《Dragonheart Core》 Chapter 1 - A Dragons Fall Of all ships on the Ilera Sea, none could beat the Golden Ghost. The pride of ungoverned waters sailed with oars powered by vast mana-gems and sails spelled to capture wind in empty skies, slender and streamlined to punch through any storm; no current could withstand her bow, no wave could harm her hull. And she was losing. Varc¨ªs Bilaro gritted his teeth. He dug his fingers into the cracks of his ship, pushing another spark of his mana into the wood; the Ghost groaned, sails snapping out as an intangible hurricane pushed her faster than he''d ever asked her to go, splinters spraying from the mast''s base. Godsdamnit. He should have stolen from a stone-drake¡ªhe''d have had centuries to prepare for its arrival. "Captain!" Lluc, hand planted firmly to keep his tricorn hat on, clawed his way closer and jabbed an unnecessary finger towards the horizon. "It''s gaining too fast¡ªwe''ll have to turn and face it!" One last turn around the mountains and he''d be at the Cove, black sails on full display in the high noon and the whole of Calarata to see his fight. It couldn''t be more than a mile away. The Ghost preferred averaging ten knots. She could hold herself together at fifteen. "The last I checked, Lluc," he said, "you were the first mate and I was the Captain. Unless you''d like to change that?" His shadow thrashed. Lluc''s face blanched and his hand slipped, hat disappearing in a flash of wind. "I¨C of course not." "Then tell the crew to push her faster. If I find a drop of mana left in anyone when we arrive, I''m throwing them overboard." The man fled. Varc¨ªs pulled up his own mana, coiling to readiness at his fingers; he threw it over the surrounding sea, telling numerous pitch-sharks and umbral serpents that they were not to attack. Their consciousnesses drifted, hazy and unfocused, but begrudgingly settled back to the ocean floor. It wasn''t yet their time. The sea-drake''s hoard had held nothing in terms of useful treasure, not even a mana-gem to aid in holding his ship together, and only served to weigh it down. If this had been a normal mission, he would have killed the dragon as it slept unawares and ferried its silver home at a far more reasonable pace. But his goal was for a different prize today. The Ghost roared, timbers splitting and lacquer flaying off her hull, but her crew''s mana dug deep and pushed. She flew over the waves, sails straining under magical winds, oars slicing through mana-fueled water. Behind them, the dragon bellowed. Crew members dropped as they depleted their mana stores, blood weeping from their ears, but the Ghost charged under their combined might and rounded the corner of the Al¨®mbra Mountains. The sea-drake was less than a mile away. The last of his crew collapsed as they arrived in the Cove, blood from their ears blooming over the deck. Varc¨ªs nodded. They were still loyal to him, even if he had to reteach Calarata that particular lesson. If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it. The Dread Pirate would not be forgotten. Only Lluc was standing, face pale and streaked with red¡ªhe clung to the railing, watching the approaching dragon with pupils like pinpricks. But even then he did not look at it with the fear of a man preparing to die, nor the terror of the unknown; only the instinctual horror of seeing a creature so many rungs above him in the food chain of the world. He trusted his captain. Varc¨ªs faced the dragon and extended his hand. Darkness bubbled and his shadow rose at his heels, laying a spear in his grasp. His weapon of choice hummed at his touch, edges trembling like morning mist, wavering like it wished to escape. Its very presence darkened his surroundings to dusk. Varc¨ªs turned to face the sea-drake flying close enough he could see the silver of its claws. It wouldn''t be the first time he''d killed an impossible beast. - I roared, untamed mana spilling from my jaws. With every passing second my fury rose to a crescendo. The bastards had stolen my hoard. My wings punched through the waves as I crested, the lash of my tail kicking up a tsunami; I pursued those tacky black sails with all the grace of a hurricane. They headed for a cove formed by two cradling mountain arms, the white of a city beyond¨C maybe they thought on-shore ballistas would defeat me, or even that I would be too scared to enter shallow water. I bellowed loud enough the ocean quaked. The greatest of the sea-drakes would not be stopped by mere humans. One man stood on the bow of the ship, mana coiling over his hands. Wings snapping out, I took to the air, erupting from the waves in an explosion; though I might not have the breath weapon of my primitive cousin fire-drakes, I had no need for such uncivilized destruction. My claws would be enough. They always had been before. For a moment I hovered overhead, his ship a mere dot on the sea I had incited into a fury, the man no more than a wisp of colour. I would demolish his ship and take my hoard back from his corpse, and then raze his city and all who dared steal from me¨C A black lance met the air. I swerved, great wings shooting me above the miniscule weapon; his pitiful attempt at an attack flew underneath me and I roared, tucking into a mocking loop, preparing to fall upon his insipid little ship¨C Mana. Some far richer than any I had felt before, nearly untainted, raged to life about me; I swiveled back and the spear, writhing with twists of shadow, stopped its errant throw¨Csomething intangible grabbed its shaft, stopping its flight with a shudder. It hovered, untouched by wind nor weight. I paused. It twisted and flew back to me. I bellowed, twisting away from the attack; even with its second wind I wouldn''t let it hit me, spitting unshaped mana in its path with an explosion of force. I felt my own scales rip from the blast, wingtips fraying; I shuddered under the pressure but searched to see the spear explode- It punched directly through my chest. I froze. My wings splayed but I couldn''t direct my mana to them, couldn''t heal the hole through my scales¡ªwhatever magic the lance was made of bit and tore into the core of my being, gnawing at my soul. It had speared my heart. Shuddering, I fell. Wings thrashed and tail writhed but still I fell, clawing heedlessly at the air, only able to see the approaching mountain in brief glimpses¡ªI would crash into it and die on impact or plummet to the bottom to bleed out instead, mana crippled and useless, killed by an incompetent, meaningless human who dared to¨C I focused. No. My eyes closed, blocking out the looming approach of the cragged mountains; I shut out the sounds of the screaming wind and howling descent; I forgot the taste of blood coating my fangs and the scent of sea breeze. Tearing away the pain of death and failure I fell, closed off from the world. My presence turned inward, to the heart that powered my mana, to the vile lance through it. I would die here, smote against the mountain like some mongrel beast, if the man had his way. He would escape with my hoard and live free. My mana spiked, the last dredges I still had control over, anger writhing with true power. I took hold of it, cradled it. I refuse. My last act alive was to rip my heart from my chest. Chapter 2 - The Mountains Maw I awoke to knowledge. It was a strange sort, like remembering conversations I knew I''d never had. Old memories of deep stone and pressing darkness flooded through me, information about mana and the formation of life I''d never learned before. If I thought of air I could still remember currents under my wings, the bite of cold easterlies; I also remembered finding openings in caves by breezes through the rock, the pressing importance of keeping caverns full of oxygen. The sensation was strange enough it took me several minutes to notice my own corpse. I wasn''t looking with eyes, though I remembered having them¡ªfaint wisps of mana floated out of me and whatever they touched I could see, brushing against the dark stone of the mountain and whispering through patches of grass. But beyond that, below me, a great dragon''s corpse cooled against the rock. Gods, even dead I was gorgeous¡ªlowly sky-drakes were pale blue and the whelpings that lived in the forest could be a mossy green, but only the sea-drakes were the deep, rich teal that so gleamed under the sun. Even smote against the mountainside, dust settling over scales and silver horns broken and cracked, it glittered with perfection. No, not it. Me. My attention wavered. I was a dragon. I knew that. Idiotic cowards had killed me but I had refused to die, had cast the one magic all dragons feared but knew, had ripped out my own heart¨C Mana drifted backwards, resting on its source, and I could see what I had become. A scarlet sphere, interlaced with streaks of black like veined marble, sat nestled in the embrace between two boulders. Blood traced its path away from the corpse where shreds of mana had ripped it from my chest, transforming it even as I fell, flawlessly round and riddled with runes shaped of pure mana. I peered deeper.
Dragonheart Core You are a Dungeon Core, awoken from a dragon''s dying wish for revenge. Your birth symbolizes the arrival of a new dungeon to be created. Through you, mana from the Otherworld flows and is yours to command, bringing many miracles within your grasp. Thank the Gods for your life by revitalizing the world around you and bringing life to lands starved of new mana. As a Dragonheart Core, all of your creations will be your hoard, absorbing mana from you to fuel their strength and evolutions. You may Name creatures by bonding their soul with yours, letting them draw the same Otherworld mana as you and granting them a blessing. All dead things within your walls will be yours to rebuild.
Awoken from a dragon''s dying wish? My mana swirled as I beheld the difference I could already feel¡ªmy memories of a life cresting the high seas, gathering silver to languish on and hunting fools who dared challenge me, were fading. They still existed and though I clung desperately to each, able to pull them up and relive the pull of ocean currents on my tail and the rasp of polishing my claws, they no longer were the memories I saw first. Old instincts of a life I''d never lived came instead, of cavernous underground lakes and the scuttle of bats and lizards. The memories of a dungeon. I had been a dragon and my mind was still my own¡ªbut now I was only a dragon''s heart, and a core first. A core with instincts that came from the gods themselves, guides for an impossible life. It urged me to dig deep, to gather the most vicious of monsters to protect myself, to release tamed mana into the world. A lizard padded through my awareness. I broke off, mana settling around the new arrival. A little under three feet long and covered in pebbled blue-grey scales, it poked its head cautiously out from a gap in the stone, blinking eyes hooded to protect from the sun. It flicked out a pale tongue, gauging the risk, before fully emerging and beginning to crawl down. Towards my corpse. Dungeon instincts be damned; I roared, gathering my mana. The lizard paused, glanced around, and nosed under a few broken scales to reveal the silver-pink skin underneath. Its fangs flashed. It was a uniquely horrifying thing to watch someone eat you. I rained mana down on its back, great spikes of raw power that would have killed gods had they been tangible, but the lizard continued to feast. Instincts wormed their way past my rage and I pieced together the worst of it¡ªI was a dungeon core. Outside of a dungeon, claimed and under my control, my power was almost nothing. I could only sit as a rock and watch my mana diffuse past my control. The instincts, now that I''d given them a moment to exist, flooded in full force¡ªoverwhelming fear at the open sky above, almost cripplingly so. Dungeons were never supposed to be exposed and I was entirely so, unable to contain my mana as it drifted away. Anyone could bind me. The lizard paused from its vile, rotten actions and glanced up, tail twitching. My mana hadn''t extended far enough to sense what it had, but soon echoes bounced down the mountain, only whispers reaching my cloud of awareness. Some sort of thick, brutish human tongue, intelligible like its species¨C A strand of mana flickered back to me, pressing over my core, and their garbled speech became words. "¨Cif he killed it, I don''t see why he couldn''t bring it back," someone said with a grumble. "It isn''t like he''s going to let us keep anything." "Shut up!" Another voice barked, clipped and scared. "Don''t say that where he could hear you." A power I''d certainly never had as a dragon¡ªreally quite a fascinating one, actually, would I be able to understand every language I came across?¡ªbut absolutely not the most important thing right now. Humans. Nasty, murdering, cowardly humans, ones coming to take my beautiful body down to the man who had killed me, to pose over my stolen hoard and my glorious treasure¨C Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators! I was seconds from throwing the entirety of my mana down the mountain to murder the vermin when the lizard moved. It crouched, splaying flat over the ground until its pebbled scales blended with the stone of the mountain. Eyes wide and panicked, it left my body and made to disappear back into the crack of the mountain it''d come from, fleeing from the humans. The humans that were coming. A dragon raged and roared, never accepting any slight against it and destroying all in its path, ripping kingdoms down to foundations and burning what was left. They were the apex predator of the skies and seas. But dungeon cores were built of fear. If a human found me here, exposed without any creations to protect me, they could bind me to them. They wouldn''t have to be the highest ranked of all Aiqith, just any scum off the street with the capacity for complex thought. My endless rift of mana pulled from the Otherworld would be theirs, my soul contracted to aid them, gutless as a puppet. I would be caged. So instead I gathered my mana, the swirling, spinning mess already trying to escape my control, and surrounded the lizard. It paused, sensing my power¡ªI pressed with all my might, clawing into its mind. Pick me up. The mountainside echoed with the force of my command. The lizard hesitantly looked out at the rippling waves of the cove just a few feet away, at the voices still approaching. I found an actual spiral of its innate mana, marking it at least a step above most mundane creatures, and forced my words into its insipid little mind. Pick me up. Slowly, it crawled back towards me. I was tiny, I realized quite suddenly¡ªthough the lizard was less than a foot tall it towered over me, lantern-yellow eyes filling my awareness. It gingerly picked me up in its mouth. Dungeon cores weren''t meant to move except under their own power. I shuddered, mana collapsing and spluttering, as the lizard gripped me between its fangs and scuttled back into the mountain just as a human appeared at the edge of my mana cloud. Darkness¨C the lizard wriggled through limestone smoothed by waves and emerged into a cavern, sprawling and massive. My mana only had seconds to expand but I could sense other living creatures, from mushrooms to bats to moss; but there was still sunlight from other cracks in the cavern walls. The humans could still find me. The lizard continued on. It scuttled over the stone floor, big enough it didn''t have to worry about hiding from other small cavern predators, disappearing through another crack in the far wall. A tunnel slithered on beyond that, my mana furiously expanding as I tried to understand what I was seeing. The lizard plodded ever on. I could only catch the faint feeling of stone and lichen before I was pulled along, blind, the only constant the click of claws against rock. We traveled for hundreds of feet, deeper and deeper into the heart of the mountain. My mana heaved and trembled before the lizard wriggled through one last opening in the stone and came to a stop. If I''d still had lungs I would have been panting; cores weren''t meant to move, their mana rooting them deep into their environment, and certainly not for as far as I''d gone. The horrible taste of lost mana filled me, shreds and scattered waves I''d lost in our frantic retreat. I shuddered. I''d never realized how lucky living creatures were to have permanent eyes. Slowly I managed to unravel more mana from my core, billowing it out in great sheets to be able to see¡ªthe lizard dropped me in the back of the cave, padding away. Good riddance. I hated the concept that I needed the beast that had eaten my flesh and the sooner I didn''t have to see it, the better. Piece by piece, my mana swept throughout the room, threading through the air until it hung heavy over the enclosed space. It was enormous¨C well. With my current size, it certainly seemed so, but it couldn''t have been more than ten feet long and half that wide, with a shallow, pressing roof. For a creature that had once hunted the great whales of the Ilera Sea, I was profoundly uncomfortable with my new size. The room, at least, made sense. With its aversion to sun and humans the lizard probably rarely ventured out from its cave, making its nest deep in the stone walls. There had been mana under its scales, though I couldn''t guess what it was used for¡ªmaybe something used to sense my death and come feasting. Speaking of. I directed my mana in the best configuration of a glare as I could manage at the idiodic creature waiting placidly by the entrance to its nest. With my mana settling I could get a better look at it, not needing the light other baseline creatures did to see, flitting my awareness over its shape. If I was feeling charitable¡ªwhich I was not¡ªI could almost have called it acceptable to look at. What I had taken for pebbled scales were sleeker than I thought, a deep blue-grey indistinguishable from the rocks behind if not for the flash of iridescence on the edges. Its tail was long and whip-thin, the hoods over its eyes prime to develop into proper fins. But it had eaten me. I declined to offer it further thought. Go away, I ordered, the power of my command echoing through the cloud of mana slowly filling the room. The lizard blinked. Baring unfortunately metaphorical fangs, I reached deep into the heart of my scarlet core and tugged, dragging out the mana needed to crash down on its vapid little mind, scaring it from my new lair to hopefully run straight into the grasp of another predator¨C And came up empty. I panicked, lasering my focus back on my core¡ªwhat had once been swirling runes of pure mana were now dim, the information nearly intangible.
Dragonheart Core
Mana: 2.1 / 25 Mana Regeneration: +0.5 per hour
Patrons: None
Titles: None
I could feel empty, now that I was paying attention. It was a gnawing sort of hunger, the same itch I''d felt as a dragon when I was spoiling for a fight and didn''t much care whether my opponent felt the same or not. The rift in my soul that connected me to the Otherworld slowly filled, drip by drip, with fresh mana. But with all the excess I''d bled out in unenclosed areas and the waste trying to get the lizard to bring me to safety, it would be two days until I was full; an impossible wait. I wasn''t nearly patient enough for it. But dungeons had other means of collecting. The lizard curled up in one corner of its¡ªI suppose his, if I had to wait with the awful creature until I could chase him away¡ªnest, watching with lantern-esque eyes. My mana, what scraps I had left, finally filled the cave and revealed every last detail to me, albeit through the darkness. We had traveled hundreds of feet before reaching his nest and there was no sunlight reaching here, the only way I could pick out colours and textures through the fluttering sense of my mana. But this was how a dungeon functioned. It would be a great while until I could find the cowardly bastard who had killed me, and even longer until I was strong enough to take him down. He had slain a dragon with one lance¡ªit would take more than me shoving the lizard in his direction to kill him. I glanced at the reptile, who was still watching me. There might be merit in the idea. But for now, I extended the bulk of my awareness to the only colour breaks in the entire cave; mushrooms, thin and fragile, growing from a bed of pale green algae. I could hear the flow of an underground river through one of the walls and thin beads of water snaked down the stone, feeding the budding mess of plants. My Otherworld memories told me what I needed to do. For a dungeon to gather schemas and grow stronger, they needed to gather creatures, to strip them apart and learn how to recreate them. To attract creatures, I would need bait. Chapter 3 - First Climb I examined the cave that had become my unwilling home. With the full spread of my mana, I could tell that my size estimates had been accurate; ten feet long, five wide, and maybe three tall with a roof littered in stalactites. Miniscule. Even the lizard would have problems maneuvering within the cramped walls. With only a fraction of mana left, there were limits to what I could do¡ªbut I refused to exist in such a decrepit place. I gathered almost a full point of mana and slammed it into the wall behind me, filling it with thoughts of gnashing teeth and strength. The stone shivered and shrunk away from me, shreds of mana flitting away with flecks of dust¡ªlimestone, I realized. Dissolving the stone granted me intricate knowledge of what it was and how to shape it, endless patterns of great weight pressing together accumulations of old shells and organic material to form a porous grey-white stone. But with my mana, I could skip all but the important steps. I turned my attention to my core, deposited so grandly by the lizard in a shallow divot. My mana took on thoughts of architecture and beauty and slowly, rising layer by layer, I pulled up a column under my core. I grabbed at the occasional flecks of silver in limestone and filled my stone with it, twisting the column like an ancient temple''s walls, pouring in raw mana until my reserves emptied. But in the end, my core now perched on top of a lovely silver-white column in a room I''d widened to twice its original size, walls still craggy and rough but alight with the ambient touch of my mana. It was mine. My dragon memories and my dungeon instincts would agree on one thing, at least. I very much enjoyed things that were mine. The lizard raised his head, blinking curiously at his newly-changed home. I preened as he padded around the new room, nosing at the column with wide eyes. A lowly admirer but one nonetheless; I would accept his presence for now. But I wanted more. I only had a point of mana left and many hours to go if I wanted more, but I loathed to wait. My instincts could only nudge me in the proper directions, instructing me from a distance rather than saying expressly what to do, but I knew at least I needed dead things to copy. And besides the unfortunately still-alive lizard, there were only two other things in the cave. The algae was a thin, slimy green I could recognize from the sea, common enough to be found anywhere in the world. The mushrooms, however, were pale spidery fingers poking up from the stone with small white caps, spores sitting under their gills. The basis of a food chain. Bait. I reached my mana over and bit into the largest of the mushrooms, filling my power with thoughts of hunger and fire. Nothing happened. My mana sharpened to a point and jabbed again, worming at the fungal flesh. My old-but-new memories did the mental equivalent of a sigh. Ah. There was a reason dungeons had to use creations to defend their cores, rather than just reaching out and crushing their opponents¨C my Otherworld mana was so pure it would only be absorbed by living things I tried to influence, rather than doing anything I wanted. I needed to learn from dead things. So I shifted my focus around the bed of plants, rifling through the stalks and blades, and found a brown splotch of algae nestled under the broken stem of a mushroom. I devoured. Both dissolved into sparks of white light, flowing to my core. I saw the true shape of the algae, shallow roots gasping for water and blades knotting together, saw the variants of colour even in the small section I''d absorbed. The mushrooms, with their pale caps and stalks, entwining their mycelium with that of the algae to stay rooted. I saw them. And thus I could recreate them. With the splinters of mana I had left I wove them into existence right by the entrance to the cave, layering a bed of algae several feet wide right over a stream of water from a stalactite high on the wall. But I made them of the brightest green I could create from the information I had, reflective and glimmering. For the mushrooms, I elongated their stalks until they could see eye to eye with the lizard, impossibly delicate and trailing their undergills like wisps of smoke.
Green Algae It grows without the need of sunlight but instead only water, and even then it consumes little. Excess water spills over its interconnected webs, creating an oasis for hungry creatures.
Whitecap Mushroom They thrive in damp, dark places. When they can''t grow on dirt or other high-nutrient substances, they will grow from the back of algae, lichen, or moss.
I wanted to do more, to create a garden of thousands of varieties, gleaming every colour of the rainbow like the world''s greatest hoard of gems¡ªbut I couldn''t. Not yet. I only knew how to create two species and without knowledge of more plants I didn''t know how to alter them, not in a way that would keep them alive. And evolution would only come once they''d absorbed enough of my mana. Something I was in very short supply of. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. Creating the plants had taken two points, even with modifications, but that was all I had. I felt woozy, my awareness sluggish and unresponding, even as I painstakingly gathered more mana from the Otherworld. So I settled my focus on the entrance to my nest and waited to reap the benefits of what I had created. - The lizard left before an hour had passed. He at least avoided my mushrooms, the clumsy brute, but in seconds he disappeared from my awareness and I was left very alone. I knew, or at least the ancient memories did, that once I could create a creature it would be a true companion that could listen to me, and once I Named one I could even travel alongside their minds, but, well. The lizard was all I had for the moment. Dungeon cores born from ley lines or shaped by mages might have been fine with the pressing silence of the cave, but I had been a dragon first, and I craved interaction. The small number of buzzing flies that had taken up residence by my mushrooms didn''t count. I had only regenerated back up to half a point, but maybe it was enough to claim the outside of the hallway? Something to allow me to see outside my cave, catch a glimpse of any approaching creatures or¨C Something moved by the entrance. My mana spiked like a startled cat and I shifted my awareness down until I was at the base of the algae, pressing my sense of touch over the fungi. A dim splotch of life, the barest trickles of mana, moved closer. The spider stalked closer, testing the algae with one of its clawed feet before accepting it would hold its weight. It was almost half a foot wide, a shiny satin-black with reddish stripes on its legs. Eight black eyes peered out at the cave and a spinneret hung at the back of its amber body. And, most excitingly, it boasted a pair of mandibles. I didn''t spare a thought for where the words spinneret or mandible had come from¡ªvenom! I knew well its effectiveness; only lesser sea-drakes retained the venom of the hatchling days but I had seen them use it to slay whales dozens of times their size. To give my creations venom would increase their lethality to a truly glorious degree. All I had to do was absorb¨C Hm. The spider crept forward, apparently deeming my cave safe, and began to climb its way up the wall next to my mushrooms. A gleaming strand extended behind it, hind legs grabbing the silk, mandibles twitching. I watched it begin to spin a web between the wall and the closest mushroom. Watched it, key word. I had no way of interacting. For all my talk of preparing the greatest dungeon to kill the cowardly man of the city outside, I hadn''t actually¡­ thought about how I was supposed to collect schemas. Finding dead plants was one thing; if I wanted to find dead animals, I would have to venture outside my cave. The sheer nausea I''d felt when the lizard had transported me stopped that particular train of thought very quickly. The spider finished a rudimentary web, lurking against the cave wall¡ªI had made my mushrooms fragile in my attempts to grow their height and even now the stalk sagged under the silk''s weight, listing to one side. A tiny fly, one small enough to suggest it had been born in the caves rather than come from outside, promptly flew in and got stuck. A single speck of mana and the faint whisper of a soul from its death floated towards me as the spider had its first meal. Good for it. I paced my awareness next to its web like a sulking hatchling. Maybe I could cut loose stone above its web to crush it? But that would ruin my little fungal garden and while I had the mana to attempt rebuilding, destroying it would certainly be noisy. Maybe other creatures were waiting outside, using the spider to test the danger of the random new ecosystem that had appeared. I couldn''t risk disturbing the fragile peace I''d made in the cave. So I settled for waiting, glaring at the spider like it''d keel over. Another hour passed, mana building but still so far away from full, until the lizard returned. He was plump and full from some meal, head held high and tail swishing. Pausing to nose curiously at the mushrooms, he made to slip past them and enter the garden. I slammed my ambient mana over his head. Kill it. The lizard blinked, swinging his head over the narrow web. The spider had finished its meal and tucked itself back on the wall, legs pulled tight until it looked like little more than a lump of rock. I could feel his confusion, though it was clear my message had gotten through. His tongue flashed. Kill it, I repeated. I filled my mana with thoughts of hunger and blood as I pressed my influence against him, certainly not pleading but getting close. Don''t eat. Kill. The lizard stared at the spider. With the sort of pause I just knew was him weighing his options for whether he wanted to listen to me, he finally padded over to the web, claws clicking against the stone. It had a second to rear back, mandibles flashing, before the lizard crunched through its carapace with a single bite. He marched over to me and spat it at the base of my column, raising his head to stare at me. A lizard''s face functioned surprisingly closely to a dragon''s¡ªI could read the clear challenge in the curve of his eyelids. I wouldn''t be swayed so easily. Don''t push your luck, brute. Its soul was delicious¡ªraw power thrumming with scraps of memories from its short life, deep and rich with mana so unlike my own pure style yet beautifully familiar all the same. I inhaled its corpse, dissolving into specks of white as I broke down each layer of its being and examined the pieces¡ªit wasn''t as venomous as I would''ve liked but what was there could be easily bolstered with mana, and any advantage would never be useless in a cave environment. My first schema of a creature.
Cave Spider (Common) With its venom and web-building expertise, it is an ideal ambush predator for cave environments. They feed on small insects and often become food themselves, but can reproduce quickly.
