the ground in the middle of the hallway. The flowers sat there for a moment, then to my surprise, seemed to rot almost instantaneously, going from a healthy green to a dead brown, then into dust before I could blink.

She bowed at the neck, her fists clenched together at chest level in a strange salute. "Please be kind to us all."

It was around this time that one of my Ants decided to check the entrance. My minion made an aggressive hiss, mandibles open, and rushed forward. I moved to stop the attack, but the woman was faster; she made a startled squeak and fled up the stairs, escaping the limits I was bound to within seconds. I followed her outside and saw her rush to her ride, a six foot tall bipedal lizard with bronze scales and a leather saddle. There was a bow hanging against the saddle, along with a quiver full of arrows. She climbed on top of it with a smooth motion, then pulled on the reins and, with a high-pitched "Yaah!", the two of them ran up the path, toward the setting sun.

"…huh," I decided, after a good moment, was the appropriate reaction.

On the bright side, that… didn't sound like she wanted to harm me.

On the down side, I was still stuck here, apparently invisible to the locals.

Also, that name again. A dungeon?

The info box made its appearance once more.

Dungeon

A self-evolving, ever-growing living construct born from a covenant made by the Planet. It's what you are, silly! (ゝз・)ﾉ

…Oh.

And that's how I found out I was a couple of rooms and a hallway.

As far as shocks went, it was honestly a little weak. I rated it a two or three out of ten, on a scale that went up to Scion Is An Alien Thing That's Just Started To Destroy The World. I mean, sure, I now had more in common with my family house than with my actual family, but I'd honestly had far worse, which meant my freakout was altogether pretty minor.

That encounter had been… interesting, in a lot of ways.

First, that girl had been riding some kind of domesticated dinosaur-like thing, which confirmed something that had been pretty obvious, but still not fully certain; I wasn't on Earth Bet, or Earth Gimel for that matter. Her reaction to seeing my ants had been notably underwhelming; if I'd discovered a hole full of giant ants before getting powers, I would have freaked the fuck out. Which meant that monsters were, if not normal, at least not unusual.

She spoke English, though. The odds of that were pretty much impossible. Did I have some kind of translation power? Was that the "secret power" from the abilities list? Kind of a tame secret, isn't it?

Her clothing had been elaborate and beautiful, but made of natural materials, clearly hand-crafted. There had been a bow on the dinosaur's saddle. The local tech level wasn't high. Again, something I'd deduced from the ruins around me, but another confirmation was good.

Druids be blessed… it's a dungeon

She'd called me a dungeon.

I was a thing that had happened before on this Earth. Had other people ended up like me? Druids be blessed could have meant a lot of things, but it certainly hadn't sounded like a negative. But it could have meant something along the lines of "God help us", which definitely wasn't.

Please be kind to us all.

That was an interesting to say, because it meant dungeons had the potential to be kind… or cruel.

So… was I a good thing, or a bad thing?

Since when has a hole full of giant fucking ants ever been a good thing?

I glanced at the Dungeon I had created… at myself with a nervous air. How would I have reacted if I'd had me sitting somewhere in the wildness?

I'd have wrecked the shit out of me, made sure I couldn't be a threat. But could I even be a threat? My ants couldn't leave the entrance. Unless that changed, there was pretty much no way for me to be even remotely harmful. I was stuck here. If anything, I was at the mercy of whoever decided to pop down here and kill my ants.

I was a dungeon, something that existed on this world. I had things I could make. I could grow. I could create monsters. I had traps. I had means to defend myself. This implied threats existed. If the locals were anything like any other human beings I'd ever seen, they were the most dangerous things I could expect to encounter. One of them had just left me with knowledge of where I was. More would come, expecting trouble.

I was extremely vulnerable, and trouble was coming.

If I had eyes, they would have narrowed.

Time to get ready for a visit.

--

Unseen by the Dungeon Core that knew itself as Taylor Hebert, a small spot of green appeared a few yards away from her entrance; a small stem with a pair of leaves popped out from the cracks of the dried, dead ground, defiantly staring at the stars.

More would follow.

I Woke Up As a Dungeon; Now What?

Discovery 1.3

I had 8 mana.

Before, I'd had 6. I had one mana gain per day, and far less than a day had passed since I'd looked.

Where had that extra two mana come from? I had no idea, but I wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

I had several problems, and many of them were connected to my mana stocks. Whereas earlier, my situation had been acceptable, the fact that I'd been discovered meant I couldn't just wait until that one mana regeneration refilled my stocks. Which meant I had to get rid of a few of my upkeep costs.

I had enough mana to destroy one of my useless rooms. This would increase my daily mana regeneration by one.

The real problem was my ants. Each of them cost me two per day unless I found a way to feed them. I assumed the Ant Colony room would help me with that problem, but without 'impurities', I couldn't research the room. Not to mention it had an upkeep cost of 4, which meant even if they cut my ants upkeep by half, I would still wind up losing one mana regeneration per day if I built it.

I had to get rid of at least one of my ants. Unfortunately…

Minion information, part 2: Feeding, Upkeep and Dismissal ヽ(･ω･)､

Each minion costs a certain amount of mana per day to keep active. Be careful not to summon too many!

If your minions do not have a proper source of food, then they will subsist only on mana, which will double the daily cost! Valid foodstuffs depends on the minion species. Some subspecies have specific food requirements. Make sure you have enough food of the right types for all of your minions!

You may dismiss your minions, but doing so will cost half of its summon cost and end the life of that minion. ( ⁍̻᷄⁍᷅ )

Click to expand...

So destroying one ant would free up two mana per day, but it would cost me 1 mana. More troublesome, I would have to pick one of them and kill them, and they were, I reiterate, adorable. I mean, I was no stranger to killing, or even sending my controlled minions to their deaths by the hundreds, but these were closer to really smart pets I'd only had for a few days than to mindless bugs.

I didn't really want to dump them. I didn't think they were strong enough to protect me if push came to shove, though. Death at sword point was death, same as dismissal. I needed a way to multiply my ants' strength. I needed to equalize the battlefield.

I needed traps.

Traps – Surprises for the careless!

· Pit Trap – 15 mana (reset cost: 0) (Hallway trap)

A hole in the ground. Not that deep. Doesn't disable when someone falls in it! 【д】

· Tripline – 5 mana (reset cost: 2) (Hallway and Room trap)

A rope hanging at ankle height to trip people. Has high chance of breaking on use.

Click to expand...

That cost was hideous. However, I had a secret weapon.

The first step was to destroy the extra room I had built in boredom. I ordered it broken with a mental command and watched as the room's ceiling collapsed, throwing up a cloud of dirt and dust into the rest of my dungeon, which didn't actually leave any debris when it cleared. Convenient, that. Then, I set up an S-shaped hallway that started in the room immediately at the end of the entrance hallway, opposite of my core room. At each curve, I set up a pit trap, with the walkable ledge sitting on the inner side of the curve. At the end of that hallway, I set up a room, where I planned on moving my core.

But I did not order my ants to start its construction.

There was an educated gamble there, assuming how far away the girl had had to go. I had a good view of the surrounding countryside from where I was; this area was remarkably flat. There was no sign of habitation visible in any direction, excluding the ruined buildings near my dungeon's entrance. The girl had been lightly armed and lightly supplied, which meant she had to live fairly close, but the actual distance depended on the ability of her dinosaur ride to run long distances. Taking the first fact into account, and the fact that it was night, that it would take time to ready up a proper expedition, that this expedition would take its time to preserve their strength and that I wasn't an immediate danger to anyone, then I thought it unlikely that I would receive a visit any time before tomorrow evening.

However, the odds of getting visitors before the day after that were too great for me to ignore. I had 3 mana now, and 2 mana regeneration per day. Starting construction now would have cut my mana regeneration by 0.25, putting me at 4.75 tomorrow morning; too low to actually perform the core transfer that would cost me 5 mana.

Now, if mana regeneration was something that trickled in over time, then what I was doing was slowing me down by a few hours. However, if it was something that came in bursts, then starting now would delay the transfer by over 24 hours, which would make the hallway essentially useless. My core would still be right next to the entrance tomorrow night, and I would be in danger.

I flew outside and waited, popping the info box open on my status window and staring intently at my mana count.

The sky brightened soon enough. The sun started to rise, and seemingly as soon as it cleared the horizon, my mana count ticked up by 2, bringing me to 5. I set my ants to work. The moment the first ant bit into the wall, my regeneration shrank by 0.25. My gamble had paid off.

I released a relieved sigh. I took a good look out west and saw no one approaching. Good. My ants would need time to execute the order I'd given them. Fortunately, the pitfall trap was a hole, which meant it was included in the scope of my ants' burrow skill, which allowed me to avoid paying that horrid mana cost. I paused a moment to appreciate just how convenient it was to have insects as a superpower. Thank you, passenger.

I turned around to get back inside… and froze.

"…well, that's… interesting."

The ground had been cracked and broken, drier than Defiant's sense of humor. What plants had grown on it had been dead and brown. Even the ant colony that grew close to the entrance of my entrance had been a sickly, weak thing with a handful of workers trying to feed their struggling queen.

What I had in front of me, behind the entrance and over where the bulk of my dungeon was, was green. The cracks were gone, the ground was visibly browner, and a thin carpet of green leaves was starting to sprout from that dirt. I flew closer to the ground, bemoaning to fact that I couldn't actually touch it, and saw this same ant colony as before, this time bustling with activity, with little workers popping out of their hole for just long enough to drop a grain of sand on the surface before diving back down.

This… was I doing that?

No answers would come. I went back below ground.

--

It was taking too long. The sun was already high up in the sky, and my ants had barely gotten started on the back room. At this rate, night would fall before the first pitfall was done. I had 5 mana to use to speed things up, but if I did I wouldn't be able to move my core; I might as well not have any left. It was frustrating, but there was nothing I could do.

It was irritating how much time my ants were wasting, though. They chewed their way through a certain area of dirt, then had to walk all the way back to the entrance to dump it. I had 3 ants to use, but the hallway was too long, and they were taking forever just walking instead of digging.

I took over, assuming control of all 3 ants at the same time. There was no sense of disorientation at all, even though my point of view became anything but human in triplicate; just another symptom of the fact that I apparently wasn't human anymore.

As a test, I made one of the ants, one that had carried a blob of dirt on its way to the surface, drop the dirt on the ground. It remained there, ready for pickup. I made that ant pick its dirt back up, then when one of the ants finished digging, I made it give that dirt blob to the other ant, who carried it through the hallway. That first ant dropped the dirt outside and came back, walking just enough to meet the third ant mid-way down the corridor to pick up its load of dirt. The third ant returned to the new room and helped the digging ant, then carried the dirt back to the hallway for the first ant to pick up and throw outside. I did this twice more, before I felt a sense of understanding wonder from my minions.

As a test, I released control. To my surprise, they continued doing exactly what I'd shown them.

They had the ability to learn.

Interesting, I thought with a grin.

Or… well, a dungeon equivalent of a grin.

Thanks to this method, they started digging much faster, and by the time the sky started to turn paler, the room was finally finished. I used my leftover mana to transfer my core to its new hiding spot while my ants got started on the first of the pitfalls, the one closest to the core.

They were about halfway finished when my infobox disappeared, and I felt the presence of four people at the entrance.

Fuck. I wasn't ready!

I rushed to the entrance, knowing I wouldn't be able to do anything, but hoping to get a first glimpse them.

My first opinion of them was "That's it?" because they weren't very impressive, nor did they hold themselves in an impressive manner.

"Doesn't look like much," said one of them, a teenage boy the same middle eastern traits as the girl from earlier. He was wearing the same kind of hand-knit wool clothing as the girl, too, though his was in darker red-black tones. He had a dusty beige scarf around his neck, long enough to cover most of his head in a sandstorm. His legs were covered with thick leather trousers, and his chest had horizontal wooden planks tied with leather strips to serve as armor. His head was unprotected, as were his arms, but the bow on his back and the pike he had in his arms said he was ready for trouble. The nonchalant grin on his face said he was anything but ready for trouble.

Also, I felt a surge of indignation at his words. The feeling's mutual, buddy.

"Don't get overconfident, Cirys," said the only girl in the group, a brown-skinned greenette(?!) with pale eyes and a scowl. She was wearing a leather armor with flaring shoulder pads and hip guards, along with leather trousers and armguards and gloves. Based on the beads of sweat that crawled down her face, she was regretting at least some of those thick insulating clothes. She had a round wooden shield and a makeshift mace consisting of an iron head and a wooden shaft tied together with leather straps. As I watched her, she brought her shield arm down with a bad angle and caused it to push down into her own leg.

"Gwen, it's a hole in the ground," Cirys said. "Shouldn't dungeons have, like, at least a mausoleum, or a goblin village, or spikes at least?"

A goblin village? Wait, I could build on the surface?

"Considering the amount of grass up here, I think this dungeon is a very young one. It probably hasn't had the time or the strength to grow anything like that," said the oldest of the group, a middle-aged man with long black dreadlocks and an impressive mane of facial hair. He was the better equipped of the lot, but that wasn't saying much. He had an actual metal chest plate, but one that had seen better days a lot time ago and which was now fighting its own war against the damages of rust. A one-handed axe rested against his hip and a round shield of wood, similar to the girl's, was strapped against his arm.

His arms were huge. I mean, he was a little old, but…

…maybe if he shaved that rat's nest under his chin…?

Focus, Taylor.

"There probably can't be much more than a room and a single minion," he added. "But even then, we don't know what we'll be facing, so be on your guard."

"Maryll said she saw a giant ant," Gwen pointed out, "so we do know what's in there."

"We don't know that. The dungeon might have switched its minions." He replied. She nodded respectfully. He addressed the final member of their group, "Samel, you stay up here until we tell you it's safe. If we're not back by daybreak, you run back to the village. Okay?"

'Samel' was the youngest member of the group, a young black-haired black boy who looked like he couldn't be much older than eight. He had an adorably serious look on his face, though, and a short bow strapped to his back. At best, the blue tunic he was wearing couldn't be considered armor, though, and his moccasins seemed to be several sizes too large; they would have flopped around helplessly without the leather strap that tightened them around his feet. He nodded, throwing his hat down over his face, and said, once he'd put it back in place, "yes sir!"

His earnest voice was equally adorable.

"First, though, we need the offerings," the old man said, giving a poignant look at Cirys. The teenage boy blinked, then grinned sheepishly.

"I forgot it on the ride, hold on."

Gwen sighed as the young man scampered to the side of the road, where three dinosaur rides—two reds and a familiar-looking bronze one—were waiting.

"Patience, Gwen," the man cautioned.

"I just want to get in the shade, it's fucking hot out here."

The man smiled gently, and his hand tousled her sweaty green locks. She squawked in protest.

Cirys returned with a rough bag. There was a suspicious red stain at the bottom of it.

"Good, let's go. I'll take point, Ciryl behind. Gwen, you're rear guard."

"Yes sir!" the two teens replied. Gwen tried to salute and only managed to smack herself with her shield.

On the bright side, I didn't feel very threatened by this bunch. They didn't look like bad people.

On the down side, that man looked like he meant business, and he probably could kill all my ants and reach my core by himself. As they started down the stairs, I took control of my ants and prepared myself mentally for a battle.

Hopefully my preparations had been enough.

Discovery 1.4

I had killed before.

It wasn't something I was proud of. For the most part, the people I had killed had deserved it. Coil had left me little choice, and had been a unredeemable monster. No one would weep for any of the members of the Nine I had killed, certainly not me. Tagg and Alexandria had been mistakes, but mistakes they had brought on themselves; my power had killed them on their own.

Aster… had not deserved it. I had thought I'd be preventing the end of the world by killing her. Obviously, I'd been wrong. But in her case, it was unlikely she would have survived my fight against the Nine even if I hadn't shot her.

Or at least that's what I told myself whenever I thought about it.

The three villagers who'd started to walk down the stairs of my dungeon—my body at the moment—didn't deserve anything either. They were just measuring a threat, or taking care of one. Unfortunately, that threat was me, I couldn't talk with them, and I wasn't going to die without a fight.

That didn't mean I was going to resort to lethal force when intimidation would do, however.

"Drop the offerings," the older man and leader of the group told the boy as soon as they were clear of the stairs. "Quickly."

Cirys pulled the cord to loosen the bag and flipped it over. The corpse of some kind of fowl and a rabbit fell to the floor. Just as before, they rotted at an accelerated pace, their flesh melting, skin flaking and bones dusting within seconds, leaving nothing but little green motes of light that disappeared in moments. I felt a warmth in my belly, as if I'd just eaten a hot meal.

The man nodded. He raised an arm. A piece of chalk-like material, hanging from his wrist by a length of string, lit up suddenly and without prompting with a powerful flickering yellow-red light. "Let's go. Eyes peeled."

The other two did like he did, though it took them longer, and the girl, Gwen, narrowed her eyes and visibly focused before the flare lit up right in front of her eyes. She immediately pulled her arm back and blinked repeatedly.

"Yeah, don't do that," the man said. The boy snickered. Her cheeks reddened in embarrassment.

Armed with their light sources, they ventured into the hallway into my first room. Gwen winced as they got deeper inside.

"Oh man, it's even warmer in here," Cirys complained.

The man shushed him with a glare. He straightened immediately. Gwen, who was dressed even more warmly than him, just wiped her brow and followed quietly. She didn't seem to disagree.

They made it in the first room. The group's leader, whose name I still didn't know, gave a look at both the hallway entrance and my previous core room, and snapped his orders.

"Gwen, watch the hall, holler if anything comes out. Cirys, with me," and he made his way to the room. The girl gave a noisy swallow, raised her shield and mace, and watched the hallway down which my core was hidden.

Finding nothing in the other room, the two men relaxed visibly.

"If this thing is nothing but empty rooms, I'm going to be so disappointed," the teenager said.

"Insect levels with ants in them tend to have a lot of corridors and rooms," the man replied, looking left and right. "The dungeon doesn't have to use its own strength to build rooms and halls, since ants can do the digging. But big levels are expensive, and at this one's age…" he frowned, "if it made too many rooms, it could be very close to starving." He frowned, bending down to pick up a pinch of dirt, which he rubbed together for a moment. "Strong mana infusion… the dungeon moved its core out of this room recently. Probably soon after Maryll found it."

This guy knew his dungeons, that was for sure. Who the fuck was he?

"Wait, if it's starving, does that mean it's going to try and kill us, like, extra-hard?" Cirys said.

"It might not know it can feed from us yet," the man said as they returned to the first room, "but it's going to try and protect itself at least. Which means yes, it'll try to kill us. That's why I'm in front, and not you two." Getting close to Gwen, he nodded at her and said, "Good work. We're going that way now."

Shit. I had kinda hoped they were going to be satisfied with just those two rooms. They were coming straight for me now. Fuck.

I watched them as they approached. The man never dropped his guard, but I saw him narrow his eyes when he encountered the first curve.

"Pitfall ahead," he said. "Not very deep. Probably not finished."

This guy was getting every single aspect of my dungeon right, and I was getting annoyed about it. My ants had only managed to dig about seven feet deep. Low enough for a fall to be uncomfortable, but not reliably injurious.

"Cirys, bow. Gwen, watch your step," he said as he started walking on the wall-hugging ledge that stood over my pit. He was annoyingly adept at that.

It was only when he cleared the corner that he found himself face-to-face with ants.

"Three ants!" he called.

"No shot!" said Cirys, an arrow nocked but without an angle in this curved hallway.

"Can't get past you," Gwen reported.

The man cursed under his breath and raised his shield to block my first ant's bite. While he was doing that, his lower half was exposed, so my second and third ants went in for his forefront leg. They closed around his ankles and squeezed hard.

His skin didn't even bend. What the fuck was this guy made of?!

He pushed with his shield, effortlessly pushing the first ant away, then swung his axe low. It went right through both of my ants, spilling hemolymph and bits of black chitin everywhere. Then he swung it again from overhead and the third ant died when its head was pulverized.

And just like that, I was made defenseless. It had taken barely more than a second.

Fuck.

"Clear," he said, looking deeper inside. "You two hurry up. Try not to fall in."

I was pretty sure the language I was using would have caused Skidmark to blink. And possibly give me pointers. Not like I gave a shit at the moment; my ants' bodies were decomposing, as rapidly as anything else that was dropped on my floor, and the one who hadn't killed them so much as swatted them to death was coming straight for my heart, and there was nothing I could do to stop him.

Gwen and Cirys got past the pitfall, the latter much less enthusiastically than the girl and with frequent looks down.

"It's probably just past this corner. With three minions and no food source, it must have been very close to starvation."

I was getting seriously sick of this guy.

They made it past the final corner, and entered my core room. Cirys made an unimpressed sound.

"That's… it?"

"It's very young," the man said as he approached the pedestal with my core on it. I moved between him and the core, but of course I couldn't actually touch him, and he walked right through me.