Ignoring modifications for the moment, I wove my shreds of mana together, barely enough earned from its death to make a proper dungeonborn one. The creature was plainly dull to look at, gangly and bulbous, but there was some elegance in the curve of its many legs. I would have to accept it for the moment. My newly formed cave spider awoke, swiveling its body as it examined its surroundings. I could feel its mind, could peer deeper to understand its most basic thoughts¡ªit wasn''t terribly intelligent, most interested in food and building its nest. Since the lizard hadn''t moved, it didn''t even register him as a threat. I nudged it mentally, installing thoughts of hunger and prey; it twitched and made for the crack in the stone wall its predecessor had come from. It clambered up, ignoring the mushrooms, and started to spin an elaborate web over the top of the entrance. By the time it was done, it would span nearly two feet in diameter. Plenty to catch some larger prey. The lizard peered at the new development, lazing at the base of my column. I glared with two pinpricks of mana but the uninterested creature hardly seemed to notice, lapping at one of the numerous puddles of water over the cavern floor. Terrible, but the only real strength on my side. When my mana regenerated, I would spawn more spiders and build a proper threat for any attracted by the flies of my trap, endless webs and venomous mushrooms. I had taken my first real steps toward being a proper dungeon today, and I had no intentions of slowing down. Chapter 4 - Those Approaching The lizard seemed displeased with his new nestmates. I couldn''t have cared less. Half a dozen cave spiders wove their glittering webs over the entrance of the cave, only the soothing press of my mana keeping them from staking territorial claims with their particular brand of cannibalism. I had shaped these with as much mana as I could shove into them before they began to reject it, enriching their venom until they could take down prey far larger than themselves, a last defense if their webs failed. As a final touch, I took the ruddy hue of their banded legs and blended it over their entire bodies, brightened to a gleaming red like little scuttling jewels in the dark. I wouldn''t ever find them beautiful, lacking the scales and wings where I found true perfection, but they were far less horrific to look at. It would do for now. Precious few creatures had come to investigate my trap, only more buzzing insects I had no interest in beyond the spark of mana I got from their deaths as my spiders feasted. The lizard had tucked himself against the base of my column, watching the new additions with his lanturn-like eyes. I wanted more. Dragons never settled and I was no different¡ªto kill the bastard outside, I would need far more than mere cave spiders and mushrooms, no matter how much venom I could fill them with. My memories clashed with the guiding hand of my instincts, wanting to force the lizard to carry me out into the wider cave to scrape and tear any creatures in my path. The overwhelming fear I was shaped from stayed my hand. My pool of mana was almost half full, the runes over my core gleaming once again, before something new arrived. One of my spiders, newly formed and yet unthreatened by life, had spun its web by the base of the algae to scoop up as many scurrying bugs as it could manage. An efficient strategy, as shown by the many flecks of mana I''d absorbed from its escapades, but its position put it at risk. The pros outweighed the cons right up until an arrow-shaped head shot from the darkness and plucked it clean from its web. All my many points of awareness zeroed in. The snake snapped down the spider, thin fangs compressing its carapace to disappear smoothly down its throat. It was a gorgeous thing, dark grey with black diamonds crawling over its spine, eyes pale and flashing. Raising its head, I saw its underbelly was pure white, free of dust and grime. I could have purred. Hello beauty, I crooned, filling my ambient mana with soothing thoughts of protection and food. With any luck, I could trick it inside to be fully separated from the outside world, able to drop rocks a plenty over its pretty head without the rest of the cave system noticing. It slithered closer. The lizard raised his head at the change in mana, tongue flashing; I saw the moment he noticed the snake. His tail lashed as he rose to all fours. The snake''s grey tongue met the air. It hissed but didn''t retreat, coiling opposite of the fungal garden, at least five feet long¡ªbeating the lizard in size, but where it was slender, he was strong. In a fight between the two, there would be no clean victories. And, most infuriating of all, I couldn''t control either one. I covered the lizard in pressing strands of mana, urging him to slow down, to plan out a manner of attack. He ignored me with the same ease he''d ignored all of my previous orders. Some predator had entered his nest, no matter the new roommates, and he wouldn''t allow it to stand. The godsdamned idiot was going to get himself killed and leave me without any power beyond a few crawling spiders. I threw more of my ambient mana over his back, enough his tail lashed, but he stayed focused on the snake. My one consolation was the bare knowledge I had of other reptiles¡ªthe snake was a constrictor, not venomous. The brief glance at its fangs had been enough to confirm that. But my lizard wasn''t either; his strength came from his claws and fangs. Two things that scales were built to protect against. The lizard stalked forward until his nose brushed against my row of mushrooms, eyes narrowed. From my bare sense of my creatures'' minds, I could feel the moment that every spider near the algae abruptly decided they had places to be and scattered back up to their webs. The snake hissed, tail lashing, and reared¨C What I''d taken for a white underbelly exploded in light; fucking bioluminescence. As if it needed any other advantage. The lizard reeled back, cave-adjusted eyes blinded and smarting; an easy target. Like an arrow, the snake shot through the fungus. It sank its fangs into the meat of the lizard''s shoulder¡ªor tried to, at least. I had a smug little moment as it bounced off his defensive scales but that was only its attempt to secure its position, not a proper attack; in seconds, it wound its way around the lizard''s midsection, threading between his sprawling limbs. I watched its grip constrict with the kind of fear I hadn''t felt in a very long time. My mana surged to life. Thrashing, the lizard bit and tore at what length of the snake he could reach, but while he ripped scales loose and drew streaks of blood it only squeezed tighter. I shoved power heedlessly between the two, enough the mushrooms between them shuddered and grew, but I couldn''t do anything. Gods, he was going to die and I couldn''t¨C With a hiss, the lizard gave one last full-body tremble and went limp. I bellowed, and not a thing heard me. The snake cautiously untucked its head from its protected position, still coiled tightly. Another moment passed and it seemed to accept it had won the battle, tongue flicking out. It either ignored or didn''t feel the weight of my furious glare, jaw extending as it slithered forward. The lizard abruptly twisted and slammed his fangs over the back of its arrow-shaped head. It shrieked, spasming¡ªhe bit harder and flung them both into a death roll, crashing through the mushrooms as they spun deeper into the nest. The snake exploded in another burst of light, sending my spiders shrinking into their webs, but the lizard ignored sight and dug his teeth past its scales. Much like he had only moments before, the snake''s struggles slowed. Its tail whipped heedlessly at the ground, fangs tearing at the air but unable to attack him with the grip he had behind its head, blood spilling from under its scales. The lizard managed a hiss through his very full mouth. You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author. I fretted overhead, mana reaching and grasping, as seconds stretched to minutes. The snake barely twitched but the lizard wouldn''t risk his own trick rebounding on him, fangs grinding deeper. Until finally, it slumped over dead. A burst of mana exploded out of it, the majority trickling back to my core alongside the slippery, flitting mess of a soul; but a not insubstantial amount entered the lizard''s jaws, flowing alongside his channels like quicksilver. He blinked and finally let it slip out of his mouth, scarlet streaking over his blue-grey scales. I didn''t have to ask him not to eat it. He spared a second to glare at the corpse, shaking off the worst of the blood, and glanced back at me with what would almost be called smug intelligence; I didn''t know what else to label his primitive trap as. He''d tricked the snake. Certainly he hadn''t been that smart¡ªas low as my threshold was when my only other companions were spiders¡ªwhen I first encountered him. My mana seemed to be increasing his intelligence. Gods knew it couldn''t have been anything else. He retreated to his corner as I poured soothing mana over him, worming what healing influences I could muster into the odd wheeze of his breath and cracked teeth. He ignored me but did curl up, tail over his nose. Then I sat back and really considered the snake in the middle of my room. Beautiful, yes. Dangerous, yes. At my heart, I was a deeply petty being, but even with its irritable actions I wanted it. I shifted my points of awareness forward, tracing over its scales¡ªfully a constrictor, deeply camouflaged for dark stone, lacking the hooded eyes of a creature that occasionally went into sunlight. Prodding at the memories from its soul I could see endless waiting, keen little eyes poised to see the faintest movement deep under the mountain; that alongside the bioluminescence cinched it for me. It was an ambush predator, relying on blinding its opponent from the shadows and constricting them before they could react¡ªin a normal situation, it never would have gone after my lizard, at least not while he was awake. But it hadn''t been a normal situation. All living things craved mana, no matter their level of sapiance, and I was an endless fountain. It had wanted to feast. With the best equivalent of a sigh as I could muster, I dissolved its corpse into motes of pale light and examined its core.
Luminous Constrictor (Common) Living in the shadows, they hide and wait for their chosen prey to draw closer. By releasing a flash of bioluminescence from the scales beneath their throat, they stun the creature and can freely constrict it. Though they lack a venomous bite, they are powerfully built and extraordinarily quick, allowing them to bring down prey many times their size.
What I''d guessed, then. My gathered schemas seemed to be building on a theme¡ªthe only truly strong creature I had was the lizard, with all others built around traps and deception. My dungeon instincts purred happily at the thought. My dragon half was less pleased. I wouldn''t create one of the constrictors, not yet. Already my mind spun with plans of adding the cave spider''s venom, of taking its bioluminescence and creating glowing rows of mushrooms to attract all manners of prey, but for now I needed to help the lizard. He wouldn''t be in pain for a second longer than necessary if I had anything to say about it. And, with my mana pushed over half full with the snake''s death, I did. - Nicau watched the Dread Pirate''s progression through Calarata and felt his stomach drop. The cart rumbled through cobbled streets more mud than stone, enormous wheels trembling and quaking even with their mana enforcements. Pebbles flew out of its path and clattered against its rickety surroundings, drawing more faces to windows and more silent watchers. That had to be his goal. It was working, because those who came for the sound stayed for the dragon. Even tightly bound by ropes, wings compressed to sides and head curled back, it sprawled over the entire main road and dragged its tail well behind the cart. Dozens of feet long, scales wider than his hand, horns long enough to replace his spine. And, perched on top with beasts made from shadow pulling the cart, the Dread Pirate watched them all back. Nicau took the sliver of comfort that as one of Calarata''s many stowaway orphans, the man wasn''t looking at him directly, though it didn''t exactly help much. Useless as he was to Varc¨ªs Bilaro, he still lived in the illegal pirate cove of Calarata, and thus survived under his protection. It was easy to forget all the taxes they had to pay when he shot a dragon from the sky with a single lance. At his side Romei wrung her hands, both of them peering out from one of many alleys dotting the city, dark eyes sharp. Pigeoncatchers, the both of them, selling the gamey birds on the docks to returning pirates or adventurers hungry for a meal¡ªbut it was him that hid in the shadows, fled away from those stronger. She had never been content with that. Had always wanted to sail on a ship of her own. He didn''t like the look in her eyes as she watched the dragon. "Killed it on the mountain, didn''t he?" She murmured, lips barely moving. The cart rolled past with a rumble like thunder. "Across from the city?" Nicau shook his head just as minutely as her. "Closer. It landed in the cove, right off the docks." Her eyes, if it were possible, grew brighter. "How much do dragon scales sell for?" He blinked and fully turned to face her, the enormous tail dragging a crevasse in the dirt of the road before them. "What?" "The scales, Nicau¡ªthe Dread Pirate took the corpse but I doubt he took enough time to fully inspect the area if he killed it yesterday and brought it back today. There has to be some scales that fell off. We could sell them." She glanced both ways but no one was in their alley, window shutters of the surrounding buildings closed. "You can track them, can''t you?" Ah. Nicau winced¡ªhe knew she wouldn''t invite him if she could get away with it. But where she had been born and raised on Calarata''s streets, he had been a stowaway first, learning the famed petty theft secret of following mana trails. Useless in most situations, with the moderate exception of tracking enormous deposits of power. Such as scales. "...I could." Romei grabbed his hand to pull him deeper into the alley, excitement thrumming between them. "Even one would get us a ride on the Diving Darling¡ªand just a handful more and we could barter our way into being cabintakers." Her nose wrinkled at the name of the grungiest ship of the city¡ªespecially for Calarata, with expectations particularly low to begin with¡ªbut her eyes brightened soon after. "Or, gods. Imagine if you find enough we could join the Dread Crew." Nicau peeked around the corner. Varc¨ªs was well and truly out of sight but no one knew the full extent of his powers, whether he could hear anything said in the city like the rumors whispered around, whether he could read minds and knew this conversation was happening. But to join the Dread Crew¡­ It meant not struggling for the rest of your life. It meant receiving the Dread Pirate''s taxes instead of having to pay them, meant comfort and riches beyond every stowaway''s wildest dreams, meant power and respect enough to make the Le¨®ro Kingdom willingly ignore you instead of having to stay hidden. It meant everything. All for a few scales. Nicau was a coward at heart, he knew that. He had only survived so long as he had because he was. But Romei had survived equally long and gods, he wanted this. "There might be enough for me to trace it," he said. She took that as approval and already started patting her pockets, tugging out a waterskin and enough scraps of food to last the night. "But I''ll run out of mana soon and we won''t be the only ones to think of this; are¨C" he paused, shivers crawling up his spine. "Are you sure?" She brushed a hand over the old, ratted clothing both of them had scrounged from back streets, the hollows under both their eyes and the wrists she could wrap her fingers around. The Dread Crew had none of that. "Let''s go." Chapter 5 - Arrival Nicau glanced back at Calarata, torch flickering weakly in his hand. Morning rose, low and flickering, over the Al¨®mbra Mountains to light the city in strands of gold¡ªsoon everyone would wake up to see the obviously, painfully, visible pair. Romei dug into the mountainside, splashing through the stony shore, blood pebbling under her cracked fingernails. "Not yet," she muttered, glancing back so he could point her more in the right direction. "We''re so close¡ªjust one bloody scale and we''ll go back. The Dread Pirate won''t be able to turn us away." Her eyes burned. "I''m going to be rich." Nicau looked at her. "We." A pause. "That''s what I meant." "...okay." Romei gritted her teeth and muscled more rocks aside to look underneath, wet sand sloughing away. "What about here?" He closed his eyes, clenching his fist not holding the torch¡ªhe could feel thin, spidery trails of draconic mana, like memories of its flight, crisscrossing over the entire cove. "It should be there," he said, brows furrowing. The lack of sleep made him hazy but it shouldn''t be to the point where he couldn''t sense scales buried in the sand, especially only two days after the dragon''s fall. "I don''t know why¨C" They both broke off. Beneath one of the boulders, a crack spanned deep into the mountain, choked with sand and black beyond. Nicau could hear the echoing drip of water inside, promises of some larger cavern, and the muffled skitter of some creature; a proper cave, one hidden for potential centuries. And, more pressingly, the steady buzz of draconic energy. "In there," he murmured, hesitantly inching the torch forward. It cast shadows over the stalactites like a fanged maw. "Something''s in there." The crack was small, had to be if it had remained hidden for so long, but they were both street-starved orphans from an illegal pirate city. If anyone would be thin enough to squeeze through, it would be them. Romei''s eyes burned. "Let''s go." "Are you mad?" He hissed, unable to avoid another glance back at the waking city. "We don''t know where the cave goes¡ªit could go right out the other side of the mountains and drop you in the middle of the Le¨®ro Kingdom. Or all the rumors of the goblin nation, and the stone-drakes, and that''s without all the monsters living in there¨C" "Do you want to join the Dread Crew?" "...what?" Romei cracked every bone in her body as she stood, blood dripping from her fingertips. She towered over him. "Do you want to keep catching pigeons for a living, unranked with no chance of even reaching Bronze, scrounging in the scraps and knowing that everyone in Calarata would kill you without batting an eye? Or do you want to be worth something?" Nicau narrowed his eyes. "I want to join the Dread Crew." "Then you''d be willing to dig through this mountain for a chance, wouldn''t you?" He hesitated for a second too long. Romei snatched the torch from his hand, flames spluttering weakly through the scraps of oil they''d managed to steal. "Then go back to Calarata." She shifted the torch to her mouth, shadows thick in the hollows of her face, and dropped to her stomach. Sand shifted under her stomach as she started to worm her way into the mountain crack. Fearless. She''d gotten what she wanted. Tricked him into leading her to the scales and scared him from going any further. Played him like a fiddle, really. Both of them knew damn well he wouldn''t muster any courage to go tell a member of the Dread Crew about her plan. Nicau looked between the crack and Calarata, between salvation and stability. Gods, he really was a coward. - The mushroom was growing. My many points of awareness circled over the entrance to my lair, prodding at the white flesh. I hadn''t noticed it in the midst of the fight, but when I''d shove my metaphorical weight over the lizard to try and get past his thick fucking skull my mana had been drained, nearly three points of it. Neither him nor the snake had absorbed any, too caught up in their pissing contest, but they''d been fighting on top of my little fungal bait field. And now one of the mushrooms was changed. Its stalk had grown thick, cap reaching for the ceiling¡ªthe same proportions but swollen thrice past its original. Even its coloration was more of a pale green, as if it had leached life from the algae it grew from. I gave it a mana-filled poke. It absorbed another spark. Living creatures in my realm had two ways of gathering mana¡ªactive consumption, the killing of others. The second, however, was much more passive, my mere presence imbuing mana through the air. For plants, their only way of growing was the second; unless, apparently, I shoved mana into them. It was hardly the most efficient plan¡ªI''d wasted three points on this one mushroom and I doubted it had ended up with even a tenth of that¡ªbut there was potential there. All dungeons craved the evolution of their creatures. And given how my idiot of a lizard would end up dead with all the fights he so loved meandering into, evolution would be my best chance to kill the bastard outside. My cave spiders, still trembling in their metaphorical eight boots, slowly crept back down to the fungal garden. I nudged them with all the care of an absentee parent towards the largest mushroom, guiding them to build their webs right alongside its base. Maybe the deaths of nearby insects, no matter how small and insubstational, could guide its evolution. Actually¡­ I twisted to glance at my core. The mana I''d all but drowned the lizard in to heal his injuries had been a painfully large amount but so had been what I''d absorbed from the snake''s death, leaving me crawling towards three-fourths full. I waited a second to at least fake thinking it through before grabbing a full point of mana and shoveling it into the mushroom''s core. It shuddered, billowing out to reach a peak of nearly two feet tall, swaying with its impossible height. The spiders clustered around its base fled like the little cowards they were. I narrowed mental eyes and latched onto another half point, trying to inject splinters instead of going all at once. The lizard raised his head as if he could sense the normally delicate procedure I was merrily tripping my way through. The mushroom swelled and started to glow a pale white, growing fat and plump with mana, the faintest undercurrent of silver visible under its flesh, until¨C
Your creature, a Whitecap Mushroom, is undergoing evolution! Please select your desired path. Lacecap (Uncommon): Learning from the spiders surrounding it, this mushroom trades its pacifism for sticky webs that trail to the ground, trapping small insects to serve as bait for larger creatures. Glowlight Mushroom (Uncommon): Without needing light itself, this mushroom has become bioluminescent to attract those that would carry its spores, spreading far and wide with even a single sprout. Fungal-folk (Rare): The influence of pure mana has given this mushroom a mind to think; growing stubby legs and a fanged maw, this beast hungers endlessly and attacks any in its path.
A-fucking-ha. Finally a proper dungeon move¡ªthe evolutions were limited but I could clearly see where they had come from, not having my own bonds or titles to draw from. Yet. The mushroom had lived through my spiders, the luminous constrictor, and¡­ I suppose my own intelligence, for the last evolution. I weighed the options. Fungal-folk, at its core, certainly seemed the most useful of the bunch. Another aware creature, presumably with many future evolution options. I tried to imagine it, a lumbering, slavering mushroom with as little brainpower as its description implied, skin pale and waxy without eyes nor arms. My mana shuddered. No, I wouldn''t be choosing that. Seven hells if I didn''t need nor particularly want savage little monsters scurrying through the cavern system, scaring away all my potential prey and drawing the attention of moronic humans. You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author. Pandering to reason aside, they sounded disgusting. Mushrooms were meant to remain beautiful, ethereal, and very, very stationary. Glowlight mushrooms fit that and I could imagine endless rainbows of lights, dotting like stars on the cavern walls as I created enough to spread over the entire mountain, but I kept trailing back to the first option. Serve as bait for larger creatures. Oh, if that wasn''t tempting¡ªmy mana tugged on subconsciouses like the world''s weakest whirlpool but if I could build a real ecosystem, there wouldn''t be a limit to how many souls I could collect. I selected lacecap. The mushroom shuddered once more and began to shrink, features hidden behind a pale glow. I had no idea how long evolution took; certainly for something like a mushroom, which weren''t exactly complicated to begin with, it wouldn''t be¨C My world shook. I threw my points of awareness out of the haze I''d sunk to in my meddling, peering around¡ªthe lizard stood behind me, back arched and tail thrashing. He''d crawled his way up my column to nudge me, eyes worried and darting. All my spiders were frozen in the furthest corners of their webs. Because outside the cave, the space where I had no control? Footsteps. I sent billowing curtains of mana out, trying to pry past the stone to see; the footsteps padded closer, the slap of bare feet against rock. My lizard tensed. Pale orange light crawled its way over the floor as a human¡ªa nasty, filthy, rotten human wielding a torch¡ªpeered into my room. Gangly and gaunt, she waved the torch ahead of her, eyes narrowed. A spider screamed as its web caught fire, jumping ship to flee to the cavern wall¡ªshe snapped the torch over and its ruby-red carapace turned scarlet-red for the split second it took to burn to death. No chance for webs, for venom. Just like that. I roared and the rest of my spiders swarmed, driven mad by the urge and shout of my mana¡ªthey threw themselves from the walls, manibles flashing, eyes rovering. She screamed. But her torch still moved and in a heartbeat, the other five were dead. "Fucking spiders," she muttered, burning away the remains of their webs. My fucking spiders, I would have bellowed, would have carved into her grimy face; but I couldn''t. Because I was a dungeon core whose creatures had already been destroyed, and that meant I had nothing left. The lizard stayed frozen on the side of my column. "What is this?" She asked to nothing, swinging her insipid little gaze around my nest. Eyes narrowing, she at least stepped over my fungal garden, bare feet splashing through the puddles of water scattered over the floor. "A beast den?" Maybe you could have figured that out with some common fucking courtesy. The lizard shifted, tongue flashing; I surrounded him with as much calming mana as I could muster past my panic. If he attacked, if she killed him, I would be bound. Be dead. We would all be dead. Her torch finally reached far enough back to show me, and I could sense more than see the greed building in her eyes. "That''s not a scale," she breathed, voice excited and rising. "Oh, that''s not a scale at all¨C you''re the heart." She came closer without fear now, torch limp at her side, water splashing around her ankles. "Gods. The Dread Pirate will make me his first mate." I would die first. I reached, blasting my mana deep into the surrounding mountain, her footsteps ringing through my mind as she came closer¡ªjust one beast big enough to scare her off, some earthquake I could trigger, something, anything¨C My mana plunged deep into a river. The source of all the puddles in my room, the reason my algae grew. It ran directly above us, wild and old, surging from somewhere up at the peak of the mountain. I didn''t hesitate. My power poured out of me, tearing through the stone between us¡ªthe human flinched, raising her torch. I ground away at the limestone, gnawing and biting like a rabid dog. She couldn''t take me. She couldn''t. I ripped through the last inch and the full force of the underground river slammed into my cave. Both of us screamed¡ªthe water threw me off my column, my awareness spiraling as I tried to focus past the nausea; she collapsed, torch extinguished, water already where her knees had been and rising faster. It bullied her towards the door, head and thrashing limbs visible above its frothing surface, ready to escape deeper into the mountain¨C No. Gods no, if she survived this and made it outside, she''d tell this¨C this Dread Pirate about me and I would die even faster, besieged by armies and mages and berserkers¨C My mana flowed and I slammed it over the stone of the entrance, rooting deep into the limestone¡ªwith a heave like straining muscle, I pulled. With a rumble, the stone grew and closed off the escape. Mana exhausted and still being limply tossed in the currents, I managed to swivel some vision to see the human, thrashing as the water reached over her head. My mushrooms floated past, shreds of algae like hair spiraling around me, the wooden stick of the torch skittering against stalagmites. Ruined, everything ruined; but I could recover. She wouldn''t. Bubbles billowed from her open mouth. As well as another set of bubbles, small and helpless. Horror bloomed. My lizard thrashed, tail whipping at the water, clawing to reach the surface¡ªbut there wasn''t a surface. The entire room was flooded. There was no air left for him. And just like the human I''d tried so hard to kill, he would die too. I flung every last scrap of mana I had at him, pressing into his lungs, covering his mouth¡ªbut I couldn''t do anything. He wasn''t mine, no way for me to trigger an evolution, no way to heal him from what I had caused. The human collapsed, no more air in her lungs and limbs too weak from malnutrition to swim away. Her soul ripped through me, full of panic and fear, and mana exploded from her corpse, more than any snake or spider¡ªbut even with it I couldn''t do anything. The lizard continued to thrash, unable to accept my mana, unable to find air. Unless¨C If my mana didn''t work, I still had more. I reached impossibly deep, enough to taste for a split second the nectarine feeling of the Otherworld, the source of my power; I dug through memories of wind and wings, through my own pride and personality, through my ego and who I was. My soul fluttered in my grasp, weary and misshapen, and I ripped my awareness out, searching for a similar spark¨C The lizard''s soul, weak and fluttering. It drifted away even as I latched onto it, bringing my own soul up to match. I slammed the two together, knotting and twisting and splicing; something posed a question to me, deep in my core, something older than my dungeon instincts or my dragon heart. I answered. Seros. Light bloomed between us.
Underground Monitor Seros Large, fast, and heavily armored, these lizards have adapted to life in unlikely places. Their mild venom can paralyze their prey if a club from their whip-like tails won''t, and they are at home both under the sun and under the ground.
Blessing of the Depths: Named by a sea-drake, the power of the dark waters is bestowed.
I came back to myself panting, trembling with the horrible sensation of attachment¡ªno longer was my soul alone in its spiral of mana. A thread, no matter how thin, connected it to another. The thoughts connected. I panicked, spreading my awareness back out, fighting to see past the slowly-calming waters and the murk of froth and grit¨C Just to see the lizard¡ªmy lizard¡ªSeros¡ªwriggle to the top of the room and flick his tail, some unknown power wrenching water away from the roof to let him take a shuddering breath. I could feel what he felt, from the desperate relief from the burning of his lungs, to his confusion at these new abilities and his instinctual control of them, to his¨C Well. To his fear for my safety, frantic even past his fear for himself. It wasn''t enough to make me regret all the things I''d called him in the comfort of my own mind, but it was close. My mana wasn''t full but it was enough; I reached out and found the breach, the underground river splashing along its usual course now the room had been filled. I gritted metaphorical teeth and pulled, dragging the stone of the ceiling across the gap. Water washed it away but I managed to stay just ahead of the erosion, tugging a flimsy shield that lasted just long enough for me to reinforce it. My attention shot down and I ate into the floor, churning stone into dust; the water level slowly, slowly began to drop. I drilled holes into the outer wall to let fresh air in, I tunneled deep to store the water away in pockets to leave the room open, I respun a platform of smooth limestone for Seros to collapse weakly on. And finally, with a mere five points of mana to my name, I let myself stop. The room was narrow and crumbling, pitch black water lurking against the platform and the river rushing ominously overhead, the only light the pale glow of the runes over my core. A right and proper mess. I would need to reopen the walls, bringing food and air for Seros, but for now I let us both rest. Someone had invaded my lair, though I didn''t think she was a proper adventurer¡ªnot enough gear, not enough meat on her bones, not near enough power to earn the rank Bronze. Clearly enough of a threat to my intellect that I''d destroyed my own cave and nearly killed the only companion I had. But I''d saved him, granting him a blessing and the Name¡­ Seros. Seros. Draconic for friend. Gods, I was turning into a hatchling. He raised his head as if he could sense my attention, blinking blearily in my direction. Exhausted, the poor fool, both from the events of the day and the new powers that had dropped in his lap. Blessing of the Depths; I''d have to puzzle out the full details of what that was later, though his brief stint of hydrokinesis was enough to get me excited. No, what I had to do right now was think. Two or three days ago, after ripping out my own heart, I''d awoken as a dungeon core with a thirst for revenge. My first day could be excused; I hadn''t known what I was, let alone my powers. But after that, well. What had I been doing? Staying in one tiny room, creating nothing more than some plants and a handful of spiders, wasting my mana forcing evolutions instead of letting their full potential arise naturally? Lounging around with plans of greater success and never thinking of the now? I''d forgotten what I was in comparison to what I had been. A dragon had time to grow under the protection of their parents and siblings, to have floundering baby steps and early mistakes. Dungeon cores had no such luxury. I glanced around the room I''d found myself in¡ªeven with the bare scraps of mana filling it, I could sense life in the water with the promise of more in the river above. Two openings, one to the unknown and one to the coastal city. The home of the so-called Dread Pirate. I''d bet my stolen hoard he was the bastard who''d killed me. But if I wanted to survive, I had to focus on the me that was currently still alive. So I shoved down my dragon-memories, let the taste of whale and the currents of the Ilera Sea fade deeper in my mind. Tonight I would rest, healing Seros and making plans. Tomorrow, I would truly begin my first floor. Chapter 6 - A Fungal Floor
Dragonheart Core
Mana: 19.1 / 25 Mana Regeneration: +0.3 per hour
Patrons: None
Titles: None
I was happy to have Named Seros, really. Gaining a true companion, one that I could speak to and understand, brought a sense of the life I hadn''t known I''d been missing. But the bastard had almost halved the mana I absorbed from the Otherworld. He certainly gave his theft the proper level of appreciation, slumbering away as motes of mana settled over the cracks in his claws and scales to heal them right as rain. In the two days it''d taken me to recover even a faint reflection of full mana, he''d spent the entire time sleeping, adjusting to his new Name and powers. It was nice to finally figure out what he was, though. An underground monitor; not the largest nor most powerful of lizards, but certainly above common anoles or geckos. Now that he was properly mine, fed and powered by my mana, I couldn''t wait to see what his evolutions would be. Also, he was venomous. Not incredibly so, mostly paralytic rather than fatal, but still infinitely more than I''d thought. He could have been nice enough to let me know. I turned away, glaring at the crumbled remains of my cave. Barely large enough for the platform Seros slumbered away on, dark waves lapping at the walls below. I could try to remove the water, tunneling it out to reconnect to the river, but all manner of living things needed water; on the same hand, I hardly wanted to reopen the connection that had just finished flooding me. Maybe I would just carve a small puddle into this floor, open enough of the wall to maintain a fresh current of new water to keep away the disease of staleness, not large enough to flood or overwhelm. The idea spoke to me. I imagined the floor how it could be¡ªnaturalistic, to still serve as bait for wary creatures, wide and open to never let another moronic adventurer all but trip over me¨C Well. I paused, glancing back at my core; the damning less than a point of mana per hour still haunted me. As large as I could make but still feasibly control. It didn''t take much to eat away at stone walls so with my near twenty points I could make it infinitely bigger than it had been, plenty to make sure that no adventurers could sneak up on me again, but not enough that it spiraled out of my control. I grabbed my mana, shaped it like hungry fangs and claws, and got to digging. Limestone crumbled away from me, dust spiraling out and pebbles tumbling away; I carved up, angling towards where the first cavern entrance had been. Something like a slope would be interesting, forcing adventurers to pick their way down through a sprawl of fungal gardens to find their way¡ªkeeping the entrance as far away from me was my first goal, given as I still needed to be on my floor in order to control it. But I wanted this to be a mix between dangerous and enticing, tricking all manner of wild creatures into meandering into my waiting grasp¨C Crack. My mana brushed the wall and a hole crumbled through. I flailed, pulling up stone and rock, anything to plug the water sure to start gushing through the break¨C the water. The¡­ fresh air? Well, fresh in the manner of a fresh corpse¡ªit was stale and choked with dust, having come from somewhere deep in the mountains. Huh. I stopped all burrowing and started whittling away at that wall, the river thundering right beyond my touch¡ªbut instead of water, more air greeted my experiments. The taste and flavour of other caves. By the time I''d carved a hole nearly four feet tall, I hadn''t encountered the river but instead the black beyond of a fellow cave system. Dark and looming, of course, but humid and warm. The kind of environment that other creatures could live in. The river raced above my cave, splashing down between the two openings I''d carved through my walls, but apparently continued straight on instead of spreading out, leaving a fully functional cave system with access to fresh water meandering on next to it. I had no way of knowing whether it was connected to the outside, if it merely looped back around and led back to the cove, but¡­ Well. I was self aware enough to know that I was a greedy bastard, and two openings held the promise of double creatures with only slightly less than double the risk of adventurers, if the second cave system didn''t lead outside. I tugged up a temporary barrier of stone over the entrance, just something for peace of mind as I worked, and continued carving into the walls. But now I started to flatten the wall between the two entrances, over fifty feet apart from each other. Shaping a pale reflection of an entrance I kept them on the same length as each other, giving neither the advantage, pushing more mana to make sure the stone would stay strong under the eroding push of the river. Then I switched my attention to what would become the bulk of my cave. I carved a slope, just enough to be noticeable without overly forcing my creatures to fight against gravity to make their way up, and scored deep trenches into the walls and ceiling for outcroppings; rugged crags and bluffs bloomed under my mana, shaping new stalactites and stalagmites, turning existing ones into massive, sloping pillars that stretched from roof to floor. I carved deeper, all points of awareness focused in front of me, and¨C Only thirty feet from the entrance, the water lurked. My mana, bright with teeth and claws and all manners of horrid biting things, splashed uselessly against it; if there was a way to eat through it like limestone, no one had been polite enough to tell me. I glared. It was hard to miss the irony that a sea-drake was having problems with a puddle. I poured mana into a thin blade and carved a stream, barely a foot deep, throwing my metaphorical weight against the back wall to extend it¡ªonce I was far enough away from the entrances to at least look impressive I dug a proper little pond, enough to hold the water but not too deep. One day I wanted floors with more water than land, twisting rivers and streams and massive, sprawling lakes¡ªbut to build those, I needed to worry about oxygenation, about flow, about nutrients and algae growth and fish. Not yet. For now I just needed a floor. Then I dragged the stone floor under the water up, forcing it to rush down the stream¡ªit splashed listlessly into my little puddle, away from the rest of my carving. Stay, I ordered. The water gurgled. Good enough. I turned back to my cave. Mana draining much faster than I was comfortable with I worked, throwing intangible bulk until walls shredded away and new stone was revealed just to be destroyed. I carved the slope further down and inspiration struck¡ªto the left of the pond I dragged an array of pillars up from the rock, carving hollows and perches over its surface. The largest I placed on top, those on the bottom cramped and uneven. Dens for the creatures that would earn them. Then to the right I bullied a plateau into rising, only a foot or two off the ground¡ªthere I would place the best mushrooms, the most mana-rich food. If they could make it to the top and fight off others that wished to take their share, they would be rewarded. My little gladiator''s garden. The idea pleased me; I swam through the rest of my room, carving dens at the base of walls and hollow pockets between the ceiling''s stalactites. They would need places to rest and even moreso, reasons to fight, reasons to grow strong and full to guide their evolutions¨C Horrible, gut wrenching emptiness. This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings. Less than a point of mana left. I trailed off, doing some equivalent of panting¡ªtime had lost its grip but I could tell it had been hours, enough to regain some few new scraps of mana before I''d used that too. But I had made this. Nearly three hundred feet long and a hundred wide, what would soon become the two cave entrances perched on the tip of a gentle slope, trailing down through an endless maze of rock outcroppings and stalagmites and terraced steps. As physically far away from them as possible sat a rock puddle¡ªI extended a fraction of a point to push it to be flush against the back wall, the unevenness was killing me¡ªand within the dark water, a narrow little stretch of an island where I would sit. To the left, a scattered mountain range of dens and burrows, to the right, a garden-bed fit for royalty. Twenty points of mana had created this. Just enough that I could control it, plenty big enough to hold all manner of creatures. I itched to fill it, to flood the cragged slopes with dens for luminous constrictors to lunge from and pillars with cracks for cave spiders to spin their deadly webs¡ªbut mana. It always came down to mana. Gods if I wasn''t sick of constantly having none. I angled a glare at the vague lump of scales that was Seros, still peacefully comatose as his body adjusted to his new Name. At least he could sleep. I just had to wait. - I lasted long enough to regret waiting before I started to poke through my cave. The water called to me, as irritating as it had been on this floor, old memories I''d tried to smother not quite willing to let go. I jabbed a point of awareness under its dark surface. My mana hadn''t finished billowing through the cavern, regaining my full awareness as it diffused to fit the space, but I wasn''t quite idiotic enough not to sense the sparks of life in the water. The algae and mushrooms that had been swept up in the flood clumped here, limply swaying as they settled to the bottom; but while the whitecaps were decidedly more brown than their namesake implied, the algae seemed fine, just untethered. Made sense. I remembered the species from my days in the Ilera Sea, common enough it was more unlikely not to find it. And feeding on them, a handful of thin silver fish. Something resembling glee shot through me as I beheld their scales, the white of their underbelly, the dark of their eyes and fins. Fish! No possible better indicator that there was life in the second tunnel. And though they were clearly freshwater, I wouldn''t be amiss to call them a cousin to the baitfish of the ocean, what with their similar size and profile. Which meant they fed larger creatures. Oh, I could have purred; I languished closer, swiveling points of awareness to see them from every angle. Narrow, thin-finned, but with a curious little scale more akin to bone plating over the front of their head. Only seven, what few had slipped through the cracks before I''d closed the river back up, but seven was plenty. I would allow them to eat my algae for the time being; Seros would need food when he woke up, and I could wait to receive their schema. The mushrooms, on the other hand; I ate through their drowned, bedraggled corpses, regathering motes of mana like specks of dust¡ªnot even enough for a full point, but anything to speed up the waiting. I would take it. Shifting through the mounds of dead, I chased a fish with an errant strand of mana as I ate the last¨C That wasn''t a whitecap. My awareness narrowed in on something concealed beneath a slump of algae, waterlogged and splintering. I ate at the outer layer, nipping through the¡­ sticky trails? A lacecap. I devoured the rest of it, stripping away its innermost pieces to examine the heart of its being¡ªby some ungodly stroke of luck it''d had just enough time to finish evolving before it was killed, letting me learn from its schema even with its death. My mana flopped unpleasantly in my core. Gods, I''d almost lost everything and gained nothing. I pulled out of the water, leaving a few points of awareness to keep track of the fish. Even with the glamour of my new cave I couldn''t ignore that I''d only gotten it because I''d lost the first. Movement. Any distraction was appreciated; I swiveled my gaze back just in time to see Seros finally twitch, raising bleary eyes as he stirred from his healing coma. Took his sweet bloody time. He rumbled, stumbling up to his feet like a hatchling. His tail thrashed for balance on the island barely big enough to hold him, left claws splashing through water before he wrenched them back beneath him. I paused. He was¡­ bigger, wasn''t he? When he''d first crawled out of the mountain he''d been three feet long, plenty respectable for his species, bulky enough to tell me he''d settled into that size instead of being the lank of a growing youth. But now he raised his head two feet above the ground, tail an easy six away from his nose. His eyes were the same lantern-yellow, his scales still camouflaged and bright with iridescent flecks, but even in the darkness of the cave I could see that he was more blue than he''d been before. More reflective. Slept for three days and near doubled in length. If he could continue that, I''d have a proper powerhouse on my hands. And, more pressingly, he had thoughts. I had to assume he''d had them before¡ªassume, of course, because no sapient creature would pull the dumbfuckery he had with the luminous constrictor¡ªbut now I could sense that he was curious, that he was hungry. Shockingly developed thoughts about waiting to let his eyes adjust to the cavern lit only by the glow of my runes, even some back pocket of his brain trying to piece together what had happened. Naming him had done a world of good for the handful of brain cells he must have had before me. I extended a faint touch of mana over the connection I could feel in my core of cores, the wavering song of our two souls locked together¡ªhe raised his head, blinking at me. I pushed a vague communication of welcome in his direction. After a moment, his thoughts took a distinctly happy turn. Gods, I was emotional as a hatchling. No time to waste, then. Now that I had a proper answer in case anything came a-knocking at my two entrances, it was time to finish the floor¡ªI bristled my quite mighty six points of mana and sent a pulse of suggestion that it would be best if he stayed on the island for the coming hours. Seros blinked again in my direction, glanced around the cavern, and promptly slipped into my rock pond. Cantankerous brute. We''d get along just fine. I plowed through the terraced steps of my cave, slipping between pillars and outcroppings to gnaw at the stone¡ªthe river had brought shiny new nutrients to my doorstep, just enough to make a mockery of real dirt for my fungal garden to bloom from. Two points settled deep into the floor, rock dissolving into a lumpy, pebbly mess that I knew would support life. Then came the question of water. The river thundered unendingly overhead, the stone between us never quite thick enough to help me forget, but if I didn''t feel ready yet for a proper pond there was no chance I would feel up to harnessing a river. Algae needed a thin stream of water anyway, and mushrooms had the unfortunate tendency to drown if they were too moist. Hmm. I glanced at the limestone making up my walls. It was already a highly porous stone, plenty of breaks between the crushed seashells and fossils making it up; if I could widen those holes, just a touch¡­ The wall between the two entrances was mostly flat, my fear of breaking through to the river beyond keeping me from expanding in that direction. I gathered a quarter point and pressed it into the stone, worming through cracks and infusing it with my power. My mana flickered. With a twist, I dissolved a fraction of the bonds holding the rock together. Water beaded over the silver-grey, splashing down in big fat drops¡ªhundreds of streams no wider than a finger bloomed over my room, trickling down the slopes and terraced steps. I tracked a drop as it rolled down the surface of the wall, slinking over the floor until it finally slipped into the pond. I could barely restrain the pulse of my mana. This was going to work. Barely four points to my name but I use them with reckless abandon, seeding a full wall of algae between the entrances so the droplets pebbled over pale green before splashing down. I wasted half a point embedding the algae with specks of bioluminescence, a hazy glow skittering over the cavern. For the steps below I threw waves upon waves of whitecap mushrooms, only sproutlings to reserve mana. Algae sprawled, thick and bristling, between beds of pale white. Stalagmites grew to be more green than grey. I would have wept if I could as I made my first lacecap¡ªgods, they were so expensive¡ªbut my excitement only grew from the first time I''d read their description. Taller than the common whitecap, a bit less than a foot at its peak, it traded the slender stalk of its predecessor for one wide and bulky, prepared to hold the weight of its cap. And oh, what a cap it was¡ªnearly half a foot in diameter, trailing its gills all the way to the ground like a fisherman''s net. A bile sticky enough to trap a full grown cave spider dripped over the lace-like web, ready to catch all manner of bugs. Bait, good and proper. I seeded them throughout the floor until my sight wavered, mana crawling up a fraction of a point just to immediately turn to mushroom; hours passed in a terrible, pressing wait. Until at last, the floor was a multicoloured mass of life. For my last step, I went to my resting place. Seros gripped me hesitantly between needle-sharp fangs and I did my damndest to hold back the bellowed curses and roars as he padded me over to the back island from the little crevice I''d managed to wedge myself in during the flood. Movement ripped security from my thoughts with jagged, paranoia-covered claws but it was short, simple¡ªin less than a minute he carefully set me down in the pillar I''d raised for myself. I still took a moment to settle myself, mana wheezing. But then I could look. Long and sloping, ripe with fields of mushrooms and algae, mana billowing overhead like a thunderstorm. Lacecaps waved enticing traps and algae glittered with hidden motes of bioluminescence, Seros splashing through his glorified puddle, pillars of silver limestone proud and bristling. Always the river rumbled ominously overhead, thundering at the thin rock roof. Natural enough to soothe concerns, unnatural enough to be haunting. Tomorrow, when I regained enough mana, I would start weaving my creatures and filling the floor with endless hungry maws, beasts and monsters aplenty. But for today, I was satisfied. Chapter 7 - Open Doors The last of the cave spiders scuttled off to their various positions in the dark, little ruby-red beauties with serrated mandibles like shattered glass. I pulsed waves of adrenaline and the excitement of the hunt through them as they set about making their webs, pressing thoughts of blood and mana into their insipid minds. They still lacked the scales and horns of true perfection but even I could admit I was warming to them, absentmindedly guiding stragglers to the better dens. It helped they weren''t intelligent enough to disobey. Luminous constrictors, on the other hand, had plenty of thoughts. I''d made dozens of spiders, the middle tier between insects and Seros, and with the quick reproduction rate their schema spoke of I knew they would have no problems flooding through my first floor. So I made ten beautiful serpents to keep their ego down. As with the spiders, I found I could only influence their creation so much before they started to absorb my mana instead of being changed; and without more creatures to study, there wasn''t a chance I could figure out how to make them venomous. Disappointing. I settled for fiddling with their bioluminescent scales, extending the effect to their entire underbelly instead of only beneath their throat. Expanding their size, their fangs, their flashing eyes; and oh, how I wanted to make them just as brilliant as my spiders, turning them pure white like ghosts in the dark. But they were ambush predators. The spiders could still hide in the shadows; at nearly eight feet long, the serpents didn''t have that same advantage. Grey and black scales would have to stay. For now, at least. Already my mind spun with ideas for the second floor. The problem with them came when I suggested to their fledgling little brains that they should focus on killing newcomers to the dungeon. As if one, they had all slithered away to the various dens I''d carved for them, cutting through the waves of whitecaps and algae with nary a rustle; I had a brief moment to admire the beauty of the movement before motes of mana trickled back to my core. Three spiders dead, just like that. Reptiles weren''t fond of obeying. Angling a glare at the crushed remains of eight legs disappearing down a serpent''s throat, I wasted another two points to weave a half dozen into existence far away from the occupied dens, muttering intangible curses. At least the constrictors got some mana from the deal, even if the amount I received was a fraction of what it took to create them. It also taught me more about my powers; creating so many creatures at once let me see the minute differences in each, little variations from colour to size. The same ability that kept me from having to consume both genders to fully recreate them. When I dug my mana into their corpse and examined their core, I saw all the possibilities they could be, even those that were deactivated. The variations were certainly interesting, at least. One of my spiders was a fierce little brute, shaped with aggression above self-preservation; already he had set his sights on a lacecap with a handful of pathetic, struggling flies stuck in its web. I wished him all the luck. Another lurked in the shadows, mandibles narrow and extended like an extra set of legs. The largest of the constrictors was a lazy, vain creature, slithering up an outcropping to loop her coils through the rocks. She glared at the spiders that could scuttle safely over the ceiling away from her fangs, pale eyes tracking the progress of a web. Size didn''t necessarily equal intellect but there was a refinement to her thoughts, a lurking annoyance at her lack of options for capturing prey. Constrictors, spiders, mushrooms. Letting my points of awareness diffuse through the cave, I gathered my mana closer, something almost like nervousness fluttering at the edge of my thoughts. Was I really ready? Opening the doors was a necessity. I knew that. The holes I''d poked brought enough oxygen and theoretically I absorbed enough mana from the Otherworld to always create prey for Seros, but it hadn''t been anything I had or hadn''t done to attract the human; she had come because my mana brought her. More would always come. My mana sharpened to steel at my grasp. A glance back at Seros to see if he was prepared and then¨C My lizard. My monitor. My idiotic lump of a reptile cheerfully snapped another fish down his gullet, languishing over the surface of the pond like the great lazy beast he was. The fish that, might I remind, I only had seven of. I slapped a wave of mana over our connection¡ªhe twitched, nearly sinking below the surface before he regained hold of his fledgling water abilities. He still took a second to finish swallowing before turning to me with a hiss. Second reason to open the entrances: I needed another creature worthy of a Name. I plunged my awareness into the pond, darting past trailing webs of pale sea-green algae; larger than I''d previously thought, nearly six feet deep and ten wide. The island in the middle loomed overhead: there. Two pale fish, huddled for cover under an undercropping of stone. The last two. Small mercies. Kill, not eat, I urged him, pushing threads of mana through our connection to guide him to the location. I''d create more for him to eat later; but I could only do that if he let me get the schema first. My attempts to impress the concept on him went about as smoothly as I''d expected. But Seros did heave a great sigh, tail swishing, and dipped under the surface of the water¡ªtwo days had hardly turned him into an aquatic beast and he floundered more than swam, clawing clumsily for propulsion. But the fish were half a foot at most and he was six: in the end, there was simply nowhere for them to escape. A hiss escaping in a cloud of bubbles, he dragged his way under the stone. The fish flailed. A flash of teeth and one drifted to the bottom, missing half its back fin. Another crack of his claws and the other joined it. Thank you, I pushed¡ªbegrudgingly¡ªthrough our connection. He twisted his way back to the surface, meandering over to the island for sleep; I kept my mana flowing through him. In the infinitesimal chance something was waiting for us on the other side of the entrances, he had better be ready. In the meantime, I dove back into the water, gnawing through the layers of fish¡ªbare flecks of mana from their corpses, souls weak and fluttering. But oh, what an ecosystem I could build on their backs; already my mind spun. Great underground reefs, flooded by billowing clouds of baitfish, vicious little eels and looming sharks overhead¡ªand mimicking the deeper ocean, with strange, glowing fish and plants that had never seen the sun. Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original. I wanted it. I wanted it like nothing I''ve ever wanted before.
Silverhead (Common) Thick of skull and small of mind, these fish gather in massive schools for protection. What they can¡¯t flee from they bash with their thickly scaled skulls, often ending more of their own lives than they defend.
Excellent. I''d really just been lacking idiots in my gathered schemas; it was nice to fill that deficit. But baitfish didn''t need to be intelligent. I just needed them to exist, plump with meat and mana, ready to feed my armies of greater threats; and if any of them could break past the mental capacities of their species, I was more than ready to help them evolve. Four points of mana to my name, what with all the creatures I''d made¡ªI wove a dozen silverheads for the pond, taking over a point, and sent them splashing through the algae-choked depths. Food for Seros, if he ever woke up to appreciate them. And then I faced the two entrances to my cave. I''d already steeled myself to the threat it would bring; I still took a moment, instinct-ridden fear coursing through my thoughts, and then I reached out and dissolved the stone barriers. My mana trembled at the new air, bare shreds leaking out before a proper boundary snapped into place; this was my dungeon, and only it would hold my mana. I peered into the darkness of the caves beyond, not having the bioluminescent algae to light the way and no mana-sense for me to see; nothing I could make out, really. The rumble of the river grew louder but the air was fresh and clear, flitting about like a living creature. As an afterthought, I smoothed the entrances out, creating gentle slopes into my cave. All the best to be inviting, after all¡ªI wanted creatures and adventurers alike to be lulled into a sense of security as they beheld my beautiful first floor. I settled my points of awareness around the entrances, mana poised and ready. Time to wait. - I had. Ah. Underestimated just how enticing a full floor would be to creatures. Half an hour and already a flood of insects buzzed over my fungal floor, endless and swooping¡ªmost boring little flies, mosquitoes, and others I dismissed the schemas of almost as soon as I got them, but I could see a few lurking in corners I wouldn''t mind recreating. My cave spiders worked overtime, spinning nets like fishermen as they caught more and more prey, luminous constrictors slithering in as some spiders grew bold enough to move closer to the ground- And where insects gathered, larger predators were soon to follow. A fat toad, bristling with pale grey¡­ armor? for lack of a better word, meandered its way through the river entrance. It swiveled to get a full glance of the room before making its way with slow, short-range hops towards a clump of lacecaps; it was nearly a foot long, limbs stubby but powerful. There was nothing I had to do¡ªmy ecosystem, even in its infantile stage, was determined to impress. Already a snake raised its head from the shadows of a stalagmite, forked tongue flashing. It zeroed in on the toad. The amphibian, all shades of blissfully unaware, headed towards the promise of flies. Its tongue snapped through the air; the snake rose behind it, coiled and tense. My mana reached out in anticipation. It hissed and struck, fangs extended¨C And bounced right off its back. Huh. With a low, panicked croak, the toad flung itself away disappearing into the mess of algae¡ªmy snake shook itself, our liminal connection pulsing with unexpected pain. I peered closer at the toad, huddled as it was under a rock outcropping. Mana. Its back was awash with it; not moving, like an active enhancement, but thick and jagged like crystals. Some sort of protection, defending it from ambush attackers; something of which caves were full of. It had probably wandered for all of its life without fear. Unfortunately for it, my snakes didn''t rely only on their fangs. And the one that had attacked was pissed. It rose to its full height, eight feet of glorious marbled scales, and slunk around the back of the rock outcropping; the toad crouched under the far side, already calming at the lack of its predator. It eyed the fly-filled lacecap. Idiots were far more entertaining when I was fighting them. The snake slithered over the rock, dragging its heavy coils up with barely the whisper of scale on stone; below, the toad hopped out of its cover towards its prize. Greedy little fool. All my various points of awareness swiveled in. The snake hissed and the toad jerked, glancing up¡ªjust to be blinded by an explosion of light. It croaked, wavering. The snake slammed its beautiful fangs around its neck but didn''t bite down, just securing its position; with the grace of an eel it wrapped its coils around its body. With my newly-enlarged serpents, the spiders would be just a snack; the toads, being nearly a foot long, were a far more enticing prey. It croaked, limbs thrashing weakly, but its mana armour meant nothing to the crushing force of a constrictor. My snake squeezed tighter. Another minute and it was done. Its mana was deliciously flavoured, like cool earth and fresh soil, and that taste contained shards and fragments of knowledge on how to control it. I spent a soothing pulse of apology to the snake but dissolved its prey before it could begin to eat it, feasting on the information.
Stone-Backed Toad (Common) These amphibians have attempted to recreate the protective scales off their reptilian brethren, growing pebble-like protrusions of earthen mana over their back. This makes them slow and stationary, but predators will find their skin nigh-impenetrable.