"Sir?" Gwen said.

"Just inspecting it," he replied, and inwardly I felt a minor relief. I watched his eyes as he reached within arms length of my core, the way his brow was furrowed in concentration. He looked down at the pedestal, then up at my the faintly glowing gem hovering above it, then down at the plaque with my name on it where he froze, and his eyebrows climbed up to his forehead.

"…so, are we going to do anything here?" Cirys finally asked.

The man paused for a second, then shook his head and turned around. "No, we're not. We're leaving."

"Wait, for real? That's it?"

"I've seen all I needed to see," he replied. "This dungeon is… it should be safe."

"Druids be blessed," Gwen said with a smile.

"Man we didn't even need to be here," Cirys whined. "You did all the work. There was no loot, either; you just pulverized them."

The man smiled. "Come on, we're leaving." He tousled Cirys' hair as he walked past the boy ("Hey!").

Cirys followed, groaning "Do we really need to get past the pitfall again?"

Gwen didn't, not immediately. She stared at my core for a moment, then smiled and bowed low. "I hope we didn't hurt you too much by killing your minions. I'll bring something for you next time."

Then she turned around and followed her teammates. Within less than a minute, they left me.

I didn't follow them out. I stayed in my core room, metaphorically holding myself.

--

That had been… humiliating.

Normally, after getting defeated this badly, my body wasn't in a state where I could just reflect on the event immediately after. It left me something to focus on other than the event itself. How was I going to handle being blind, for instance, or tanking a pain grenade, or getting cut in half by an alien abomination (I got better!). This was, I believed, the first defeat I'd suffered where I'd been completely helpless, and my enemy had just left instead of finishing me off.

If their goal had been to kill me, I would be dead.

That wasn't a thought I wanted to dwell on. I needed to rebuild and shore up my defenses. The first step was to take stock in my situation. I called up the info box.

HELPFUL INFO BOX! ( ω )

Topics

Rooms

Room Upgrades

Floor Upgrades

Minions

Minion Upgrades

Traps

Trap Upgrades

Progression Status

Special Abilities

Mana: 13/19 (10 per day, -3.25 upkeep)

Impurities: 2

I… what?

I had impurities? When had that happened? My mana count was a lot higher than I expected, too.

Two impurities, two offerings… was that it? Or was it something that went up when humans were inside the dungeon?

I took another look at the info box's impurity screen. It didn't have any additional information.

Well, a mystery to solve later. For now, I had impurities to spend, and problems to solve.

Rooms - Places that do stuff! ヾ()

Core Room -- can't have more than one!

Don't break this! :eek:

Converts life force into useful stuff and contains your core! Verrrry important!

Ant Colony Room -- 20 mana (1 impurity to research), 4 upkeep

Makes all your Ants better! \(o)/

Room Upgrades – Roomier rooms!

No upgrades available. ໒( •́ •̀ )७

Build rooms to access upgrades!

Floor Upgrades – Things that make your floor better!

Stone brick floor – 50 mana

Improves active mana absorption

Looks nifty!

Reinforced wall – 50 mana

Improved protection against digging. Won't affect you though!

Minion Upgrades – More rawr for your beasties!

Ants

Improve an ant's digging ability (10 mana, 2 impurities)

Make an ant bigger! () (20 mana, 2 impurities)

Improve an ant's armor (10 mana, 2 impurities)

Improve an ant's running speed ε=ε=(っ*ºº)っ (15 mana, 2 impurities)

Trap Upgrades – They won't see it coming! (=ω=)

No upgrades available. ໒( •́ •̀ )७

Build traps to access upgrades!

Progression Status – How are you doing?

Flowers – 6/100

Small mammals – 1/20

Small birds – 1/20

That last window was interesting. So progression meant having my dungeon eat things, then? That was pretty basic. Considering the rest of this game, I was willing to bet that completing one category would unlock things for me to build or summon.

On the problem side… the upgrades I could get were underwhelming. My ants had been simply crushed by that guy. I didn't know how much harder the improved armor would make them. Would making them bigger make their bite better?

I needed more options. And, it seemed like the way to get more options was to actually build stuff.

So I did.

I didn't have enough mana to build the ant room if I researched it. I didn't even have enough maximum mana for that. All I could really do to unlock options cheaply was summon creatures. I had plenty of mana and some free regeneration at the moment, so I summoned my first bee and my first spider to unlock their upgrades and rooms. I also summoned an ant.

Congratulations! \(*)/

Bee Hive Room can now be researched!

Bee Upgrades can now be researched:

Increased flight speed 二二二（ ω）二 Zoooom!

Improved stinger

Improved flight maneuverability

Spider lair can now be researched!

Spider Upgrades can now be researched:

Increased run speed

Improved venom

Increased jump power

Floor specialization achieved – Insect Level can be researched!

As my bee took its first flight, my ant started smelling around itself with its antennae and my spider raised its forelegs in greeting, I chose not to look too much at them.

Probably not worth getting too attached to these three.

I sent the ant out to finish the pitfall right away. Then, I checked the floor upgrade menu.

Floor Upgrades – Things that make your floor better!

Stone brick floor – 50 mana

Improves active mana absorption

Looks nifty!

Reinforced wall – 50 mana

Improved protection against digging.

Specialization: Insect Level – 20 mana, 2 impurities

Global: Proves to the world that you really like bugs!

Decreases the cost of research in half

Decreases upkeep of insect minions by one.

Decreases upkeep of insect rooms by one.

Global: Generates passive insect deco creatures which cannot be controlled, but act as food for insectivorous minions

Global: Upkeep of vegetal minions doubled.

(A level can only have one specialization, and will affect neighboring levels with its global effects. Specialization effects require these conditions: Must have at least 6 different insect minions active.)

I whooped in joy. A source of food, and halving my insect upkeep? Now this was something I needed! Unfortunately, the mana cost was higher than my maximum, but I only needed to increase my room count by one to increase my cap above that maximum. I immediately dismissed my bee and spider (while not looking at them), which left me at 1 mana remaining, but this time I had a plan and a goal.

My ant was put in charge of building another room, branching off from the entrance room. I could build that pitfall at any time after I was done solving my mana problems. As it started digging, I opened up my info box again.

HELPFUL INFO BOX! ( ω )

Topics

Rooms

Room Upgrades

Floor Upgrades

Minions

Minion Upgrades

Traps

Trap Upgrades

Progression Status

Special Abilities

Mana: 1/19 (10 per day, -6.25 upkeep)

Impurities: 2

…there was little that was worse than waiting for a plan to complete. This was going to take

I Woke Up As a Dungeon; Now What?

Discovery 1.5

I spy, with my little eye, something that begins with g.

Is it grass?

Yes, me! It is! Good job, me. It's like you can read my mind!

And now it's my turn! I spy, with my little eye, something that begins with d.

Dirt.

Wow, you're good at this too!

I sighed, looking up at the night sky. My ant was working furiously downstairs, digging through the last little bits of dirt that needed to be removed to finish my new room. I'd looked at every menu option from the info box several times by now. I'd even gotten to the point where the smiley faces weren't bothering me anymore. And now here I was, waiting patiently, literally watching grass grow, and trying desperately to find something to pass the time.

There was nothing to do but think, and I honestly didn't want to think. Thinking lead to reminiscing, and I had precious little good things to reminisce about. How could I have handled this and that crisis differently? Had I know Scion was the one who was going to destroy the world, what would I have done? Were my friends still alive? Had Lisa survived? Aisha? Brian? Theo? Defiant? Dragon?

My dad?

Did he know I was still alive?

…did he want me to? Did anyone?

I sighed in frustration and chased those thoughts away. I wished I could sleep.

…

The wind was blowing a bit. Was it cold? I heard it got cold in a desert at night. I couldn't feel it.

…

…

I spy, with my little eye…

--

HELPFUL INFO BOX! ( ω )

Topics

Rooms

Room Upgrades

Floor Upgrades

Minions

Minion Upgrades

Traps

Trap Upgrades

Progression Status

Special Abilities

Mana: 1/22 (10 per day, -6.25 upkeep)

Impurities: 2

Click to expand...

My room was finished. I redirected my ant toward finishing up the pitfall, then glanced at the open info box with a sigh. Twenty mana minus one divided by three point seventy-five was five point zero-six. That most annoying zero six meant that I would have to wait six days before I had the mana to get that floor specialization and a path to having a lot more bugs for my protection. Six days, that's one hundred and forty-four hours. That's eight thousand six hundred and forty minutes. I was debating whether the time that was left before the next morning should be added or removed from that time when I realized two things.

First, I was actually doing mental maths to entertain myself. I was that bored.

Second, something was coming.

At first, I thought I was seeing stuff. It looked like a dim turquoise ball of light was approaching, hovering only at about a foot of altitude and yet barely lighting up the ground and it swayed back and forth, almost drunkenly, but inexorably towards my entrance.

Was… it dangerous? Should I be protecting myself against this thing? I mean, it looked harmless, but it was about the size of my dungeon core. I didn't have mana to summon any last minute defense, and it looked too agile for my ant to easily take a bite out of it, so… yeah, I was pretty sure I was in danger if it got inside.

My panic rose fast when it did exactly that. My info box disappeared, same as when humans came in. I watched nervously as it explored my rooms, one by one, seemingly gaining enthusiasm as it did so, then grabbed control of my ant in a hurry when it started going down the hallway, beelining toward my core. It went down the winding path in seconds and, faced with my ant waiting for it behind the pitfall, paused for a second.

Then it fired a lightning bolt at my ant, which knocked it unconscious.

Definitely not friendly! It crossed the few yards that separated it from my core, and I frantically tried to find a way, any way at all to either wake my ant up, or defend myself, but I had nothing. As it slowed down, I saw it wasn't a ball of light as much as a very small, human-shaped creature with huge eyes and small wings. It stretched its arm toward my core, a smile on its tiny face, and touched its surface.

The info-box reappeared.

Important notice! (ﾟДﾟ; )

Small Wild Pixie would like to enter a contract with you!

Accept? (Y/N)

What was a pixie? What was a contract? What were the consequences of accepting?

My ant was unconscious. I had no other minions. I had no defenses. That "pixie" had me completely helpless.

What were the consequences of refusing?

Grudgingly, held at metaphorical gunpoint by a creature that could have been crushed by a decent-sized apple, I accepted. Hopefully this was the kind of contract I could break out of somehow. I'd had enough dealing with bad contracts as a hero, thank you very much!

Congratulations! \(*)/

Contract achieved: Small Wild Pixie is now a Small Lesser Pixie!

· 1/1 contracts done; Maximum reached! Add more levels to unlock more contracts!

· Pixie acquision progression will increase as your contracted minion gains strength.

· Infobox option unlocked: Contracts

· Infobox option unlocked: Contract Upgrades

Click to expand...

Unlock it before it happens, please!

The pixie's reaction was easy enough to understand. It floated away from my core with both of its tiny arms raised in the air, and proceeded to circle my core several times while chittering energetically. Apparently, I'd made its day. When it calmed down, which took almost a minute, I took the opportunity of it catching its breath to take a closer look.

Its ball of light was a bit larger than my core, about the size of a bowling ball. The creature inside the light ball was a significantly smaller humanoid. If it curled itself up, it would have been a little smaller than a tennis ball. Its skin was either white or the same turquoise as its light, it was a bit hard to tell. What was equally hard to tell was its gender; it had no discernible sexual features. Its eyes were enormous; they filled up almost half of its face and the sides of its head with uniform aquamarine.

A pair of white glowing antennae poked out of the unruly, shoulder-length mane of pale blue leaf-like hair that covered the top of its head. Its limbs were spindly. Its hands had only three long and pointy fingers. If its feet had toes, they were too small for me to see. It had two pairs of wings which were almost as long as its body was tall and poked out of its shoulders, and although they were fluttering too fast for me to see the details, I could tell they were translucent.

In short, this thing looked like a bee had fucked a fairy.

I checked up on my ant, found it was already recovering, and nodded to myself. Okay, crisis averted for now. Now what exactly was this 'contract' thing about?

HELPFUL INFO BOX! ( ω )

Topics

Rooms

Room Upgrades

Floor Upgrades

Minions

Minion Upgrades

Traps

Trap Upgrades

Contracts

Contract Upgrades

Progression Status

Special Abilities

Mana: 1/22 (10 per day, -8.25 upkeep)

Impurities: 2

Click to expand...

Damnit, my upkeep had gone up again. Fuck, this was going to take forever.

Contracts – Your special agents (̿̿ ̿Ĺ̯̿̿̿ ̿)̄

Count: 1/1

1. Small Lesser Pixie (Lv1) [Not doing anything! \(v)]

Not very informative, but I imagined it would be more useful if I had more of them. That Lv1 was interesting, combined with previous references to contracted monsters getting stronger. There was a leveling system in play, huh?

Contracts information – part 1 ヽ(*)/

Contracted creatures are wild creatures who have come in contact with the dungeon and become its servant. Unlike summoned creatures, contracted creatures aren't a part of their dungeon. Contracted creatures can't be targeted by Control Minion and have their own free will. They can't harm the dungeon core or any of the dungeon's minions, but they can be harmed. That's not a nice thing to do, though! ｡(Α)｡

They can't be dismissed, and if they have no food source, use up mana for nourishment, which counts as upkeep. They don't have a passive mana upkeep. If a contracted monster dies, it can be brought back by using impurities. They'll be a bit weaker when they come back, though.

Contracted monsters can be directed to execute missions. How to actually complete those missions is up to them, however. Contracted monsters aren't bound to their dungeon and can leave them at will. Be nice to them, and nice things will happen! o()o

Click to expand...

Huh. That was actually pretty nice. So I could ask it to pick stuff up outside and drop it inside the dungeon?

[Order sent: Small Lesser Pixie assigned to task [Scavenge]

"Bleek!" it made, hovering in front of my core and saluting cutely, before speeding out of the core room, down the hallway and out the stairs.

Huh. Convenient.

Contract Upgrades – Licenses to thrill ω

· Braveheart – (100 mana, 50 impurities)

Your contracted creature will try to protect you more!

· Scavenging senses – (150 mana, 100 impurities)

Your contracted creature will have a better idea where to look for rarer drops!

· Hidden Dragon – (100 mana, 75 impurities)

Makes your contracted creature harder to spot. (ﾒ_)

· Squad Leader – (140 mana, 80 impurities)

Makes your contracted creature able to lead one of your minions outside the dungeon.

· Eye see you – (100 mana, 50 impurities)

Provides you with your contracted creature's vision. (′ʘʘ‵)

Click to expand...

Yeesh, those were some expensive upgrades. And all of them were for only one creature, too. Were they really worth it?

I liked that Squad Leader perk, though. If I gave it an ant to work with, it would be able to carry a lot more stuff. As it was, I wasn't expecting a lot of results from a single pixie's gathering prowess.

I released a metaphorical breath I'd been holding for a while. That had been unpleasant, far too dangerous, and absolutely terrifying. It was the second time someone had just waltzed inside my dungeon, walked up to my core and basically had me at their mercy. It was only because neither of them had sought my death that I was still alive. Next time, I would not be so lucky.

As much as I was telling myself I was done with being helpless… there was nothing I could do that I wasn't already doing. Decreasing my upkeep so I could have more minions to protect myself with was the best way I could go.

Unless there was a way I could increase my mana regeneration.

…was there?

Mana Information – Generation ()

Mana is a product of life. Absorb life force and vitality to generate more mana! Reliable mana sources will be added to your daily production.

Injuring and killing adventurers is a good way to make mana! Fight hard!

That didn't sound good. Especially not when told by a chipper info box with the apparent personality of an overly excitable thirteen years old. Fortunately, it seemed like injuring would be enough. How injured did they have to be?

I wasn't exactly comfortable with the whole "hurt people to make myself stronger" thing. I wasn't a stranger to hurting others; hell, I was even pretty good at it. If someone was going to put my life in danger, then I wasn't going to hesitate to put them down hard, or at least as hard as I could; my ants had demonstrated they weren't exactly the best fighters, and while that pixie could stun an ant, I was pretty sure it wasn't going to do much against a determined adventurer. But killing hadn't ever been my first option, nor would it ever be. I was a killer, but I wasn't a murderess. I wasn't going to kill someone just because they got inside me.

...I spared a moment to thank the fact that Aisha and Lisa weren't around to hear that thought, because they never would have left me live it down.

The girl who'd visited me had apologized for killing my ants, and had hoped she hadn't hurt me too much. Considering the effect I seemed to be having on the desert outside my door, it wasn't surprising they were hoping I'd survive. I was willing to bet most of them wouldn't want to hurt me. The pixie, however, had shown me humans weren't the only thing I needed to worry about.

There was something weird about this whole thing, too. If dungeons generally killed or tried to kill whoever got inside, then why the ever-loving fuck would anyone want to get inside? Oh, a dungeon? Cool, let's just fill up the hole with a mound of dirt, never open it back up and enjoy the free greenery!

Thinking about it, getting sealed up was almost a better solution for me than trying to get stronger. I mean, if I could spare the boredom of being eternally shut away in a dark hole never to see the light of the sun again…

Yeah, no. Fuck that. If they tried that, I was going to find a way to summon a bomb just so I could break out.

I was interrupted in those thoughts when my pixie returned with both arms full of greenery, which it dropped on the ground before immediately departing. It turned out I'd been right about my pixie's carrying capacity; although its arms had been full, the actual amount it had brought back would have fit in a teacup.

The grasses fell to the ground and decomposed in seconds. A smell of freshly mowed lawn floated up to my metaphorical nose. I glanced at my resource tab.

I now had 1.25 mana. I'd just gotten a quarter point of mana for a handful of grass. This was…. very slow. I didn't have a way to speed things up, either, but it was somehow still faster than waiting 24 hours for a little drip.

"Bleek?"

The pixie hadn't moved. It was staring up at me, both of its tiny feet inches from the ground, its head tilted to the side and its huge eyes made somehow huger by the way its antennae drooped over its forehead. It looked like a puppy that had left a mess and knew it was about to get scolded.

"Uh… good job?" I told it. "Uhm, you helped, really."

"Bleek!" it… well, bleeked, twirling once on itself before flittering outside with a spray of happy sparkles.

Huh. Easily satisfied, wasn't it?

--

It was soon after the sun had started to rise that I realized what the solution to my problem was.

I was going to cheese the crap out of this system.

I Woke Up As a Dungeon; Now What?

Interlude 1.u

Although the people who lived in this nameless place called it a village, it wasn't a fair way to describe it. A village, after all, tended to have permanent structures of some kind. It did have a field of sorts; barely a hundred moribund trees with almost as many leaves as fruits on their branches--and not many of either. Its houses were tents, its floors were rugs and bare dirt. It had a wall, an old rickety circle of wooden spikes buried into the dirt a long time ago, patched here and there with new stakes of different woods. Calling it an encampment would have been fairer, but still unfair to actual encampments. There was a smell in the air, that stench of unwashed hair, sweat and faeces, mostly that of the pachyderms that the villagers raised as cattle.

It was poor, it was disgusting, but it was home.

"Ooh!"

With a noise and a pull of the bridles, he brought the lizard's hasty walk to a stop just outside the plain wood and cloth tent that served as the village's stables. The bronze-scaled creature obeyed faithfully, well-used to being a beast of burden, and well used to him personally. Behind them, his two companions brought their own rides to a stop with the same kind of ease. He glanced down at the boy he shared his saddle with; young Samel's hadn't stopped bouncing in excitement all day, and now that it was far past his bedtime, all that excitement had caught up to him and he was completely knocked out. The satchels hanging from each of his shoulders were packed full of herbs and grasses freshly picked from the dungeon's surface garden.

He turned back to Gwen, and she understood his unspoken order. She slid off her saddle, walked up to his side and extended her arms even as he made his lizard bend its long legs down to disembarking position. He grabbed the boy under his arms and handed him to her, carefully making sure none of the herbs fell out of the satchels.

"Get him to his mother, then go get some sleep yourself," he told her.

She nodded, then bowed her neck and held out her free fist in front of her chest in a Velthian salute. "Thank you for the adventure," she said. "It was educative."

"Hm," he replied. Gwen wanted to become an adventurer, not for glory or wealth like most others, but for power; the strength to save and protect those she cared about, as she'd described it. Altogether, not an aspiration he was opposed to. It helped that she honestly had great potential for it. It was far too early for her to actually venture into a dungeon unsupervised, though. Fortunately, she had a good head on her shoulders and knew that, too. Hopefully today's expedition wouldn't put false ideas in her head; most dungeons weren't newborns, after all.

He turned to Cirys. "Make sure the lizards have everything they need. Caring for the animals is a proper squire's job," he added when Cirys looked like was going to complain. "I'll go report our findings to your father."

"Please be kind about me?" the teenager said.

"I will be honest."