I could have purred. My luminous constrictors used tendrils of mana to release their bioluminescence and Seros had his fledgling hydrokinesis, but this was my first creature to utilize it in a proper elemental form. As a dragon, I''d used water mana to guide deepsea currents. I wanted my creatures to have that same skill. The snake hissed in the vague direction of my core and slithered off. But I could see earthen mana diffusing through its pathways, won from its kill even if I hadn''t let it eat. Maybe a future evolution. I wove a handful of stone-backed toads from three points and seeded them throughout my various dens, little ribbiting fools¡ªthey''d have to fight for access to the best lacecaps and access to the pond, let alone the garden thick and ripe with mana-filled mushrooms. None of my creatures were those that could properly eat them, but maybe the toads would find a way. I did so hate things going unused. My dungeon deserved respect. I was halfway through wondering what would happen if I just created several of the toads in the garden, whether that would start competition or just scare others off, when- A rumble. Something plodded outside of my river entrance, thick and heavy enough I could hear its footsteps like the beat of a drum. The webs over the entrance shuddered as if caught in a wind, something rather impossible in the deep underground, I might add. I jabbed my awareness towards the darkness beyond. A wide, snuffling nose poked into my cavern, surrounded by ragged black fur; pale brown eyes and rounded ears emerged next, ivory fangs below. It growled, massive chest thundering. Alright. I''d gotten used to being small. Mostly. Whatever tinges of jealousy I got looking at Seros was diminished when I compared him to the vast breadth of my cave. Two weeks ago I had been a leviathan large enough to eat whales. Now I was a pebble. So it was safe to say my sense of size was a bit skewed. I didn''t know whether that was good or bad as I beheld the bear entering my cavern. Four feet at the shoulder, nearly six long, paws the size of my old scales; it plodded down my gentle little slope like an avalanche. My dragon memories had no real equivalent to bears, certainly nothing similar existing in the ocean; my dungeon instincts, on the other hand, told me that they were dangerous with an unfortunate penchant for desiring power. Power such as a connection to the Otherworld. I grabbed hold of my ambient mana and tuned it to hunger, to bloodlust and rage¡ªmy various creatures stirred, arrow-shaped heads peering from alcoves and spiders pausing in their weavings. And, most importantly, the underground monitor that had been here since the beginning rose to meet the eyes of the intruder. Go, Seros. Chapter 8 - Ill Tidings Calarata was a city of thieves and liars, and if you asked anyone, Albo was its champion. More specifically, if you asked Albo. He was still struggling to have the anyone part work out in his favour. He slammed his mug down, ale sloshing over the rim; four pints in and his cheeks burned like a solar newt''s tail. Two weeks on the sea coming back to this¡ªgods, he''d missed Calarata and its endless freedom. Pretending to be some high-n''-mighty merchant making port in the Kingdom''s taverns just wasn''t the same. No place else could he toss back mugs and boast about selling a pack of hoarfrost wolves or the horns of a storm-bringer kobold to dozens of adoring fans¡ªmade easier by the fact there was no government to point out that they were all lies. Well. One government, specifically of the one-man sort, but it wasn''t like the Dread Pirate had any reasons to look at him. Far too busy demanding taxes and tithes from ships with a bit more gold where their mouths were. The man across from him, equally foul-tongued and ruddy-cheeked, gestured at the bay with a sloshing mug¡ªthe tavern had an open-water wall, letting the merrow and sirens drink their fill alongside the terrestrial races. His clothes were plain but not shabby, manner quiet but not timid; a rather perfect boast partner. "Then I beat the shit out of him," Albo drawled, rapping his four fingers on the bar table. "Steppin'' on my ship without permission, he right deserved it. Bastard gave me all the gold he was carrying and double more when I carried his sorry ass back to port. I had ol'' O?a toss him overboard. Ain''t that right, Velesso?" O?a rolled her eyes, downing another mug next to him¡ªcrewmates together, neither particularly friendly but both rather fond of alcohol. Velesso, though¨C the merrow rumbled unhappily from his place in the bay, finned hands splayed over the floor of the tavern''s open side. Bastard had no reason to complain, not with his gills getting him drunk twice as fast. Especially with Calarata''s hideous ale prices. His voice bubbled and danced with boredom. "You did make me take care of someone when I was on guard duty." "See!" Albo slapped the table. "Got a fat payload off that pirating stowaway without a drop of blood. Although I could''ve killed him, no problem. Been a fighter for even longer than a sailor. Tell him!" Him and the merrow were business friends at most, the underwater city of Arroyo situated just outside Calarata''s cove and similarly uninterested in Le¨®ro''s rule; by the flat look in his white-ringed eyes, Albo could tell he was getting knocked down to business acquaintance. So be it. The merrow relied on them for legal trade. "He''s a fantastic fighter," Velesso droned, resting his finned elbows on the floor and carelessly knocking aside an empty mug to splash into the bay. "Good enough to fight pitch-sharks, even." His drinking partner did raise an eyebrow at that, leaning in. Even O?a glanced over. You bastard. "Of course I''ve fought ''em," he said, leaning forward with as much swagger as he could while sitting down. "No pirate worth his salt hasn''t fought with those gods-cursed devils. I took this knife here¨C" he fumbled, dragging his old coral blade out of its sheath "¨Cand split one from its second maw down to its tail. Ever heard of anythin'' like that, ho?" "Can''t say I''ve even heard of pitch-sharks." Albo raised an eyebrow. ¡°Really? You¡¯re in Calarata, which means you¡¯re either a pirate none-too-fond of Le¨®ro¡¯s trading laws, or an adventurer none-too-fond of Le¨®ro¡¯s adventuring laws. Either way, you¡¯ve heard of them.¡± The man snorted, raising an offhand in surrender even as he drained another half a mug. "You got me. Adventurer. But besides, what''s to say you could take one down?" He narrowed his eyes. Bastard wasn¡¯t believing it¡ªwhich, fair, considering it was a lie¡ªbut that just wouldn¡¯t stand. He was Albo of the Diving Darling, greatest ship in Calarata¡ªanother lie¡ªand he certainly wouldn¡¯t have this two-bit piece of shit call him out on it. "Now, I know I didn''t just¨C" "Excuse me?" Both of them glanced over. A rail-thin boy, lanky and skittish with malnourishment, padded closer with hands wringing. He looked like a stiff seawind would knock him over. "Apologies," he muttered, peering at the dozens of other bar patrons. "But are you sailors on the famed Diving Darling?" Albo could have kissed him. "No need to flatter me, boy," he pronounced, leaning in like he was right embarrassed by the praise. O?a set her mug down but didn''t interrupt. "You''ve come to the correct man. Who''re you?" His drinking partner also settled forward, eyes bright. Hook, line, and fucking sinker with that one. "Nicau," he said, hands still wringing. "And I wanted to ask if you know about what lives in the mountain." He glanced to the side again like he feared someone would pop their ugly head out from under a bar table and catch him. "My¡­ friend went inside to collect treasure and hasn''t come out." Albo felt gold reflect in his eyes. "It just so happens that I''m in the midst of two trade jobs," he said, pushing up from his chair. "And I''d be more than willing to help you reclaim your friend. Treasure, was it?" The boy nodded. "Now, I''ll need the details if I''m going to help you. All of ''em, really¡­" His drinking partner, interest fully peaked, stood to match him¡ªO?a mirrored him. Both gold-hungry and plumped fat with ale, alongside the little streetboy starting to lead them out of the tavern, all timid and meek. No better stepping stones to clamber his way up to power. It was fate, really. Things were all going Albo''s way. - The great fat bear lumbered into my cavern, paws like boulders as they stomped and squished all my mushrooms without care¡ªcave spiders chittered and spat with rage but did nothing, skittering higher into their ceiling safety. But I had moved past relying only on Seros. My creatures, though still small and riddled with weaknesses, were developed. I pushed strands of mana containing my plan into my chosen few. The most aggressive of my spiders, the spindly little brute who''d already chomped and gnawed his way through a full lacecap, shuddered as my full attention dug into his insipid brain; but then he straightened, aiming all eight eyes down at the intruder marching below. Three hundred feet until the bear reached my core. He hooked a line of silk and dropped from the ceiling, legs contracted tight to his thorax¡ªthe bear, covered in its shaggy fur, didn''t notice as the spider landed cautiously on its back. It snorted, shouldering past a rocky outcropping. Another three spiders jumped over. Two hundred and fifty feet. The spiders swarmed over its back, mandibles positively dripping with venom. I pushed more mana into them, not desperate but probably close, urging them to sink their fangs into its bulk. They struck, and couldn''t find their way past its shaggy fur. Their mandibles glanced off its natural protection, too small and weak to properly deliver their greatest attack; they were built to hunt insects and fend off bats. That was their limit. The bastard of a bear marched on. Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation. My constrictors slunk their way forward, curling around stalagmites with their underbellies tensed and ready. Seros slipped into the pond, head raised barely an inch over the water, eyes narrowed to slits. My mana hovered nervously overhead. And then my spider, most contentious of his bunch, managed to string together enough brain cells to make his own plan. He skittered forward, hooked legs only barely catching traction on the bear''s back, and crawled his way up to its head. Specifically its ears. More specifically, its thinly-furred ears. Go, I urged, awareness swiveling in. Bite, rip, tear¨C The glorious arachnid clambered up to the point of its ear and dug mandibles into flesh. The bear rumbled, paused in its flippant destruction of my fungal gardens, and slammed its back against a rock outcropping. I snarled, watching three spiders be crushed, motes of mana flowing back to me¡ªbut the bravest stayed on, latched to its ear. More venom flooded through its system. A base cave spider wouldn''t have done anything but sting such a massive creature, but these were dungeon-born, specifically mine. Their venom might not kill the bear but it would at least start. The bear growled, pale brown eyes zeroing back on me. I sharpened my mana to points. Over my dead body. Ah. Technically under, depending on if they had moved my corpse. I chased that particularly distracting thought away. My serpents rose sluggishly, barely moving to keep their grey-black scales out of the bear''s attention; I jabbed a spear of mana into a den and spooked a group of toads, sending them croaking and panicking through the bear''s path. It paused, tracking their mana-filled backs. Four luminous constrictors raised their heads and exploded in white bioluminescence. The bear bellowed, staggering back¡ªand Seros shot from his lurking disguise in the pond and snapped his fangs into the beast''s throat. It screamed. Seros matched it in length but was woefully outcompeted in height and weight, and so he didn''t try; as soon as he''d bitten it once he let go, slipping away to huddle beneath a stalagmite. The bear swiped wildly before it, claws cleaving through the air like an avalanche, eyes rolling and unfocused. Blinded. But I, through the mana I''d flooded through Seros'' system, got to watch his paralytic venom mingle with that of the cave spider''s and start working. Another wave of serpents reared their heads and blasted it with light¡ªSeros darted around his sheltering rock outcropping and tore into its back flank, fangs and claws working in tandem. It roared and tried to swivel to face him, but its legs twitched and froze out of its control. Its eyes rolled. A stray swipe tore through a stalagmite and the constrictor coiled around it, ripping it in half before it could even react; its frenzied stomps trampled toads and spiders to mush under its great paws, claws cleaving through another snake. Seros'' venom slowed it but not nearly enough. I pushed a strand of mana upwards. The largest of my serpents, ten feet with a lazy attitude to match, uncoiled herself from her stone pillar and dropped onto its back. It bellowed, legs locking to keep it from falling; but all she needed was the moment of confusion to twist her way around its chest, arrow-shaped head curling tight over its ribs. Once, twice¡ªin its blind panic, it only noticed by the time she properly started constricting. The fear truly set in then. I doubted it had ever felt that emotion before, lower apex predator as it was¡ªbut now, legs twitching out of its control and serpent winding her way around its chest, I took full appreciation of just how much it felt fear. Roaring, it tried to claw at her scales, but Seros'' venom had spread through its body and it could only shudder weakly, collapsing to its stomach. She tightened her grip, massive coils spiraling over its form. I watched its breath escape in a mana-filled cloud. Seros raised his head, blood dripping from his front-most fangs. The hunger in my mana diffused but still my creatures closed in on the dying bear, eager for revenge if they had a pair of brain cells to rub together or merely sensing the mana on the air if not. Our numbers culled, our mushrooms trampled¡ªbut oh, if I didn''t near explode in pride as the bear died. Mana, thick and heady like the finest wine, burst from its corpse to the air¡ªthe majority flew back to me but a not insignificant amount flooded through the surrounding creatures. My prized serpent hissed as her pathways filled, the lone spider on its ear¡ªsomehow managing to survive its frenzy and fall, I had no idea how¡ªconsuming more than his fill. And Seros¨C He padded back to my island as if half asleep, a hazy glow building under his scales; he slipped through the water and curled around my pillar, eyes closing and tail resting over his muzzle. Mana raced through his pathways. A truly glorious message popped up in my core.
Your creature, an Underground Monitor, is undergoing evolution! Please select your desired path. Frilled Lizard (Uncommon): Deadly and mesmerizing, this creature grows wide, multicoloured frills surrounding its neck. When flared, it hypnotizes any opponents, freezing them in place long enough to bite with its paralytic venom. While it doesn''t have the immense bulk of its previous forms, its speed and venom lethality make it clear it''s a predator. Seabound Monitor (Uncommon): Born deep in caves, nevertheless it has learned of the seas and wishes to follow. Gaining gills alongside its lungs, its finned claws and limbs allow for speed in both aquatic and terrestrial environments. What it lacks in bulk or venom it makes up for in mobility, highly dexterous and able to wind its way through even the smallest of cracks. Lesser Crocodile (Uncommon): The great beasts of shallow waters, this reptile hasn''t reached the upper echelons but even its lesser form is one to be feared. Trading its venom for overwhelming bulk and power, it disguises itself as it lurks on the surface, waiting for unsuspecting prey to be dragged to the depths by its immense jaws.
Every creature in my cave felt the pleased thrum of my mana. Finally. I''d force-engineered the evolution of my mushrooms and while the lacecap was nice, there was truly nothing as satisfying as watching my friend gather strength until he could evolve. Even mid-evolution, his mana flooded through our connection, drunk with pride. The problem was picking his path. He''d won the fight with his venom and frilled lizard played most to those strengths, giving him two ways to stun prey¡ªbut the lesser crocodile meant he could fight head-to-head with those same opponents. Though I''d mostly spent my time in the high seas, I remembered proper crocodiles from my trips ashores, from the ironbacks to the lightning-toothed. The frilled lizard had abilities rather similar to a siren''s song, though more centered on sight. But again my attention drifted to the second option. A crocodile was aquatic but they still had lungs, sticking to shallow waters¡ªwhile frills could help with swimming I doubted that was what they were for. And at my heart, I was still a sea-drake. I loved the sea and hoped my creatures did as well. Gills and hydrokinesis would play fantastically together, either way. I waited another second for any rogue thoughts to give opinions before selecting the seabound monitor. Seros glowed, his edges losing definition in a hazy spiral of mana¡ªhe rumbled and curled tighter around my pillar. I cocooned him in a protective seal, seeding more silverheads in the pond as a final line of defense. Or¡­ I shifted my attention back to the bear, idly dismissing the rest of my creatures back to their dens for healing. Its presence loomed large over the rest of the cavern, even while dead. I devoured it.
Juvenile Lunar Cave Bear (Rare) This nocturnal creature hides in caves to avoid the burn of the sun, only emerging at night to eat. They harness scraps of shadow mana to camouflage themselves as they hunt. Though they grow slowly, a limit hasn¡¯t yet been found.
Juvenile. Huh. I supposed categorizing them as separate schemas made sense¡ªI certainly wouldn''t count a hatchling sea-drake the same as an adult, while cave spiders came roughly with the same level of development. Thoughts for later. Another mana user, but one seemingly less adept than the stone-backed toads; and, most worryingly, how they used the mana for defense. I had been quite comfortable thinking that the bear was one of the apex predators in the caverns. If even it needed to hide, well. It was a good thing Seros was evolving. I peered back at my core¡ªnine points of mana. Enough to experiment. Creating a mammal was far different from the others I''d made: fur was a uniquely strange thing to weave from mana, thick and stringy like seaweed, and its heart pumped warmth alongside blood. I swiveled more points of awareness in and shifted the bulk of the creation to be stationed to the left of my core, hidden in the twisting pillars and dens. Those entering my dungeon would have to search to find the current greatest threat. Three mana disappeared from my grasp. I glared at the bear that wasn''t even halfway done. A full seven later, nearly third of my total limit, and a lunar cave bear shook itself awake. It yawned, ivory fangs glinting in the algae''s bioluminescence. Smaller than the one that had invaded my cavern, though still enormous, it rumbled curiously before awkwardly grabbing the closest mushroom and plopping down to eat. Underwhelming. Our connection was stronger than most of my other creatures, vague thoughts and ambitions filtering through; although ambitions was too strong a word. Most of the bear''s thoughts revolved around food and its¡ªhis¡ªgreatest goals appeared to be obtaining more. I glared. Truly a magnificent defender. He stuffed a full whitecap into his mouth. But at least that was something new and excellent for my dungeon¡ªand although my first floor felt enormous compared to what it had been, the size of the bear proved I would need to expand, and soon. My mind spun with new ideas. Up until I noticed a gleam of light from the cove entrance, warm and flickering; one I''d seen before, in a human torch. The rumble of footsteps. The quiet pant of breath. Adventurers. Chapter 9 - Those Entering Albo squinted at the darkness, pushing his torch forward. The little streetrat hadn''t gone into the mountain, a-shaking and pale, but he''d spun quite a story of dragon scales; enough that Albo, O?a, and his mysterious drinking partner named Feliu had all ventured into the stony peaks. Calarata was free of Le¨®ro''s laws and regulations and that meant gold flowed freely, but it, ah, also meant that everyone who wanted gold flowed just as freely, and thus gold was rather scarce to be found. So any mention of treasure was enough to set his heart racing. One tight squeeze into the mountain with his rather impressive gut and the world opened back up, sprawling caverns filled with bats and moss and other skulking critters. O?a snorted and unsheathed her falcata, the one-sided sword gleaming in the torchlight. "Even if the goblin-hordes are long dead now, keep your guard up. I''m not dragging either of you back." "Charming as always," Albo muttered, but he did pull out his knives¡ªone an old coral blade, narrow and biting, and the other a dagger, not in the proper navaja style but deadly nonetheless. "Scared of bats, are you?" "I wouldn''t be so sure the goblins are gone," Feliu said rather cheerfully, cheeks still flushed red with ale. He accepted the offered torch but didn''t pull out a weapon of his own. "Le¨®ro''s been hiring adventurers for years now to go into the mountain and cull their numbers." Albo gripped his daggers a bit tighter. Goblins weren''t necessarily dangerous, normally considered the weakest of the sentient monstrous races, but their shamans were well-prepared to pick apart adventurers and their brutes'' blood-rush was only stopped by death. In their mountainous homes, they could be undefeatable. "Children''s tales," O?a said, but even she glanced around at the moss covered walls. They picked their way through the old cave system but it was surprisingly well formed¡ªtall enough they didn''t have to stoop over, wide enough for room to stretch. Though stalagmites formed scattered blades on the ground, there were large enough creatures living in the stone rooms to carve trails through the minefield, though watching their step was a necessity. Feliu held out his hand, palm up, and a faint yellow glow built between his fingers. He closed his eyes, frowning. "To our left." Albo was rather experienced enough to be suspicious of whether the adventurer was leading them to a trap, but, well. Dragon scales. Dragon scales would buy his way up to first mate on the Diving Darling, maybe even contending with the damn captain. Bastard wouldn''t keep assigning him to menial cleaning jobs if he started flashing draconian energy. Albo could guess O?a''s thoughts ran a similar course¡ªsame for Feliu and whatever rouge guild he was a part of. Only high magic creatures¡ªand those dungeon-born, he supposed¡ªproduced elemental mana items. Particularly high ranked adventurers, lesser Golds and up, would go through them like candy, absorbing the mana needed for their immense spells and strengthening tactics. Thus there was always a shortage¡ªselling any was a surefire way for riches. He glanced at O?a; friends they were not, but being crewmates built at least some sort of truce. If Feliu wanted to get out of the cave alive, he''d lead them to the scales. The magic user''s frown deepened, palm still glowing faintly as he led them through another fork in the cave system, clambering over a water-carved step. "It''s definitely draconic, but something''s changed about it," he said, pursing his lips. "I don''t know how else it could have gotten so deep underground. Maybe there''s¨C" He turned left again and disappeared through an opening. Albo muttered a curse and followed¡ªthe cave opened up, an ovular hole chiseled through a wall to emerge into a massive cavern. Easily hundreds of feet long and a third of that wide, ceiling sloping and covered in stalactites like a fanged maw, it loomed before them in the massive way their previous caverns just hadn''t managed. Water beaded on the walls and splashed over the endless fields of whitecap mushrooms, alongside a strange, net-like variant he hadn''t seen before, handfuls of cave spiders scuttling over webs on numerous pillars and outcroppings. It was far from silent¡ªbeyond the buzz of insect clouds, some underground river rumbled overhead, thundering through the stone like it was about to escape. Pretty, in the way an untamed jungle was. Even with flecks of bioluminescence and Feliu''s torch he couldn''t see all the way to the back, but already the mana was thick and strong. Plenty of life in the den. And maybe something more. Feliu''s eyes reflected gold. "It''s in here." His hands lost their previous glow and turned a soft white¡ªa base mage then, one who hadn''t sworn to a specific element. Even then an incredible help. O?a hefted her falcata. "Save the bartering for once we''re out," she said, glancing around. "Grab everything now." "Aye aye," Albo muttered, but followed after her. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. Endless stalagmites littered the floor before them, dangerous even without the slope and tripping hazard of the water-slick algae¡ªhe picked his way through the rock outcroppings, daggers raised. Feliu whispered some archaic word and wriggled his fingers in one of the bullshit maneuvers mages knew, pale light blooming from his palm¡ªcombined with the torch, the rest of the cavern crawled into view. A pond at one end, a cluster of stone pillars to one side and a raised plateau of mushrooms to the other. Albo frowned. He''d called it an untamed jungle but this felt too organized, each section neatly separated from each other. Maybe the goblins really still lived in the mountain¨C O?a cursed, swatting at her leg. An utterly massive cave spider flopped to the ground and scuttled deeper into the cave, dragging three twisted legs behind it¡ªwhere the hells had that come from? She made a halfhearted stomp in its direction, glaring at the two pinpricks beading up with amber venom on her exposed calf. "Motherfucker, that hurts¨C I thought they were supposed to be useless against humans?" "We''ve never ruled out you weren''t half orc." "Not the time," she snapped back. "Mage. Where are these scales? I want to get out of here." Feliu blinked, gold flickering through his eyes from his tracking ability. "Further in," he said, lowering his hands. The pale glow dissipated from his fingers as he switched back to only using the torch, peering towards the back¨C He frowned. Feliu flicked his hands and resummoned the light spell, white blooming between his fingers. He stabbed the torch into a clump of mushrooms and spread the glow to both hands, frown deepening as they both gleamed. "That''s odd," he muttered. "I''m still full of mana. Do either of you have any spells to test?" Albo quite cleverly didn''t look at him, glancing back around at the cave; of course he didn''t. He wasn''t even ranked at Bronze, a combination from being unwilling to be tested at a guild and his own lack of strength. If he had any magical abilities he certainly wouldn''t have brought two others to the potential for dragon scales. O?a shook her head. "Nothing here." "I''m, ah, fresh out of mana," Albo said. Feliu shut off and recast his tracking spell, brows furrowed. "I''m being replenished as soon as I use it. Are there any ley lines¨C" Light. Albo howled, hands jerking to cover his face¡ªan explosion of pure white seared through his eyes, digging daggers into his skull. O?a and Feliu cried out, stumbling away from each other; his boots skittered over algae and sent him fumbling back, hands blindly outstretched for balance. Feliu managed a warning croak. Albo furiously rubbed at his eyes, white flooding his vision in pulsing, growing splotches¡ªhe managed to fight past his blindness to see an enormous serpent, underbelly still glimmering with light, land on Feliu''s shoulders with a sickening crunch. He went down. O?a bellowed, falcata swinging furiously¡ªthe snake hugged tight to the mage and curled around his chest, Feliu stunned for just long enough it wrapped twice around him. He let out a choked gasp and clawed desperately at its scales, mana sparking and popping from his fingers. It rumbled and constricted tighter. Albo stumbled back, daggers shaking. Feliu howled and thrashed, beating at the serpent¡ªthe daze finally disappeared from O?a''s eyes, grip tightening on her falcata. Painfully slowly, her gaze fell on the mage. "Hold on," she growled, stepping forward¨C or tried to. Her legs seized and twitched, stumbling down to her knees. "I¨C" Something unfroze in his brain and he managed to reach out to her, catching her by the shoulders as she fell forward. Her eyes were still unfocused, confusion sprawled over her face, falcata slipping from limp fingers. And most damningly, from the two puncture wounds on her leg, a massive web of amber veins spread under her skin. Poison. Albo stumbled back, O?a collapsing to her stomach¡ªFeliu''s movements slowed, going from screams to breaths to wheezes. White still flashed over his eyes but he could see the gleam of numerous other spiders and serpents closing in on the two dying, dozens of them. They were surrounded. He staggered away, lashing out with his coral knife. The monsters paused to stare at him, pitch black eyes reflecting the flicker of the torch. They watched him flee. Dead. They were¨C The torch gleamed, lighting up the far back of the cave; a far back where a pillar sat, carved of silver-veined limestone. Something glowed beyond, the water rippling below, but on the top sat a gem, marbled red and black. Albo''s stomach dropped to his knees. There was no way for dragon scales to pick themselves up and wander merrily deep underground¡ªbut he''d been willing to ignore that in the off-chance he could find some. No. The only way draconic energy would find itself from a corpse into a different location would be if something brought it there; or if it wasn''t dead. Like if the dragon had turned itself into a dungeon. The scarlet jewel gleamed merrily. Albo stumbled forward, followed by hundreds of hungry eyes¡ªthe heart, the core, seemed to pulse with mana now that he focused on it, sending out waves of pure magic. It explained how the cave was so full of life this far back in the mountain, the organization of the outcroppings and stalagmites, the size and ferocity of the creatures. The monsters. Something shifted in the darkness to the side. It yawned, emerging from the shadows like a mountain itself, lumbering and massive; it padded forward, shaggy fur rustling in an unfelt breeze, pale eyes lazily zeroing in on his face. It barely fit in between the pillars it walked through. The bear¡ªthe fucking cave bear¡ªrumbled at him, rising to its back legs. Even as young as it was, it met his eyes with ease, lips peeled back to reveal ivory fangs. Albo''s knives fell from limp hands. The bear watched him. A heartbeat passed and Albo laughed, curling up his fists. His heart beat like a thunderstorm in his chest. "You bastard," he said, stepping forward. Its ears flicked to face him. "Waited for me, didn''t ya? Knew I was the strongest?" That was a lie. Maybe O?a or Feliu could have stood a chance against this thing¡ªbut it didn''t know that. Didn''t need to know that. Albo was a liar, and by the gods, he would die as one. Chapter 10 - A New King Mana. Delicious, unending, ceaseless mana¡ªI had my fill and then more, vast pools flooding through my core. A welcome reprieve from the distinct lack of mana I''d been able to utilize during the invasion. The mere presence of rotten humans had torn at my control, absorbing my mana and actively using it for their own spells; I''d been able to send commands to my creatures but that had been it. With the first human she''d had no abilities of her own, nothing to absorb the mana beyond a passive pull; these were far different. For future adventurers, those with actual power and numbers behind them, I would be stripped of my control and left to just watch them enter. But that had been the same for today, and we''d seen how well that had worked out for this particular batch of idiots. Idiots ripe with both mana and souls. Souls rather full of information, little scraps and pieces of memories¡ªquite annoying memories actually, given as humans only had rather primitive eyes through which they saw said memories¡ªbut I could start to piece together the outside world, what lay in the white walls I''d only gotten a glimpse of. Calarata, city of liars, home to the Dread Pirate. All of their memories, as fractured and broken as they were, shuddered with fear of his name. Taxes, an iron fist ruling, only their greater fear of being discovered by the Le¨®ro Kingdom keeping them under his thumb¡ªbut that didn''t explain why he''d stolen my hoard. Why he''d killed me. Not that, say, finding out he had a good reason would spare him, but I was at least curious. A message crawled over my consciousness, points of awareness flicking to the one who''d triggered it. A lone spider, huddling under a rock outcropping, curled around three broken legs from the woman''s hit; the same one that had bitten the bear, actually. Ambitious little brute.
Your creature, a Cave Spider, is undergoing evolution! Please select your desired path. Webweaver (Common): Spiders are a territorial species¡ªbut this beast has ignored that and created a communal web, the work of dozens all spanning together to create an inescapable trap. Not yet a hivemind but through releasing pheromones, they communicate across the miles their webs can span, and any foe that falls to them is split evenly between the lot. Angler Spider (Uncommon): When webs aren''t enough to attract prey, this spider creates glowing orbs to scatter over its silk, captivating insects who don''t yet understand their position on the foodchain. Through the release of hormones from their thorax, they can turn the lights on or off at will, avoiding larger predators and feasting to their heart''s content. Jeweled Jumper (Common): Foregoing webs entirely, it spends its life constantly on the hunt, jumping between trees and stalagmites alike in their hunt for prey. As active predators, they ignore smaller insects and use their potent venom to take down larger prey, draining their insides and leaving the husks as a warning.
My third evolution; my mana ruffled happily as I examined all the beautiful, beautiful options. Webweaver sounded glorious and already I could imagine my ceilings and halls filled with nothing but strands of perfect silk, trapping all manners of creatures¡ªbut the issue came down to how a communal web would be, well. Less than communal if I only had one webweaver. Angler spider was certainly interesting, matching my bioluminescent theme for the first floor, but the spider hadn''t exactly been a stationary predator in the short time he''d existed. Attacking the bear, the adventurer; he was a hunter. I selected jeweled jumper. The spider shivered, a white glow diffusing over his form¡ªI pushed more mana into healing his legs, slivers of points smoothing over the breaks and strengthening the chitin. A reward for all the work he''d done. Another notification, one I had expected a bit more with how powerful the lazy creature had gotten. She''d crushed the bear and choked out the adventurer¡ªthat collection of mana alone would have been enough to push a newborn creature to evolution, let alone one of the older inhabitants of my cavern.
Your creature, a Luminous Constrictor, is undergoing evolution! Please select your desired path. Horned Serpent (Rare): To actively hunt is well below this creature. Exchanging its luminous underbelly, it instead grows crystalline horns, embedded with psionic mana as a hunting lure¡ªwhen unwarry foes follow the mana-light, their lives are soon ended. Colossal Boa (Uncommon): Growing to titanic lengths, this constrictor lurks in the shadows and strikes at passing victims. With its immense strength and size, there is little that can successfully fight off its fatal hold. Luminous Viper (Uncommon): No longer is constriction its only power. Its venom is luminous, stunning and blinding its opponents as it launches ranged attacks from its hollow fangs, as well as letting the viper mark its territory in glows that mean danger to those who understand, and attract lowly prey for those that don''t.
Even through the unconscious quiet of her mind, I felt the serpent''s pride at what she had achieved. All of the options fit her, though the luminous viper seemed a touch too proactive for her particular brand of using so little effort she enjoyed just falling on her prey to stun them. The colossal boa called to my love for reptiles, but, well. My first floor was three hundred feet long at most. If she became a species large enough to be called colossal, she''d have no chance to claim a den, let alone find prey. Horned serpent sounded like it both kept her previous luminescence while also letting prey come to her¡ªso I selected that. She hissed, curling tighter as her scales disappeared under a white glow. And then I really stopped and examined my floor. Slivers of mana drifted through the cavern, regrowing whitecaps and lacecaps squished by the rampaging adventurers and dissolving the gear they''d brought; the odd leather clothing they apparently needed to wear and pockets with bits of string and food. Little symbols were embroidered on the hems of their clothing; I frowned, puzzling it over, but the wave of mana that let me understand all languages didn''t seem to extend to the written word. Ah well. Much more interestingly, three blades and a small collection of metallic rings I remembered as money. I hesitated but dissolved them as well, picking through the exact shape of the metal''s mana; for eventual adventurers, ones strong enough to bust through stone walls, I could hide iron beneath it. Or maybe influence my creature''s evolutions with it, giving the silverheads actual heads of silver or the stone-backed toads some¨C Another message, apparently pissed at being ignored, skittered across my core.
Congratulations! You have reached the threshold for evolution. As a reward, the gods offer gifts. You may choose your second Otherworld schema and either an expansion to your mana pool or regeneration.
Every single one of my points of awareness swiveled in to face it. Evolution. It made sense that I would have the opportunity to grow on my own instead of only my creatures, even if this seemed less like actual evolution and more like a growth spurt; but oh, what a growth it was. This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it. An expansion to my mana regeneration¡ªa gift of the gods, I could have sworn a deity right then and there¡ªwith the potential for more down the road. Naming Seros had crippled the mana I needed to expand even if I didn''t regret it, though the lazy bastard certainly did his best to make me, and I¨C My second Otherworld schema? The part of me stuffed full of dungeon instincts shifted in a way almost like panic, foreign emotions flickering through my thoughts¡ªthe runes before me shimmered like light off water and changed.
Congratulations! You have reached the threshold for evolution. As a reward, the gods have deigned themselves to offer you gifts. You may choose an Otherworld schema and either an expansion to your mana pool or regeneration.
Ex-fucking-cuse me. I jabbed a spear of mana at the message; it wavered, words rippling, but stayed the same. The fuck had it meant by second? Was that saying that I should have started with an Otherworld schema? Something other than having to actively claim the first creature I saw as my sole protector? If Seros hadn''t been there, the human coming to investigate the corpse would have found me instantly, binding me to their will before I''d even set about my revenge¨C A stone-backed toad croaked nervously as it brushed against a stream of mana I''d unconsciously sharped to a knife''s edge, inching back into the den it had tried to emerge from. I gritted mental teeth but let my grip on my mana go, fading back to its habitual haze throughout the cavern. Alright. I could focus on the bastardly thieving gods at a later point; I would accept their incredibly appreciated gifts now. Mana regeneration first. I pressed my control into that option. Snap. I was only faintly aware of my connection to the Otherworld, a vague presence that pushed pure mana up to my control¡ªI selected regeneration and felt something tear deep in my heart, flaying feeling and sensation away in an explosion of mana. I barked and kicked but it wasn''t like I could escape myself, helplessly thrashing as the rift within me widened, mana flailing about my cavern. Blessed fresh, pure mana. I could have purred, once I actually stopped acting like a kicked hatchling and calmed down. Raw mana, tamed and rich with potential, flooded through me like a proper wave instead of a trickle; my core proclaimed its new holdings proudly.