Cirys groaned, and the man who had assumed his mentorship tousled his hair one final time before leaving. If he was being honest, Cirys hadn't done too badly today. He was young, his heart full of that foolish temerity that inhabited all young men of worth. He would grow to be a brave knight, if he lived at all. His ability with his chosen weapons left something to be desired, but he was earnest and dutiful.

The older man shook his head. At this point, he wasn't surprised to feel the smile pulling at the scars on his face. He'd been part of this little community for a few years at this point. Him, a washed-up mercenary, tired of selling his blade to the highest bidder, his adventuring days behind him, somehow finding joy living in a lost community in the driest depths of Central. Had he still possessed that youthful foolishness himself, he would have bared his blade and gone for the throat of the first dog who dared tell him he would be satisfied with this fate.

But he was. He'd travelled far and wide, climbed the towers of Magnus, the stalked the bloodstained jungles of Velthia, the trampled the dried wastelands of the Khan, admired the wall of the Arimans and even swum in the waters of the black sea. Not by choice, and the black sea had been awfully red with the blood of his fellow shipwrecked and the beasts eating them, but it counted. And yet, he'd never felt at home anywhere. Until, that is, the day he'd wound up near death, injured in the wake of a scuffle he preferred not to think about, without water and under the unforgiving glare of the sun, and had been rescued by these generous, courageous people.

He shook his head at his own foolishness. A man of his strength could have found wealth and glory a thousand times diving into the Empires' dungeons. And he had, at one time. But here he was, smiling at being home amongst a bunch of unwashed wastelanders and their beasts of burden. They'd needed protection. He'd needed direction. More importantly, he'd needed friends, and he'd found some.

The largest tent in the village was roughly near the center. It was large enough to contain a good dozen people, and often did whenever the village convened, without too many elbows bumping. A flickering light was coming out of the open flap leading inside, along with voices. He had to duck pretty low to actually get inside without throwing the entire tent down, though.

Inside the tent was a man and a woman, whose discussion had been cut short the moment they saw him. The man smiled first, the woman soon after, and she patted an empty spot on the rug next to her. The inside of the tent itself was pretty Spartan. The wooden structure of the tent was bare against the tent's cloth. A shield and a sheathed sword hung at the far end of the tent, near a rolled up bedroll. A weaved folding screen stood folded up partially in front of that bedroll. The entire floor was occupied by a single rug, the skin of a ferocious Khanite Tiger he and the man before him had slain years ago. In the center of the room was a simple iron rod in which rested an active fire crystal, the tetrahedral transparent rock glowed softly with an orange-yellow light and a faint heat.

"Tyr," he greeted to the man, walking and sitting at the offered seat. "Kamella," he nodded to her.

Kamella offered him her wineskin. He accepted and took a large swig from it. The fruity flavor wasn't his taste, but his one true regret was that it was absolutely impossible to find a decent drink out here in the wastes.

Both of the friends before him would have called his favored drink "rotgut". Most the village would have, in fact.

"Ulfric," Tyr greeted back.

Tyr was a few years younger than him, of noble Velthian blood with all the elfin delicateness of feature that blood implied. He wasn't particularly strong, nor tall, nor did he possess much in magical talents. What he had however, was finesse, bravery and the kind of charisma that allows a man to conquer an army with his voice alone. His hair was fair and short, and while he was only wearing a white tunic and coarse brown leather pants, he somehow managed to make even those clothes look regal.

A younger Ulfric had thought he'd be able to snap this pretty boy in half without trying. Several years later, Tyr was still undefeated in their spars.

Kamella was older than himself, and while her face was starting to bear the wrinkles of old age, her astute mind and sharp eyes were as young as they'd always been. Her pale blue hair was carefully braided from the front of her temples to the small of her back. Her blue dress was simple but embroidered with birds and floral imagery, a personal gift from the best weaver in the village. A chain hung from her neck, the iron heptacle of the Druids sitting between her modest breasts at the end of it. She'd been the one the men and women of this village had entrusted their fate to, and in this room she had the final say.

"So?" Tyr asked. "How was it?"

Ulfric took another swig from the wineskin, grimaced at the taste and handed it over to the woman next to him before replying, "your son behaved… adequately."

"Oh dear." Kamella smiled.

"I see," Tyr replied seriously. "I see I have to work him a bit harder."

"You do," he replied equally seriously. "I suggest shoveling manure for a week straight might be a good start."

"Do you think withholding meals would help?"

Ulfric blinked. "You feed him?"

The two stared at each other for a moment.

Ulfric was the first to smile. Tyr grinned. Kamella shook her head as they laughed.

"Seriously though, I have no complaint. His blade is hot, but some tempering will take care of that. He followed orders and knew when to stop whinging. That's good for his age."

Tyr nodded.

"And the dungeon?" Kamella asked.

And all good humor fell out of him as his mind went back to that. Tyr and Kamella sensed it immediately, the latter tensing up, the former's eyes narrowing. The wineskin was offered again. Ulfric accepted it, drained it, then sighed.

"Maryll was right," he said, turning to Kamella specifically. "It was a dungeon."

Both of them made relieved sighs. Tyr then frowned, then his eyes widened and he sighed again. "Fuck."

"We should kill it," Ulfric added.

"Absolutely not," Kamella said.

"Kam—"

"Tyr, no," she interrupted. "We need this. This village… you know how much trouble we're in. Our supplies are too low; we'll have to leave this grove soon, and it's too soon. The next grove can't have recovered yet." She shook her head. "Tyr, if we don't use this dungeon, this gift from the Planet, then we'll lose people to hunger. And we will lose a grove."

Tyr said nothing for a few moments, the cursed again. In Khanite this time, which Ulfric knew the other man reserved for the worst of times.

"Kamella, you know what this dungeon means to the kingdom."

She nodded. "It means our neighbors are going to get moving to capture it, because 'this Dungeon is in our territory'. It means war."

It meant destruction, because only a madman thought a victory against the Khanite or Velthian empires could be won with Central's measly armies.

"But," she continued, "that's tomorrow's problem. The problem today is starvation, Tyr Mirrilyn. We need this dungeon, or we die."

Tyr sighed.

"Magnus does not have to know," she continued diplomatically. "We can hide it, say we stumbled on a pool of pure mana and grew a new grove on it. They won't look too deeply; they know what a dungeon means as much as we do."

"I can't not tell the courts, Kamella."

"If you tell the King, you've told the court."

"Magnus is a viper pit," Tyr replied. "There are more foreign ears and eyes there than in a Khanite slave market. It's almost impossible for the wrong ears not to hear about something like this." He sighed. "I can tell I can't convince you, though."

"You can't," she confirmed.

He sighed again, louder this time. "…Fine. I'll see what I can do. But even then, questions will be raised. We have suppliers. There's no way they won't spot at least some of the loot we'll pull from this dungeon, and they'll ask questions. It will be found out."

"They don't have to know they're not actually visiting the village," she replied with a sly smile. "Let me handle them, okay?"

Tyr stared at her eyes for a moment, then smiled and raised his hands in surrender. "Okay, fine."

Then his eyes crossed with Ulfric's. His smile vanished after a moment. "That's not the only thing, is it."

"It's not," Ulfric confirmed. He took a deep breath, then repeated, "we should kill it."

"Ulfric," Kamella started, but he raised a hand to interrupt her.

"It's not about the damned politics, either. That thing is an aberration."

Their breath caught. Their eyes widened.

He told them what he'd seen in there. They remained silent, Kamella in contemplation, Tyr in growing consternation.

"A curving hallway to disable ranged attacks. A pitfall trap with guards at the end of it," Tyr repeated.

Ulfric nodded. "That thing was weak, but it used what it had perfectly. It even managed to bite me; I've gone through dungeons that were a hundred floor deep without getting hit."

"Were you injured?" Kamella asked in alarm.

Ulfric scoffed. "It tried its best, but it's still a newborn. If Gwen or Cirys had gone in first, though? They'd have lost limbs." He shook his head. "That blasted thing is too smart. It's got one floor, only three rooms, but those hundred floor dungeons I talked about before? Even they weren't this smart. It's an aberration. And it's named, too."

Their eyes widened again.

"It's got a warlock, then," Tyr frowned. "Which explains the tactics. So why didn't you kill it then and there?"

"Tyr," Kamella protested, but the man shook his head.

"The laws are clear, and they exist for a reason. You Shall Not Suffer A Warlock To Live," he recited. "You know the danger as much as I do, Kamella." Turning to Ulfric, he raised an eyebrow. "So?"

"Well, first, there's the fact that Kamella is right, and this thing is this village's only hope," he replied, drawing a smile from the woman and a frown from the man, "and then there's the fact that I couldn't recognize the symbols that were used to write the name."

"…that's it?"

"Tyr, you know how much I've travelled," he grumbled. "I've seen samples from every language used in the conquered lands, and a lot of those beyond the wall, and this script looked like none of them… whoever this mage is, he had to come from really far away, which raises several questions, like 'how did he know there was a newborn dungeon out here', 'how did he contract with a newborn, barely cognizant dungeon', and 'why contract this dungeon in particular when new dungeons aren't that uncommon, and most aren't in the most politically tense kingdom in the region'."

Tyr raised an eyebrow. "You hesitated, there," he noted.

Druids be damned that man knew him too well.

Ulfric sighed. "Those symbols kind of looked familiar, but I can't remember from where. I don't remember ever seeing them in use, so I'm willing to guess I saw them from our loremistress' tomes or something," he finished with a pointed look at Kamella. It was her turn to raise an eyebrow.

"I… find that hard to believe, but…"

"Like I said, I'm not sure."

"None of that matters," Tyr cut in. "The law is clear. This thing has a name, it needs to die."

"Does it?" Kamella asked.

"Yes," Tyr insisted. "Kamella, it's a fucking warlock."

"You're assuming it has a warlock," she pointed out.

"What else could have named a dungeon?" Tyr asked. "You're grasping at straws because this dungeon can save us."

"Maybe I am," Kamella admitted with a shrug. "I'm not willing to doom our village's only hope on the suspicion that it has a warlock. If anything," she added when Tyr appeared to be gathering steam, "the fact that it's so weak means this warlock could be handled by our garrison. I don't think the warlock could have accumulated a large number of monsters from it?"

Ulfric scoffed. "We're the only people within leagues. There have been no disappearances. The whole area is a desert, the dungeon is almost the only form of life out here. The warlock can't have fed it significantly enough to have it spawn an army, and the strongest minion it had was a lesser ant. Even if it somehow spawned an army as large as the garrison, Tyr's men can easily take them."

"My men haven't signalled anyone missing either," Tyr added grudgingly. "Not even a desertion."

"Then, nothing is preventing us from making contact with this dungeon, killing its warlock—if it has one—and using the dungeon's wealth for our own survival," Kamella suggested. "Yes, it's very smart for a dungeon its age, and yes, that does probably come from its warlock, but if it's smart enough to communicate with people, which it needs to in order to contract with a human mage, then maybe we can convince it that murder isn't its only lot in life, that it has other options than whatever its warlock suggested."

"You want to convince a dungeon not to be a meat grinder," Ulfric raised an eyebrow. "Do you want to try and convince the sun to rise from the west too? Might be easier."

"The sun isn't aware that we exist," she replied matter-of-factly, "and if it is, we can't talk to it. Unlike this dungeon." She paused, then added, "Possibly."

Ulfric scoffed. "Lady, if you manage to do that, then I'll go ahead and shave my beard."

"Oh?" she said, an eyebrow rising and a smile growing on her lips. "Challenge accepted then, sir Ulfric."

I Woke Up As a Dungeon; Now What?

Exploration 2.1

--

As I watched it toil from the entrance of my dungeon, I mused that for an intruder who had just made its way into my dungeon, threatened my existence and forced a contract out of me, that pixie was an awfully earnest worker. I watched it flutter across the grassy field looking for the largest leaves, land when it found one and pull at the grass with all of its minuscule strength to tear it out, then carry it to the little pile it was preparing in the middle of the field.

It was hard work, and as much as I wanted to stay mad at it, I just couldn't. First, it was helping me out a lot; my mana reserves had doubled in the last few hours. At this rate, I would be ready to get that specialization I was after within a day, instead of near week I'd been expecting to wait. Second, it gave me something new to watch, and anything that could stave off the ghost of boredom was something I liked at this point.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, it was adorable. It wasn't just what it looked like, it was also the sounds it made, the way it moved, the way it responded… it was like it was specially built to tug at my heartstrings. Maybe I just had a thing for bug-like critters.

It didn't seem to mind the attention, either. Every time it dropped a load in my dungeon, it flew past me with a little twirl and greeted me with a noise. So far, it had made bleeks, chirps, whistles and even several different tinkling chimes, like little bells. How in the world it made those sounds, I had no idea. Then again, I was dealing with a human-shaped floating ball of light; strict adherence to physics was not mandatory in this place.

Or so decided the sapient set of rooms and hallways.

--

Watching my infobox carefully, I nodded to myself when my stocks reached 20.25 over 22, then called out to my pixie, "That's enough for now, take a rest."

As it bleeked its assent to my order, I took a look at my info box and thought about what I needed to do.

It had taken most of the day, and I could tell my poor little pixie was exhausted, but my mana stocks had finally risen to the point where I could buy that insect level specialization. Unfortunately, that left me with a problem. Namely, the insect minions count requirement. Fortunately, I didn't need six insects; thanks to Insect Mastery, each of my crawlies counted for two. That still left me with three minions to make, and with my upkeep as high as it was, any minion I created would put me in the negatives.

It couldn't be helped. Once the specialization cost was done, my minions would have food, which would halve their cost, and then that decreased upkeep would put their cost down to zero, food supplies allowing. With free minions, I would finally have adequate protection. Then, I would go on with the second step of my master plan.

Mana was life and vitality, from plants or dead animals (or adventurers). Nothing said I couldn't grow or raise those animals myself. Rats were fast-breeding, ate literally anything (including bugs), and grew just fine underground. All I had to do was find a breeding pair, drop it in my dungeon in a secluded room, make sure they had enough food, occasionally cull a few of them, and I would have a source of infinite mana to use, right here inside my walls. Failing rats, any fast-breeding insectivorous animal would do.

It wasn't a flawless plan; I was assuming animals like that existed in this place, but then again humans and ants did, so evolution had to have followed a kind of similar path on this world, right? This desert was particularly hostile, or at least it had been before I'd dropped on it like a drop of green paint, so there was a possibility that no such animals existed nearby, which was another problem.

At the very least, I knew the animals my visitors had dropped on my floor—some kind of fowl and a rabbit-like thing—existed nearby. Either they'd been hunted, or the villagers were raising them. In the latter case, I would have to surreptitiously acquire some from them. If they were going to use my magical fertilizer powers, then I was at least allowed to steal a few chickens.

And that line went straight in the list of 'things I'd never expected to say, ever'.

First, though, I was going to wait for morning to fill up my mana stores, then I—

I threw myself backward as the info-box made a sudden appearance right in front of me. Unfortunately, I was outside, which meant I was sent bouncing off the Taylor-only dome outside. Ow.

I glared at the box.

Congratulations! \(*)/

Room: Pixie Fountain Unlocked!

What?

My Pixie had flown over to my core while I'd been distracted. I felt a pang of panic when I realized it was actually touching my core right now, which decreased to mild alarm when it floated backward.

Had it just given me a room? I checked the room list, and sure enough, there it was:

· Pixie Fountain– 30 mana (15 impurities to research), 1 upkeep

A resting area for pixies! (︶︶)

Unlocks pixie evolution paths.

Makes pixies happier, makes pixies stronger!

I… what? First, the cost was ridiculously higher than the rest of the rooms. 15 impurities? I'd only gotten 2 of those so far, and I still wasn't exactly sure from where. Second, evolution paths? Why didn't my bug rooms do that for my bugs? Were bugs unable to evolve?

Urgh, this whole thing was getting more confusing by the day.

My pixie was staring intently at my core. Was it hoping I'd make the room right away?

"Sorry," I told it, "I just can't right now."

Its face fell. Its antennae drooped. Its big, big blue eyes stared into my soul like a begging puppy.

Argh, damnit. I really couldn't…

Its lips quivered pitifully.

…but I swore I would, as soon as I could.

--

Morning came, and with it the 1.75 mana I was missing to be topped off. My pixie had fortunately not sulked for too long; apparently it had figured out that I was just that weak right now, and resigned itself to cruel reality. Which was a good thing, because I was going to need its work again today.

It greeted me with a cheerful tinkle when it saw me, and thankfully didn't complain when I sent it outside again for more grass collecting.

And I needed it right now, because I'd just summoned two ants to get those six insects I needed. Which meant my daily regeneration had fallen to -2.25, a fact which had my info box inform me that "your upkeep is too high! ヽ ( д )ﾉ". I was feeling a pang in my stomach, as if I hadn't eaten in several hours, and I had a feeling it would only get worse as time passed.

Fortunately, I didn't have to wait too long. In fact, popping over the surface, I was greeted to my first surprise of the day. Namely, the grass had grown closer to my dungeon's entrance, within range of my ants' mandibles. I was able to help the pixie, finally.

The moment my mana went to 20, I applied the specialization upgrade to the floor.

Congratulations! \(*)/

Specialization: Insect floor selected for floor 1!

Floor Upgrades Unlocked

· Insect Statues

Rooms Unlocked

· Boss Room (Insect)

· Gauntlet Room

Room Upgrades Unlocked

· Loamy floor

· Wall hives

· Loot Chest spawner

· Collectible Insect spawner

· Insect Deco spawner

Traps Unlocked

· Wall of Flies

· Wasp Nest

Approval increased by 2! \(o)/

Info Box Option Unlocked: Approval Rewards!

Click to expand...

This thing just loved shoveling tons of information on me at the same time. I put it aside for now.

HELPFUL INFO BOX! ( ω )

Topics

Rooms

Room Upgrades

Floor Upgrades

Minions

Minion Upgrades

Traps

Trap Upgrades

Contracts

Contract Upgrades

Progression Status

Special Abilities

Approval Rewards

Mana: 0/22 (10 per day, -6.25 upkeep)

Impurities: 0

Click to expand...

4 rooms. 1 hallway. That was four and a quarter mana points of upkeep. The remaining two had to be my pixie, which apparently wasn't the bug-eating type. Of my 3 ants, though? Not one point of upkeep. I had free insects.

Excellent.

Rubbing my metaphorical hands, I began my inspection of my new dungeon, because one peek at the entrance room, past the perfectly unchanged stairs hallway, was enough to tell me things had changed. First, the ground. Whereas before, the dirt that had covered the ground had been fairly hard, it was now loamy and soft, the kind of dirt that I knew from experience most bugs absolutely loved to burrow into. Even as I looked, I saw little piles of shifting sand, bumps and mounds that moved around haphazardly. There were insects of all sizes in there, from barely visible spiders to millipedes the length of a human arm. I wasn't too surprised to find I couldn't control any of them.

One of my ants was looking at the ground, antennae wiggling, and it wasn't long before it reached down and plucked what looked like a squirming beetle from under the dirt. Moments later, the ant had been fed, and I felt a kind of warm satisfaction coming from it.

My Pixie… wasn't quite as happy, and hovered near the ceiling with a frown on its face.

"Not a fan, huh?" I asked it.

It bleeked a negative.

"I'll see if I can't get you a cleaner room to hang around in until I have what I need to build that fountain thing, okay?"

It looked my way with wide, glowing eyes, grinned, made a happy tingle—then had to duck out of the way as some kind of centipede fell from the ceiling, nearly on top of it. With a protesting whistle, it twirled on itself, then fled outside.

Poor little thing. It had helped me out, though, so I was going to do something nice for it.

Resuming my exploration I turned to the walls and ceiling. Both were messes, riddled with holes from and to where all kinds of bugs were crawling. Centipedes, spiders, beetles, scarabs, some the size of a fingernail, others the length of a whole hand. The air was surprisingly free of flying bugs, except for the occasional giant fly that went here and there, seemingly without real aim. Unlike the other ones, there didn't seem to be any small flying bugs, strangely enough.

I saw a fly land in the face of a spider without getting attacked; apparently, none of these bugs would prey on each other. Nor, I had a feeling, would they attack any invader. That task was reserved for the bugs I actually created. These existed for the sole purpose of feeding my summons.

The hallway to my core room had apparently lost some width in the transformation; whereas three men could have stood side-by-side before, it was now a tight fit for two, and the walls possessed the same crawling holes filled with insects that the rest of the dungeon did. They arched up toward each other, so the heads of anyone entering that hall would be even closer to the bugs.

I nodded to myself. Creepiness had its own defensive value, and there was little creepier than having bugs crawling just inches from your face.

The pitfall, now complete and about fifteen feet deep, was just as full of insects as the rest of the dungeon. To my surprise, it was actually mostly centipedes down there, which absolutely made the thing even more terrifying. The ledge that granted people access to my core room was still hard, however, more than solid enough to hold the weight of a man in plate armor.

My core room… was completely unchanged. Hard walls, solid floor and an absolutely featureless pedestal with my core floating above it. The plaque with my name hadn't changed. Looking only at this room, it was impossible to tell anything had changed at all.

I wasn't sure what I'd expected. Maybe the pedestal could have transformed too? Turned into a bug statue maybe?

Talking about statues…

Floor Upgrades – Things that make your floor better!

· Stone brick floor – 50 mana

Improves active mana absorption

Looks nifty!

· Reinforced wall – 50 mana

Improved protection against digging.

· Insect Statues – 10 mana

Beautiful insect-themed decoration that proves to the world that you really, absolutely, truly love bugs! ヾ(o‿o)ｼ [Insect Level Only] [Research cost: 2 impurities]

· Specialization: Insect Level [Unavailable: Floor already has a specialization]

Click to expand...

Impurities for decorations? I was going to give this one a pass.

I guess I didn't really, absolutely, truly love bugs.

Traps – Surprises for the careless!

Pit Trap – 15 mana (reset cost: 0) (Hallway trap)

A hole in the ground. Not that deep. Doesn't disable when someone falls in it! 【д】

Tripline – 5 mana (reset cost: 2) (Hallway and Room trap)

A rope hanging at ankle height to trip people. Has high chance of breaking on use.

Wall of Flies - 5 mana (reset cost: 1) (10 impurities to research) (Hallway trap)

A noisy wall of flies that block vision and sound. Walking through that doesn't sound very fun!

Wasp Hive - 10 mana (reset cost: 2) (5 impurities to research) (Room trap)

A hive of angry wasps that angrily attack anything stupid enough to get close. Run away! Not very dangerous. Very scary!

Click to expand...

Those seemed quite nice. Dropping those at the entrance to my core hallway would certainly be giving a message to anyone who came inside.

Rooms - Places that do stuff! ヾ()

· Core Room -- can't have more than one!

Don't break this! :eek:

Converts life force into useful stuff and contains your core! Verrrry important!

· Ant Colony Room -- 20 mana (1 impurity to research), 4 upkeep

Makes all your Ants better! \(o)/

· Bee Hive Room – 20 mana (1 impurity to research), 4 upkeep

Makes all your Bees better! \(o)/

· Spider Lair– 30 mana (1 impurity to research), 2 upkeep

Provides more spider research options.

· Wasp Nest Room – 20 mana (1 impurity to research), 4 upkeep

Makes all your wasps better. Might also make them angrier, who knows!

· Boss Room (Insect) – 30 mana (1 impurity to research), 3 upkeep. Insect specialized floor only. [Stress room 3]

Provides special room for adventurers to do battle against super strong monsters!

(･益)二二O)Д)

Grants 1 Boss Monster upgrade! Maximum of one per fifteen rooms.

· Gauntlet Room – 25 mana (2 impurities to research), 2 upkeep [Stress room 2]

Provides a special room that locks adventurers inside until all monsters have been defeated! Maximum of one per ten rooms on floor.

· Pixie Fountain– 30 mana (15 impurities to research), 1 upkeep

A resting area for pixies! (︶︶)

Unlocks pixie evolution paths.

Makes pixies happier, makes pixies stronger!

Click to expand...

…Could I put the boss room in front of my dungeon core?

I felt like I could. I felt like I should.

The Gauntlet room was interesting, too. Any way to prevent potential threats from getting closer sounded good to me. But what were those [Stress room] things?

Stress Rooms – Challenges for Visitors! ε=ε=ε=(ﾟロﾟ; )

Stress rooms are a way for dungeons to increase their odds of hurting or killing adventurers. (•̀ᴗ•́)و ̑̑ They are challenges that, if completed, increase the loot quality for adventurers on the same floor as the challenge, but expose those adventurers to danger and, hopefully, death !

Each stress room is marked with a value, which is its respawn cost. Make sure your challenge is at least hard enough to recover the cost if you fail!

Click to expand...

Respawn cost?

Respawning Mechanic

Some rooms and effects, such as room monsters, traps or loot boxes, will automatically reset themselves once they are used. Every time they do, however, the respawn cost of the respawning object will be added to the room's daily upkeep for the day. This is dangerous, so be careful with it!

Most effects will respawn up to four times a day. Some will do it more often, and will have a /X notation where X is the number of times they spawn each day.

Click to expand...

…So if I read this correctly, then the gauntlet room would cost me two additional upkeep, plus another two if the monsters inside were slain? That didn't sound good at all; unless I actually managed to injure someone, which I didn't want to, then my mana regeneration would fall below zero!

Not to mention, if someone did that four times, it would cost me an additional eight mana, which was more than a third of my total.

I vowed to never build one of those. Injuring people wasn't my goal, in any case. Only defending myself. Thankfully, pitfalls had no reset cost.

The boss room was still appealing, though. Anyone who fought their way through that had good odds of wanting to kill me anyway. Starvation would be the least of my problems then.

Room Upgrades – Roomier rooms!

· Loamy Floor – 5 mana

Sets or removes loam floor effect in this room.

· Wall hive – 5 mana

Sets or removes wall hive effect in this room.

· Loot Chest Spawner – 10 mana. [Spawner 0.5 /12]

Makes this room spawn random loot chests!

· Collectible Insect Spawner – 10 mana, [Spawner 0.5 /24] (Requires Insect floor)

Makes a spawner for special, rare and precious insects that will attract adventurers to your jaws… (*)

· Insect Deco Spawner – 5 mana, 1 upkeep

Constantly spawns worthless deco insects that can serve as monster feed.

Click to expand...

Hm. Well, on the bright side, I was going to be able to provide a clean room to my pixie, for the low cost of 10 mana.

I saw little interest in the first two spawners. I was assuming the 1 notation on them was the same thing as the stress rooms', and I wasn't interested in bumping my upkeep by six to give someone else something nice. Drawing people in wasn't my goal. The last one was interesting if I ever got a level that didn't get random inspect spawns and had insectivore creatures.

Also, I now knew why people kept venturing into dungeons even though they risked death. Greed was a simple motive, and apparently my fellow dungeons had mastered the art of baiting.

Progression Status – How are you doing?

Grasses – 74/100

Flowers – 7/100

Small mammals – 1/20

Small birds – 1/20

Pixies – 6/20

Approval: 2

Click to expand...

So. That Approval thing.

Approval Rewards – Make yourself bigger and better!

· Floor 2 – 30 AP

Increases daily mana regeneration. Makes you taller and stronger! Price increases with floor count.

· Improve Minion Mastery [Unavailable, you only have insects and you have full Insect Mastery already!]

· Improve Control Minion [Unavailable, you've already got Control Mastery!]

· Enable Surface Construction – 150 AP

Lets you build some things on the surface!

· Increase Intelligence [Unavailable, you've got a human mind, you can't be made smarter!]

· Obtain Random Acquisition – 60 AP

Gives you acquisition points for a random progression category. Useful if you're isolated! Price increases with ongoing acquisitions. If a random acquisition is already in progress, it'll complete that one first!

· Beacon – 20 AP

Shines a very visible beacon of light above your entrance. Baits people in!

· Unlock Control Structures – 40 AP

Doors and other things that control where Adventurers can go!

· Unlock Monster Spawners – 40 AP

Lets you make room upgrades that automatically spawn a certain number of a creature you can summon.

· Unlock Environment Mutator – 50 AP

Lets you pick a terrain modification that applies to one of your floors.

· Support structures – 20 AP

Columns and supports that make the ceiling easier to keep from falling!

Lets you build bigger rooms!

· Unlock Traps – 40 AP

More ways to main and kill the unwary! ψ()ψ

· Light Sources – 10 AP

Lights that make adventurers less scared, so they go deeper and die more. Also makes your minions fight a bit harder.

· Increase Adventurer Party Size – 130 AP

More people per floor means more deaths!

Makes encounters harder though.

Click to expand...

That was a pretty massive list. Some of those were interesting, like the control structures or the extra floor. The spawners would cost upkeep, if the respawn mechanic was still valid here, but if their upkeep was lower than the cost of summoning the creatures back, then I would win out in the end--assuming it didn't put me in the negatives and kill me, that is.

Come to think about it, maybe that was a bit of a dangerous pick.

That last option was eyebrow-raising. Parties had size limits? That was actually good news, and it was a nice and expensive option I would never pick.

I still had a question, though. How could I get more AP?

Approval Points – The Planet's reward system!

The Planet likes dungeons that help it, so it rewards the dungeons that do it so they do it more. Help the planet out, and it gives you Approval Points (AP)! It's simple!

Well, that was positively unhelpful. How did making my first floor an insect level make the planet happy?

Wait. It had cost 2 impurities. Impurities were things that the planet found "icky", based on what the info box had told me. If I was right, then the planet had approved of the fact that I had used impurities, and rewarded me accordingly? It made sense. Were dungeons a kind of tool that the planet used to purify itself, then?

That seemed… awfully like an active behavior from a pile of rock. I'd assumed the info box had been figurative on that topic before, kind of like how people always said that human activity was "hurting" the planet, but this was looking very directed.

Was this planet alive somehow?

I Woke Up As a Dungeon; Now What?

Exploration 2.2

Ants were nice. The ability to dig for free was very convenient. They were incredible workers, and better at collecting the grass outside for mana than my pixie was. Untiring, servile and genuinely happy to work for the greater whole, they had been an ideal monster to start off with.

What they didn't have a lot of was combat potential. Large number of ants could take out a foe far larger and stronger than themselves, but with ants this size, in cramped quarters, using the weight of numbers was impossible. Fortunately, I had other creatures to summon.

I first tested with a bee, as an experiment, and saw my upkeep jump by one. Bees were, of course, not insectivorous, but I had hoped the multiplier effect on upkeep from hunger was added at the end, after the insect floor upkeep savings. No such thing; the savings was added last. I dismissed it.

Spiders and wasps, however, had always been amongst my favorite attack insects, and were absolutely insectivorous.

I was somewhat disappointed to note that my spiders were the jumping type, without access to spinnerets and webs. They were smaller than my ants, about the size of an American Cocker, with light grey bodies covered in furry bristles. They kept their eight legs cocked tightly against themselves, even when moving, which made them look skittish. Their fangs were easily long enough to run through someone's arm; every now and then, a drop of green fluid would drip from them and fall to the ground. If a bug was unfortunate enough to stand where that drop fell, they collapsed upon themselves and died nearly instantly. Their eyes were huge and shiny; tiny jumping spiders were adorable, and somehow these were even cuter.

The wasps were... less cute. Bright yellow and black, they were about as tall as a child when flying upwards on their long wings. Their flight didn't buzz as much as it hummed ominously, and their black eyes were notably triangular, making it look like they were permanently scowling. At the bottom of their abdomen was tipped by a long pale yellow stinger which pulsed, as if eager to be used.

Definitely intimidating. I approved.

Over the next day, I used up every bit of mana I recovered from the grasses outside to make minions, abusing the fact that I could make them for free. In between summons, I explored some of the rules of being a Dungeon. I knew I could prepare rooms and queue their production without actually building one; I'd done that before with the pitfalls, so I used that to see what I could and could not do with my rooms and halls.

First thing I discovered? It wasn't possible to make a room completely separate from the rest of the dungeon. Nor, it seemed, was it possible to destroy the entrance hall. I assumed it was because all rooms needed to be connected to my core room, or maybe the stairs. Or both. Hallways had a limited length of about sixty yards, including curves, and while I could make them quite wide, I couldn't make them thinner than about three feet across.

Rooms also had limited sizes; the smallest I could make were those same fifteen feet across squares I'd been making since the beginning, but I could expand them up to a hundred feet wide. The room information text hadn't mentioned anything about room size, so I didn't expect a massive room to have an upkeep cost any higher than a small one. It certainly would take longer for my ants to make, though. Rooms didn't have to be square, either, but they did need to have four walls.

In terms of height, I couldn't make them lower than about eight feet tall, but I got my first big surprise when I tried to make it higher. I was able to stretch it up, and up, and up, seemingly without limit… except there was the fact that I wasn't that deep underground. From the surface to the floor of my first and only floor, there couldn't be more than twelve feet of depth.

Come to think about it, I'd destroyed several rooms since I'd landed here. I'd clearly seen the ceiling of those rooms collapsing down to the floor, and yet there weren't any holes on the surface. How had I not noticed this before?

This meant I could dig up without having to worry about popping a new point of entry on the surface. Potentially interesting once I got ranged minons, certainly useful information to have. And if that was correct, then my entrance was more than just a hole, it was some kind of portal into an alternate dimension in which I was lord and master. That thought made my situation a bit more tolerable, or it would have if I wasn't being put under so many arbitrary rules. It's not like a crystal ball on a pedestal needs air to breathe, so why couldn't I just close off my core room, or build a room out in the middle of nowhere and move my core there? Why did it have to be accessible?

The infobox had said dungeons were born from a covenant with the planet. Assuming the planet was actually alive, then who was it who'd made a deal with it? Certainly not me.

Was it my passenger?

I considered that. On this world, dungeons were a thing that were common enough for a random girl to recognize one on sight. It was impossible that my passenger had made all of them, but mine wasn't the only one.

Maybe… maybe this was a kind of parahuman purgatory, and the other dungeons of this world were, like me, disembodied hosts shoved into dungeon cores?

That didn't feel right. Why wouldn't the villagers try to communicate first, if that was the case? And… right, one of my Approval Rewards had been unavailable because I have a human mind, which implied my situation was abnormal.

I didn't think it likely that other dungeons were parahumans. But maybe they were passengers without hosts, then?

There was no way to tell. I forced myself off of those thoughts, spent a moment to regret that Lisa wasn't here with me, then returned to my experiments.

It was around the middle of the day that I made my first big discovery. Hallways did not have to be jointed with the floors of the rooms they connected to. I could build a hallway that started very close to the ceiling, leading to an opening barely tall enough for a man to squeeze himself through. When I tried to build a room attached to that hallway, though, I found that I couldn't.

So apparently all rooms had to be walkable to, but hallways were fair game so long as it was possible for someone to get inside in some other way.

That was fine. An idea was starting to form in my head. I dismissed my experiments, then created an alcove hallway that joined the far room with the curved hallway that went to my core room, connecting to it right over the pitfall. Whoever tried to get inside that way would inevitably fall into the pit. As an experiment, I tried to curve the new hallway so it also touched the other curve of the core hall, but found hallways could only connect to one room or one hallway. I'd have to create a second hallway to add another entrance.

Maybe later.

Now, that new hallway alone wasn't very useful. It was, in fact, a connector between one of my room and the hall that went straight to my core. Not a good idea, in normal circumstances.

That's why I would cram it full of wasps and spiders.

This hall, and its connectors, would be my way to carry my fast fliers around for rapid response in case of a threat. Whoever tried to invade me would be assailed by bugs coming from both sides, stored in that hallway until they were needed. Whoever tried to cross the pitfall would have to worry about bugs pouring out constantly from a hole while they were trying to cross the pitfall. If they fell in, they would have to climb out while under heavy attack. At some point, one of my venomous bugs would get lucky, and I'd have one less attacker to worry about.

I nodded to myself as I ordered my ants to get working on that. Might as well also build that second pitfall I'd given up on a while ago; they were free. With another connector linking my new bug hallway to the other pitfall, whoever tried to get to my core room would get attacked from both ends of the hall even when they weren't crossing.

The last thing I needed was some kind of strong and solid minion to keep people pinned there; if I was invading myself, I would have rushed through as quick as I could into the core room, then held the core hostage in exchange for whatever I was going after. Or, if my goal was to just kill the dungeon, straight up break the core. I wasn't sure what would happen to my minions if I died, but even if they continued and fought on after my death, it didn't really matter; I'd still be dead.

I had ants, jumping spiders, wasps and bees. This wasn't the job for agile fliers, or ambushers. My ants had already proven they weren't strong enough to hold an actual threat back. This wasn't a job for them, either.

What I needed was a tank. And if one was thinking about tanks in the insect world, they of course had to think about beetles. So why couldn't I make one? Because I hadn't completed the acquisition research thing. Insect Mastery provided me with 3 free insects to research: Spiders, Bees and Wasps. An ant had died inside my walls, so I was able to make them. I had beetles as part of the bug level thing, but apparently they didn't count for some reason, because of course not.

My pixie was nowhere inside. It hadn't spent more than a few minutes indoors since the floor had become an insect level. I flew outside and—whoa.

The grass patch had… grown. A lot. It was almost a hundred yards across now, a gigantic green blot in the middle of the desert. The grass was vibrant green and healthy even under the harsh sun. Near the center, the grass was tall enough for a small child to get lost into, and became progressively thinner and more sparse as it got closer to the edges.

And there were birds.

Lots of birds.

And not birds I'd ever seen, either. Oh, they looked normal enough on the surface, but even as I looked, a long-legged, four foot tall crane-like thing reached its head down, opened its beak and fired a spike of bone at the ground, which it then retracted along with the caterpillar it had speared.

A flock of tiny green and brown birds hopped here and there, digging into the ground. As another of those crane things came closer, the lot of them seemed to just fade out of existence. Based on the vibrations of the grass, though, they had actually gone invisible. A sparrow-looking thing was standing outside of the grass circle, taking a dust bath with its four wings flapping happily.

There was a sharp, familiar crackle of lightning, and a flash of light. A few birds took flight, alarmed by something—and a little turquoise ball was giving chase.

My pixie was on the hunt, and not successfully it seemed. I chuckled.

"Pixie, come back, I have work for you," I shouted.

The floating lightbulb stopped, then came to me with a happy whistle.

"I need you to find me a beetle. Do you understand me?"

[Order sent: Small Lesser Pixie assigned to task [SEARCH]

It bobbed once, saluting with a tingle and an enthusiastic "BLEEK!", and sped off into the grass.

Considering how many bugs there seemed to be amongst the grasses, I didn't expect it to take too long.

I was right; it came back a moment later, a big dead beetle in its tiny arms. It was also being chased by an angry crane thing that stumbled to a stop and darted in the opposite direction as soon as it saw my spider. Was I going to have to worry about my pixie getting eaten out there?

It didn't seem worried.

I was disappointed when my pixie dropped the beetle on the floor of my dungeon… and nothing happened. It didn't get absorbed, its corpse just sat there, unmoving. Why wasn't I getting the research option? I popped open my info-box and saw my mana wasn't even moving. Why the hell—

My infobox flickered out of existence for a moment. A sparrow thing flew down, baited by the dead beetle. My pixie reacted faster than me and zapped it. Within moments, its body disintegrated on my dungeon floor. My infobox reappeared almost immediately after.

I stared at the rotting corpse for a moment, then shrugged. At least that effort wasn't wasted. My mana had gone up 2 points and—

…and so had my impurity count.

I grinned and moved a spider closer to the entrance.

[Order sent: Small Lesser Pixie assigned to task [Bait]

I could always get beetles later.

--

It turned out that sparrows were at the very least smart enough not to dive into the death pit that was my entrance. Fortunately, the cranes were not, and after I hid my spiders, they were more than willing to chase my pixie all the way into my jaws. Unfortunately there weren't that many of them out there, just enough to net me six out of fifteen points in Medium Birds progression—how big were the big birds?—by the time evening fell. Each of those had given me a point of impurity as well as a good amount of mana. The other birds weren't aggressive enough to be baited by my pixie, but many could be tempted by juicy bugs. I didn't need to use my pixie for that, though, so I recalled it after I'd killed and eaten all the cranes.

Knowing I could access a reliable source of mana was a bit liberating. It also fit right there with my plan, except I'd noticed something unfortunate back there. It took me a big juicy caterpillar, one of my ants and a particularly hungry (and possibly stupid) dopey-looking turkey thing to confirm, but I discovered another one of this dungeon thing's secret rules.

Namely, that if anything that wasn't a minion or a contracted minion got inside, the infobox refused to open. Worse yet, my ants lost the ability to dig through dirt—why?!—and I was unable to change anything. And, of course, I couldn't dig a tunnel and make it not part of the dungeon, because that would just collapse the fucking tunnel.

In other words, my fancy "cheese the system" plan had just been lawyered. I'd fought the law and, this time, the law won.

"Well played, whoever was in charge of this system," I groused. "Well fucking played."

I made my ant eat the dumbass turkey to vent my frustration. On the bright side, I had a supply of birds willing to waltz into danger for the delicious, delicious bugs I seemed to be spawning all the time. Why was that, anyway?

It took me another glance at the floor specialization I'd taken before I realized why; the global effect of insect specialization spawned "insect deco creatures" on neighboring floors—it being floor one, meant that the surface was also affected?

I was a bit sad I didn't get a fire specialization then; burning moats of molten lava would have been a message to potential invaders.

But that meant that floor 2, when and if I got around to it, would also have free feed insects to use, and could be given another specialization. And I had plenty of bug-eating birds to use, or at least I would once the progression was done.