Dragonheart Core
Mana: 21.2 / 25 Mana Regeneration: +0.9 per hour
Patrons: None
Titles: None
Gods, it had tripled what I''d had before. Tripled. Already my mind ran with ideas for my next floor; with more mana I could control more floors, building actual traps and deceit, wrong paths that led straight to death and the entrance to the next floor hidden in some unassuming corner. Evolving my creatures had taken some of my mana but I was still insanely full, and carving away at stone took so little. I rumbled, gathering my mana closer around me. Focus. Prodding the original message, another wave of information flowed through me, bright and tinged with Otherworld mana:
Please select an Otherworld schema: Firetail Fox (Rare): Born half fox and half elemental, this wiry creature has no fear of environments or predators. Spraying sparks from its tail, it runs faster than the eye can see and sets forests ablaze in its wake, fireproof fur allowing it to feast on its prey as they burn. Ironridge Crab (Rare): Hunters often specialize¡ªthis creature specializes in all. Boasting massive claws for both defense and offense, it gathers ore from seafloors to build up its shell as an impervious shield and for ramming opponents. Lesser Harpy (Rare): Beings cursed in their pursuit of immortal life, this twisted descendant soars through the skies in search of prey to fill its insatiable hunger. Its humanoid face fools prey into letting their guard down before its claws rend heads from their shoulders. Kobold (Rare): Diminutive and weak, this ancient offspring of a once mighty race still dreams of the day it was feared. Though it lacks in terms of physical might, it uses a primitive intelligence to hunt in packs, worshipping the dragons they descend from and willing to do anything to regain their lost strength. Oceanic Slime (Rare): Water bound together by an immense mana-gem, this patient predator disguises itself as a massive body of water, attracting all manners of prey. Because of its biology, smaller creatures can swim freely through its body, fooling larger creatures into trusting its waters, a mistake they can only make once.
Holy shit. Okay. Listen. Seros was great. Dangerous right when I''d found him and only getting moreso, especially with his new evolution; but he was still a mundane creature. A decent Bronze adventurer could take him out with a well-placed hit, let alone one strong enough to earn a higher rank. If I had started out with an oceanic slime, slipping safely into the cove away from all humans and burrowing away from merrows; or a lesser harpy, lofted away to the peak of the Al¨®mbra Mountains; safe to plan revenge. I gritted mental teeth. No sense in wondering over what could be. What did I want my next floor to be? Immediately the harpy called to me¡ªunderground I could still have water but flight would always be another love, soaring on wings and currents high above the world; but while my mana regeneration was increased, I thoroughly doubted it was enough that I could build a floor where there would be anywhere close to enough room to fly. It tore at my heart, but I moved on. The firetail fox seemed the size that would fit well into my ecosystem, fed by toads and snakes, but I wanted a water-themed floor for my next. Not necessarily one a half fire elemental would fit well into. I would merely have to hope that these choices would still be available the next time I reached my threshold for evolution. Oceanic slime, ironridge crab, kobold. For the first, I imagined it was only an Otherworld schema because of how specialized it was; slimes were common all over Aiqith but mostly in their base forms, various materials bound together by a mana-gem. Ones reaching this size would be nearly impossible to find if not in a dungeon. Which I was. And it fit the water theme I wanted, even if I didn''t fully know what I wanted from that. But it might fit the water theme a little too well¡ªslimes were famous for having vast and varied evolution trees, but this one was almost at its apex. I couldn''t very well un-evolve one of my creatures. Ironridge crab certainly seemed a contender¡ªnot the massive size I had to worry about with the colossal boa and well prepared for the water I wanted to expand to, and being underground meant I had far more opportunities for it to find metal ore than scrounging on the seafloor. Balancing offense and defense was certainly something I needed; most of my creatures relied on hiding and striking from the unknown, but as I continued to dig deeper, that wouldn''t be possible forever. Certainly an option, even if I worried about its combat effectiveness¡ªcrabs were fiercely territorial once they reached the brain capacity for original thought, in the way that I couldn''t afford my current predators being. And then the kobold. Their description didn''t exactly inspire fear, and what scraps were there were further lessened by the fact I had been a dragon¡ªI remembered the sniveling, groveling little packs lesser dragons would keep around for whenever their ego got too bruised. Idiotic, cowardly rats¨C When raised incorrectly. They had intelligence, though primitive; they had pack dynamics, though small; they had drive and grit, though they were so far from their goal. Kobolds were also found in Aiqith as natural-born rather than from a dungeon, twisted descendants of mighty ancestors and commonly regarded as fodder for adventurers looking to reach the fabled first rank of Bronze. But they could be more. Certainly if anyone was going to get them to the top, it would be me. And, well. I was still a dragon at heart. I selected kobold. Knowledge punched a hole straight through me. I would have gagged if I could¡ªwhen I stripped other creatures apart to learn their schemas I did it slowly, carefully, peering at their build and mana. The gods¡ªwhichever sociopath was involved with the messages¡ªsimply ripped my awareness open and shoveled kobold into the crack. I spat out a blast of oddly scale-shaped mana to clear my mental taste. Bleurgh. The schema settled through me, rising easily to my command¡ªbut I held off. I''d survived this batch of adventurers by having them enter my cavern unawares, getting far enough in I could take them out; I couldn''t easily do that if they saw a draconic humanoid wandering around the mushrooms. I would create my first when I had carved out the second floor. And speaking of¨C Quietly, almost escaping my notice, the soul-connection I shared returned to life. My points of awareness swiveled back just in time to see Seros emerge from his mana-haze evolution. Gone were the rough, pebbled scales¡ªnow he was sleek as a fish, a beautiful blue-green with iridescence catching on every edge. Frills had sprouted over his limbs and back, muscular tail now lined with two pale green fins, even the bare beginning of silver horns sprouting over his eyes. Where he''d once been stocky and broad at six feet long, he was now a lithe predator at near ten, gills rippling between the scales of his sides. Little bastard felt my awe through our connection and preened, flashing ivory fangs. His power quickly swept through the rest of the cavern¡ªserpents raised interested heads from where they''d curled up to sleep, toads retreating further into their dens. Even the cave bear, though still taller than Seros, stopped gorging himself to lower his head. A right little king. I couldn''t have asked for a better guardian. Seros rumbled, voice properly deep and powerful now, and started to make his way towards the pond with its flashing silverheads, no doubt famished by the strain of evolution. I sent a burst of disagreement to him. No need for him to try and squeeze his way into the narrow stretch of water. I gathered my mana about me, glaring in the darkness behind where my core rested. In my next floor, he''d have room and more to feast. Chapter 11 - Reawakening Halfway through gnawing my way deeper into the mountain, I ran face-first into something different. I stopped, letting my mana relax around me¡ªusing it for too long was like overusing a muscle, my vague sense of it strained and stiff. After what I could estimate as hours of digging, it stood to reason I''d be tired. But there wasn''t time to worry about that, because what I had come across was not rock. Well. It was, but it hadn''t always been; some type of fiber, fossilized for untold centuries, entombed in the stone. I prodded it with a spark of mana. Pale and twisting, it sprawled over the limestone like the veins of some monstrous creature, digging deep into every surrounding section of rock. I shifted my thoughts to careful little claws and tunneled around the fossil, freeing it all to the open air; it stuck out from the limestone like pale fingers extending from the dark. But when I brought my mana closer to examine it, I accidentally dissolved a bare sliver from its further point. I knew fossils¡ªin the Ilera Sea, there was a hidden trench that only the strongest creatures could swim to the bottom of, surviving past the crushing pressure and dead water to find all the others who hadn''t managed to survive. Mostly smaller fish, bones embedded in the stone they had died on, but I remembered venturing there as a younger dragon and seeing the skeleton of the greatest being to ever dominate the sea. Nearly two hundred feet long, armed with enormous jaws and fangs to cleave kingdoms, built like a crocodile but superior in every way¡ªit had been humbling, as a sea-drake not yet out of my venomous days, to see such a titan brought low by age. None knew what had killed them, if their preferred food of whales and dragons had run out or territorial fights had brought them low, but they were dead. And their fossils were their remains. Their dead remains. Dead for minutes or for hundreds of years, but was there a difference to me or my mana? Still three points left to my name after my endless burrowing, potentially enough¡ªI gathered it around me in great billowing clouds, tugging points of awareness away from my top floor to glare at the fossils sticking placidly out of the rock. I spared a last glance at my creatures, just to make sure they wouldn''t immediately crumble over and die without my watching presence. Seros glanced up as he sensed my gaze, paddling carefully over the rock pond that barely fit his massive new size. He kept his limbs close to his sides and tried to only guide himself with his tail, spraying water over the surrounding whitecap mushrooms. His clumsiness was endearing. You''re very temporarily in charge, I impressed upon him, earning a hiss in response¡ªSeros glanced around at the quietly existing first floor but begrudgingly dragged himself out of the pond, assuming a perch on the edge of the island. His lantern-yellow eyes swept over the floor I had appointed him guardian of. Temporarily. I still didn''t trust his particular brand of intelligence. My jeweled jumper and horned serpent continued slumbering in their evolution-mana hazes, shapes twisting and rebuilding, but they were far enough away from the entrances if any ne''er-do-wells came in. Seros would protect them. And thus I turned back to the fossil in my dungeon home, gathered my mana, and began to dissolve it. I broke off a sliver from the furthest point, less than an inch of calcified fiber, and ate the white motes of mana it produced¡ªknowledge flooded through me, intricate information about what it had been. A root of some type, much larger than from other trees, made to sit above the soil and¡­ I narrowed my focus, dissolving a little more. Made to sit in water? It made sense, if I stretched it. The cove was a very tropical location, and I could presume it had been so before this mountain had sprung up, give way for a water-adapted tree. I gathered a spark of mana, chose a random location in the massive empty room I was constructing, and recreated the pattern. White tendrils spilled out across the stone. I¨C hm. Sweeping my points of awareness between the two, I could see they were functionally similar, though mine was a bit too symmetrical for a proper root cluster; but it was still clearly a fossil. I glared at the exposed roots. I had come back to life. Clearly it couldn''t be that hard. But my normal strategy didn''t look to be working¡ªeither dead for too long or plain stubborn, both of which wouldn''t match up to my own particular level of obstinance. This time, I gathered my mana and instead of dissolving, I pushed it into the root. It shuddered, bowing under its own weight, but stayed calcified. I narrowed my focus. A full point this time, slowly threaded in like the world''s most elderly grandma. I hovered overhead and slowly pressed my mana in at different points, infusing the root with various thoughts of life and growing and curses at its unwillingness to come back; it shifted again, the tip trailing towards the ground before it made to harden again¨C Not on my watch. I shoved two entire points into its base. The root groaned, the limestone around it heaving and cracking as the fossil it had once held comfortably started to loose from its grasp, eons-old water moving under its surface and shaking off the powdered calcium. Ignoring costs I pushed more mana into it, flooding the delicate system only barely reawakening¨C Crack. The stone that had housed it shattered, crumbling away to reveal a fragile root.
Vampiric Mangrove (Exotic) Dead ages before the first sentient races, this twisted tree spreads its roots throughout rivers and canals. Using great thorns hidden under its bark, it drains blood and vitality from its victims to sustain its growth. This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
A mangrove? The roots certainly made more sense now, although I wondered how it had ended up so deep inside a mountain¨C I only had a second to celebrate before another message crawled over my consciousness.
Congratulations! Due to your actions in reviving lost mana to fulfill your duty on Aiqith, you have earned a new title!
Resurrector The dead and dying¡ªa dungeon¡¯s purpose is to bring new and reawaken the old. You can activate extinct bloodlines and recreate fossils within your dungeon''s halls.
Holy shit. Gods, I felt the title settle in place around my core, great golden rings of rune writing themselves into existence. I preened as the power settled over me, glorious new riches of mana and understanding carved deep into my being. A new title. Resurrector. The Al¨®mbra Mountains were old but this mangrove root proved they weren''t quite ancient¡ªand that meant potential to find hundreds of other fossils deep within its stony walls, creatures never seen before but plenty capable of filling my dungeon. And oh, even the chance of it sung to me; what if I could find a bone of one of the great sky-screamers, with wings so large a single movement could be heard for miles? Or a mountainback turtle, carrying entire continents on their endless journeys? Or¨C I knew I was impossibly far from the depths of the Ilera Sea, the voyage even less probable with my current dungeon-y state, but gods. Even the thought of resurrecting one of the titanous beasts I had seen in my hatchling days sent shivers down my non-existent spine. Those things had regularly preyed on dragons. The Dread Pirate would have no way to stand up to one. I''d never wanted anything more. But that was a dream for a later day; I could try and soothe myself by imagining one of my creatures evolving into it, what with my new ability to reawaken extinct bloodlines, but I had no way of guaranteeing or even trying for it. Shaking off my sulking didn''t work. Ah well. I threaded another few tendrils of mana to carve out the stone around the root, letting it sag freely instead of being constrained¡ªI probably wouldn''t be able to use this particular root unless I could find a way to transplant it, but I would let it survive for now. Unless I had enough mana to fully start building my next floor¨C
Dragonheart Core
Mana: 25 / 25 Mana Regeneration: +0.9 per hour
Patrons: None
Titles: Resurrector
Oh, seeing a proper title there sent warm spirals through my mana. I still didn''t know what patrons meant, but knowing my previous track record, I''ll stumble face-first into them when I least expected it. Maybe it involved choosing what I''d heard of other dungeons having, guardians of particular floors? But the name should have been¡ª What? Full mana? Now that I was concentrating, I could feel my core straining to hold itself together, my Otherworld connection closed off to protect myself; no more room left to fill. As strong as my creatures were I doubt they could have killed enough newcomers to give me nearly thirty points with what I''d used, unless¨C Gods, it had taken me over two days to resurrect the mangrove root? My floor. I exploded out of my focused concentration, throwing points of awareness shooting back up to my fungal garden. Maybe adventurers had come in while I was distracted or another cave bear, not a juvenile this time, had come through and destroyed everything¨C Seros blinked as my awareness burst back onto the scene, tail lashing against the surface of the pond. He managed a confused hiss past the mess of fur in his jaws. I swept my gaze over the floor, panic crawling over my core¡ªthe entrances stayed empty, luminous constrictors slithering up their pillars, lacecaps swaying in the breeze of a passing stone-backed toad. My cave bear had situated himself between two rocky outcroppings to jab his claws underneath a protective stalagmite and snatch up a whitecap that had been climbing towards evolution, thoughts ripe with hunger. He looked an inch or two taller. Normal and functioning. Not dead. My mana sagged in relief. Seros padded closer and nosed at the pillar I was on, dragging my attention back. He crooned, eyes smug, and spat whatever creature he had in his mouth before me. Little bastard. He''d been busy. I spread out my influence, dragging loops of mana back¡ªit certainly wasn''t a full picture but I could drag up whatever scraps of outsider mana remained to try and piece together what had happened while I was unaware. Something new had come in, disturbing the lacecaps, and a luminous constrictor had only been too quick to capitalize on it. Then Seros had claimed its corpse to give to me. Thank you, I pushed to him through our connection, earning a hiss in response. His thoughts were smug. As they should be, if I was being honest with myself. He''d done exactly what I''d asked of him¡ªprotect the dungeon¡ªand more, by keeping the schema for me. I idly added a mental note to give him plenty of interesting areas to swim in on the second floor. But honestly. Two days out to revive one simple little root? The resurrector title would be more useful for reducing that time and not keeping me from my dungeon more than any extinct bloodlines. The corpse was another mammal, covered in the odd, stringy hair so many of them needed to stay warm; it seemed highly inefficient but I didn''t know any other way to create them. Ah well. I dissolved it into white motes of mana.
Burrowing Rat (Common) Small and often afraid, it avoids predators by digging through dirt and stone to create burrows, using their sensitive twin tails to sense vibrations of approaching animals. They feast on anything they can find in their short excursions out of their burrows.
Huh. Its twin tails were forked, like a snake''s tongue, but could move independently¡ªthey were lined with sensors that relied on air currents, while their paws could feel vibrations in the ground. They were decently sized as well, which I hadn''t exactly been able to see when it''d be crammed in Seros'' mouth, about a foot long to match the stone-backed toads. But a new schema. It looked like another entirely prey build, full of interesting skills for my predators to test their skill against, but I could see potential in their evolution. The ability to dig through stone in a dungeon could never be ignored. But they were another useful level in my ecosystem, especially with my planned expansion to an area that could support larger creatures. I paused, reactivating points of awareness aimed at the bare space I''d started to carve out¡ªutterly massive in comparison to my last one, nearly one thousand feet long and not yet done, a bare sketch of a river meandering through. Plenty of space and options for actual aquatic creatures, as well as land for my kobolds and cave bears; the mangrove trees, even¨C Oh. Oh. Now that was an idea. Chapter 12 - Arising The last of the stone ground away to dust. I slumped, mana collapsing around me as I finally stopped carving out the second floor; all the regeneration rate increases in the world wouldn''t have kept that from taking as long as it did. Gods. Why had I decided I wanted it so big? But it was gorgeous. A full thousand feet in diameter, the circle-esque shape spiraled deep under the mountains, the ceiling carved far and away from the bottom and littered in nooks and stalactites. Hundreds of rivers¡ªcanals, really¡ªtwisted and knotted their way over the bottom, stone pillars separating sections into nearly a dozen smaller rooms, the only consistent land already covered in stony soil ripe for planting. The canals ran deep, almost twenty feet in the larger areas, and I''d threaded hundreds of smaller tunnels and dens underneath for my creatures to rest. Some of them were large and sprawling, enough that Seros could have fit if he managed to wriggle his way through the tunnel leading to him, while some were only inches from the surface of the river and riddled with jagged spikes. Only creatures willing to fight would earn those better dens, with what knowledge I''d taken from the silverhead''s schema to make perfect homes and those that barely counted. I preened at the thought. It would be a meandering river, broken into smaller pieces like the mouth of a delta¡ªI didn''t nearly have the knowledge on how to shape fast-moving water yet, so a slow but deadly threat would have to do for now, filled with all manners of creatures that I could source from within the mountain. One day I would mimic a proper oceanic floor, with riptides and undertow currents galore, but as with most of my ideas that would have to wait. I hated waiting. Seros hissed as my points of awareness floated back up to the first floor, snapping down another silverhead¡ªhe''d been patient as I''d finished up what I''d promised as his new hunting grounds, but I could see his restraint rapidly eroding away. Fish that were only half a foot long compared to his near ten wouldn''t ever satisfy him. Both in the nutritional sense, and the sheer love of the hunt; he wanted prey that could actually put up a fight. Could actually challenge him. And oh, I was going to deliver. Keep back, I instructed him, gathering my mana. Only five or so points to my name, fed both by the Otherworld and the constant hunting of my many predators, but it would be enough. I slipped slivers of power between the cracks in the stone. The river thundered overhead, racing down over the side of my walls and continuing deeper into the mountain. I pushed my cloud of control out further, settling at the base of the water, and dug a narrow shaft underneath. It immediately filled with water. Oh, this would work. I dug dozens more, filtering away from the river in narrow stretches of water¡ªI paused, then combined them all into one large tunnel, maybe five feet in diameter. If I wanted aquatic creatures, I couldn''t ask them to politely flop their way through my first floor and make their way to the canals below. I''d just give them a route directly to the second floor. A third entrance, then. My dungeon instincts prickled uncomfortably at the thought, too many openings for adventurers to rampage their way through and attack me; but this was a hole tucked away under the base of an underground river. It was unlikely at best that a human would go through all that effort just to skip a small room filled with mushrooms. Or at least what they thought was a room of mushrooms. My glorious serpents and spiders would soon convince them of that folly. Still. I refused to let myself hesitate as I dissolved the wall between the first room of my second floor and the tunnel of water. It rumbled, spilling through the carved pathways I''d laid out. Seros raised his head at the new sound, tongue flicking out curiously; my luminous constrictors with their lack of anything resembling decent hearing carried merrily on murdering but my spiders and toads all stopped what they were doing to search, glancing around. The cave bear continued eating. He truly was a juvenile. But for now, I would sit and wait, letting my second floor fill with water as I focused on my second task¡ªif I wanted a proper mangrove forest, I would need light for them to grow. Maybe it hadn''t been such a waste to imbue my algae with bioluminescense. - Two hours later, I could admit I might''ve gone overboard with how much I''d carved out. Barely a foot of water sat throughout the entire floor, not even filling the bottom tunnels and dens, and it already looked like it would be days until I could even try to call it full. I''d already dug out an outflow near the back room where I''d planned for my core to go, reconnecting it to the river so that my room wouldn''t overflow with an excess of water, and covering the ceiling in a mass of glowing algae. Everything was washed with a hazy green glow, filtering through all the cracks and lighting the place up not quite to an outside level but enough I could trust they would grow the mangroves. Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel. It would limit my ability to have mushrooms, but ah well. I could find nooks and crannies for them. But the entrance was open and even with only a foot of water through the floor, several silverheads swam merrily through the stream available to them, struggling through too-shallow sections with nary a thought between the ten of them. The bare sparks of life already sent warm thoughts spiraling through me, getting to see my floor used and properly appreciated. Speaking of. I spent my last few points of mana to plant a dozen mangrove seeds, lacking any more to actually grow them beyond a few inches; I would wait until I had enough to bring them to their proper height, but I was curious if they would grow on their own in my mana-rich environment. They were beautiful trees, really; thin and wavering at their current stage but already doned in a wine-red bark, sprouting pale white leaves. White? I swiveled a few points of awareness in; huh. Pure white, ruffled and shaped like a collection of spikes. Maybe plants had been far different in the olden days. But either way, I had a proper grove building up, separated into dozens of rooms to properly confuse and entrap any adventurers that dared to venture into my halls. All I needed now was creatures to fill it. I shifted back to the first floor, peering at all my various inhabitants; I could admit my not-quite failure here, at least. What I had created was a resting point for my creatures, a place where they never had to struggle for anything. Dragons didn''t subscribe to that particular line of thought. So instead I pushed myself into all of their insipid little minds, brandishing faint pictures of my second floor. I showed them the algae-light sky above, the deep rivers and currents soon¡ªsomewhat¡ªto be filled, all the trees and mushrooms I''d be able to grow. I also showed them the endless tunnels and dens I''d carved both into the canals and the walls of the room, of the larger pockets for those willing to fight for them, of how the ambient mana on this level would decrease as I moved my core down. The last one seemed to hit them the hardest. Even my cave bear stiffened, his endless thoughts of hunger fading as he considered what that would mean for him. I got the sense my creatures had grown fat and comfortable, fed by my buffet of Otherworld mana. Not any longer. You''ll have to work for it, I impressed on all of them. Seros rumbled, pulling himself out of the pond and facing me. You too, I said, getting a vague sense of irritation but also excitement from the seabound monitor. He was already the strongest creature in my dungeon but I could tell he wasn''t going to stay comfortable with that position, always striving for more. On an idle thought, I returned a point of awareness back to my second floor, carving out a hollow behind where my core would sit. Large enough for him to curl comfortably in, padding by soft algae with a spring of fresh water trickling down the hall. A den to replace what I had taken from in, far back in the beginning. Take me down, I asked, surrounding myself in as much soothing mana as I could muster. The journey tore at my soul with jagged claws, but I endured. Mostly. Seros still had to stop halfway through the second floor to let me recover, panting and heaving my mana out in great clouds. But soon I sat upon my next throne, a great pillar of silver-flecked limestone like the one before, and already I could feel my mana diffusing out into this new environment. The floor above would still have the ambient power, enough for any creature to dine and sup like nowhere else in the world, but all they would need would be a taste of the lower floors to be filled with a hunger nothing else could satiate. And to come to the lower floors, they would need to be strong. Already I could see a few creatures staring out at the rock pond they would need to cross, to the gaping maw that stood as the descent; even the silverheads within the pond nosed hesitantly at the tunnels I''d dug to the canals below. A luminous constrictor with earthen mana heavy in its gut flicked out its tongue, a cave spider that had already doubled in size from its many hunts eyeing the darkness beyond. Come, my mana sang, and I knew they would answer. - She awoke from her mana-filled slumber. The power stayed within her. Two new growth weighed heavy above her eyes, sharp enough to hurt when they brushed against her scales as she uncurled to her new height, lidless eyes staring across the room she had claimed as her home. The Voice Below had shaped her, created her as the predator within these walls, but now¡­ She was stronger. Much stronger. Already new power came to her call, her horns thrumming with a siren''s cry of potential. One of the eight-legged beasts stopped weaving its web, scuttling awkwardly over to face her, eyes fixed on the light spilled over her head. On an idle thought she tried to activate the same mana that made her stomach glow and came up empty. The loss of her previous power ached deep in her soul. But already she could feel there was more. The beast crawled closer, eyes unfocused on her mighty fangs nor her bulk capable of squashing it with an errant flick of her tail; it came to her like she was the one filling the air with all the sweetest mana, unaware of danger or threats. In a past life, she would have curled up and let these meals march to her throat one-by-one, content to sleep and let the world pass her by. But she was now changed. Now stronger. And beyond where the Voice Below had once sat, an opening loomed deeper within the mountain. Beyond that, mana called to her with all the gentleness of an avalanche. Let her primitive siblings stay on this floor, hunting beasts with no more intelligence than strength or letting their fangs bounce off the rocky four-legged creatures that fled from their mere presence. Let them continue to stagnate, to never reach the levels she had already obtained. She wanted more. And thus the horned serpent, freshly evolved and starving, became the first to slip into the rock pond and venture deeper into the mountain. Chapter 13 - Fishfood The jeweled jumper had existed for all of an hour and he had already managed to hurl himself from one stalactite to another to avoid the rock pond and safely make it to the second floor. I couldn''t help but be impressed. He''d stayed about the same size as before, less than half a foot in diameter, but where he''d once been bulbous and slow he was now incredibly thin, many-segmented legs tipped in jagged claws and mandibles tucked close to his head. Everything about him was streamlined for speed and agility. And oh, his colouring¡ªno longer was he the barest red I could muster when I''d created him, instead a deep, rich scarlet like the brightest of rubies. Even his venom stained his mandibles red, dripping over the algae with a hiss. A proper threat. I couldn''t wait to see him in action. The horned serpent had already slunk her way through the rock pond, easily twelve feet long with sprawling, antler-esque growths over her head; they were like diamond, crystalline and impossibly sharp, less than a foot long but twisting and complex. Her colouration had darkened until she was nearly all black, only the pale white of her horns visible in the gloom. Gorgeous. She felt my interest and raised her head, flicking out her tongue¡ªI pressed soothing thoughts back through our limited connection and let myself drift away. I''d let her find her own way through the second floor. Others were soon to follow, and I wanted to give her all the competition she desired. Speaking of. In the sprawling tunnel I''d carved between my canals and the river, something other than a silverhead wriggled its way through; the web of mana I''d woven over the entrance as an alerting system sprung to life, informing me of something long and twisting making its way through. An aquatic creature. I immediately threw half my points of awareness towards it. It splashed into the first room of my second floor, to the near six feet of water that had been building up over the past day and a half. Pausing, it swung its body back and forth to examine the new habitat it''d found itself in, a maze of canals and algae I''d built up in the best approximation of kelp I''d managed to construct. It was thin and narrow, over six feet long and a dark stony green with a yellow underbelly. No scales, oddly enough, which was enough for me to place it in the same category as the moray eels I''d hunted in my hatchling days, but its sides were covered in strange pockets thrumming with mana. Maybe water-attuned, for swimming? A silverhead, separated from the two schools that had grouped up in the third and seventh room, swam before it. The creature''s black eyes snapped on its location. Lightning crackled out of its sides and fried the silverhead to death before it had so much as a moment to react. Oh. Oh. Yeah, I''d be claiming that schema, thank you kindly. I was half a heartbeat from reaching for my connection with Seros before I paused, glancing back at the eel; it finished snapping down the silverhead it had killed, exposing its oddly shaped mouth it no doubt used to hold tight to its prey as it zapped them full of lightning-attuned mana. Maybe Seros'' scales would defend against that, maybe they wouldn''t. I had no doubts he couldn''t find a way to defeat it, not with his past track record; but it was exactly because of that track record I was hesitating. Seros had always been the one to fight those that entered my dungeon, earning the most mana from the kills even if others helped out, always testing himself and growing stronger from it. The one time I had let other creatures fight, it had only taken two battles before they were evolving. A dungeon couldn''t survive off of only one monster, even if they were as strong as Seros. I let our connection drop, leaving the seabound monitor splashing through the back half of the second floor as he practiced his hydrokinesis. He would be able to grow strong if I gave him proper competition within my halls instead of relying on those from outside. Instead, I reached for my silverheads. Of the small population I''d spawned in the rock pond, only a dozen had been brave enough to swim down the tunnel I''d made to venture onto the second floor. Over a hundred others swept in by the river schooled lazily through my halls, claiming the dens the water had filled to. I had no control over them, much like Seros before his Naming, but I could still speak to them in the echo of the mana filling the floor, little nudges to guide them away from my dungeonborn until only twelve were left, swimming placidly underneath a rocky outcropping. Only my creatures would be given this opportunity. And then I snaked my way into their little minds and pressed in the image of the eel. Dungeonborn or not, they still had all the instincts of their species; they immediately scattered, hurtling deeper into the narrow tunnels I''d constructed for them. I sighed. Idiots. It''s not here, I soothed, corralling them back together. A glance back at my core confirmed I had four points left, and at roughly a dozen silverheads a point, I used three to give them a more proper school. They settled down with strength in numbers, relaxing enough to try and find some algae to nibble on. I pulled their attention back to me. But there is one within these waters. They stared blankly. Maybe this was too complex for them. I pulled up a rough picture of the eel, waited for their frantic swimming to die back down, and then superimposed it with a mental image of a school of silverheads bludgeoning it to death. At least a few of them did pause, fins wavering. Then I slapped together the most beautiful den I could imagine, placed a happy silverhead image inside, and stuffed the whole thing full of enough mana to make a creature weep. That got the idea across. Finally. The school¡ªover thirty, less than fifty¡ªhesitantly poked their heads out of the den they''d hidden themselves in, the algae-light from above bouncing off their heavily-scaled heads in a scintillating rainbow. For half a foot long, they were some of the most fearful fish I''d ever encountered. But still, they slunk out of the tunnel''s protection and headed back to the starting room of the floor. The eel finished devouring the silverhead, shifting upward to poke its head curiously into a few of the dens it passed; already it seemed content to stake its claim in my dungeon, living in an environment that suited it more than the plain stone of mountain rivers. When my mangroves finished growing and their roots extended properly into the water, it would have no easier time hunting than settling itself to hide between the roots, zapping anything that passed and feasting as it pleased. If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. Not if I had something to say. The school of silverheads finally entered the first room, the water rumbling overhead as it continued to slowly fill up the canals. They hovered, waiting for another to make the first move; but my mana sang sweet promises of dens and power. It wouldn''t be long. Finally, one of the silverheads who''d made the plunge and abandoned the relative safety of the rock pond darted forward to slam its armoured skull as the eel turned. Safety in numbers; the others swarmed to follow, tails kicking out clouds of bubbles as they threw themselves towards one of their greatest predators. The eel warbled, thrown back from the first hit but able to twist around¨C I could see the pockets on its sides glowing, its lightning mana recharged by its meal. The silverheads continued on. Electricity¨C light exploded between the two but the eel wasn''t ready for a school this size, its strongest blast already wasted on earlier prey. A few silverheads fried but others merely drifted to the river floor, stunned and twitching, others bullheadedly throwing themselves forward. They slammed into its side with a crunch. The eel had no scales to soften the blow¡ªit went flying back, tail thrashing. One silverhead had nicked its sides with teeth and hazy blood bloomed between the silver mass of fish; some of their eyes flickered red, something awakened. They threw themselves back with renewed vigour. It whipped around, lightning sparking at its sides¨C but it wasn''t meant to use so many charges at once. A few more silverheads faded out, stunned or struck by its massive tail, but the rest exploded forth, slamming into its side again and again and again¨C One more hit and the eel fell, thrashing, and went still. The silverheads¡­ not quite cheered, but definitely celebrated, swimmingly wildly overhead as its corpse drifted down to settle on the river floor. They had been victorious against what had plagued their previous lives¨C the old eel had grown fat and lazy until the pretense of its own power. My dungeon had no place for those that didn''t work to improve themselves. I pushed calming mana into those that had been only stunned instead of killed, pulling the knotted threads of lightning out of their own innate loops; I stored the pattern of the lightning, already my mind running wild. Earth-attuned from the toads, whatever psionic abilities the horned serpent had, and now lightning; I could finally start developing true, proper traps for those that wished to invade. I was positively giddy. Nothing excited a dragon more than progress, and oh, I was finally beginning to make some. I pushed apologies through to my silverheads but tugged the corpse away from their gnashing teeth, letting them focus on the mana they''d absorbed from the kill; the eel hadn''t given any number to be too surprised at, maybe as much as an old luminous constrictor, but already its soul spoke endless promises for other creatures in the deep rivers. I dug through its memories and found glimpses of finned sharks overhead, sand-burrowing crabs, even salamanders that glowed an unworldly shade of pale blue¨C For a later date. I dissolved its corpse, picking through each level of its being to find what schemas it could offer me now.