I shook my metaphorical head; at the moment, I was still working on floor one. I needed a tank creature to block off access to my core. Once that was done, yeah, I'd be able to worry about floor 2, but I was still vulnerable right now. I was still set on using a beetle as a tank, so I needed to find a beetle that wouldn't mysteriously not wo—

Oh.

I was an idiot.

Of course the beetles from the surface weren't going to work; they were created by my dungeon. They were just like the centipedes, and the flies, and the other bugs I created as "useless deco creatures", because that's what they were. I needed a real beetle, from somewhere out there.

With that in mind, I sent my pixie off again with a more precise order ("Bleek Bleek!" it chirped before flying off into the distance) and focused on what else I could do to make my current situation better.

HELPFUL INFO BOX! ( ω )

Topics

Rooms

Room Upgrades

Floor Upgrades

Minions

Minion Upgrades

Traps

Trap Upgrades

Contracts

Contract Upgrades

Progression Status

Special Abilities

Approval Rewards

Mana: 19/22 (11 per day, -6.5 upkeep)

Impurities: 8

Click to expand...

I hadn't noticed until just now, but my daily mana regeneration had actually gone up. It was only by one, but it absolutely had gone up. Probably because of all the birds upstairs.

Come to think about it, I'd picked up quite a few things today.

Progression Status – How are you doing?

Grasses – 92/100

Flowers – 7/100

Small mammals – 1/20

Small birds – 2/20

Medium birds – 6/15

Pixies – 12/20

Approval: 2

Click to expand...

I was very close to that grass progression. I sent a few wasps outside to grab what I was missing; my ants still being busy digging out the new hallway.

I noted they weren't using the trick I'd taught my first three ants. I thought about teaching it to them again, but odds were good they were just going to die again eventually. If I attracted more visitors and until I got beetles, these guys were going to be my front line, and as had been previously pointed out in a very direct way, Lesser Ants weren't very powerful.

I had impurities to spare. I had mana to burn. I had spare upkeep. There was no reason for me not to acquire a minion upgrade.

…except that the upgrades I had available were pretty terrible.

Minion Upgrades – More rawr for your beasties!

Ants

· Improve an ant's digging ability (10 mana, 2 impurities)

· Make an ant bigger! () (20 mana, 2 impurities)

· Improve an ant's armor (10 mana, 2 impurities)

· Improve an ant's running speed ε=ε=(っ*ºº)っ (15 mana, 2 impurities)

Bees

· Increased flight speed 二二二（ ω）二 Zoooom! (10 mana, 2 impurities)

· Improved stinger (15 mana, 3 impurities)

· Improved flight maneuverability (10 mana, 3 impurities)

Spider

· Increased run speed (12 mana, 1 impurity)

· Improved venom (15 mana, 2 impurities)

· Increased jump power (15 mana, 2 impurities)

Wasp

· Increased rage! Makes wasps more aggressive (also generally stronger)! (10 mana, 2 impurities)

· Improved stinger (15 mana, 3 impurities)

· Improved venom (15 mana, 2 impurities)

Click to expand...

I had no bees. Venom upgrades were good, but how good? And my goal still wasn't to outright kill people, just scare them off. Angrier wasps was kind of useless when I controlled them directly in combat. Ant armor was something, but how good was it exactly? Was I going to be wasting points if I took it? Ant digging was interesting, but my ants were already doing well enough. If I had some serious construction to make, then certainly it would be a nice one to get, but was it all that useful at the moment? Not really.

The one upgrade I really thought was worth it, spider web, didn't seem to be there.

Probably, I decided, it was locked inside that spider room. Which cost 30 mana. Which was higher than my current cap. I thought about it for a moment, judged my other options, and finally resigned myself to my fate as I queued up a few more rooms for my ants to build.

I considered that ant digging upgrade once again, but although I had mana to spare at the moment, there was something more important I needed to buy first.

Ten mana later, the room that had once housed my core had a perfectly smooth floor, clean walls and a flat ceiling. Not a bug was to be found here. My pixie wasn't here to see it yet, but I was eager to see its reaction.

--

Congratulations! \(*)/

Acquisition complete: Grasses!

Unlocked two random grass minion types

· Vines

· Bomber Bush

Click to expand...

I spent a moment staring at my info box as the last bits of harvested grass withered and disappeared on my floor.

Well, now I knew what completing an acquisition granted. It was a bit underwhelming, to be honest.

So, in summary:

By absorbing living things, I got acquisition progress, which granted me minions.

Summoning those minions gave me rooms, upgrades, and unlocked floor specializations.

Those floor specializations allowed me to use whatever I'd acquired in my dungeon.

There was another tier of rooms that could apparently be unlocked through contracted minions that granted access to evolutions.

This was a very slow-paced system. Whoever had designed it had intended to limit the options available to dungeons as much as possible. The rules built into the rooms and halls system was clearly meant to prevent the dungeon from making itself unassailable. Upkeep was a savage limiting mechanic meant to limit my growth, but it was such an aggressive system that it was almost ridiculous. Relying only on daily upkeep was clearly not the way I was meant to get mana. Every step of the way, I was encouraged to hurt and kill.

This did look like the result of negotiations. One side wanted a killing machine. The other side tried to apply limits to that killing machine, keep it vulnerable and make it provide them with resources. And somewhere in the way, there was the whole impurity filter that was factored in.

I already knew I could get impurities from corpses. Ergo, the side that wanted impurities to go away was also the side that wanted to kill.

The planet thought impurities were "icky", and approved of me using them to grow stronger.

Therefore, this planet wanted to kill the people that lived on it.

QED.

Not a pleasant thought.

The sun was getting low over the horizon, giving me a colorful spectacle I had seen several times in the past two weeks. The daytime birds were leaving one by one, having flown off to wherever they'd come from. The green-brown birds that could go invisible hadn't left, though, and one of them was awfully close to the edge of my dungeon.

I considered having one of my wasps grab it, and decided not to. I probably wouldn't get much mana out of it. It was cute. I really didn't need to.

I sighed. This place was starting to get to me.

I Woke Up As a Dungeon; Now What?

Exploration 2.3

My pixie had come back in the middle of the night, completely exhausted and downtrodden, arms empty. Evidently, its search hadn't been a success. Its spirits were immediately lifted when I guided it to its new room, and within hours I found it sleeping soundly on the floor in a corner of the barren room. That poor little thing needed a proper bed.

My monster hallway was finished overnight. It really wasn't much to look at, but my wasps seemed to enjoy being in it well enough; I guess it was a bit like an improvised wasp nest?

This left my ants to work on the new set of rooms, which I'd built deeper inside. Really, those rooms were only there to increase my mana cap, so I didn't worry about them too much.

Interestingly, the rooms they were digging were completely smooth and bare, without the loamy floor and the wall hives, right up to the point where it was finished. As soon as that happened, the new room became the same as the other rooms as the floor specialization kicked in immediately.

Yet another little bit of Dungeony wierdness.

They had just gotten started on the second room when my infobox disappeared.

I had visitors.

Fuck.

I dashed to the entrance just as they finished walking down the stairs, which were illuminated pale yellow by the morning sun.

I immediately recognized the first three. The black middle-aged man with the rats nest under his chin who'd killed my first three ants. The green-haired brown girl with the leather armor, the shield and the mace, and the archer boy with the pike and the "I will be the first to get my shit wrecked" grin. The same three as before.

Except he wasn't grinning, she wasn't wearing her full leather armor, and the last one was going to get a nasty surprise if he tried to kill my minions again.

And they weren't alone. As soon as the fourth person of the group stepped off the final step and into the entrance hallway, a pale blue transparent wall appeared behind them. The boy was the only one to register it, but didn't seem alarmed.

The fourth party member was notably more fragile-looking than the other three, an older Arabic-looking woman whose face was almost entirely hidden by a wrapped-up shawl very similar to the one my first ever visitor had worn. Even as she climbed down, her thin and wiry hands reached up to pull the shawl open to rest it against her shoulders, revealing her graying blue hair—seriously, what was up with this place and hair colors?—a pair of bright, calm eyes and a small smile.

She wore a beige knit wool dress that covered her from neck to toe, with ornamental sleeves of loosely woven darker brown wool. She didn't have any visible weapon. Her left hand closed around the heavy-looking pendant that hung from her thin neck. A small pouch hung from her hip.

The two younger adventurers seemed to be extremely aware of her presence. Whoever this woman was, she was important.

What the hell was she doing here?

Gwen the verdette's nose wrinkled. "Something smells. It didn't smell last time, did it?"

"I dunno, I mostly remember the pitfall," replied Cirys the archer boy.

"Cut the chatter, keep your ears open," said the black man. I didn't know his name, so I was going to call him Bob. "The dungeon can start attacking us right now." he frowned, his nostrils flaring for a moment, and he added, "That's a loam floor. Keep your eyes on the floor. Gwen, antlions."

The verdette blinked. "Huh? Oh, uh--antlions. Ant variant, can burrow underground to attack from below. Threat rating... B, I think? Countermeasures is to wear solid leg armor and boots, freeze the floor and avoid soft dirt."

"And?" Bob pushed.

"...and..." she furrowed her brow in concentration, "uh... stab down at the dirt?"

Bob clicked his tongue. "Keep moving," he corrected. "While burrowed, they are slower than a man on foot. Stabbing down leaves your weapon vulnerable to getting grabbed. Also, they're C-threat, not B."

"Ah... right."

"You were mostly right," Bob continued while the verdette's spirits visibly rose, "just realize that the countermeasure you thought up on the fly back there could have killed you. Every battle..."

"Every battle begins with information and ends before it begins," she recited while deflating. "Yes sir."

Turning to the older woman, Bob said, "This could be really dangerous. If I tell you to get out, you get out."

"I understand, Ulfric," she replied. "Just remember what we came here for."

So Bob's name was Ulfric.

I liked Bob better.

Bob snorted once. "I still think you're insane, Kamella."

"We'll see," replied Kamella the old woman.

Bob snorted again. "We will." the other two, he said, "forward. Gwen, left guard. I'll take right. Cirys, center. Remember that Kamella is the priority here. Don't do anything stupid."

The kids obeyed, the boy sliding his pike to its furrow on his back and pulling out his bow. As they started carefully walking down my entrance, he nocked an arrow on the string.

I also got ready for battle, hiding most of my wasps and spiders in the monster alcove, keeping only a about a dozen of them in the entrance hall, along with my ants. I had other ants already climbing down in front of my core room to form a chitinous wall in case they didn't get the message.

"Awfully dark down here, isn't it?" Kamella said. "Should I fix that?"

Bob furrowed his brow and nodded. "Do it."

She nodded, reaching into her pouch and pulling out some kind of yellow crystal. She took a deep breath, held the crystal in front of her and, after a moment, opened her hands. The crystal kept floating in place.

"Spirits of knowledge, bless our path with your sight," she chanted. The crystal burst into light, was surrounded by a circle framed with tiny words--Light, path, protect, purify--for an instant before a sharp light filled the tunnel, illuminating it and a small portion of my room. Somehow, their own bodies were not throwing any shadows.

"Urgh, what the fuck," Cirys complained. "Where did all those bugs come from?"

"Insect floor," Bob replied immediately, frowning. "Keep your eyes peeled, remember that only the big bugs are actually dangerous. Don't panic if something small falls into your shirt."

"Eww," the boy complained. Gwen shot him a glare, but I noted she'd pulled at the threads in front of her shirt to tighten up the neck opening.

As they walked forward, I was just close enough to Bob to hear him mutter, "fucking hate bug levels..."

This raised my spirits a bit.

Within moments, the light from the old woman's spell reached my first bug. I took this as my cue and revealed the rest of them immediately, moving in to strike.

"Ciry--"

"Hold!" Kamella barked, interrupting Bob's order. The black man made an audible growl and raised his shield, at the same time as Gwen did. Before Bob could yell at Kamella, she shouted, "Dungeon, wait!"

I froze, as did my bugs.

...

"Can you understand me?" she asked.

...

…

Was she... was she trying to talk to me?

...huh...

When was the last time that happened?

"...oh fuck me," Bob muttered.

...well, my plan had been to get them to not attack me, so... talking counted, I guess. Yes, talking was good.

I moved most of my bugs back, except for one spider. I'd use that one to communicate. I made it bend its front legs in an improvised nod.

Kamella's smile had grown victoriously as did, for some reason, Bob's scowl.

"Greetings, Dungeon," she said, pushing her way past the boy, and between the two adventurers.

"Kamella..." Bob warned, but the old woman ignored him.

She stopped just past him, well within arm reach of getting tugged back to safety if I attacked. Fair enough.

"We're not here to hurt you," she continued. "We just want to talk."

My spider nodded again.

"Druids..." Gwen muttered, her shield falling an inch. "This is actually happening, isn't it?"

Bob hushed her.

I guessed dungeons talking back was an unusual spectacle.

"Our village is coming here," she said. "We have a lot of things we can give you, to help you grow. Do you understand?"

I frowned. She was speaking slowly, treating me like a child or a simpleton. I was a little insulted, but... considering what else I'd heard, I was starting to guess my fellow dungeons were a bit simple-minded, to say the least.

I made my spider nod, and used one of its fangs to write on the ground.

"My name is Taylor"

There was a short silence. Gwen's shield had dropped completely, as had her jaw. Cirys' and Bob's eyes were wide, and Kamella's mouth was open in shock.

"...it's writing," Gwen said.

"Druids Eternal," Kamella swore, hand clasped on the amulet around her neck.

Bob seemed more practical than them both. His shock turned into a scowl, and he glanced at Kamella. "Can you read that?"

The old woman shook her head. "Those symbols are like nothing I recognize... they are absurdly simple, but absolutely a writing system of some sort."

My spirits fell. I had hoped the people of this magic world would just mysteriously speak and read English, but apparently at least that much wasn't working by video game logic. Damn it all.

Kamella glanced at Bob with an unspoken question.

He shook his head. "They didn't look like that, either."

What didn't look like what?

Kamella absorbed that answer for a moment, then shook her head and turned to my spider with a smile. "I guess you are pretty smart, aren't you?"

If words weren't getting across, I'd use pictures. With my spider's fang, I drew a matchstick person on the ground, a little circle on a pedestal right next to it, and an arrow going from the person to the circle. My artistic talents had never been the greatest, but I figured it had to get the point across: I'm a human inside the core.

Their reaction wasn't what I expected. The two adults shared worried looks between each other, with Bob's hand tightening around his shield strap like he was expecting an attack. The kids didn't seem nearly as worried, staring at my drawings in incomprehension.

"That... kinda looks like a person, I think?" Gwen said, her head tilting sideways, "and... a square house with the sun?"

"Maybe a field with a little pond? And what's that squiggle between them?" Cirys asked.

Come on, I wasn't that bad, was I?

Kamella spoke up next. "This person who talked to you, they must have promised you a lot of bodies to eat? A lot of precious materials to absorb? In exchange for your minions?"

What the hell was she talking about? I tilted my spider sideways in incomprehension.

"I assure you, you don't need to listen to them," she said, apparently taking my question for an agreement. "You don't have to--"

She paused when I wiped the drawing and tried again, this time drawing the circle around the stick person. If that didn't get the message across...

Gwen was the first to try and guess, "They had an aura?"

Oh for fuck's sake!

"I don't think that's it," said Kamella, staring intently at my spider. "...but I don't think..." she trailed off, her brow furrowing. Her eyes widened in realization suddenly, her mouth opened--

There was a girlish shriek.

Gwen looked behind her.

Cirys was jumping in place, his arms reaching behind his back, into his shirt. "Something just--argh!"

An instant later, a centipede fell from the bottom of his shirt and hurriedly burrowed in the loam.

"Wow, Cyr," Gwen quipped, "didn't think your voice could still go that high."

"Oh, har, har," he groused. "You try to keep quiet when a fucking bug with a billion legs is crawling on your back."

Bob gave a gruff chuckle, then turned back to my spider. Kamella did the same, though her smile wasn't quite reaching her eyes.

"I think I understand what you're trying to say," said the old woman. "I'd need to see your core to be sure."

Did I trust them?

Certainly not Bob. The other two... Gwen looked like the earnest, reliable type, but she clearly followed Bob's every word. The boy... I wasn't sure he wasn't going to use my core as a baseball, just because he could. He reminded me of a less sociopathic Alec.

Kamella kind-of reminded me of my grandmother, but experience had told me never to trust my first impression of people. She had magic powers, too; she was anything but harmless.

I shook my spider and made a pair of wasp fly in front of the entrance to the core hallway, blocking the way. Bob's eyes widened a notch.

"Well, that's a very clear message," Kamella said, disappointedly. "Very well, dungeon, we'll respect your desires." I nodded my spider in acknowledgement, and she continued, "but to be sure, you haven't had another person talk to you? Just us?"

I nodded again.

"Good," she sighed, smiling in visible relief. "Then, I would like to propose a mutually beneficial agreement. Would you be willing to hear it?"

I nodded again.

"Our village will be moving close to here. We have much we can give you--many types of materials, many products as well, and of course our dead. We would offer you those things, in exchange for the wealth you will generate. Your loot, and crafting materials from your minions. We can both help each other grow."

This... sounded like a good deal? I knew what loot was, and assuming they were paying back the mana it took for me to make that loot, I wasn't against making it for them; having a bunch of people with an interest in keeping me safe seemed like a good idea. But crafting materials? What did that entail exactly, though?

Sadly, that wasn't an easy question to ask without vocal cords or the ability to write.

So I tried to draw again.

A long bar and a rounded rectangle. A hammer.

"...A maul?" Gwen guessed. "Is it asking if weapons are okay?"

Damnit. I shook my spider, then drew again. A saw, this time.

"...A Rinkar's head?" guessed Cirys.

What the hell was a Rinkar?

"It's got a handle, doofus," Gwen retorted. "That's... some kind of tool, I guess?"

Did these guys not know what a saw was?!

"A saw," Bob rumbled. "And a hammer. You're asking about crafting materials."

Finally! My whole spider leapt with joy at that.

"Uh, shouldn't it know all about those, though? I mean, it's a dungeon." Cirys pointed out.

"If we're the first people it has encountered, then it wouldn't know about it," Kamella replied calmly. To my spider, she said, "Adventurers enter dungeons in search for loot. They kill minions that the dungeon attacks them with and recover materials from the corpses. Those materials are later used for crafting armors, weapons, potions or useful day-to-day items."

Oh, so they wanted to kill my cute little minions.

Hell no.

I shook my spider.

"You... you don't want us killing your minions?" She asked.

My spider nodded.

"But you're willing to let us use your loot spawners."

It felt strange to hear an old woman use words like those, which I normally associated with Uber and Leet videos or gamer geeks.

"And you won't attack us if we do?"

"It'll kill itself," Bob interrupted before I could reply. "It needs to fight us at least a bit, otherwise we won't generate enough mana to feed it."

"Can't we just give it offerings every time?" Cirys suggested.

"We can, and we will," Bob replied, "but that won't be enough if we want to make good use of it. We'll starve ourselves. Passive abilities won't work either; only skills used on a target will work."

"Then what do you suggest?" Kamella asked him. "You know more about dungeons than everyone in the village."

He knew more about dungeons than this dungeon, even.

His brow furrowed as he thought, arms crossing. A beetle fell into his beard, and he didn't seem to even register it.

"Dungeon," he finally said, "the reason you don't want us to kill your minions is because you care about them, right?"

I made my spider nod. This guy had lost me 3 of them already, he was not going to kill another.

"That's because if they die, they don't respawn, correct?" At my nod, he said, "right. I keep forgetting how young you are. My suggestion is, get spawners. You've got an insect floor already, usually it doesn't take too long before a dungeon grows spawners after this step. You've got a... a really impressive number of insects already," he said with a glance at my assembled army, completely unaware that this was less than half of the bugs I actually had, "you can just link those bugs to those spawners, and they'll just come back after they die. I think."

Including what they had learned? I drew again; a book.

"Uhm... some kind of bed?"

Fuck off, Gwen. Now you're doing it on purpose.

I wrote a few random letters in the book.

"Oh!" Cirys said. "A map!"

Right, that's it. He made a startled squeak as a wasp dove straight for him. Gwen blocked it with her shield, and I pushed the wasp's leg off the shield to avoid her return blow.

"Dungeon?" Kamella asked in alarm.

I made my spider stand up on its hind legs and crossed the front legs in front of its thorax.

"Looks like this dungeon has a temper," Bob said with a grin. "Relax, Kamella. It's just making a point. Weren't you?"

My spider nodded.

"See? Stop teasing the thing. By the way, good reflexes, Gwen. Swing faster next time. Redir--"

"Redirect the blow into your strike, I know, I just..." she shrugged, "I just wasn't sure if I really wanted to hit it or not, I mean... this is a nice dungeon. Don't hit the nice dungeon's beasties, you know?"

Bob blinked. "Ah... yes, good presence of mind. Good work, Gwen."