Electric Eel (Uncommon) Using lightning-attuned mana, this silent predator lurks unseen in murky water or overgrown foliage to wait for its prey to swim closer. Its attacks are short-ranged but there is no escaping, and thus it feeds on whatever it pleases.
Glorious. Already I could see exactly where it would fit into my budding second floor, not the apex predator of the water but a hidden threat, never what those living in the canals would fear most and thus always being the one to catch them by surprise. And to any humans who wished to avoid the predators of the land by making their way through the water, well. I had only started to drift away with wonderful thoughts about the Dread Pirate exploding into lightning when a light skittered over my awareness, blooming from within the river. I poked a point of awareness back down the silverheads and found them glowing. Glowing. Gods, how many evolutions had I lost by letting Seros deal with all the invaders?
Your creature, a Silverhead, is undergoing evolution! Please select your desired path. Armourback Sturgeon (Uncommon): This creature has grown tired of a life as prey and forgone fear entirely¡ªthough it starts off small, its scale plating grows so thick that nary an attack can damage it, allowing it to grow exponentially, unfazed by mortal worries. Electric Silverhead (Rare): If you can''t beat them, join them. This creature has grown an actual head of silver, and this highly conductive metal allows them to magnify an electric eel''s lightning mana, far increasing its lethality. Collecting in schools that serve under an eel, they feast on the remains of the prey they take down together. Silvertooth (Uncommon): Using numbers over size, this creature gathers hundreds of its fellows to create massive schools, swimming peacefully until their blood-frenzy is activated. It will only calm down once its prey is dead, ripping ecosystems apart until their hunger is satiated.
Now this was what I was talking about. True, proper predators to fill my canals, as well as the sturgeon for a prey Seros could get behind¡ªI angled a glance at the glowing silverheads. Seven, all of them originals that had come from the rock pond, and¡­ I muttered a curse. Only two breeding pairs, and just about all of my choices were the type of creature that needed a large population to succeed. It wasn''t like a single silvertooth would be all that effective against something like an electric eel. I narrowed in my focus, examining each of the silverheads; two were those that had been stunned, still twitching erratically as they picked themselves back up from the river floor. Not cowards but certainly not victors either¡ªI selected electric silverheads for them. The other five were mixed; one was a fierce little brute still scouring the rest of the available canal as if another predator lurked nearby, eyes still faintly red. She would make a fine silvertooth, and her mate, well. He wasn''t anything special but she would be the star of the show anyway. The other two, both females, would be her support. The last silverhead swam cautiously near the bottom of the river, flicking his fins in tight, nervous little circles to avoid stirring up the water too much. He had still charged alongside his fellows but I doubted he would have done so alone, and certainly not to the degree I would have found impressive. But still. He had gained enough mana to evolve; I''d free him of his apparent worries. I selected armourback sturgeon. All seven glowed a pale white, drifting down as their subconscious raised to the surface; I hoped that their evolutions would take significantly less time than my previous had, given their rather primitive size and temperance¨C Thunk. Something else fell through the tunnel to my second floor. The non-evolving silverheads scattered, their victor''s high disappearing as fast as it had come in the presence of a potential new predator¡ªI shaped various water currents to tuck the glowing few safely away in a den, to rest until they''d finished their transformations. It would be just my luck to have them killed before they could evolve. Much like the electric eel, the new invader paused upon arrival, glancing around at its new environment. Unlike the eel, this wasn''t even a fish¡ªit stood nearly three feet in diameter, stocky with heavily scaled limbs, with an enormous shell cradling its sensitive back. A turtle; and one glance at the jagged beak it called a mouth was enough to tell me in no uncertain terms that this was one of the snapping variants. On its shell, however, numerous mosses and algaes bunched together, streaming off its back like threadbare wings; they wavered and danced in the river''s current as it padded around its new space, growing directly from the beast''s shell. Huh. I''d made the first room''s canal only have six or so feet of water, as compared to the near twenty of the later ones, and so it was full enough the turtle was able to scramble its way up to dry land¡ªthe mosses and algaes over its back hardly seemed to care at the difference in environment, puffing back up in the fresh air. Some kind of symbiotic relationship, then. I narrowed my points of awareness in. Seros probably could kill it, but I''d already made my promise with the eel; my other creatures needed something to prove themselves against. He would rest for now. The snapping turtle lumbered deeper into my second floor, hunting for a den to call its own so it could continue to sup on my mana. But it was on land, and I had an untested schema I was very interested in seeing how it performed. Once I had enough mana, it wouldn''t be so free to wander. Soon, I called. It didn''t react. Bastard. Chapter 14 - Berserk The mangroves rustled, stretching higher to their faux sky; in only a day of my mana-rich environment, they''d grown to nearly three feet tall, roots thickening and inching their way into my finally full canals. I kicked up a slight breeze to watch their white leaves dance and shake against the backdrop of their blood-red bark. Ethereal, I could say; one glance and some part of my heart knew that they weren''t from this age, born long ago and only brought back by the actions of some bright and bold creature. Me, of course. The title of Resurrector still sung a merry tune in the back of my core. But now, with the second floor properly full of budding vampiric mangroves, tangled tunnels and canals a-plenty, and the scant few creatures who had deemed it safe enough to venture below, I could finally spawn the schema I had been so desperately awaiting. Seros raised his head from the den I''d carved for him, languishing around the base of my pillar with the tip of his tail dangling in the river. Be on guard, I instructed him, and chose one of the closest rooms; its canal was narrow and twisting, deep enough to drag some unwary fool under, but left plenty of land for terrestrial creatures to roam and make den. Which I very much planned my newest arrivals to do. Gathering my mana, I set about making them. Halfway through my first, I earnestly considered waiting longer¡ªeven with my heightened regeneration rate and the steady stream my creatures provided me, I''d only gathered seventeen points of mana in-between guiding the mangroves'' growth and seeding smaller creatures throughout the second floor to jumpstart the ecosystem. Five bloody points later, a diminutive creature opened dark eyes and straightened up in its new home. Less expensive than the juvenile cave bear, at least. I guess. It was short, maybe four feet tall from claw to horns, but its seemingly permanent hunch left it just above three. Scales of dull, pale red covered its body, its horns and claws the rough-hewn grey of igneous rock; ugh. Fire-drake descendents, then. Better than the whimsical, idiotic moon-drakes, but not by much. It blinked, awkwardly clasping and unclasping its claws as it adjusted to its new body¡ªher new body, our liminal connection told me. Her mind was soft and unsure, still coming to terms with her brand new existence, but already I could see that was where her strength would lie. Her horns were short and curled back, useless for ramming, and her tail was a mere stub that barely came down to her digigrade ankles, no way to use as a weapon. Even her claws were wide and flat-tipped, like an engraver''s tools left in an ocean current, worn dull by time and water. It would have to be traps. Hello, I pushed over our connection, taking my sweet time to not overwhelm her; she still stiffened, the spines over the back of her head rustling like they wanted to raise but not quite sure how. Welcome. After a moment, she opened her fanged little mouth and warbled an answer back, something¡­ almost draconic but lacking any of the actual bite the pronunciation so desperately needed. I decided to take that as an affirmative. Seemed my mana-translations only extended to humanoid languages, unfortunately. Ah well. It wasn''t like her thoughts were hidden to me anyway. I cast a point of awareness around; the snapping turtle had taken shelter in one of the rooms with the deepest canals, tucking itself between a rocky outcropping. I could sense silverhead''s mana in its stomach, resting after a hunt; but, well. I doubted it would enjoy the next hunt so well. Kobolds were creatures built around proving themselves in their desperate hunt to reach their great ancestors. I was beyond curious how this one would do. I gathered my mana and¡ª And then took another glance at her diminutive, weak form barely capable of killing a burrowing rat. Fine. Twelve points left¡ªI did so hate to leave myself empty but it wasn''t exactly like one kobold would make any threat for adventurers of the humanoid or animal variety. Their strength lay in their numbers and traps, which she had a distinct lack of the first and another lack in a way to properly set up or maintain the second. Traps were a long while off until my mangroves could provide the wood needed for tools so if she had any glancing chance of being able to kill the turtle, she would need numbers. So. More time being empty on mana. To my infinite annoyance, I was growing used to the sensation. Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site. She squawked, claws slashing painfully slowly as I wove two more kobolds into existence before her¡ªone had almost dappled red scales, darker at his limbs and near pink at his chest, the other with wildly twisting horns that nearly wanted to escape from her head. Both fire-drake descendents. Maybe I had to do something special to get actual sea-drake descendants. Certainly it couldn''t be that hard to obtain another kobold schema; any dragon worth their salt would only have to flick their tail and an army of kobolds would arrive at the foot of their hoard, desperate to serve with the only reward being a mere moment of their attention. Even I would have been able to gather some at my call. I paused. Would I? I knew that aquatic kobolds existed, though they were evolved past the base form; but surely even for those evolved I still would have been a powerful enough dragon for them to serve. What was I saying? Of course I was. I had hunted the great whales of the Ilera Sea, had gathered silver from civilizens dead long before the awakening of the sun, had swam to the bottom of the hidden trench and seen its lost dangers. Kobolds would have counted themselves lucky to even be in my presence, and I knew I was powerful enough to not need their praise or adoration, not when my only strength was warning enough to my enemies. If I had wanted any of their sniveling presences, I would hardly have needed to string the thoughts together before they would have swam their way down to my hoard. ¡­but I didn''t know for certain. The thought struck me with all the grace of a misplaced lightning bolt. And I wouldn''t be able to. Because I was dead. Because the dragon that had ripped his way up from the bottom and claimed his territory was now just some trophy in a pirate''s bedroom, the claws that had cleaved thousands of lives from bodies carved down into swords, scales plucked from the skin they had once protected and woven into armour for the being that had killed me. Because I had been him but now I wasn''t and there was nothing I could do. Danger had kept me focused in the beginning. It was easy to lose myself in fiddling with mushrooms that didn''t kill and snakes that didn''t listen because there was always the thought of adventurers finding me, of the Dread Pirate returning to finish the job. That had kept me focused. Unconcerned. But in staying focused, I had lost the only remnants of who I had been. Where was my corpse? I had been right next to it¡ªinches away from what I had been, what I had grown up to be; and my new title showed me that I could bring things back to life. Could I have shoved my soul back into my body, reawakened myself from an impossible death to rain fire and hell upon the city? Could I have stopped this whole mess from happening? I would never fucking know, because I was dead. The three kobolds, from where they had gathered to warble and croon at each other in their strange half-language, paused and glanced in my direction¡ªsome part of me could feel my mana sharpening to a dagger''s point, my floors trembling as I latched deep into the mountain that had trapped me in what had so far been a willing prison; because I hadn''t tried to escape. Hadn''t tried to understand the soul magic I had undergone when I''d torn out my heart, hadn''t wondered why or refused to do what my instincts had said. I had been a good little dungeon core, doing everything needed of me. Because I was dead. What fragile hold I''d had over my constraint snapped. Only two points of mana to my name but I raged with them nonetheless, thundering against stone walls and hurling tsunamis throughout my canals, ripping lacecaps loose and trembling mangroves down to their budding roots¡ªthe kobolds fled, scrambling and tearing at the ground to curl inside a den, my snakes latching tight to their outcroppings, the cave bear bellowing as falling rock struck his side. Seros rose to his claws in a flash, nosing at my core with a panicked hiss; I hardly noticed. My mind focused on the one thing I couldn''t see, the one thing I had hidden from myself in the midst of my plan to take revenge; the man who had killed me. Because I was dead. I howled, and the world shook in tandem. - Nicau felt, more than heard, the rumble spreading over the cove. The hour was already late and he was picking his way back up from the docks, heading back to the alleyway he curled himself into at night to avoid any desperados roughing him up for a goldpiece he didn''t have. Another dreadful day selling pigeons to pirates who didn''t give a damn about him, about any of the others. Another day earning barely enough to stay alive. The rumble, low and howling, echoed over the night sky. He stopped, somewhere near the heart of Calarata, and glanced back to the cove; the water, mirror-black in the rising twilight, rippled like some great wave had slammed into the Al¨®mbra Mountains opposite the city. The place that Nicau knew sat an opening. An opening where four people had disappeared and never come back. His mind raced. Romei would go missing and stay so. Nicau had been the only one to mourn her, a wooden effigy carved from bone tools set adrift in the Ilera Sea, because even past her manipulations they had been friends. But she was just a pigeoncatcher; the others were not. Even if Albo was alive, he had never returned to claim his supplies, nor his position on the Diving Darling. If only one pirate disappeared, the captain would grumble, blame a whore with a knife that wasn''t paid, and keep the crew understocked. Maybe even for a handful. But if pirates kept disappearing, and soon there weren''t enough going around to replace the more important positions, then captains would have to turn to other means of filling their ships. Perhaps people they never would have considered before. Nicau waited a moment, just a moment, to see if he would disagree with himself. If he would search for another answer. And then he turned on his heels, heading back to the shore where already the taverns rang with drunk patrons greedy for gold. Chapter 15 - Those Big Thoughts I had lost the walls between several rooms of my second floor. Great heaps of stone, torn loose by my rampaging, sat huddled against the walls and ceiling I''d carved them out of¡ªone small passage of my canals had been blocked off, creating a still, flat pool with a few panicked silverheads. Two mangroves were dead and one was bleeding, the gash in its trunk spilling deep scarlet sap over its crushed roots, staining the algae beneath it. All of my creatures had fled to whatever corners they could find for themselves, even those on the first floor quiet and unmoving. I had raged until I was so empty of mana I couldn''t see, all my points of awareness shriveling away, and it had brought me nothing but ruin. I supposed there was catharsis¡ªfinally acknowledging the emotions I''d stoppered up inside for so long did remove some sort of weight from my metaphorical shoulders, a relaxation I hadn''t had the privilege of enjoying for weeks, but that wasn''t tangible. Wasn''t something I could actually feel. And the destruction I''d brought and the challenge I''d issued was. I doubted the idiotic brute in the cove outside could understand the draconic words I''d woven into my roar, but he didn''t have to. All he had to feel was that there was a massive explosion of mana from within the nearby mountains. I didn''t know the direct translation of points to the screenless power I''d had as a dragon, but I knew that the Otherworld mana was the purest I''d ever felt and all the more enticing for it. Someone would have heard my call and decided to investigate. So now that I had thrown my hatchling''s tantrum and potentially doomed my entire dungeon, I had to try and save it. Gods. I slunk out a few points of awareness, the mana I''d built up after passing out from my rage equalling nearly ten points to my name, and prodded my way around the caverns I''d tried my damnedest to destroy; the damage, while not necessarily minimal, was enough I could handle it. I''d only ripped down a few walls and destroyed some of my trees, not weakening the supports or gnawing away at the stone separating the two floors, and thus it was manageable. My silverheads who hadn''t been trapped in the new pond had barely noticed the ruckus, swimming merrily around in their lazy schools; only quakes had reached the first floor and now that my mana had diffused back up my creatures there felt safe enough to emerge, luminous constrictors poking their heads off the outcroppings and spiders repairing their webs. My poor fool of a cave bear had finally made the plunge and headed down to the second floor only to be met with this explosion, and he was rather quickly scampering his large behind back up to the safety and food of the first. I''d find a place for him eventually. Seros flicked his pale tongue out, lantern-esque eyes peering out from the den I''d carved for him¡ªI pressed soothing mana over our connection, even if the motion rang hollow. We both knew what I''d done and what it could mean. The kobolds had¨C Hm. All three had survived, thankfully, and had huddled themselves in one of the far corners of the second floor; but already the first one I''d created had¡­ established herself as the leader of the group? I paused, sending a handful of points of awareness in; she had gathered her little herd into a den not nearly large enough for them, their igneous-rock horns scrapping against the stone above. She huddled them together, warbling in their strange, kobold language what I could only guess were commands. The other two nodded in agreement. She would be one to watch, then. Already she looked to be setting herself apart from my other creatures; the other one advanced enough to be related was the cave bear, and he was a lazy bastard who cared only for my mushrooms. The horned serpent was spending her time hunting on the second floor, fooling burrowing rats into her fanged embrace, and the jeweled jumper kept attempting to take down one of kobolds to lackluster success so far. The kobold, however, was making a group. I pushed a point of mana into their little cave and expanded it, dust raining over their horns as I carved the ceiling up and burrowed little nooks and crannies for them to sleep and rest in the back; I kept the entrance small, to keep it away from the cave bear or Seros, but enough for them to scurry their way through. The kobolds blinked, glancing around¡ªthey stretched tensed muscles, tapping their dull claws on the walls like they feared it would disappear. I breathed soft, soothing mana into the room, making algae bloom over stone outcroppings like blankets and pushing fresh water to drip from the ceiling. Off you go, I urged, withdrawing my active points of awareness. I would never be able to claim kobolds followers as a dragon, but maybe I could build an army as a core. The bitterness struck me; I tried to shake it off, turning my awareness back to the second floor. It would do. I was fine with it. Really. I fled before I could fall back down the same path I had before. Adventurers were soon to come, I knew that, and thus I had to prepare¡ªmy first floor was defined for the moment, strong enough I knew it could hold itself together if I let it be while focusing on the second. I paused, swiveling points of awareness back to the rooms with the broken walls; I could technically try to rebuild the walls, but I rather liked the larger room in the midst of the others, somewhere a larger creature could build a home while leaving the rest of the floor ready for travel. Maybe I could get the bear to build a den here. Either way, I used what nine or so points I had left over to poke my way through the rubble, dissolving the larger chunks of stone that were blocking paths and healing the mangrove with the gash. It shivered when I touched it, the thorns hidden beneath its bark extending as if it thought I was a prey. Already I could see a darker streak over its roots where it had claimed the life of a burrowing rat that had made the horrible mistake of sheltering under its roots, its pale white leaves extending further up than its fellows. If the kobolds wanted wood to build their traps, they would have to work for it. I kept the pond the same, seeding a few more silverheads in to keep it stocked; maybe they would have a chance to evolve into a separate species when they were kept away from the main canals. Speaking of. One of the silverheads I had safely tucked away in a den finally let the glow fade back underneath its scales, shivering off the last of the mana it had built up in its victory over the electric eel. I could have purred, shoving away the last of my bitterness and still-not-dealt-with rage as I focused on my newest evolution; the first of the seven silverheads that had triumphed. This one was the first electric silverhead, the breeding pair I''d chosen for evolution; compared to his previous six inches, he poked his head out of the den I''d hidden him away in with a full foot to his name, impossibly sleek and even thinner than before. The scale over his head that had once been for ramming was now akin to a warrior''s helmet, growing over his jaws and dorsal fins in actual plates of silver, heavy enough his tail fin was nearly four times its original size just to keep him floating properly. He peered out at the canals swaying with strands of algae, fins flicking, before returning back to stand guard over his still-evolving partner. If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. Loyal. He''d serve an electric eel well. The others slowly finished their evolutions as I picked my way through fixing up the broken room, emerging one by one¡ªthe pair of electric silverheads swam off in search of an eel that I, uh, hadn''t created yet, laying claim to a den tucked far away under the roots of a growing mangrove. The four silvertooths emerged, already schooling; they were of a similar length, nearly a foot long, but built like proper brusiers with a wide, bulky body, their silver colouration broken up by red over their fins and eyes, and massive, jagged teeth like shards of broken glass. Already they followed the female I''d evolved first, circling around her like a tornado waiting to land. And as for what their prey would be? The creature I''d secretly been most excited about emerged from his den in a lazy, sweeping sprawl, easily three feet long and only just starting to grow¡ªhe was covered in massive, plated scales like a dragon''s armour, interlocking even over the base of his fins. His head was sloped like a shovel, built for rooting around under sand for food, and his eyes were layered with clear scales as further protection. The armourback sturgeon. Seros so far had fed himself off frequent culls to the silverhead population, occasionally going for a burrowing rat or stone-backed toad just to spice things up; but this was a proper prey for him to hunt. I would have to wait until there were enough to sustain themselves but oh, there would be no better place for my predators to gather mana than attempting to take down one of those beasts. Once I had enough. My dungeon instincts had been silent for nearly a week, now that I had reached a point where they had apparently determined I wasn''t fucking everything up; they had taught me how to kill my opponents and gather schemas, and that was it. I had no knowledge of how to go about obtaining schemas of evolved creatures but I had my hopes that it would just take their death as with my other creatures, even if I wasn''t about to reward them for evolving by immediately sending Seros in to kill them. Would it be in my interest to do so? Probably. Hells, even killing Seros would do me worlds of good to fill my halls with seabound monitors; but that wasn''t the point. This wasn''t just a dungeon. It was my hoard, my newfound reason for living; if I killed every creature that evolved why would they ever want to push themselves, knowing that maybe they could unlock a new evolution and I would just kill them for it? I wanted my creatures to feel appreciated and cared for within my dungeon. I wanted to protect them. So I would wait. The sturgeon meandered his way through the canals, ignoring the hungry looks of the silvertooths, searching for somewhere to rest; I nudged him away from the large middle room, if only so whatever set up in there wouldn''t constantly hunt him. For a later date. The other evolutions picked their way through the canals, scaring away silverheads with their much improved size to claim the best dens; I created a single electric eel, sending the wriggling mass of pure muscle off to meet with his new underlings. With any luck they''d start their proper trap setting for the adventurers. Adventurers soon to come. I pulled back my awareness until Seros could feel me return to my core, raising his blue-green head to nose hesitantly at my pillar. He was the most in-tune to my emotions, as well as the going-ons of my dungeon; he knew what I had done. What I had called to us. They''re coming, I said, and watched him curl around my pillar; behind him, the canals lapped quietly at the mangrove roots, full of small, biting fish. Above us, spiders wove tiny webs and snakes feasted on rats and toads. Our first adventurers had been unranked, weak, and unprepared. We wouldn''t be so lucky next time. - The Heart was still angry. She could feel it, being the cleverest as she was¡ªthe mana around her was brittle and sharp like birds'' bones, though she couldn''t quite recall what birds was. Something brittle and sharp, apparently. She frowned and tapped her claws together. Many big thoughts were in her head, ones she hadn''t had, but she was the only one with them. The two other scale-kin were slow and quiet, listening to her instead of their own big thoughts. They had only been happy at their new-formed den instead of wondering why. Why a den? Why there? Why not next to the Heart? Too many big thoughts. She stood up, dragging the attention of the others back to her. They were picking through the bones of the scurrying furred one she had killed earlier with her claws, sucking out the juice inside to ease hungry stomachs. Little prey for little thoughts. I go, she warbled. They nodded at her. She dropped to her stomach and slithered out, horns catching against the stone; she twisted and was free. Green-light spilled over the algae above, the white tree-leaves waving over her head. Those big thoughts remembered what it was like to hold¡­ pieces of trees in her claws, to use as longer claws? She didn''t know. But she listened to the big thoughts. One day she would break the trees. For now she hunted, ducking behind rocky outcroppings as she headed deeper into the stone, tail swishing. She didn''t like the water, she knew that, too cold and wet; those same big thoughts dreamt of fire. She had never seen fire before. Another furred one scurried across her path, ducking between patches of algae¡ªshe hissed and gave chase, claws scratching against the ground. It squeaked and ran faster, sprinting over the¨C She froze. Something lumbered out of another room, nearly up to her chest; it was covered in the same scales as her but dark green, except for one enormous scale that took up its entire back. Armour; something her claws could never break past. It stared at her with a pale grey eye. Oh, her thoughts were big but she was still very small; the furred being got away as she scampered behind a rocky outcropping, heart beating hard enough to make her tremble. Maybe it wouldn''t kill her. A second passed. She heard it exhale and begin to plod away, disappearing back into the water with a splash. She stayed hidden until her chest stopped shaking. There was a reason she was supposed to stay hidden in the den; too small, she chided herself, peering cautiously out. Maybe she would take a different way back this time, wait until she was truly hungry to start hunting. It was too dangerous. She went to the left this time, scurrying past the open rooms and the waving trees, following the flow of the water. Maybe it was time she started traveling with all three of them, safe in a group. There was no reason to go alone. Another entrance to a room she hadn''t seen before; she crouched by the entrance, peering cautiously through. A pillar sat in the middle, water on both sides; but behind it, another mass of scales. A deep blue-green, flecked with silver, again so opposite to her own pale red; she tensed. Another monster. She had to get back to her den. The monster raised its head. It loomed above her, easily twice her height, and as it slowly uncurled from its position around the pillar she could see that it was so much longer; its claws were massive and sharp, its tail long and finned, muscles enormous under its scales. It could kill her with a bite, a flick of its body, there was nothing she could do against something so big. It turned its¡ªhis¡ªyellow eyes on her. And¨C Oh. He was a dragon. Her big thoughts weren''t hers¨C they were dragon thoughts. That was why they were so big¡ªthey were made in the presence of a dragon. He was so strong and mighty, even her thoughts were empowered in his presence; empowered! Another big word, a dragon word. She wanted more. But she was so small, so weak. How could she prove herself to such a mighty dragon? How could she convince it to continue giving her dragon thoughts? What could she possibly do to impress it? She stayed there, staring at him; he was merciful, gracious, not killing her despite how weak she was. He just looked at her before returning to his rest, guarding what she had thought was the Heart¡ªbut it had to be him. No plain rock could be so powerful; a dragon ruled these mountain halls. And thus knew every creature within. Her thoughts, small ones she knew came from herself, turned back to the monster she had seen. The one so big, so armoured, that she didn''t have a chance in killing it. But if she did? She turned back to her den. It was time to hunt. Chapter 16 - Forced Charge Nicau skittered down the rocky beach, heart ringing in his ears. Technically, he''d succeeded¡ªhe''d found someone willing to go into the mountain in search of draconic treasure and not ask too many questions of him once he''d played up the lost, sad boy wanting his friend back, and that had been all he''d wanted. He fought the urge to glance back at the Bronze marching behind him. He wasn''t quite sure he liked the risks that now came with succeeding. It wasn''t like he''d asked a Gold, to be fair; but also he would have known if he was asking a Gold. They had a presence that unranked people could barely stand in, some outward expression of their power; no one truly knew the Dread Pirate''s ranking but if being Gold was anything compared to his aura, Nicau would have certainly never been able to approach the tavern. So he hadn''t messed up as much as he''d thought he had. Bronzes were technically just one rank above him, really. But still. The Bronze was perfectly capable of squishing him like a larvae if he so much as insulted her, and Nicau knew he was enough of an orphaned streetboy to perhaps not quite know the etiquette required for interacting with someone of her level. "It was this way," he tried, kicking a few pebbles out of her path with all the subtly of a stone-boar. The noon-rising sun was making him sweat even worse than normal. "Just, ah, past the docks." "How much further?" The other man whined. "Mighty Luthia has many important tasks to be completing!" Ah. Nicau had successfully gotten two people¡ªLuthia the Bronze, powerful adventurer who stopped in Calarata to unload the more illegal monster parts she gathered on her journey. The tavern had whispered about how she was attempting to reach Silver, where she could officially claim a title and have the High Lords of the Le¨®ro Kingdom start to squabble over who could pay her enough to join their teams, but she still had a ways to go. Powerful, strong, fearless. And her lackey, Gui the unranked. "You don''t speak for me," she said, voice bored and monotone. Gui blinked, head cocking to the side. "Was I?" She didn''t bother with a response. "Lead the way, boy." Nicau didn''t have a rat''s chance of figuring out what was going on between them, and as Gui continued to try and both speed up their travel and convince them to turn back, he found he really didn''t care. He led them over the hump of crumbled rock from the dragon''s fall, the endless rain of the jungle already sweeping the sand clean of blood splatters and twisted shrapnel; beyond that, hidden from Calarata''s gaze, stood the gaping maw of the entrance deeper within the mountains. It might have been his imagination, but it seemed larger than when Romei had disappeared into it, when Albo had managed to squeeze inside. He didn''t know whether either of them were still alive. Nicau didn''t know whether he wanted them to be. "They went in here," he whispered, hugging his arms closer to his chest. It helped his case he didn''t have to pretend to be wary of the entrance. "And they haven''t come out since. Please, if you can find my friend¨C" "Mighty Luthia never fails!" Gui said, chest puffed out for her. "Whatever brats you lost in the mountain will be right as rain once she''s done with them." Luthia hummed, peering into the darkness beyond. Her pale hair matched the sand beneath her feet, skin copper under the sun, eyes dark and focused. She wore only a casual shirt and pants, though still with two short swords slung over her back and wrappings over her ankles and wrists; a Bronze always had be prepared for something, given the life of danger they got their strength from. Gui had a full shield and spear strapped to his back, fiddling with a dagger on his belt. More prepared than Albo and his crew, but hopefully they would fall prey to the same monsters the others had found. Luthia traveled aboard one of the merchant ships that frequented the area, and Nicau knew he would vastly prefer finding employment on those versus with pirates. He had no taste for killing. He grimaced. There wasn''t any other word to describe what he was doing here. "This is where the mana came from," she murmured, eyes narrowing. Of course she would have felt it too¡ªNicau had no doubt that his pleadings for her to find his friend had only been a fraction of what had convinced her in comparison to the energy that had exploded out from the mountain yesterday. He had just been a guide to the right location. "And you''re sure this is where the dragon fell?" Luthia asked, fingering the hilt of her leftmost sword. Nicau bobbed his head with all the pent-up energy of an idiotic pigeoncatcher. "Yes, yes¡ªit must have dug out this hole when it landed, and some of its scales fell inside." He dragged his shoulders up for a miserable sniff. "Romei just wanted a chance to be on the Dread Crew. We knew that if she found enough scales¡ªor even something more¡ªshe''d have a chance." Luthia''s eyes flashed. No one could resist the siren''s call of the ruler of Calarata. She crouched¡ªgods, she was like seven feet tall¡ªand braced her arm on the roof of the entrance, glancing back at him. "I''ll find her," she said, and disappeared into the darkness. Gui threw himself in after her, already fumbling his spear out. Nicau exhaled. He waited until the ringing echoes of their descent stopped, only the quiet crash of the waves behind him audible, and turned to sit on the boulder resting by its entrance. It would be afternoon before long, and night after¡ªhe would wait. Maybe this time they would survive. - I hated being right. Less than a few hours after I''d helped guide my new silverhead evolutions to their new positions in the canals, floors still trembling in the wake of my roar, the rumble of footsteps had reached my points of awareness I''d stationed by the cove entrance. Fantastic. I wrangled the ambient mana diffused through my dungeon, tuning it to awareness and vigilance; my various creatures raised their heads, peering towards the entrances in their many-faceted eyes. I didn''t ask for violence, though; not yet. I needed to see who was invading. A woman appeared just outside of my dungeon; she carried two short swords like extensions of her arms, rustling at her sides as she peered into the fungal garden. Her pale hair shone where her eyes didn''t, skin bronzed and teeth uncharacteristically sharp for what I thought humans had. Still outside of my awareness¡ªtake just a step closer. She did. Holy shit. My mana bristled like a spooked cat¡ªI didn''t know the exact rankings for humans but already I could sense the power in her, flowing through her currents like molten stone. Not Gold, certainly¡ªmostly because I knew damned well I''d be dead if a Gold invaded this early¡ªand not quite whatever was below that, but one step lower. Certainly higher than the last group that had challenged me. A man inched in after her, brandishing a massive shield with what I thought was a lake engraved on the front, a spear''s head poking around the right side. Much less powerful than his companion, if the sluggish ripple of his mana channels said anything. "Mighty Luthia," he hissed. "Should we¨C" "Be quiet," she snapped. He did. Mighty¡ªor was her name Luthia? I had a vague recollection that Mighty was a title¡ªswitched to holding both of her swords in one hand, raising the other to gently press her fingers to the hollow between her eyes; something flared and her eyes gleamed gold, light blooming over the floor. My mana burbled, caught in an invisible whirlpool, and merrily tugged itself out of my control and flooded towards her. Gods. Hated that little detail. No point in keeping mana on hand when adventurers could use it all for their own spells. "Below us," she finally said, dispelling whatever spell she''d whipped up. "There''s an entrance in the far back." "Do you think scales?" He murmured. She snorted. "Not a chance. The boy is an idiot¡ªhe saw the dragon fall and thinks that''s all there is to it." She swept her gaze over my first floor, fingers drumming against the leather-wrapped handle of her short sword. "No, there''s something else here. That mana wouldn''t come from stone-wyrms or goblin-hordes." I wrapped mana in a soothing balm around my core. There it was, then. Confirmation of what had drawn them in¡ªalongside whoever this boy was, leading people to my entrance? Bastard¡ªthey had felt my mana, and wanted more. I stiffened my resolve. Time to protect what I had ripped apart. My creatures stirred, awakening in the presence of new prey. Luthia switched her swords back to two hands and started her march forward, swinging the blades in front of her like an anglerfish''s lure¡ªlacecaps stuck their sappy nets to the wrappings around her ankles and stone-backed toads froze, desperate to keep from being noticed, but she was undisturbed. No one yet risked being the first she attacked. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it. The man behind her, though. He had a spear and a shield, both of which I was rather interested in dissolving to see if I could learn how to recreate a new type of metal, but was also infinitely more wary than her¡ªhe kept peering out from behind his oversized defense, fumbling the shaft of the spear against his legs. The two of them looked similar, at least with their pale-gold hair and dark eyes, but their combat experience was leagues apart. I could use that. A cave spider, scuttling on the underside of a rocky outcropping, inched closer¡ªwhatever part of its brain that registered thought had lost all traces of originality and sought to follow the same path as the jeweled jumper before it, dropping from the ceiling on a thread of silk. It aimed itself at the man''s neck, mandibles flashing¨C Luthia''s sword cut it in half before it had descended even a foot. "Gui. Pay more attention." The man blinked, pulling his shield closer to his chest. "I¨C yes. Sorry." She marched on. Other cave spiders, spooked by their fellow''s quick defeat, apparently dropped their various fantasies of evolution and scuttled away to hunt for easier prey. My luminous constrictors, patient as always, slithered alongside them as they waited for an opening¡ªone I worried they would never get. I narrowed my focus in. These adventurers weren''t the slow, wary group I''d first had; they knew something was below them and wanted it. They were already halfway through and hadn''t been so much as challenged¨C The cave bear was still on the first floor. Gods, I''d forgotten about him¡ªin the aftermath of my tantrum he''d hurried back up to the safety and food of my fungal garden, and I''d been too focused on fixing my mistakes to guide him back down. Even now he was lurking in my little lacecap paradise I''ve carved out to the right of my rock pond, only vague awareness of the invading threat making it past his hunger. If they saw him now, he was dead. She would carve him to mincemeat. I took a great heaping of mana tinged with the fear-stained word hide and shoveled it into his brain, ripping past all the thoughts of food and mushrooms; he stiffened, ears swiveling to point towards the approaching duo. Even as massive as he was, he was still a juvenile unused to fighting, and she was a ranked Bronze. He was an ambush predator. The great fool paused, ivory claws carefully lowering his bulk until he was flat on his stomach. Whitecaps rustled by his nose. He closed his eyes and the vague power I knew he''d never used before surfaced, tugging on my ambient mana to change it, speck by speck, into the shadow-attuned style he could use to hide himself. Luthia hadn''t turned off her mana-detecting spell. She''d only turned it to a weaker version, one that let her apparently still see the normal world past the mana¡ªI figured that out a second too fucking late when her head snapped in the cave bear''s direction. Up! I bellowed, and he roared to match. Luthia kicked off a rock outcropping and charged, Gui panicking behind her; the bear barely managed to rise to his back legs before her swords lashed at him. He howled, massive claws ripping through the air where she''d been¡ªshe carved open his front leg and danced back. True pain met him for the first time; Albo''s fists hadn''t done much but these were real blades, cleaving fur and fat alike. He lumbered forward and swept out again. Compared to her, he wasn''t moving. Luthia leapt over his extended claws, mana exploding up her legs as gravity just apparently decided not to work and let her switch to perching on the ceiling, bracing her legs against the various stalactites. "Gui! Get over here!" She bellowed, switching her stance. The man yelped but charged after her, slamming his shield down below her. The bear roared, trying to back up but hedged in by her slices and Gui''s spear pokes¡ªhowever thick his coat was it wouldn''t protect against steel, and already blood gushed hot and heavy over the surrounding mushrooms. But they were situated towards the rock pond. Run! I shouted, and jabbed the direction into his brain; he roared, thoughts full of agony, but managed another wild swipe to clash against Gui''s shield and send him stumbling back. Luthia moved in to box him but the bear threw himself off of the plateau, bulk crashing through a stalagtite. He half limped, half charged but got himself moving, sprinting towards the entrance deeper into the mountain. And then he was gone. My connection with him splintered away, only catching vague glimpses of pain before he left my zone of control, running further until I couldn''t even confirm if he was alive. I knew nothing of his whereabouts, his thoughts, even if he was going to bleed out. He was gone. Mana spiked around the invading duo like a forest of knives. Luthia sighed, kicking off the ceiling as her spell faded away; she touched down on the algae-covered ground with all the grace of a landing bird. "Don''t chase it," she said, even though Gui looked perfectly content with doing nothing of the sort. "A baby. It couldn''t have hurt us if it tried." The gash on her arm spoke otherwise, but she had a very uncomfortable point; he hadn''t injured either of them to the point of taking them out, or even chasing them away. Both were very much still in the running. I grabbed my mana and pushed it into the surrounding creatures, urging the serpents to slither faster towards them. Luthia''s eyes flashed again. "Come along," she said, glancing around with her swords pointed at the ground. "That''s a good sign that whatever is watching us doesn''t want us to go further." I stopped. Gods, was there anything that mana-vision couldn''t see? I remembered the mage from the last group performing roughly the same manevour, eyes glowing gold and all; was it so common a spell that anyone with an inkling of magical ability would be able to tell when I tried to guide my creatures? All I could hope was that the cave bear had been so unused to using his magic he''d done it incorrectly and thus been seen¡ªnone of my creatures being able to use mana at all without being detected would cripple me beyond compare. Gui stumbled, eyes wide and white-ringed, but dutifully made his way after Luthia as they stomped deeper into my dungeon. A luminous constrictor raised its head, ready to explode into light; Luthia stiffened and shoved Gui over the rock pond. Her sword cleaved through its neck before it could even try and attack. Gui helped pull her across the pond, both casually avoiding even getting their toes wet with a little jump, and just like that they were through my first floor. I gnashed teeth made of mana in their general direction as they marched through the sloping tunnel to my second. But then they would face my maze¡ªnot a proper maze, true, given it only had a handful of rooms and not necessarily a complicated way of following the flow of the canals to find the end, but still certainly more of a challenge than the straight shot of my first floor. I darted around before they could see me meddling, waking up all the creatures meandering around¡ªthe stone-backed toads and burrowing rats were still too fearful to serve as any sort of attack and my aquatic creatures were rather useless unless they got in the canals, but my kobolds raised their head with a confused warble. Seros bared his fangs. It was time. They paused at the entrance to the next floor, peering out at the¡­ well, a bit pitiful mangrove trees, really. I''d mentally clocked them as further grown when comparing them to the diminutive kobolds but they really were only a few feet tall. Something to fix after I survived this. "Keep your guard up," Luthia murmured, eyes narrowed. "I don''t know what this is, but something is aware here that shouldn''t be." Gui seemed to have shaken off the worst of his panic, raising his shield. "Of course, Mighty Luthia." They crept forward, even taking the time for Gui to dip the butt of his spear into the canal and inspect it for poison, I assumed. Finding none, they continued along its bank, hackles raised and blades ready. They stuck to the first room, moving slowly enough to barely make shift the stony dirt beneath their boots. One of my mangroves shifted as if in a breeze, deep underground; one of its thorned branches drifted closer to the adventurer''s unwatched backs¨C Luthia stiffened, sword going wide as a sound emerged, throwing her attention to the left as a¡­ rat leapt at her? I paused. No, that was definitely a burrowing rat, roughly a foot long with its forked tails, charging furiously at her ankles with high, panicked squeaks echoing against the algae-dampened ceiling. She swept her sword but the bugger was fast enough she only cleaved through the tip of its tail, steel bouncing off the stone below. "Luthia!" Gui cried, lurching forward¡ªhis spear impaled it against the ground. The rat continued to twitch and squeak through its death throes. Huh. "More monsters," Luthia spat, bringing her blades low as she scanned their horizons¡ªand right on cue, another rat erupted from behind the wall separating another room, eyes rolling and tail lashing. She snarled and ran to meet it. Carrying her just slightly out of view of the room behind them both, where now only Gui could see. Something stirred. With a slow, methodical pride, the serpent who had hidden herself in the loops between a mangrove''s roots raised her head. A spark of mana traveled up her diamond-grey scales and her horns began to glow. The man paused. I could feel more than see the psionic mana drifting through the air, something soothing and rich; he was getting the full blast of it, eyes already losing their wary edge and his grip loosening on his spear. The horned serpent rose to her full height, horns level with his eyes, and began to hiss. It sounded almost like crooning, a song that only the two of them knew. Gui had no defense. His shield dropped with a clatter as he shambled in her direction, eyes fixed on the pale glow of her horns; she slowly uncurled from around the mangrove''s roots, her scales protecting her from its deadly thorns, and started to slithe further back. He followed her blindly, footsteps muffled against the algae, and disappeared fully from the room. And his partner''s sight. Luthia stomped on the twitching remains of the second rat and glanced back, short swords dripping with blood. "Gui?" She shouted, only to curse and whip around as another burrowing rat, driven mad by fear, charged at her ankles. Okay. I was immensely proud of the horned serpent, already pumping poison into the man who hardly seemed to notice her fangs embedded in his calf, but I really needed to figure out where the rats were coming from. I spread out my points of awareness, letting them filter through the surrounding rooms like pollen on a breeze¡ªthere. Hidden in the shadows, pale red scales crouched outside of a den of burrowing rats, the kobold owner peering through the leaves of a mangrove at the human invader. His fellow was in the opposite side of the room with her own den of rats, and the third¨C Nowhere near. I could get a vague sense that she was awake and hunting, but she was on clear the other side of the dungeon, ignoring the humans entirely. But wasn''t she the leader of the little trio? I peered into the thoughts of the first kobold, the one with the variegated scales; he hadn''t seen her since the new hollow I''d carved for them. Then I got to see him reach into the den of rats, his scaled hands protecting him from the furious little scratches and bites, and grab one. He dragged it out, the massive rodent nearly the same length as his whole arm, and promptly proceeded to shake it. Hard. After a minute, the poor rat was so confused and panicked that when he set it on the ground, aimed at Luthia, it took off in her direction with a wild shriek and attacked. Huh. Maybe they would be just fine without the other kobold. Luthia killed another two rats, but her swords were, well, swords¡ªthey weren''t meant for slamming against the ground as she tried to kill opponents less than six inches tall. She snarled, sweeping lower and lower as she tried to keep up with the numbers. The kobolds locked eyes from across the room. Carefully, the male slunk his way closer, hiding behind the protective trunks of the mangroves; he waited until Luthia turned, still unharmed but now significantly more frustrated than before, and charged. He didn''t need to attack her, to try and claw her up with the little nubs he had on the tips of his fingers; all he needed was a push. And Luthia the Bronze, off-balanced by the monsters built exactly of the wrong proportions for her to attack and confused about the lack of her companion, was just a second too late to turn when the kobold emerged from the underbrush and pushed her into the canal behind. She sunk to the bottom of the fifteen-foot-deep water immediately, bubbles shooting up from her shout¡ªshe might have even made it back to the surface if she hadn''t had the open cut on her arm from the cave bear''s attack. The silvertooths'' blood-frenzy activated. Bronze-ranked mana exploded through my dungeon, and I could have wept. Chapter 17 - A Few More Hmm. Bronze-ranked mana wasn''t what I was expecting. My creatures¡ªjust the two kobolds, really, the horned serpent was merrily waiting for her venom to kill her enthralled victim¡ªrose up to celebrate, crying out in their strange, warbling tongue. Mana flowed through them, rising strong and fast from their kill. Strange mana. I didn''t have many memories of my first humanoid kill, all thoughts consumed with Seros drowning in the river I had brought down on both our heads, and even now I could only remember the scraps of her soul and the memories that had come with it. Then the next group, where I had taken more time to split them open and truly examine what they knew; where I had learned the name of both Calarata, the lawless city, and the Dread Pirate who captained it. My mortal enemy. The man who had killed me. I took great pains to relax my mana before continuing. But from what I could remember, while they had clearly had the most mana of any creature I''d yet killed, filling me to bursting with each of their deaths, this Bronze mana was different. Stronger, in a sort of way, but not necessarily more; just condensed. Like brine in saltwater, it gathered thick and heavy at the bottom of my core, weighed down by its own power. I dragged out a tendril of it, waving it idly through the haze of my second floor; the kobold I swiped it through paused, forked tongue flickering out. His channels inhaled a spark of the mana like the finest of wines. I withdrew. Something to save for when I needed real work done, then¡ªmaybe I could use it to make stronger creatures, although that might have been a fool''s hope with the creature I now wanted to replace. My cave bear had been young, idiotic, and with a head controlled more by a stomach than his brain, but he had still been mine. I couldn''t feel him, our liminal connection snapped the moment he left my walls; but I liked to hope he was still alive. I had to imagine he would be. But at the same time, it was worrying. I still only had the capacity to hold twenty-five points of mana; I had easily received thirty alone from the two adventurers, and my core flashed in warning golden runes at me; I grimaced but released the excess five points rather than try to wrangle them under my control, letting them drift around the winners of the little duel. If I had wanted to try and create something with it, rather than wasting it, I didn''t know what it would do to my core to try and harness more than I could successfully hold. Only the unranked mana, of course. I wasn''t enough of a fool to part with my new toy. The two kobolds froze, almost shivering as power they hadn''t experienced since the old days flooded through them; the female, still holding a shaken rat she hadn''t yet released towards Luthia, let it drop as she absorbed the mana. The poor rat, squeaking and trembling, absorbed its own spark as it sprinted full-tilt into the nearest den and curled up. My horned serpent raised her head, already ignoring the man''s body as she was familiar with my normal feeding habits; I thanked her with an errant curl of the mana and told her she could keep it. There wasn''t anything I could do with the mana I would get from dissolving him, and I already knew I couldn''t claim a humanoid''s schema. Monsters were fine, somehow, even those with sapience like the kobolds; but the gods protected certain races. I had no idea what the distinction was, which races were safe or not; it wasn''t like anyone was going to tell me. Too many rules to being a dungeon, I was quickly finding. Limitations of mana, on schemas, and now apparently even for my creatures leaving my walls. Just a quick step and I could lose their mana-connection forever¨C I paused. Lose their mana, yes; but what about their soul? That still came from me. Seros raised his head as I gently nudged our connection, uncurling from around my pillar. His tail splashed through the edge of the canal. Movement flickered from the corner of the room; the first kobold, blood stained over her claws, abruptly disappeared further into the floor at Seros'' movement. Scared of being eaten, maybe? Or something. I didn''t have time to go into her thoughts now. To the first floor, I urged, pushing thoughts of the cave bear and the rough sensation of our connection snapping. The seabound monitor narrowed his eyes, pushed up to his clawed feet, and slipped into the river. If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it. Silverheads fled from his shadow as he swam upstream, his burgeoning hydrokinesis shifting the currents to aid his passage instead of tugging him back. My one electric eel, tucked carefully between the growing roots of a vampiric mangrove, called back its electric silverheads to hide as he swam overhead; already the evolutions were breeding, a cluster of eggs growing under the shade of an algae field. I couldn''t wait to see how many silvertooths I could get. The armourback sturgeon still lived an immensely carefree life, the bastard. Seros popped out of the canal in the first room, winding his way up the tunnel; the rasp of frills and scales on stone sent all my various prey-adjacent critters scuttling back to their hiding-holes, far too scared to make it to the second floor, let alone face the seabound monitor. A few stayed out, a serpent with channels full of earthen mana and a spider too dumb to know the threat. One of the stone-backed toads I''d been really quite content to ignore up until now leveled a glare as best he could at Seros, bristling up the mana-stones over his back; he was larger, much more so than his brethren, nearly large enough a luminous serpent would struggle to eat. Mana pooled deep in his stomach. Seros, still effortlessly dwarfing him, didn''t so much as glance over. A king cared little for the opinion of toads. He padded up to the cove entrance of the first floor, flicking his tongue cautiously at the darkness beyond. Neither of us knew what would happen. Not too far, I said, and knew he could hear the pleading undertone. I didn''t want to lose him, not Seros¡ªbut at the same time we needed to know. If there was a way I could venture forth into the world beyond without fear of losing everything I had worked so hard to maintain. Seros narrowed his eyes, lashed his tail, and stepped outside my dungeon. A pause. He popped his head back inside and warbled at me. Our connection was strained, to be fair, and I could no longer send healing mana nor see all around him; but our souls stayed together. I could even close off other points of awareness, focus only on the quiet song that sung between us and the Otherworld, and see through his eyes. It was terrible. I''d forgotten how flimsy and weak mortal eyes were; I far preferred the effortless omnipresence being a dungeon core granted me. But we stayed connected. I sent him soothing thoughts of relief and gratitude, taking the moment to peer outside my walls through him; nothing but cold stone, the river rumbling overhead in an ever-present thunder. No visible creatures beyond the buzz of insects looking to feast on my fungal garden. A normal mountain. No threats for the moment. My cave bear had run out the other entrance, heading deeper into the caverns in a desperate run for his life; but maybe I could still find him. I had no place for a cave bear anyways, not yet at least; I would wait to create a second until I could make an honest effort to reclaim him. He deserved to come back. For now, at least, I had well-full mana and plenty of places to use it. The second floor needed to be strengthened. - "I don''t know what happened," Nicau said, curling his hands in his lap with a quiet little frown spreading over his face. "They just¡­ disappeared." He was getting very comfortable with lying. Poetic, in a sense, that it had taken Romei''s death before he had started to learn from her. The captain of the Diving Darling matched him with her own frown, one faux silver eye flashing in the light; some kind of detection spell, though Nicau wasn''t near versed enough in magic to know what. "An'' I guess you''re the only one to have seen them last," she said dubiously. "In all of Calarata." Nicau played dumb. It wasn''t difficult. "I¨C I guess so. I don''t know anyone else that would have." She pursed her lips. "So two of my crew went missing in their mugs and haven''t been seen for over a week, and when I start askin'' around a pigeoncatcher is the one to have seen them. Any clue where?" Courage built like a fire in his belly. "I''m not a pigeoncatcher." "Oh?" "Just a¨C" he paused, wetting his lips. What was he? Certainly not a pirate, with no love of raiding; perhaps a trader, even if his only trades had been in lives thus far. He couldn''t well just say citizen. "¨Can adventurer. That''s all." She raised her eyebrows. "Adventurer, then." "And I saw them near the mountain, where the dragon fell." That finally cleared the smoke behind her eye; she sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Gods. Of course they were; huntin'' for scraps like I don''t pay them damn well to serve under me. Scuttlin'' around like a proper scavenger pair, I''d bet; the mountain cove, right over there?" She jabbed a finger at the ocean waves lapping against the base of the peak. "A little lower," he offered. "Right where the water meets the shore." She growled, flicked a copper piece at his head, and stomped off. Nicau exhaled, rubbing a thumb over the miniscule payment; gods. It was working, it really was; people kept disappearing and others were beginning to ask questions. Just a few more and he could leave behind his past, truly rise to someone of power, of importance. Just a few more. Chapter 18 - Hammerfall The first mangrove I''d made shuddered as I pumped mana into its roots, leaves bristling as they stretched to the ceiling; I didn''t want to hold its hand¡ªbranch?¡ªfor all of its growth, but at the same time I certainly wanted my unsuspecting foliage to be taller than four feet. Two points was plenty to take it from a sapling to a proper tree, its tallest leaf nearly nine feet off the ground, still nowhere near the algae-covered ceiling but now armed with many more properly thorn-covered limbs to slash with. The silverheads in the canal below scattered as its roots extended, gnawing deep into the surrounding stone for nutrients and balance; already its roots protected a stretch of the water nearly six feet across, looping over each other in massive, spiked ropes. A proper threat. I couldn''t wait until some adventurer was foolish enough to fall into my river. Twenty-three points left¡ªI shuffled around the rest of my second floor, aging up trees at random. I had far more than I was able to properly grow, but I just wanted enough that they would be able to stand for more of a proper threat. They could do the rest of their growing by themselves. I whittled away at my trees until I only had three points left, enough for something drastic if it would come up before relaxing. My newly-grown arbour rustled quietly, their bone-white leaves adjusting to their new position and twisting to catch the algae''s bioluminesence; a toad died a horrible, squeaking death as it made the idiotic mistake to try and avoid a cave spider''s web by crawling over the surrounding roots and was promptly stabbed to death. Glorious little trees. I was immensely fond of them. My second floor picked itself back up surprisingly quickly, silverheads emerging from their dens and silvertooths slowly relaxing from their blood frenzy; it would be several more days until their eggs would hatch and thus the small school didn''t have much swarming power, but they''d done their damnedest to try and break through the sturgeon''s armour. Not a fraction of success to their name, but still respectable. The rewards for killing Luthia were already flooding through the two kobolds, standing just a bit straighter, their scales just a bit brighter. Oh-so very far from unlocking their draconic heritage, if they even would at all, but I had hope¡ªthe loner still hunted in the furthest corners, eyeing the snapping turtle. I wished her all the luck. Tomorrow would bring more adventurers, I could guess, what with the mention of some little bastard guiding them to my entrance, but for today, I knew there wasn''t anything I could really do beyond let my floors heal. I would simply follow my creatures and see how they recovered. The horned serpent was still merrily sleeping off her kill, stomach swollen with the entire man she''d managed to consume¡ªimpressive, really¡ªand her channels thick and bright with mana. Gui hadn''t had any attuned mana to speak of, so nothing in particular to guide whatever evolution she could reach, but already she was well on her way to gathering enough. Her evolutions took longer than most of my other creatures, taking a full human''s mana and the cave bear before she had even evolved once, but beyond Seros she was easily the most impressive I had so far. Speaking of. My smallest evolution, scuttling and ruby-red, had been having a lovely time trying to claim the entirety of the second floor as his territory. The jeweled jumper was less than half a foot in diameter but with his scarlet venom and disregard for anything resembling self-preservation, he''d managed to wrap up quite an array of hollowed-out husks to serve as the boundary points in his territory. Just a shame his evolution had seemingly removed braincells instead of increasing them. He did have potential. His biggest contenders, surprisingly enough, were the other cave spiders called to the second floor by the density of my mana; I had only created starting populations of stone-backed toads and burrowing rats to serve as food on the terrestrial sections, every other creature coming down of their own free-will. Some intelligent¡ªcomparatively¡ªspider had woven a little pathway alongside the stalactites over the rock pond so more of its brethren could clamber their way down. That sort of communal spirit went right against the jeweled jumper''s interest. He wanted no other spider within the second floor, thank you kindly, and did his absolute best to murder them all. They kept coming, though. All creatures wanted mana and while my first floor still had plenty compared to the outside world, the siren call of being closer to my core would always bring more. Competition was good for him. The twin kobolds scuttled back to their den, taking their sweet time now that the mangroves had grown over their normal path; the male hissed and clawed futilely at a branch stretching between two rooms, but just as how his scales protected him from its thorns, his claws could do nothing against its bark. I imagined they would grow to hate each other. As much as a tree could hate. I didn''t have the same connection to them as I did my other creatures, but there certainly was something more than that of my lacecaps and algae; not yet a true consciousness, but certainly moving in that direction. I couldn''t wait. Most of the canals had been undisturbed, beyond fleeing from the silvertooth''s frenzy; my electric eel was happily settling into the new growth of a mangrove''s roots, twisting his muscular body between the thorns to curl up at the base; his two electric silverheads continued switching between staying with him and guarding their nest of eggs, struggling through the cracks in the roots with far less grace despite being a fraction of his size. They''d learn. I was counting on them being a massive threat once their schools got large enough. In the middle room, the newly made pond sat quietly, water lapping at the shores as silverheads swam lazily around their own little paradise. They were growing fat on the algae swaying in their home, alongside the occasional delectable feast of a fly that strayed too far from the top floor; I reached in and carved a very thin tunnel back to the main canals, far too thin for any of my larger threats but enough they could still escape if they so desired. I didn''t expect it for at least a long while, though; silverheads seemed just unintelligent enough that they needed outside influence to actually start wanting things. Such as evolution. I could wait. I had only just finished bemoaning how long it would take for them to gather mana when something pinged against my awareness. I paused, swiveling several eyes towards the first room on my second floor; something splashed through the river entrance, bouncing gently off the ground before drifting up to the surface. The surrounding silverheads spooked, clearing out from the deep emerald-green creature struggling its way to the top of the water, hooded eyes peeking out. A crab. This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version. It was certainly one of the larger creatures to invade my halls; while the turtle was several feet around and the electric eel was nearly seven long, this one was broad and stocky, measuring nearly four feet in diameter with massive, crushing claws extending out front. Its carapace was beautiful, the rich shade of evergreen trees or deepwater granite, smooth and not yet pockmarked by lost battles or age. Its claws stabbed deep into the ground as it pushed off, strong under their protecting armour, and even its antenna looked capable of surviving a hit or two. To put it shortly, a right proper beast. It managed to stab its front legs into the rocky wall of my canal, using its pincers to tug its way up to the surface; maybe it was trying to find new territory? I knew crabs could survive in both water and on land, but preferred land for making dens or laying eggs. The crab wriggled its way up, bulk slamming into the stone as it breached the surface; it had to weigh near twenty pounds, utterly massive for a crab, and even by watching it manuver its way up to the shore I could easily tell it had the strength to utilize that bulk. Some crabs were scavengers, often those in the sea, feeding off the dead that fell to the ocean floor. Others were hunters. I got that lovely little fact confirmed for me when the crab''s eyes swung to the left as a stone-backed toad¡ªone of the few that had managed to leap, swim, and struggle its way across the rock pond of the first floor¡ªpoked its head out of its den, croaking curiously, and promptly froze. The crab clicked its pincers. Ten legs¡ªalthough to be fair, only six that were actually used for running¡ªwere infinitely faster than four, and before the toad had even a second to try and disappear back into its den, the crab had charged over with all the grace that scuttling sideways could truly have. The toad squawked and curled up, its¡ªhis¡ªback spikes bristling with earthen mana; the crab''s left pincer, larger than its right, crashed down on his back with all the force of a hurricane and bounced off. Both of them seemed rather shaken by the experience; the crab from having its presumably flawless attack deflected, the toad from having been hit with the equivalent of a falling anvil. But the toad was used to it and recovered quickly, croaking desperately as he sprang around the crab to run¡ªbut it was only partially stunned. It clicked its horrible little mandibles and gave chase. The toad scurried, strong back legs propelling it like a misshapen missile; he tore off towards the closest mangrove, one of the largest ones. Pincers snapping, the crab pursued; I followed behind at a more leisurely pace, idly curious for the toad''s action. He was similar to my rats insofar that he had lived his life as a prey species, hunting only the small insects that posed no threat to him; how would he really react when hunted? Apparently, he would react by running directly into the thorns of a mangrove. His pebble-like protrusions on his back flashed as the mangroves in vain tried to stab him, curling up to protect his still-sensitive underbelly as he rolled under the grasping roots. He safely made it to the other side, heart racing like a war drum in his warty chest. The crab had the unfortunate symptom of never having encountered the extinct species I had so lovingly brought back to life; it ran directly over the thorned roots with no such care to try and protect its sensitive underbelly, being far too large to try and crawl underneath. It was its undoing. As strong as a beautiful emerald carapace was, it was only as strong as its weakest point. The mangrove seemed to¡­ shiver in delight as it managed to stab a thorn up the underside of the crab, needling right in the crack between two of its legs; the creature clicked and thrashed, pincers snapping fruitlessly at the roots holding it prisoner. The mangrove hardly cared; what was one root to a meal? And a large one at that. The crab''s blood, blue instead of the tree''s usual red, already started to flow up the hollow thorn; I watched with a certain satisfaction as the crab''s thrashing weakened, a purple-ish hue rising up through the scarlet bark of the mangrove. Apparently, so did the toad. He crawled hesitantly back, eyes still bulging and lungs inflating like a bellows, but some strange mixture of pride showed itself through our liminal connection; he was proud of what he''d done. Proud of trapping a predator so much larger than himself. Don''t give yourself too much credit there, pal. The crab continued to quiver and shake, heedlessly bashing at the roots despite how it wormed itself deeper onto the thorn, back left leg nearly ripped off by the pressure; the mangrove seemed to grow inches with every passing second, more blood flowing into its core, upper leaves rustling happily in a breeze of its own making. The toad continued to watch, even creeping forward to give a truly pathetic bash with his back legs to the crab''s arm. A real hero. Until eventually, with a shudder and a last click of its claws, the crab''s legs curled in and it slumped over. Its mana burst into me, bright and full of memories of swimming and deeper mountain rivers; it wasn''t a stationary hunter, neither in water or on land. It highly preferred stalking prey over river beds, grasping them in its powerful right claw and ripping them to shreds with its left. I dissolved its corpse with no small amount of glee.