"Thank you, sir," she grinned.

I had a feeling she rarely got nothing but praise from this man.

"This is a book, correct?" Kamella asked me.

I felt a bit miffed she had to ask, but nodded with my spider.

"Then you're wondering if respawned monsters keep what they learned?" she redirected that question to Bob, who shrugged after my spider nodded again.

"As far as I know, yes," he replied. "Minions in a dungeon with spawners usually can't get fooled by the same trick twice. On floors without spawners, it's usually only bosses and gauntlet minions that do."

Awfully convenient. Also informative. Why was Bob more helpful than the helpful info box? Could I get a helpful Bob box instead?

"Then," Kamella said, "would you be opposed to us gathering crafting materials if your minions were not harmed in the process?"

I…

…

Was I?

In the past, I wouldn't have thought twice about throwing minions to certain death. Even outside of battle, beetles and flies had been sacrificed by the thousands as protein for my web-weaving spiders. Much like these people, I'd used my minions to craft myself a costume, armor, nets, ropes and many jury-rigged field equipment.

The difference here was that my current minions weren't mindless bugs.

They were smart. Could remember. Had feelings.

This wasn't throwing a few fruit flies at Lung's flames; this was throwing people at someone who wanted to use their bones to make pointy sticks, for the sake of congeniality with said stick-maker.

At the same time… the minions I was controlling right now weren't horrified at the thought. I could feel it in their minds; they knew what we were talking about, or at least had a general idea of what the discussion entailed. The wasp I'd sent at Gwen earlier hadn't feared her mace, and would have taken the hit without complaint if I hadn't pulled it back.

They weren't people I was throwing at someone who wanted to use their bones; they were self-aware constructs made of magical stuff. Not people.

But they still had feelings. Maybe they would feel different after experiencing death once?

I hesitated.

Kamella seemed to sense my turmoil, and smiled gently. "For now, we'll assume you are not willing to sacrifice your minions."

I nodded my spider gratefully. That's right, I didn't have to decide now. Maybe once I had spawners and tested it out.

"I might have an idea," Bob said suddenly. "Your minions have never fought before, have they? You've been controlling them this whole time."

He could even tell that, huh? I made my spider nod.

"...Right. So how about this. People who come in here fight your minions—without killing them," he added when Kamella's stare hardened, "and you do the same to us. You get the mana that feeds you from our fights, your minions learn how to fight better so you don't always have to control them, we get your loot without starving ourselves or you, and some of us even get to learn how to handle themselves in a dungeon without putting their necks in actual danger."

The latter was said with a pointed look at Gwen. Her eyes widened, and I could see gears start rolling in her head.

I mulled over that idea for a moment. I could only see one downside from it, and it was on their end; in order to get mana from them, I had to injure them somehow. I wasn't against sparring, but sparring to injury wasn't a spar. Unless they had magic healing potions or something?

"We could even give it a shot right now," he continued, grinning at the girl took a wide-eyed step back. "One-on-one, Gwen against one of your bugs. Are you okay with that?"

"Uh, sir?"

I felt like playing along. I wasn't going to try injuring her, though. I nodded with my spider, then pit that same wasp from earlier in front of her.

"Shield up, Gwen. Remember your training. You're lucky enough to face your first actual minion without pressure or the threat of death, I expect you to do well."

Or else.

Nice pressure you just added there, Obi Wan.

I'd been a mentor before, though, and I felt that kind of evil giddiness every mentor feels at the thought of helping a fellow out with his lesson plan.

"Gwen, what are you facing?" he asked.

"Lesser Wasp, Wasp starter variant," Gwen recited, her eyes set on my minion. "Threat level F. Aggressive insect, very persistent, easily baited to attack. Fragile, but agile. Has F to E-class pain venom. Countermeasures is to block and counterattack, or use area of effect skills."

Bob nodded in approval. "Good. One thing they don't note in that book is that they're social, like to stick together, so if you're facing one, you've probably got more on the way. Not a problem today, but something to keep in mind."

"Yes, sir."

The lesson was done, and as she's said, I could feel my wasp was eager to attack. I obliged it, darting forward with open mandibles. Wasps could fly backward, so I could have angled its body so my stinger had been in front, but they were much faster flying head-first, not to mention far more agile. Gwen raised her shield high, expecting a head-on strike, and this time I obliged her, although I saw a big hole in her defense strategy.

She blocked and counter-attacked. This strike was much faster than the previous one. I almost couldn't see it, and—was it just me, or was her mace glowing this time?—but since I'd been expecting it, I dodged it easily enough. I flipped upside-down and pushed down to avoid the returning mace strike. This put me to the ground, with her leg in stinger range.

I struck, pushing without actually stinging.

"Ah!" she exclaimed in alarm, jumping back.

Bob chuckled. "Solid leg hit, get down on one knee. You can't use your leg anymore."

"Fuck," she muttered, obeying. My wasp had returned to a safe distance, letting her recover, and although my wasp did feel some annoyance at not pushing the attack, it was also elated at what its body had done. My minions really didn't mind that I was controlling them.

With Gwen on one knee, she was a sitting duck, and I decided to show her why her blocking technique was flawed. I moved again, using the same attack. She raised her shield, and the moment she lost sight of my wasp I darted sideway and moved to strike her around the shield on her mace side. To her credit, she reacted correctly, immediately swinging her mace at my bug, but I'd expected that, pulled up just above her strike, and at that point she was wide open.

My bug rammed her in the face. It was only because she was already on one knee that she wasn't toppled over. My stinger fell on her stomach, the hard point pushing hard at her leather vest without penetrating.

"And match," Bob said. "Dungeon wins."

"I can still fight," she protested after my wasp pulled away.

"Wasp venom feels like a white hot metal flowing in you, and that one was right in your gut. That's a debilitating strike," Bob added, pulling her upright without even a grunt, "and its next move would be to rip your throat open. In a real bout, you'd be dead." Looking up at my ceiling, he added, "thanks for not killing my student, by the way."

Gwen's eyes widened, and she seemed to realize she'd just lost a fight against a literal murder machine that could feed on dead people. "Uh, yeah, thanks."

My spider nodded. My wasp returned to the bulk of my waiting army.

"As punishment, you two will be doing block practice tonight," said Bob. "Then you're going to talk to me for at least half a candle about all the mistakes you did in this fight."

Gwen's voice was the definition of resignation. "Yes sir."

"Wait, why am I being punished?" Cirys protested.

"Character building," Bob replied. To Kamella, he said, "are we done here?"

"I believe so," she replied. Turning to my spider, she raised both arms before herself and clenched both fists in front of her chest, bowing her neck lightly. "Thank you for your time, and for your understanding. I hope our agreement proves productive for both of us. Spirits protect."

A spider had no neck, so I moved a wasp instead, moving its top two pairs of legs together and craning its neck forward a little bit. Kamella's eyes widened, then her whole face twisted with mirth.

"Thank you again," she said.

They left. I followed them as far as I could, wondering if they were going to talk about me, but they didn't say a word until they were at their rides. Kamella got on the same saddle as Gwen, turned to Bob and said, "I remember our little bet, by the way."

Bob didn't say anything, he just grunted and got his lizard walking. Kamella watched him leave while tittering.

What had that been about?

I shook my head, returning to my dungeon and releasing my minions from my control. That had been… unexpected. I hadn't thought I'd be making friends, of all things, but somehow that had just happened. Altogether, I was rather pleased with it, although a part of me was expecting a massive shoe to drop on my head any minute now.

I opened my info box and got my second surprise of the day.

13/25.

I had far more mana than I was supposed to.

I Woke Up As a Dungeon; Now What?

Exploration 2.4

As I stared at the orange and yellow horizon, trying to catch a first peek of my new incoming neighbors and feeling a bit like a lot of trouble was coming my way, I reflected that this whole thing could have been a lot simpler if my info box hadn't apparently been written by an idiot.

I'd made peace with the smiley faces and the childish way it described literal murder beasts and death traps. It wasn't even the way it liked to spring things up on me without warning. I'd had my fair share of jumping both feet into more troublesome situations than this with very little information; this was like having a pocket Lisa around, if Lisa was a sugar-high thirteen years old with an attention deficit.

The problem was that, just like Lisa, it seemed to get details wrong at the most terrible times.

For instance, this thing.

Mana Information – Generation ()

Mana is a product of life. Absorb life force and vitality to generate more mana! Reliable mana sources will be added to your daily production.

Injuring and killing adventurers is a good way to make mana! Fight hard!

Except for the little detail that I could apparently get mana from just fighting, which this stupid thing had led me astray about.

It hadn't taken me too long to figure it out. I'd had 19 mana earlier, used 10 for my pixie's room. One morning had passed, and I currently had a measly 0.5 mana regeneration—which was fine, since I could grab birds from outside—but instead of the 9.5 I was supposed to have, I currently had 13.

I hadn't injured Gwen. We'd sparred, but neither of us had come even close from hurting each other. All we'd really done was push each other around a bit—mostly me to her.

Which, apparently, was enough. I reasoned that the exertion from the sparring had been enough to count as "vitality". Or something. Bob had apparently known about this, obviously since he seemed to know everything that could be known about dungeons, and had given me the final hint I'd needed:

"Passive abilities won't work either; only skills used on a target will work."

I felt like I was the fourth ring in a game of telephone for the hearing-impaired.

Once I was done expressing my frustration, I'd returned to the surface to stare at the horizon, while guiding one of my spiders to stalk in the tall grass and grab birds that came too close. Moving more than a few yards from the hole caused my minions to break apart in little pieces, but they had just enough time to grab something and pull back, seemingly without consequences, before they vanished.

I'd lost two spiders already. I felt bad about it, but the rest of them didn't seem to worry or mind at all. Score one for magical constructs.

I'd noticed it before, but it turned out that things my dungeon ate had a "taste", for a certain definition of taste. For instance, those little invisible bird things tasted like a spring wind. Grass tasted like a freshly cut lawn. The big cranes with the stabbing tongues tasted like dust. More mundanely, those four-winged sparrows tasted like chicken.

There was no seeming rhyme or reason for it. It was just a thing. Then again, considering I had no sense of touch or smell, and presumably my fellow dungeons were the same as I, that little bit of positive reinforcement must have been a pretty strong incentive for… us, to try and absorb as many things as possible. Including people.

I spared a moment to wonder what someone would taste like.

Then I grabbed that thought, dragged it in the back street, executed it and dumped its body in a ditch.

--

Night came, then dawn, and with the morning sun came a familiar visitor, riding on the back of one of the green dinosaurs. The girl with the dusty shawl and the leather pouch, the first person who had seen me in this world. Today, she had loaded the lizard with a handful of woven wooden boxes which, as the dinosaur slowed to a stop and bent down to let her dismount, she carefully unhooked, stacked on each other and hefted, until a small pile of four woven boxes was sitting on the ground.

I'd had a spider out in an effort to grab the few points I needed to complete one of the bird progressions, both of which were about halfway done. When the girl saw it, she made a noise, then carefully put the boxes down and gave me that two-fisted salute. I returned it, awkwardly. She reached up to her face, unhooked the shawl and uncoiled it from around her head, revealing a head of startling blue hair, shiny black eyes and a nervous smile. Her face was very youthful; she couldn't be older than sixteen; roughly Gwen's age, maybe?

"Hello," she said. "I just thought I'd rush ahead and drop these, ah…" she motioned to the boxes, just as the topmost topped and fell to the ground, seemingly on its own power. "Oh, druids—calm down, you guys…" she pulled the box upright without putting it back on the stack, then turned to my spider with a small grin, "sorry, they're a bit nervous. Hornhares are skittish at the best of times, and it's the first time these have ever travelled—uh, sorry, I'm rambling."

She reminded me of Charlotte, a little. If you cranked the chatterbox up to eleven.

She stood again, made that salute and said, "I'm Maryll. You met my mother yesterday, Kamella?"

I nodded my spider.

She shook her head, wiping her brow and smiling. "Druids… I mean, I knew—Gwen told me you could understand people, but it's so weird, right?"

The boxes bounced a bit. She put a hand down on top of the remaining stack.

"I'd better release these—I mean, if you're okay with it?" she asked me. "I've raised hornhares since I was a kid, but it's the first time I actually get to release any—they don't really survive out there normally, but in your grass… I mean, dungeons like to be surrounded by forests and stuff, right?"

She knew more about what dungeons liked than I did, so I just nodded.

"Right?" she repeated with a grin. "So I thought I'd add a few more things in your grass patch; ah, I got these four, two breeding pairs, should be a good start, and I got a few seeds and plants too. As thanks, you know? For everything you've done for us so far."

I felt like her gratitude was a bit misplaced. It made me feel a bit guilty for how many plans I'd made which included ruthlessly attacking these people. I hadn't done that much, just grown a patch of grass by accident.

"I guess I'd better get started, then?" she gave my spider another look, then reached for the boxes.

She grabbed the first at the top of the stack, unhooked three of the strings that held the lid in place and tilted the box a bit. Immediately, the lid exploded as something white and small dashed out, disappearing instantly amongst the tall grasses.

"That was Yakyl," she smiled fondly. "Always a speedster, that one. You have no idea how many times he got himself in trouble. Or me, for that matter," she added with a grimace, "He should be happy in there, though. No scroll stacks to make messes out of and no ink bottles to spill, but I think he'll cope."

She grabbed the next box. Unlike the previous, its occupant didn't immediately leap out, instead apparently preferring to cower in the box. This let me get my first real glance of those "hornhares" she was releasing.

It was a white bunny with red eyes, staring nervously at the open lid of the box and shaking lightly. Its ears weren't that long, but they still stood about as tall as the bunny itself was. Standing proudly on its forehead was a horn that was almost half the length of the entire bunny.

"Come on, Kymel, go on!" Maryll said, shaking the box lightly. The bunny seemed to decide leaving the box was the better idea and—

With a streak of white, it disappeared in the tall grass. I had barely seen it move.

"There we go!" she grinned.

She didn't have nearly as much trouble with the other two—which she named Nomel and Hylla—then stacked the empty boxes into each other, used a spare string to tie them with their lids, and returned to her dinosaur to hook them back on.

"Okay, next I got these," she reached into her pouch to pull out a handful of fruits, which she showed to my spider, "I thought I'd plant these. They're Tengrape fruits—because they grown in bunches of ten, see—and they're pretty much the only plant we can get to grow out here, with just a bit of…uhm, fertilizer." She grimaced. Shaking her head, she continued, "anyway, I figured they'd grow like mad on actual fertile ground, so I thought I'd plant one. And I got a few flower seeds, too—you're a bug dungeon, so you got bees, right? That should help you a bit!"

I nodded hastily. More sources of food were good, especially if they fed by pixie (which would spare me one mana) and let me start using bees too.

She giggled. "Okay, I see you approve. I'll just plant these, then, but…" she glanced around. A few birds were looking at her warily. She frowned, then reached into her pouch. "Good thing I brought this."

She glanced at my spider. "Don't tell my mom I took one of her Life Crystals. Please. She'll have me sitting in a corner until the end of summer. Gwen told me about all the birds and I figured they would just eat the seeds if I didn't use this."

This "Life Crystal" turned out to be a small crystal, a transparent octahedron with a little green glow inside. It looked just like the one Kamella had used yesterday to create a shadowless light source. I floated as close as I could to her to get a better look. I'd been surprised last time, but I was interested in seeing an actual spell being used.

She pulled out her knife, dug a hole in the ground and pushed the fruit in, then stood, clasped the gem between her hands, closed her eyes and focused for a moment. Then she held her hands out as far as they could go and, carefully, opened them. Just like yesterday, the gem stayed in place, softly glowing in green.

"Spirits of knowledge, bless this pot with your might." She chanted.

Which… made no sense.

The gem seemed to agree, and after giving a meager green puff, fell to the ground.

"Huh? Oh, no, I got it wrong…" she picked it up and tried again.

"Spirits of knowledge, bless this pot with your glacier!"

Again, it poofed and fell. I stared, bemused. What the hell was she saying?

"Druids be damned, ohh!" she grumbled, reaching into her pouch and pulling out a roll of thin straps of bark, tied together with strings. "Growth spell, uh…… ah, there. Oh! It's Kindness, not Knowledge… okay, Spirits of kindness, bless this plant with strength… druids, I was completely off, wasn't I?" she giggled. "Okay, third try."

This time, it did work. The gem responded by flashing a green circle with the words growth, plant, protect, purify written around it. Long strands of blue light flowed from it, slowly snaking their way to the fruit, which started glowing in green—and then grew, sprouting a small stalk and a pair of leaves within a few seconds. Maryll herself seemed surprised at her own work.

"Oh! Oh wow, that was a lot easier than in practice." She smiled at my spider, "must be all that mana you're making, huh? I've always heard spells were easier to cast around dungeons, but it's the first time…" she trailed off wistfully, then shook her head. "I'll get started on the flowers, I guess."

She did just that. Rather than seeds, she had several whole plants with their roots, which she took from a basket on the saddle of her lizard.

"Lilua—that's our herbalist," she added rapidly, "she always has all these plants growing in her tent, right? She spends all day caring for them. She wouldn't let me have any of the more precious ones—she'll probably want to plant them herself—but she did give me some that she has spares of…" she glanced down at the plants in her hand, then shrugged, "to be honest, I'm not sure what she can do with even half of these, but, you know, she probably has a reason for growing them, right?"

She pulled out her dagger and stabbed a few times into the dirt, digging up a hole small enough for one of the plants. A moment later, I had a small blue wildflower growing in my grass patch.

"I picked up a couple others on the way here—wild flowers, hardy stuff that can grow even out here. They should do great out here, right?" she continued while digging another hole. "They're not easy to find, but if you know where to look… I mean, they don't need much mana, but they do need some, right? So I just sense for pure mana, and I can usually find something living there. Either a plant, sometimes a bird of a bunny or something." She glanced up at my spider, her brow sweaty and her lips grinning, "I think I spotted a Mirlow earlier, but I didn't have my bow on me. Sucks, huh?"

I shrugged noncommittally. What the hell was a Mirlow supposed to be?

She continued digging, prattling the whole time about everything that went through her mind. One of the plants, a dried-looking yellow flower, also received a dose of that growth spell, but the rest were left to their own devices.

"Whew. That should do it," she said, wiping her brow again. "Most of these plants are pretty tough, they won't need any help with all this mana floating around." She sighed again, this time in apparent exhaustion, shuffled the grass around to flatten it and half-sat half-collapsed on the ground. "Between all packing this morning, the ride here, all this digging and using the spell twice, I'm beat," she said, letting herself fall on her back. The grass was tall enough to hide her completely.

There was a short moment where I thought she might have fallen asleep right there, then she spoke again.

"Hey, dungeon," she said. "You're a nice dungeon, right?"

She sat up to look at my spider. I made it nod.

"Can I… touch it? Your spider?"

I had no reason to refuse. The stuff she'd planted on my grass patch would eventually be harvested by my pixie and give me stuff to make, which was good. Besides, I was playing nice with the locals, and she was nice.

I made my spider nod again, and moved closer to her. She smiled, shuffled closer, then her hand got through the circle of grass that my ants had cut short around the entrance. She touched its leg, and her eyes widened.

"Oh wow, it's a lot softer than I thought it'd be," she said, grinning as she came closer. Her other hand came, and she started petting my spider on the head.

I felt its emotions; it was absolutely nonplussed, as if not quite certain if it enjoyed the attention or found it awkward. I let her touch it for a moment longer, then had it push her hands away with its pedipalps.

"Aw, that was fun, though," she said with a grin. "You really are a nice dungeon, Gwen was right."

She laid back down, eyes leaving my spider to look up. She smiled peacefully, admiring the blue sky, and I'd just started feeling awkward about staring at her like this when she started speaking again.

"This place used to be our village, you know?" she said. "You can still see the foundations of some of our houses here and there. My grandmother's grave is over that way," she pointed vaguely in the direction of the ruins, "I come here regularly to drop some flowers. To pay my respects, right?" Well," she shrugged, "I say 'our village', but really I've never lived here. I was born after the war. If this," she tugged at the grass near her head, "was how it was before all the dungeons died, then it's no wonder the old folks in the village are excited about you."

Wait, hold up. The dungeons died? From what?

She didn't hear my unspoken question and continued, "Ulfric... ah, he's the big Khanite man you've seen before," she added with a sideway glance at my spider, while I tried to find a way to get her to tell me what had killed the dungeons, "sometimes, he sounds like he's spent half his life in dungeons, right? He's told us stories, it's like he's got a different one for every day of the year, and then some. I'd say he's making it up, but I've seen him washing, his body is covered in scars."

She stopped, then her cheeks pinked and she turned to my spider fully, "I mean, not that I was peeking. Or trying to peek." Her head tilted to the side and I heard her mutter "...much," before she shook her head quickly and turned back to the sky, "So, anyway. Yeah, his stories. He tells us a lot of stories, right? And all them are always the same; he goes in a dungeon with his party, the dungeon tries to kill them, he fights it off and brings back something nice. Or nothing. Sometimes he loses people. But the dungeon always tries to kill him."

She turned to my spider. The distance that separated her from its fangs was far less than it could jump in an instant. She didn't seem scared at all.

"You could probably kill me right now, but you won't, right? And not just because you're a nice dungeon," she shifted, turning her whole body towards me. "There's something special about you. You're not like the other dungeons Ulfric talks about."

It wasn't a question. Her eyes were bright, piercing, and for some reason I felt like she was seeing right through me.

"There hasn't been a dungeon born in these lands in decades. And then you show up, and you're so smart and nice?" she shook her head. "You're something special. Different. Maybe the druids themselves had a hand in making you. Maybe it's something else, something I can't even imagine. I'm just a girl," she reached out to touch my spider again, patting it on the head with a wiry but soft hand, "and you're something the planet itself must be watching. Maybe it even has a special plan for you."

She smiled.

"Take care of us, and we'll make sure you're ready for whatever the planet wants out of you, okay?"

I had nothing to say on that. She didn't know me, or what had happened to me. She didn't know I was a human girl inside a floating ball acting as the mind of a magical murder mansion. If those druids had made me like this, then I didn't know; they certainly hadn't asked my opinion about all this. The planet? I'd only just figured out it was more than a pile of rocks.

The future mattered, but the present was more important, and I had a question right now.

I used my spider's fang to tear a hole into the grass to expose the dirt under it, which I used as a drawing surface. I traced what I wanted to be a pedestal with a broken core.

"...an angry face?" she guessed. "Are you mad at me?"

I wiped it off and tried again. A flat surface, a hole in the ground.

"Your entrance? Do you want me to leave it? Oh!" she gasped and pulled away. "Sorry, am I too close? Did I enter you by accident? I thought—the circle, I'm sorry, uh—"

Damnit! I wiped it off again, this time using many entrances.

"Uhm... I think I understand...? I don't know if you can have more than one entrance; that's the kind of question you should ask Ulfric, not me."

I knew I couldn't have more than one entrance. I sighed; this just wasn't working.

Mercifully, she seemed to realize I was getting irritated. "...Are you asking about other dungeons?"

I nodded, quickly, several times. She smiled.

"Sorry, it's just... it's a bit difficult to understand you. So you want to know what happened to them, right? Right," she bopped her knuckles on the side of her head and pulled her tongue, "silly me, I just told you something terrible like that without explaining a thing..." she trailed off, frowned, and said, "I think I'd better tell my mom to tell you, I don't know all the details, the grownups don't like to talk about it. I can give you the basics, though--ah, here," she reached over to the patch of dirt, wiped out my attempts at communication and drew with her finger.

Spoiler

"Okay, so, we're here," she pointed to the big hole she'd made on the southeast of the area, "here," she pointed east on the map, "there's the black sea. There's the Arimans that way," she pointed west, "but they never really go past that big wall they built to keep us out. Down here," she pointed south, "is the Velthian Empire. And up here," she pointed north, "is the Khanite Empire. We're stuck between them."

She frowned. "There was a war between the two empires right here, in Central, and the two empires looted so much from the dungeons here that they died. Neither of them really cared about those who lived here." she frowned, then shook her head and smiled at me. "But the war ended before I was born, there's no need to worry about it." she patted my spider again. "Don't worry about it, okay?"

Even as I made my spider nod in thanks, my mind was churning.

Ignore the fact that the land I was in was neighbored by two Empires who had shown they were willing to kill dungeons--to kill me, out of greed.

No, I wasn't going to do that.

I Woke Up As a Dungeon; Now What?

Interlude 2.tk

A figure wearing an ankle-length black cloak stepped out from a dark alley between two broken houses. As he passed across the street, the wind rose, nauseatingly thick with the stench of Rot from the old dead woodlands that had provided for this town in the years before the death of its Dungeon. The man had to reach up to prevent his cowl from flipping off his head and revealing his face, and to block the cloud of dust the wind carried within itself.

This township, which went by the name of Temperance, had once been a nice place to live. Here and there, it was still possible to see signs of the peaceful hamlet it had once been. The cracked stone paths; the flakes of bright paints on what houses hadn't been destroyed by fire or decay; the remains of the old mill, with its waterwheel hanging over the dry bed of what had once been a snaking river; the dead skeletons of bushes and trees.

As the figure advanced toward the center of town, he caught sight of a somewhat fresh corpse hanging from one of those trees. A visitor, or perhaps one of the locals, who had run afoul of the wrong kind of people, no doubt.

Which 'wrong kind of people' was up for debate; there was no shortage of people who could go by that description here.

Closer to the center of town, more buildings stood in a somewhat better state of repair. Old shops, temples and administrative buildings, all of which had been built of sturdier materials, and had had the pleasure of being somewhat maintained by the barely-reputable businessmen who'd established themselves there. The hooded figure ignored the buildings themselves, instead finding his way between the old adventurer's guild and an abandoned shop of some kind.

The figure walked swiftly, purposefully, his footsteps noisy against the uneven stone walkway. A group of brigand-looking men stood at the alley's far end, their heads turning to glare at him as he approached. He didn't even seem to notice them. He didn't give any sign that he noticed the men hidden amongst the broken shingles of the houses that framed the alley, armed with bows, crossbows and wands. He didn't seem to care, either, that the alley's other entrances had been roughly bricked shut, leaving but one entrance and exit.

All he seemed to care about was a single door built in the back of the adventurers' guild, about halfway through the alley.

A bear-like man stood next to the door, his massive arms crossed. A well-worn pair of metal claws hung from his wrists, glinting in the evening sunlight.

"Business is closed," he rumbled.

"Urgent payment," the figure replied. "I'm here to pay my due." The guard startled for a moment, then, brow furrowed, nodded. His arms uncrossed, and he tapped against the door.

'Tap-tap tap tap-tap'

A few heartbeats later, the door unlatched noisily, then slowly swung open. The person behind the door was another cloaked figure, a woman, whose piercing yellow eyes stared at the figure suspiciously. There was a glint of recognition in those eyes, only for a moment, and she stepped aside to let him through. Beyond the door was a short hallway with boarded, open doors—more men stood visible beyond those doors—and a short flight of stairs heading directly into the basement.

The figure said nothing, walking past her, past the second row of guards, and down the stairs. He pushed the wooden door at the end of the stairs open and stepped into a cramped room of roughly-assembled wood. There was a small door on the left, locked tightly. A counter and a window of latticed wood plants in front, at waist-level. The figure had to bend down to see the room on the other side of the window; originally far more spacious, it was now full of all kinds of knick-knacks and more-or-less legally acquired more-or-less legal merchandise. A man sat at the other side of the window, glaring at him as he approached.

"Account?" he asked.

The figure reached into his pocket and dropped a small golden medal on the counter. The man slid the window open to grab the medal, inspected it for a second, glanced at the figure to see his face, and nodded to himself before returning the medal.

"Hand it over. Destination?"

"Highest peak," he replied, reaching into his cloak for a rolled up scroll, which the man accepted.

Frowning, the man continued, "Urgency?"

"Critical," the figure replied.

The man's frown grew even as he inserted the scroll into a black wooden tube and sealed it. "You realize what will happen to you if the council decides this didn't warrant such urgency, correct?"

The figure nodded. "It does."

"On your neck, then," the man scoffed. With a knife, he marked the tube with a specific pattern, then reached past the figure's view and brought a locked box in front of the window. He manipulated the lock with several quick flicks, opened the box and pulled out a little red crystal. He clasped the crystal in his hands for a moment, just long enough for it to start glowing, and incanted after releasing it to float in mid-air,

"Paphèal tethalké-fa'm'emlèhk o'malì ta-ï tethalékia."

The crystal did nothing, floating gently while glowing, until the man tapped it with the tube; intense flames immediately flowed from the crystal up the tube, engulfing the message and the man's hand in an instant. A heartbeat later, the flames were gone, as was the tube. The man's hand was unscathed.

"Thank you," the figure said.

The man grinned with misshapen yellow teeth. "I hope for your sake that this was worth it."

"It is," he replied. "Death to the King."

The man's grin grew sharper as he replied,

"May his rule be short."

--

The village was in the middle of a transformation. Several tents had already been dismantled, the cloth and supports separated in different piles. Several carts had already been loaded, several more would be loaded the next morning, but for now the villagers rested. Most whose tents had been taken down were sharing with those whose tents were still standing. A few had chosen instead to spend the night under the stars, rolled up in warm furs, their heads covered by wool to prevent the dry sand of the wastes from filling their mouths and noses overnight.

It would take three more days to finish preparations, but not all of the village needed to wait. Nor, in fact, did the village possess enough beasts of burden to transport everyone's belongings; too many of the beasts were too young to carry loads, and many of those that had brought them here had been slaughtered for food, leather and bones. It had been agreed that a third of the village would leave the following evening, travel during the night and start setting up after sunrise.

Kamella would lead the first group. Ulfric's group would be the second to leave. Tyr's would be the last, once he returned.

Although, Kamella mused with a wry smile as she and Ulfric entered Tyr's tent, her own daughter would probably find a way to get there before anyone else.

"You're in a good mood," Ulfric groused.

"Shouldn't I be?" she asked.

Ulfric grunted.

They sat down. She reached for the lamp, activated the fire crystal that sat on the spindly holder in the middle of the tent and turned it on with an incantation:

"Lharalke hum'nhake-m'emlèhk nhalè'y ulynake nhalè'hao."

The crystal started emitting a small amount of heat and light, less than a fire but far more than a candle. She sighed in contentment as the warm light chased the desert chill from her skin and flesh.

Her eyes met with Ulfric's frown and she smiled.

"Are you that angry about your beard, Ulfric?"

He hadn't shaved it yet. He would, though. Ulfric was many things, but a dishonest man he wasn't.

"Cut the crap, Kamella," he snapped. Patient or polite, he also wasn't. "What the hell was that, back there?"

That was... a good question. One she had an answer for, but that answer raised more questions than it actually resolved.

"Was the dungeon saying what I think it was?" he finally asked, his voice quiet and uncertain. It didn't fit him, she thought.

"What do you think it was saying?" Kamella asked back. She pulled at the side of the rug to expose the dirt underneath and drew, roughly, the symbols the dungeon had drawn.

Three lines of a rectangle, with a circle above it. Some kind of symbol made of three lines; a long straight line and a pair of much shorter ones starting from the end of the first, at sharp angles along the length of it. A set of lines and a circle that, recognizably, represented a person.

Another circle, this time with the person inside.

"...I don't want to say it," Ulfric sighed.

"A core pedestal, and a human with a line connecting it to the core. A human inside a circle," Kamella described. "The dungeon was telling us it's a human being. Or, at the very least, that it has a human mind. And, from the language it has displayed, human memories as well."

Ulfric's curses this time were in low Khanite, a vernacular far too vulgar for Kamella to have paid much attention to.

"So," Ulfric finally said, then faltered. "So."

"So," Kamella agreed.

There was a short silence. The village, normally so noisy, seemed eerily quiet tonight. Most likely nobody wanted to bother those who were sleeping without a roof over their heads. Kamella just found it annoying that it left her nothing to focus on except her own thoughts.

Thankfully, Ulfric spoke. "So how did that poor bastard end up in there? Did he try making a contract with a core and…" he trailed off, frowning.

"If that is the case, then we're dealing with the kind of warlock that dread legends get written about," Kamella replied lightly, "and I somewhat doubt someone like that would go in the middle of nowhere, here in Central, to make a contract with a newborn Dungeon, only to accidentally get swallowed in." she shook her head, "I can't even begin to guess how such a thing could even be accomplished. And, ignoring every argument we've shared last time against the probability of that dungeon having a warlock, there's also the fact that it is clearly unaware of itself and what it represents."

"If I remember correctly, you were the only one certain that there was no warlock," Ulfric rumbled. "And what do you mean, unaware of itself?"

"Tell me, Ulfric Blackthorne; if you were a would-be warlock who somehow was absorbed by a dungeon core, would you tell anyone about it?"

He shook his head. "It'd be madness."

"You Shall Not Suffer A Warlock To Live," Kamella recited. "Anyone knowledgeable about dungeons and their cores to the point of attempting to make a contract with one would know about this law."

"And he just went and told us about himself, just so you would stop treating it like a child."

She smiled. "He has a lot of pride, that one. Or maybe she? It might be a girl dungeon."

He didn't answer anything, his brow furrowing darkly. He was, she was guessing, mulling over the insanity that was the thought of a gendered dungeon. She tittered.

"Whoever is in there isn't from around here," Ulfric noted. "Maybe their laws are different?"

"Or maybe," she suggested calmly, "he, or she, wasn't absorbed by the dungeon, but rather suddenly found themselves inside the core as it was forming."

"That's fucking ridiculous," he snapped, loudly enough that he was probably heard outside of the tent despite its specially soundproofed material. "Are you suggesting… That's…"

"Tell me, Ulfric; did the symbols on the pedestal look anything like this?"

She drew on the ground with her finger. She was working from memory, and with these symbols' complexity it was always difficult to get things exactly right, but she got a fairly close approximation.

Filling an exact square about the size of her palm, made of over twenty overlapping, curving lines of various width organized with little care for geometry, she had written one of the few words she knew how to read in High Druidic. M'emlèhk. Spirit.

Ulfric nodded, slowly.

"Then, I have no doubt that the druids themselves are involved in this dungeon." She smiled. "Perhaps the soul inside the core is one of them?"

"The druids have been dead for more than a millennium," Ulfric groused. "They've rejoined the planet long ago, Kamella. I know you believe differently, but—"

"Oh, they are dead," she smiled, "but who is to say that their souls aren't swimming in the stream of life, welcoming their descendants to their final resting place?"

He shook his head and avoided the theological debate. Unlike her, he didn't believe. Well, perhaps he was right. Perhaps he was wrong. Either way, both of them would discover the truth eventually.

And on that day, she would find him, and she would rub that truth in his face. Then she would give that big lug a hug.

Ulfric grumbled under his breath, then finally said, "I should have brought a drink. This is not a conversation I want to have sober."

She tittlered. "Going without every now and then is good for you," she said, and pointedly ignored his retorting glare. "More seriously, even if the druids are not involved, then the Planet itself has to be. High Druidic is said to be the language the druids and the Planet used to speak to one another. And only it can create dungeons, which it does at its own free will."

He rolled his eyes. "So either we're dealing with literal ghosts or with the source of all life in the world?" he shook his head. "I really fucking need that drink before we go into that. Kamella, this…" he sighed, ran a hair through his dreads, stared at her in the eyes and said, "this isn't the kind of thing meant for mortal men. This is… this is so far above our heads, it belongs to the stars."

"It is on our laps," she replied, folding her hands between her legs. "And I pity the fool who tries to claim ownership of it. I get the feeling they will have bargained for far more than they can take."

He croaked a laugh, "I do not pity the fool who tries; that level of foolishness is better left to its own pains! A dungeon with a human soul—the sheer madness this thing will produce… I'm starting to think Tyr might have had the right of it! Not to mention the way it possessed multiple minions back there."

Kamella raised an eyebrow. "Is that unusual?"

"It is," Ulfric replied. "Minion possession is usually how you know the dungeon is pissed off at you specifically, and it's high time you get the hell out. They usually start using it when you get into a path that leads to their core, or if you stick to the same level for too long. It's not something they use all the time, and when they do use it, it's on named or boss monsters." He frowned thoughtfully, one of his hands tugging at the knots in his beard, "I don't think I've ever heard of a dungeon possessing more than a handful at a time, and this one controlled the spider it used to talk with us, the wasps it blocked its core hall with, and the wasp that fought against Gwen. And the other monsters weren't behaving normally, either."

He shook his head. "I'm willing to bet that every single creature in that dungeon was under its direct control at the same time, and that scares the crap out of me. There's strength in numbers, and whoever goes in there hoping to hurt this dungeon isn't just going to be facing numbers, they'll be facing an organized army, working on terrain specially prepared to fight in by a single mind that has perfect awareness of every movement they're trying to make. They'd have a chance only because it doesn't have anything stronger than a lesser insect right now, but the moment it starts growing stronger…"

She smiled, knowing he wasn't being serious. "All the better reason to stay on their good side, isn't it?"

Ulfric's answer was a grunt. "Assuming it, or whoever is in that thing, doesn't decide we'd be more useful as snacks than partners. I—" He interrupted himself suddenly, head pivoting toward the tent's entrance.

An instant later, Legate Garlynn popped her head between the flaps. Her eyes met theirs and she stepped inside, slapping her heels together and hitting her right fist over her heart.

To say she was tall was a bit misleading; a more accurate term would have been 'statuesque'. She was a trained swordswoman and it showed in her lean and powerful arms and graceful legs. She was, as usual, wearing the top half of her armor, and while she had left the long greaves at home today, she had brought her helmet; she was carrying it, purple feathers and all, under her left arm. Her features were sharp and elfin, much like Tyr's own. Her hair was a dark blue, nearly black, and tied in a practical ponytail that left her bangs free to frame her face.

Although she was a striking woman, there wasn't a man in the village who would have tried something with her.

"Elder," she said to Kamella, as seriously as ever. Her voice dropped an octave as she continued. "Ulfric."

Ulfric greeted back with a grunt. The Legate's eyes narrowed.

Kamella cut in before blades could. "Legate, I assume the preparations are done?"

"Yes ma'am," replied Garlynn. "The volunteers have been chosen, the first and second groups will be well protected. I put Garmin in charge of the first cohort, and I will lead the second. I... am assuming the Commander will be back by the time the third group is ready to leave."

"That's what he told me," Kamella replied. "Trusting him has not led me astray so far."

"You don't trust your commander, Legate?" Ulfric snipped.

"Of course I do," Garlynn protested immediately. "It's just..."

She trailed off. Kamella continued for her. "You wish you knew what he's doing."

"He shouldn't have gone alone," she frowned. "Leaving his post like that to send a message--I understand why he couldn't use a messenger, I'm not an idiot," she glared at Ulfric as the man grinned, "but he could have brought someone."

"You, you mean?" the man suggested suggestively.

"Shut it, you barbarian," she snapped. Ulfric's grin just grew bigger.

Her face was impassive, but her cheeks and ears had grown just a bit pinker.

"He told me he needed you to organize things, and trusted no one else with what he was going to do," Kamella said. "He hasn't even told me."

"The only town close enough is Temperance. I haven't been there, but I've heard… things," Ulfric said with a furrowed brow. "I wouldn't think it's a good place to go to if you want a trustworthy messenger—or a trustworthy anything, actually—but Tyr knows what he's doing."

Legate Garlynn frowned, said nothing, and crossed her arms.

--

When Tyr returned to the village, Ulfric had flask half-full of flowery-tasting brew in his hand, a scowl on his face, and no beard under his chin.

"Wait, it worked?" Tyr asked in disbelief.

Ulfric just grunted.

I Woke Up As a Dungeon; Now What?

Interlude 2.m

Court was in session, and the nobles of Central had assembled at the round table in one of the lounges of the Palace of Magnus to speak their grievances and suggestions. King Medyrsjn was listening with an air of boredom as the Right Honorable Duke Geilr gave an impassioned speech about the plight and pleas of the men and women in his duchy, in the northeastern corner of the country. He would have been more convincing, the king told himself, if he hadn't been calling out famine with a protruding belly and complaining about poverty while covered in gold and jewels.

It was a well-known fact that none of the men and women at this table had seen or spoken to their would-be subjects in recent times, some of them ever, and yet the comedy continued. Duke Murnend, sitting next to the speaking man, was ordering a maid to fill his chalice with wine for the fourth time. On a daily basis, he could usually be found touring bars and taverns around the city. Geilr himself spent most of his time keeping his stomach full at the Khanite embassy. Lady Willfynn, sitting directly opposite to himself in her Velthian gown, had never left the city and, for the life of him, Medyrsjn couldn't remember if she even had lands to rule over. The other nobles were no better.

None of that mattered. Geilr's speech didn't matter. Murnend's alcoholism didn't matter. Wealth didn't matter. Central's pitiful lands didn't matter, and their own people didn't matter either. The king himself didn't matter.

Only one question, and topics relevant to that question, mattered: "On which side are you".

Topics, or people, like the two beautiful women who sat at each side of the King.

Andrya Jorrskyr was the Velthian Ambassadress. Sitting to his left, the golden-haired beauty held herself with the dignity of a queen, the self-righteous arrogance of a princess, and the garbs of a high-class whore. Her gown was sheer to the point of transparency under the right light, its neckline plunging to her stomach and leaving her back exposed even lower. It was also a shade of olive that was close enough to her skin color that most men could not look just once when seeing her for the first time. Only a handful of cordons and strategically placed pads kept her modesty hidden, though with everything else that her clothing revealed, the secret was absolutely more enticing than straight exposition. She had legs that went forever and breasts generous enough to overflow a man's hand, and her face was just as attractive with the nearly undetectable makeup she wore. He remembered seeing more of the underside of her pointy nose than the rest of it; not just because she was taller than him, but also because she seemed to always be trying to point it at the sky when talking to others.

The king wouldn't bed her for all the wealth in Velthia. The king had refused to bed her for exactly that offer. A beautiful poisonous flower, this woman was, and any man foolish enough to approach her courted his death.

Eiseh Flametongue was her Khanite counterpart. Where Jorrskyr had the mannerisms of a courtesan (and likely had been one in the past), Flametongue had the behavior of a barbarian. Her skin was the color of tree bark and her hair, which she kept in a braid so long and thick she could probably use it as a club, was as black as coal. He had never seen her wear anything but dark leather and glinting steel, and had seen more of her boots than anyone else's since he'd become king; even now, as she listened with half an ear while chewing on a stick with her startlingly white teeth, her feet were on the table next to a plate half-full of meat brochettes. Today, she'd chosen to wear a halter top and form-fitting half-calf leggings. She was beautiful as well, in much the same way as a panther or tiger.

She'd also come to him with a proposition he'd refused. In her case, she'd done so by entering his room in the dark of the night wearing nothing but a few scraps of some predator's skin, as well as its smile.

His wife, the Queen, was in attendance, but had said nothing and would say nothing. Quietly standing near her were her two handmaidens. The first had olive skin and orange hair. The second looked like she'd been carved out of a block of ebony. Both wore the uniform of the castle's maids, a frilly black and white dress with a neck ribbon and long-legged boots. He also knew that both wore long, thin daggers on their garterbelts, which he suspected weren't meant to be touched without a powerful antidote. He did his best not to meet his wife's eyes, to avoid seeing the premature crow's feet growing on her face.

Instead, Medyrsjn turned his attention back to Duke Geilr's speech, which appeared to be winding to a close. He was describing how a man (who probably didn't exist) had approached him.

"…and then he asked me, no, begged me," Geilr was saying, "to use my influence upon this court to ask permission to use waters from the Lions' stream so he could water his fields. Without those waters, he swore up and down that his village would face death from hunger."

Lions' stream, that sounded familiar—

Oh.

Oh. So that was the deal. The Lions' stream, if he remembered correctly, was a stream that had once flowed near a dungeon in the southeast that had focused many of its levels on big cats, particularly lions, hence the name. It was an irrelevant stream, especially now that the dungeon was dead, but the important detail was that this stream flowed into Velthia, where it became the drinking water of a small trading outpost he couldn't remember the name of.

And of course, Duke Geilr sided with the Khanites.

He was keenly aware of the sharp look Jorrskyr was shooting him.

"And so, my Lord, with your permission I would grant approval—"

"You will do no such thing," King Medyrsjn interrupted, "until the consequences of draining water from this stream have been evaluated. Concerning the village's water needs, I will authorize you to increase your debt toward the treasury. You may use this debt to import water from our neighbors."

Stupid.

Idiotic.

Some men, perhaps unaware of his country's true situation, would have had nothing but scorn for this edict. Those men would have agreed to divert the flow, or ordered the village to move closer to the stream. Those men would have taken a side.

Those men wouldn't have realized the treasury meant nothing, either.

Those men would have died.

Flametongue's boots went off the table and onto the ground. Her elbows replaced her feet as she leaned forward.

"The Emperor would be willing to provide his aid," she said. "For enough gold, that is."

Jorrskyr spoke next. "Your Empress would see this village fed, for the correct price."

Both pretended they didn't hear the other speak.

"Ah—ah, your generosity is… appreciated," Geilr said, eyeing the Velthian ambassador. There was a nervous tremor in his voice. "I will… I will study the, uh… the offers. Offer," he hastily corrected himself. "I am sure we—ah… we can come to an acceptable agreement."

A shame, Medyrsjn thought to himself as the other assembled nobles averted their eyes. It appeared they were going to need a new Duke soon.

Again.

A sound caught his ear, and he turned his head to find a familiar blonde maid carrying a carafe step into the lounge. He didn't prevent himself from genuinely smiling when he saw her as she bowed her thanks to the round-faced guard beside the door, then quietly walked into position behind him. He moved his chalice closer to the edge of the table. She poured into the cup for a moment, stopping when it was less than half full. Three of her long, slender fingers brushed against his arm.

On the opposite end of the table, Lady Willfynn saw this byplay, but other than a disapproving stare, said and did nothing.

His wife the Queen did as well. She stood hastily, then bowed and excused herself, storming away in a furious flurry of embroidery. Her handmaidens followed faithfully.

While no one was looking, the maid pulled back, gently bumping the carafe against his shoulder.

"Excuse me," she muttered.

"Everything's fine, my dear Naïlynn," he replied.

He took a sip from his chalice. Water, with a hint of blackberry juice. He swallowed the rest rapidly, using the cup to hide his furrowed brow, holding it to his lips longer than he truly needed to as if the cup has been full. Finally, he put it down and addressed the nobles.

"Does anyone else have another topic to raise?"

He mentally counted. Three, two…

"Your Empress has noted that many of your lands seem to be harboring Khanite criminals," said Jorrskyr, on cue, with the usual stare directly at Flametongue. "As you know, it is explicitly forbidden to harbor these criminals under severe penalties. She requests that all efforts be employed so that their scourge can be eradicated from Velthia's lands once and for all."

"All efforts are being employed," he lied, as usual. "We do not have many men available to do the searching."

"Your empress repeats her offer to send her men to inspect your villages and towns so that the Khanite criminals can be properly handled," she replied, as usual.

Over my dead body, he thought.

"That would be a violation of the terms of the treaty of Magnus," he replied, as usual, "neither empire is allowed to send their men into Central, even for the righteous purpose of ridding the world of the Khans."

The words had made him ill, the first few times. Velthia had a broad definition of 'criminal', so long as the target had Khanite blood, and did not believe in mercy in that case. That the children and toddlers they put to the flame had nothing to do with the vast armies that had once conquered their lands was an insignificant detail. These days, the routine had dulled the horror down to a mild twist of his stomach.

"Any modifications to the treaty would have to be accepted by the Khanite empire," he added, as usual.

"Your Emperor has forbidden any changes or attempts to renegotiate the treaty with a foreign power," Flametongue sniped in, as usual. "To even consider this would be treasonous."

Jorskyrr nodded, as usual. "I will send word of your intransigence to your Empress," she said coldly. "Know that her patience has limits."

It had been eight years since the Empress had claimed the throne of Velthia. He'd been hearing this threat for two thirds of that time.

"I beseech her mercy," he pleaded, as usual. "I hope she can understand that my refusal is through no fault of my own."

She would, as usual.

"Does anyone else want to speak?" He asked again, preparing to stand. No one ever did.

This time was different.

"Yeah, I got something," said Flametongue, pausing a moment to eat the last bite from her last brochette. She discarded the stick by carelessly throwing it behind her. She chewed, seemingly for years while the King tried to calm his own nerves, swallowed, then said, "Under the terms of the treaty, your Emperor demands that you give his court wizard access to the ruins of some of your dead dungeons."

Medyrsjn frowned. This was new, and it couldn't be anything good. He had no idea what that was about, and this worried him. He needed time to investigate. Since when did the Emperor of the Khans even have a court wizard?

"May I inquire on the purpose?"

"Why do you care?" she asked. "It's just a bunch of dead holes in the ground. Who cares what he wants to do with them?"

"Even dead dungeons have their share of dangers," he said. "I would not want to have the Khanite court wizard be hurt or die in Central, you understand."

She thankfully accepted that excuse, but replied, "I don't actually know what he wants to do with the ruins. I was merely tasked with getting your permission to let him in."

This was unfortunate. "I would like to know which dungeons he would like to visit before I grant my approval."

Outright refusal was a death sentence. Outright acceptance was a death sentence from the other direction. He needed to find a valid reason to refuse, and keep refusing. Jorskyrr's stare was growing colder by the second.

"I don't have it right now," Flametongue said, shrugging nonchalantly. "I'll make sure to send the list over in the next few days."

Good. That gave him time to investigate.

"Good," he said. "I look forward to seeing this list."

From the corner of his eye, he eyed the guard standing next to the door on the right, the one Naïlynn had come from. He tilted his chalice to the side. The guard, a moment later, adjusted his belt slightly.

He nodded, both to himself and to the guard. "Then, if there are no further topics?" He asked, standing. When no one spoke up, he said, "then, I declare the end of this court. I will be retiring early." He turned to the maid behind him and said, "Come, Naïlynn."

He walked out of the lounge, the pretty maid following him closely. If anyone thought this was inappropriate, they didn't say anything.

The king's chambers were on the sixth floor of the main wing of the palace. According to tradition, it should have been at the top of the central tower, the highest point of the building, a beautiful and luxurious room with an incomparable view of the countryside, but as his predecessor had fallen to his death after a mysterious failure of the thaumaturgic elevator, Medyrsjn thought it wise to relocate his sleeping quarters to a more grounded location.

He entered the room and walked to the five-candle chandelier that sat on a small countertop near the entrance. He picked up the box of matches, struck a match and lit up three of the five candles; the first two and the very last one. Then, he put the box down, the top side facing the wall.

The candles weren't a message. The foreign agents running around in his castle thought it was one. The box, however, would tell tomorrow's room cleaning maid that there would be a message to his wife in one of the usual hiding spots. Unless, that is, that maid wasn't one of those trusted enough to know about it.

He sat on his bed, watching as Naïlynn went to each of his room's windows and slid the drapes aside to provide them with privacy. The sun hadn't fully set yet, but the thickness of these drapes, specially ordered by himself for the purpose of what was going to occur, plunged the room in near-total darkness.

Once the room had gone dark, he reached for the bed's headboard and applied pressure on the cushion. A moment later, the small crystal built into the center of the headboard started glowing with a pale flickering light.

She smiled at him. In the dim light, it was a bit harder to appreciate her sharp aristocratic features, but her beauty was still something to behold. Her blonde hair curled as it flowed down the sides of her face, accentuating the dimples on each side of her mouth. Her light blue eyes were bright, although not as playful as they normally were.

He frowned. "We have no time for your games tonight. Open up."

"Very well, my lord," she said, moving forward to put her knee on the bed.

Her dainty hands reached up to pull her ribbon, which came undone easily. Then she tugged at the buttons of her dress, popping each one by one. After the third, the pale skin of her collarbone and the jade pendant that hung from her neck was exposed. Her vest opened after the fifth, revealing her brassiere. She pulled at the clasp between the two generous cups, easily undid it and opened her bra. Something spilled out.

A handful of little wooden tubes, all sealed. Three white ones, a grey one, and a single black one.

The bra's cups were empty. The chest underneath was decidedly breastless. Shaking his head, King Medyrjn said, "You are entirely too good at pretending to be a woman, Maryk."

For an instant, the "maid"'s dainty smile turned into a boyish grin, which vanished so quickly it could just as well have been a trick of the light.

"I don't know what you're talking about, my lord," said Maryk, his voice light, airy and feminine. If anything, Maryk was showing far too much enjoyment in that disguise game he was playing with everyone but the Druids.

Shaking his head again, the king reached for the black tube. The insignia on it was unfamiliar, but belonged to one of his many trusted regional commanders. It wasn't uncommon for urgent messages to make their way to him, but it was unfortunately rare that these message were good news. Not that good news was something he was in any way used to receiving.

He tugged at the tube's cap, breaking the seal and revealing the message inside. He unrolled it, handing the empty tube to Maryk.

"Find out who it's from," he told his 'maid'. The disguised boy nodded and started digging into his thigh-high stockings. A moment later, he pulled out a thin sheet of silk dusting cloth marked with a complex mosaic of multicolored threads. While he was comparing the patterns on the cloth with the one on the tube, the King started reading the message.

An instant later, he felt his heart skip a beat.

"My Lord?" Maryk asked. Apparently, he'd also gasped loudly enough for the boy to hear.

He read the message again, just to be sure. And again.

"A dungeon."

Maryk's eyes widened. Immediately, he returned to digging into the patterns, and a moment later nodded. "The message's sender is..." he furrowed his brow. The jade pendant around his neck gave a small glow, which flowed into his eyes, and a second later he said, "Tyr Mirrilyn. Commander of the southern legion's twelfth cohort."

"It's in the South-Eastern Crags. Morrigsjn's duchy," the king said. A king had to know where his legions were. "Velthian-friendly."

"The Khanites won't tolerate their enemies getting a new dungeon," Maryk remarked. "Should the duke suffer an accident?"

Medyrsjn shook his head. "No, that would raise attention. We need to keep this thing a secret..."

"Sir," the boy frowned, "there's no way in hell they won't find out eventually."

Druids burn that boy, he was right. Sighing, the king stood from the bed, keeping that accursed message in his hand. Looking out through the window was the kind of tell he normally wouldn't have risked, but his mind was churning too hard, trying to absorb the monumental size of the catastrophe that had befallen his plans. The view of the beautiful city he was the technical ruler of had always calmed him.

Home to the wasteland's last remaining dungeon, the city of Magnus was surrounded by a ring of forests and grasslands that stretched out for miles before surrendering to the desert. The city itself was a gem of white and gold, built from materials the dungeon provided in its early levels and planned by some of the Old Empire's greatest architects. It was a beautiful melding of Velthian and Khannite styles, a physical embodiment of the dreams of the Last True Emperor.

A shame about the rats that walked the walls of that dream, though.

From the window of his room, King Medyrsjn had an enviable view of the Garden, a wide park of shrubbery and trees. At some point, long ago, these stone paths and colorful flowering plants had been painstakingly maintained by a literal army of gardeners. These days, there was little difference between this place and the forests outside the city. Only the fact that it wasn't filled with monsters differentiated it from the wilderness inside the Magnus Dungeon itself. Beyond the iron fence that delimited the garden were several blocks of white and gold buildings, bustling with people and activity. Beyond those buildings was another set of woodlands, then a grassland, and a deceptively short-looking strip of yellowish-orange dirt that spread to the horizon.

Magnus had no permanent walls. What it had instead were the thaumaturgic masterworks of the Last Emperor's court wizard: a set of nine walls that could be activated at will, emitted from nine towers and fueled by the Dungeon's endless supply of pure mana. This wall was the only reason this city and this dungeon had escaped the rape and pillaging of the war. With all the Velthian and Khanite spies rummaging around the city, he wasn't sure they would still work next time.

He scoffed to himself, pulling the curtains shut.

His plans.

What plans?

What fucking plans?

What the hell did any of what he'd done so far matter? He grit his teeth.

"My Lord," Maryk was suddenly at his side, a soft hand falling on his shoulder. It was frightfully cold, and neatly shocked him out of the rut he'd gotten into. "This isn't the end."

"It's not," Merydsjn agreed, "But it might well be the start of it." He nudged the boy away, running a hand through his greying locks, and shook his head in frustration. "This is just... This..." he trailed off, sighing, and heavily sat on the foot of the bed. He tried to think of a way to explain, but found that his mind was too busy conjuring up every image of everything that could go wrong, on top of everything else that had been going wrong.

There was only one thing he could think of saying.

"Maryk, am I a good king?"

"You're the best we've ever had, sir," the boy replied immediately.

He rolled his eyes. "Now that's a high bar to reach. You know what they call the throne I'm sitting on, don't you?"

"The Iron Maiden," he replied. "Amongst other things."

"I've always been partial to the Bull's Saddle," said the King. "It knocks whoever is sitting on it straight into the abyss." He shook his head. "I've been king for half my kingdom's history, and I have five predecessors, Maryk. Being the best of a group of men who collectively barely had time to realize they were kings before they went down is not a accomplishment to be proud of, especially in these circumstances."

"I disagree, my lord," Maryk said. "You've managed to stay, and you've grown our military without either of our masters noticing. That's already impressive."

The King scoffed. "Grown our military... A few half-legions filled with disparate cohorts of footmen barely able to lift their swords, armed with whatever sub-standard Khanite and Velthian equipment could be smuggled here without raising eyebrows. They won't stand a chance if either kingdom decides they want to start the war again. Meanwhile, the nomads who have to house them in their caravans are starving to death one by one because I was too young and stupid to realize this plan was doomed to failure."

He shook his head again, sighing loudly, "and the worst thing is, I can't pull them back. Our 'masters', as you say, would notice if Central suddenly grew an army from out of nowhere. Both would accuse the other of breaking the treaty and would invade just to slaughter us. Our only value to them is as a warning bell in case the war starts. The last thing they want is for the bell to grow a sword and strike back.

"And now, there's this." he waved the message in his clenched fist. "A fucking dungeon has appeared in the crags. You're right; hiding it is going to be impossible. It's going to be a giant fucking green blot in the middle of nowhere. Someone will see it. Someone will want it."

"We could claim it for Central, as part of the Empire? Both of them claim us..."

"Both of them claim us because we're too poor to be worth rat shit. The moment that changes, that little political 'truth' is going to fly right out the window. And there is absolutely no way for them to simply let us have it. We're back in the 'armed warning bell' territory if they do."

"Could we reveal it, but say that it's a life spring?"

Medyrsjn stopped, considered it for a moment, then shook his head. "No. We can't. At some point, the adventurer guilds are going to start asking why they're not getting culling missions from that spring, and they'll investigate. It'll give us time, though, but not as much as you'd think. Not as much as we could get just by staying quiet about it." He shook his head again. "In the end, the result is the same. They find out, they get greedy, they fight and slaughter us. The war starts all over again."

He sighed loudly.

"Central's days are numbered. Either Velthia is going to win and all our Khanite citizens are going to be burned alive along with whoever tries to help them, or the Khans win and our Velts get chained and made into serfs and slaves."

Maryk frowned in deep thought. Meanwhile, having said the cold and hard Truth, Medyrsjn was left to think about what could be done to save his kingdom.

He could think of only one thing. There was no future in hiding, or being weak.

There was very little future in fighting back.

Very little was better than nothing.

Curse him a madman for even considering this, but curse the Druids to the burning pits, he could not think of a better solution. It was the only way his kingdom would survive.

Nodding to himself, he stood. Maryk's eyes widened in surprise, then a small smile came to his lips when he saw the determined look on his King's face.

The King walked to his work desk, pulled a sheet of paper and, with a quill, scribbled a short message. Then, he pulled the topmost drawer all the way out, reached his arm into the drawer hole, and found a small latch on the underside of the desk's top he'd only used once before. It flipped easily, allowing him to pull a sliding panel open. A small, hard object fell into his palm, and he pulled it back.

An amethyst ring. He looked at it for a moment, softly running his fingers over its smooth silver, feeling with his fingers at the name inscribed on the gem slot's underside, and closed his eyes.

A moment later, he turned to Maryk, putting the ring and messages in the boy's hand and closing his fingers around them.

"My dear Naïlynn, you must leave tonight," he said. "You will go to the Haunted Flagon. You will speak to an adventuress who lives there, by the name of Karjn. You will give her this ring and the message, and tell her that you are henceforth under her protection, by my command. I want her to escort you to this dungeon and stay with you. You will go into hiding amongst the nomads who found it."

"My Lord? But..."

"She is someone I trust with the future of this kingdom," he continued, ignoring the interruption. "You can tell her anything she needs to know; talk to her as you talk to me. She can bring however many people she feels she can trust with this. And please, my dear," he took the disguised boy's chin in his hand, "be discrete. It would not do for the wrong ears to hear about this." he felt a smile rise to his lips as he said, "The king's progeny must be protected, after all."

Maryk's thin eyebrows curved in incomprehension, then his pretty eyes widened in surprise as he realized the subterfuge. Then they narrowed again.

"But my Lord, why? I am not that important, and what about..." he motioned to the handkerchief, discarded on the bed, and the gemstone at his neck. The king shook his head.

"Keep them. You might need them. I have other methods of deciphering messages, and agents you do not know about." He smiled. "Do you trust me, Maryk?"

"I do, my Lord," the transvestite boy replied immediately.

"Then, trust me once more. Please. Go. Karjn will know what to do."

The boy frowned, then nodded to himself. The frown became a dainty smile, and she stepped away from him with small steps. Her delicate hands found her skirts, and she raised them in a curtsy.

"Death to the King," she said.

"Yes," replied the king with a wry smile. "May his reign be short."

A few guards later claimed to have seen the king's mistress flee the castle. Rumors would spread that she was with child, igniting some drama amongst the Court and anger between the Queen and the King. Those same guards would claim, even under threats, that the mistress had hired a few adventurers and guards for her protection, and proceeded to flee the city.

Specifically, through the north-west exit.

A/N: You have no idea how much I wanted to work "Buckinghorse palace" into the list of titles for the Throne of Central. Sadly, it made no sense because Buckingham Palace is an Earth thing, but I'll share it here.