Greater Crab (Uncommon) Grown much larger than its primitive cousins, this powerful beast uses its pincers of differing sizes to both hold its prey and rip them apart, feasting on the remains. Its armour is enough to protect it from all frontal attacks, and its multi-purpose limbs allow it to retreat should the need ever arise.
Oho. Frontal attacks yes, thorns from below not so much. That might have been my own personal bias from seeing Seros'' glorious evolution notice but this message seemed almost¡­ lesser, somehow¡ªsure, it hyped up the creature and called it all manner of flattering things, but there wasn''t the specialization that my other creatures had. It did everything a lesser crab would, only more so. That was what a greater evolution seemed to be, then. Not a gain of anything specific but more an overall growth in size and power, something more feasibly obtained by wild creatures without the constant mana from a dungeon. I imagined I''d find more evolved creatures down the lines, with the vast majority of them being greater variants. It was also terribly rude of me to sit there insulting the creature that had so graciously given me its schema, but ah well. I was a terribly rude creature myself. Its soul flowed entirely to me, filling me with memories and the odd taste of a new template, but its mana shifted and bubbled as it split itself neatly into sections; the largest came to me, of course, tasting richly of water. The rest, however, halved itself between the mangrove and the toad. I hesitated. I¡­ wasn''t sure the toad really deserved that kill, nor the mana, but someone upstairs certainly seemed to think so. He''d barely led it on more than a chase; the mangrove had done all the work. Ah well. What was far more pressing at the moment was the pale glowing surfacing from underneath his rocky skin.
Your creature, a Stone-Backed Toad, is undergoing evolution! Please select your desired path. Bullfrog (Uncommon): This ornery beast lives between worlds, resting just below the surface of the water until its twin stone horns can be mistaken for driftwood. If it is ever disturbed, it charges out of the water with a war-cry. Ironback Toad (Uncommon): Resplendent in metallic armour, this creature guards the dens of those below it to fulfill its innate sense of honour, protecting them from larger predators and retaliating with its deadly bulk. Stone-Tongue Toad (Uncommon): Sitting in the shadows, it swaps its back protection for an earthen spike on the tip of its tongue, which it uses to spear its prey and kill them before it drags them back to its mouth to feast.
Gods. So many delicious choices; and alongside the greater crab, no longer would kobolds have to terrify the poor rats to attack invaders. I would have a proper roaming threat. After, of course, I actually chose the damn thing. Chapter 19 - Twice Alike Bullfrog, ironback toad, stone-tongue toad; I grabbed the remaining strands of consciousness from the mid-evolution toad and poked my way through them, absent-mindedly guiding him to stumble his way to a safe den for his rest. He was a brutish little creature, one of those that had come down from the first floor instead of being part of my seeding population; I could feel bits and strands of cave spider mana in his channels, something far above the normal flies and crickets most of his brethren fed on. Not a pacifist, then. Despite how cowardly he''d acted when the greater crab had challenged him. Ah well. No stone-tongue toad, then. As lovely as having creatures in my dungeon with more ranged options than the horned serpent would be, it didn''t match with his particular style of hunting. Maybe for a later toad evolution. I tried to imagine an ironback toad, some sort of knightly amphibian strutting his way around and standing guard over the burrowing rats as they dug their nests through the stone of my walls; that would mesh well with my current floor set up, actually. Every time a burrowing rat got anywhere close to evolution it was quickly snatched up by a hungry kobold or luminous serpent, all the mana it''d gathered from nibbling down by whitecaps gone in a second. Such as with this current stone-backed toad, it took a massive, sudden influx of mana for my prey-ranked creatures to have a chance to evolve. My attention strayed back to the first option. The bullfrog. Losing his pebble-covered back protection in exchange for stone horns, turning in a prey''s attitude for something that attacked at the slightest provocation; all well and good, especially in a dungeon where apparently my kobolds had to shake monsters to get them to attack, but one word kept drawing me back. Frog. I liked water, and I was plenty content with making sure my dungeon had it in excess. Already I was tracking the water levels of the underground river, planning out what my third floor would be; a massive, open room of nothing but water, greater crabs scuttling on the stony sand below, silverheads in spiraling baitfish schools, sturgeon casting sprawling shadows in their lazy swims overhead. I purred at the thought; I wanted water. I wanted Seros to have a territory he could truly claim as his own. And frogs were far more adept in water than toads. But I had the crabs, didn''t I? Damned rational thoughts. I couldn''t predict how big the bullfrogs would get but I doubted it would be larger than the greater crabs, and even with earthen mana, their horns were comparable to claws. Another version of the predator I had just obtained. My thoughts, as always, slipped back to the previous raid; where two adventurers, so proud and strong, had politely stomped their way through my first floor without so much as a problem. The only threat they had faced was handily defeated and currently running away deeper into the mountain. Plan for now. I would have to let my dreams of a water-filled third floor rest until I had the strength to defend it; I grimaced and moaned but pressed ironback toad. Another stone-backed toad would reach the evolution point eventually, and it had better have the bullfrog evolution option available. The toad croaked once, a pale glow fully overtaking his warty skin as he slumped to a comfortable sprawl at the bottom of his den. Already I could see the earthen mana start to shift, taking on more and more metallic properties as he evolved; maybe with his new honour system, he could start defending other toads to help them evolve. That was my current biggest problem, really. I had all these fantastic evolutions that I had seen, only a handful obtained; but of those I had obtained, very few were actually¡­ increasing. Sure, my silvertooths and electric silverheads were breeding¡ªbreeding a lot, actually, dozens of eggs already laid and growing¡ªbut for things like my horned serpent or armourback sturgeon? I couldn''t make more until others of their species evolved, or they died. The second was certainly not an option. I pushed my way back up to the first floor, idly shifting through a half point of mana as I tended to my fungal gardens; the food chain up here was rather complete. Whitecap mushrooms and lacecaps at the very bottom, fed by the algae wall constantly dripping water over the ground. Dozens upon dozens of bugs I didn''t care enough to focus on beyond keeping my populations of them steady fit the next layer, nibbling away at the mushrooms and growing fat and bloated with my mana, only to be promptly eaten by my cave spiders and stone-backed toads. The burrowing rats shifted between a diet of mushrooms and insects when they could snag them, and then they and the toads were in turn eaten by the luminous serpents. And when the serpents had reached their peak, they grew confident enough to make the trip to the second floor, where they promptly left their position as apex predator and had to start fighting for their life again. That was how a dungeon functioned. No creature was truly the strongest, as there was always a deeper floor to go to, one filled with both richer mana to satiate their hunger and stronger creatures to make them work for it. Every time a cave spider made the treacherous leap over the rock pond I celebrated alongside them, every time a burrowing rat successfully avoided a kobold''s grasping claws and dined on more mana I cheered. Seeing my creatures grow and thrive was what I wanted. Seros raised his head as I poked a point of awareness back into his den, curled up as he was on his comfortable bed of algae; a luminous serpent''s mana diffused through his channels. Back from a hunt, then. The canals were infinitely better for him than the miniscule rock pond of the first floor was, even past the fact that he was near thirteen feet long and it was roughly twenty in diameter. The presence of a current meant he could truly practice his hydrokinesis, fighting against the drag to bend the waters to his might; hells, with the point of awareness I had always locked to him, I had seen him kick up infant waves with a curl of his claws. Already he was living up to his name as a seabound monitor. I couldn''t wait to see where he went next. Hello, I pressed through our connection, my thoughts spiraling down a sappy hatchling''s path as his tail flicked happily with the attention. Walk with me? He blinked but rose to his claws, shaking off the call of sleep; he needed to eat more than I had as a dragon, maybe once a week or so, but he also only had to sleep for a day after the kill. Significantly better than the months I''d dozed away after a large enough whale. Seros pushed his way out of the den I''d carved for him, padding around my silver pillar with a brief glance to my core. He seemed content just to meander, choosing a direction at random and slipping into the canal to swim, heading to the left. I followed. If I wanted to start building my third floor, I needed to make sure my second was up to snuff. The vampiric mangroves had thrived over the past week, their bark darkening to a rich scarlet as they took in more blood and vitality from their hapless victims. My surviving burrowing rats had started to figure out that they should really avoid the trees, no matter how much protection they provided from the kobolds, and now the mangroves had started to extend out their roots to hunt for more prey. Even now Seros passed over a silverhead gasping weakly on the riverbed, the last of its blood leaking through a gash on its side. Each of the canals was a tangled mess of roots and thorns, impossible to safely travel through without losing at least a touch of blood. The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there. Unless you were armoured, as Seros was. He nosed his way under the drooping root of a mangrove; it shuddered and did its damnedest to stab him. His glorious teal-blue scales never so much as shifted. He wriggled around a bend, claws curling as he tugged the current back to guide him. I followed with a half point of mana, gnawing at the edges of the wall to make his path easier. He would be the guide to help me make sure everything was right. I paused. Wait, I asked, Seros dutifully securing himself to the riverbed. I reached out and grabbed all my various points of awareness, getting one last glance of my floors and creatures, before shutting them off. I hunted for the Otherworld song that connected our two souls. Then I slipped fully into Seros'' mind. ¡­woah. By my best guess, it had been around a month since I''d started my dungeon, a month since losing my old life; as such, I had, ah, quite forgotten how a mortal body felt. It was a lot. I could feel the need for air, the ripple of his gills as he inhaled water, the scratch of his claws against the stony sand of the ground, the push and sway of the current against the frills on his back and tail. He had to blink, losing sight for precious seconds, he had a swell in his stomach and siren''s call of rest, even a faint twinge of stiffness behind a patch of scales he was ready to shed. Gods. I''d forgotten how many things mortal creatures had to deal with. I certainly didn''t miss having to remember to breathe. Seros crooned curiously at me, his throat vibrating with the sound and bubbles rising from his snout. That felt odd as well. His sight, too¡ªas a core, I was, well, very small; but my awareness stretched all the lengths of my halls, hundreds of feet. I could inflate a point of awareness until it loomed over my entire first floor or shrink it down enough to flit between the claws on a kobold''s paw. Seros had one size. Terrible. I would enter his mind only for special occasions. Go, I said, and he rumbled back and continued swimming. We ventured deeper into the second floor, twisting past mangrove roots and rocky outcroppings. Silverheads schooled like metallic clouds, the green algae-light from above catching on their scales and flashing over the canals. The electric eel, safely tucked away under a stony ledge, watched Seros pass with lightning-attuned mana flickering in the ridges on his side. The snapping turtle, still with a back covered in various moss and algae, gave a halfhearted glance in Seros'' direction before meandering deeper underwater. I glared at it. I should''ve just sent the cave bear to kill it. But gods if I wasn''t stubborn. The kobolds would eventually handle it. Seros popped his head up in the large middle room, scrabbling up the bare section of shore that wasn''t covered in mangrove roots. A family of burrowing rats threw themselves deeper into their den with a panicked squeak. From his perspective, the room was enormous, thirty feet high and ripe with towering trees. The canals lapped softly at the stony soil, algae slick over their surface, mushrooms sheltering in the alcoves away from the light. To Seros, it was one of the most impressive things he''d ever seen. I preened at the praise. But to me, I could see where it could be improved. I tugged myself out of his head, releasing my points of awareness back throughout my floors; nothing had changed in the miniscule time I''d been away, but some pressure released itself as I could once again scan my surroundings. I didn''t like leaving everything behind. But it had shown me what else I could do on my floor. Seros was large, easily thirteen feet, and he was the limit I would build my canals to; so I needed larger tunnels for him to hunt, larger underwater dens if he needed a rest, easier turns and twists. But at the same time, I needed those same passages to trap unwary foes, so I would make them narrow; just enough he could wriggle his way through. Minor expansion there. And then I needed more ground cover; the mangroves were unbelievably impressive, but our little jaunt showed me that most of their thorns were exposed. No one would willingly step on an exposed root when stone was right next to it. More algae, unless I could snip some of the growth from the snapping turtle''s back. Increasing creatures, as well. I glanced back at my core.
Dragonheart Core
Mana: 13.1 / 25 Mana Regeneration: +0.9 per hour
Patrons: None
Titles: Resurrector
Enough to experiment, then; I chose a spot far away from Seros, nestled in a little nook near the entrance and started to weave together a greater crab, something to fill the current niche of apex predator and cull the rising population of luminous serpents. I doubted they would be there forever, considering the kobolds were already well on their way; well. Sort of? They had fully separated into two groups, the original off hunting to her heart''s desire and strangely following Seros around, and the other two staying grouped up with coordinated hunting efforts that were bringing in more and more rats and toads. They hadn''t yet figured out how to harvest the mangrove''s wood for tools but they were working towards it, awkwardly holding slivers of rock and poking the trees to no success. Eventually they would, though. As for the first, I had no idea what she was up to. Maybe when I had created her, I had accidentally let my intentions for her to hunt down the turtle into the mana shaping her? That might explain why she was so determined to do¡­ something. I had gone off on quite a tangent when I realized that I was still weaving mana. Mana that was quickly emptying itself from my stores. Twelve godsdamn points later, a greater crab awoke, clicking its pincers together and peering out at its surroundings. Twelve. Little bastard had even taken most of the Bronze-ranked mana I''d been saving. That had to be because it was an evolution. Had to be; but that also spelled very worrying things about the future expansion of my dungeon. Twelve points for a single evolution of a¡ªlet''s face it¡ªrather unimpressive specimen? An idle thought of how much it would cost to make another seabound monitor slipped across my mind, and I shuddered. For my first evolution, I had the choice between expanding my mana storage or regeneration, and I''d easily picked the regeneration. Now I was becoming uncomfortably aware of how little twenty-five points really was. I''d create another crab tomorrow and let those two breed. Not a chance I was going to actively manage their population like I did my smaller creatures. It scuttled off towards the closest canal, dropping into the water with a splash¡ªoff to hunt, I guessed. It''d find a bountiful feast ahead of it. Me, with one mere point to my name? Yeah. It''d be a bit of waiting until I could do all those lovely plans I had come up with. - He ran, bawling, crashing deeper and deeper into the mountain; his coat was crusted in dry blood, the cuts over his legs stinging and raw, bewildered by the dark and unfamiliar setting. It hurt, it hurt so bad¨C He smashed his nose into a stony wall. With a roar, he collapsed back, panting wildly. Everything hurt. He hated this, hated running, hated the two strange animals that had stabbed him; all he wanted was to go back to his safe little cave, full of mushrooms and water, where nothing was scary and he didn''t have to worry¨C "Oh?" A voice crept out of the darkness. It wasn''t the deep, rumbling voice of the cave before, the one that had spoken into his mind rather than his ears, the one that had made the mushrooms grow and given him shelter and food; it was a raspy voice, dark and curious, and very, very close. He managed to swing his head to the side. Two figures, shorter than him and scrawny, standing on their back legs with their front legs wrapped around strange, stone-tipped pieces of wood. Their skin was a pale green, hairless, with ears that extended away from their face like tree leaves. Bits of fabric wrapped around their chest and legs. Their eyes were black. "What do we have ''ere, boys?" One of them croaked, face twisting up like they were baring their teeth. "Little ol'' cave bear, lost without its mommy?" He didn''t know much, not like the great lizard or the pointy serpent had; but something about them awoke something in the back of his mind. Something that wasn''t him recognized them. Goblins. Chapter 20 - Collectors Nicau bobbed his head in response, shifting his weight between his feet. "Disappeared, yes, right into the mountain. I heard there was treasure there." That stopped the light table discussion in a remarkably satisfying way. Three of them, two men, one woman. All rustically dressed, plain tunics with only a handful of bauble earrings or unadorned rings, a sword at each of their sides. He''d picked them out from across the tavern in an instant, regulars getting together in search of their next target; and if you were in Calarata, what else was there to do but drink? Nightmarket scavengers, a common breed¡ªthey made their living by scrounging up illegal or difficult to obtain items and creatures to sell to those either needing them for alchemic reasons or rich enough to want a statement piece. Either way, the type that would absolutely be interested in secret underground treasure and would think themselves strong enough to be able to go claim it. "What kind of treasure?" The woman said dubiously, but even she had set down her mug of hibiscus sour ale¡ªgods, he wished he could afford to try it¡ªand leaned in to listen. "Gold, untapped ore, some goblin relics¨C" "Dragon scales." And they shut up again. Nicau wished, in some vague part of his mind that spoke in a Romei-sounding voice, that he had someone to brag about how good he was getting at this whole thing. "That would do it," the taller man said, exhaling. "Gods. Where?" The merrow they had been talking before he came in rolled her white-ringed eyes, pale blue tail swishing idly below the open-air tavern. She kept listening, though, her frilled ears perking up. "Near the base. I can show you," he offered, then plumped up his lips and watered his eyes for the parting shot. "Just please find my friend." They all waved a vague hand in his direction, chairs clattering as they rose to their feet¡ªmore desperate for a job than he had assumed, then. The merrow listening gave a warbling hiss and disappeared beneath the water, swimming out to the cove. The trio threw a scattering of copper over the table to pay for their ale and marched to the door, eyes flashing as they murmured to each other. But the taller man paused in the doorway, looking back. His eyes were a pale, flashing blue. "Nicau, you said?" He nodded. "Well then." His smile was sharp. "Lead the way, won''t you?" - My second greater crab scuttled off into the canal, slightly smaller than the first but a deeper green; I aimed a beautiful glare at its back. Twelve more bloody points of mana. I was beginning to see why dungeon cores had to be coddled in their first few weeks of existence. If I had tried to just evolve a creature and fill my first floor with them, I would have been killed by the first schmuck to so much as glance in my direction. That would have been even easier if the gods had given me my first schema. I was still confused about why I hadn''t gotten a starting one¡ªthe message of my evolution had changed what it said quickly, but not quickly enough. I knew I was supposed to start with a creature to protect me. So why hadn''t I? I''d been a dragon, which weren''t exactly virtuous beings, but I certainly didn''t think I''d done enough to offend a god. A harrowing thought, though. What if I unknowingly continued doing what I had done and I offended them so much they killed me with a glance? I glared at the wall until my sharpened mana ate a hollow in it. Did nothing, but it made me feel better. The ironback toad was still sheltered in his little den, swelling up as his evolution grew; the silvertooth''s den had almost been raided a few times by silverheads hungry for an easy egg meal, but one snap of their shattered-glass fangs had been enough to scare them off. Not the brightest, those silverheads. With any luck they''d evolve soon. A luminous constrictor, merrily stalking her way closer to an unassuming burrowing rat on the first floor, froze. It took me a heartbeat longer than I''d have liked to notice, too many of my points of awareness aimed at the second floor. But that little blip of time was enough for a human to poke their head into my dungeon. Panic, of course. He was thin, covered in studded armour, and wielding two vastly different knives; one with differing sides, one rounded and sharp and the other flat and dull. His other was a thin twig of a blade, barely thick enough to avoid snapping. I didn''t have time to ponder the reasoning why, because two bloody more humans entered behind him. A taller man, bristling with the same two knives held high in white-knuckled hands, shoulders raised to his ears and lips pursed. He inched his way in, skating carefully around the edges of my whitecaps and green algae. A woman was behind him, holding her knives far more loosely, though her dark eyes were still narrowed. Unranked, at least, but that certainly didn''t make me feel better. "This is definitely it," she murmured, nudging a mushroom with her boot. The stone-backed toad crouching beneath its cap''s thoughts were mad with panic. "Brus, get the quartz-light, will you?" The taller man nodded, shifting his knives to one hand to tug out a sliver of pale stone, runes engraved onto its surface. He murmured a word I couldn''t understand and light bloomed from between his fingers, spilling out over the first floor¡ªand promptly draining my ambient mana to do so. Bastards. They did take a moment to stare in awe of my fungal gardens, which I appreciated. Brus stayed very close to the entrance, little coward that he was, but the woman and other man started to poke around; they kept their knives low, using the flat of the blades to shift mushrooms out of the way like they were worried about hidden thorns¡ªif only they knew¡ªand otherwise investigated around. I could see how bright their eyes were even in the gloom. At least, when they''d only explored a few feet and my creatures had had time to finish waking up, they stopped. I still didn''t want to risk actively going through and instructing my creatures unless the need was dire. I was still burned from Lady Luthia''s ability to see the movement of mana, to see how my creatures were being guided by an overhead hand¡ªif suddenly every adventurer knew that, they''d figure out what I was in a heartbeat. No, that had to be avoided. The shorter man inched closer to the woman, shifting his grip on his knives. "This is just like High Lord Thiago''s dungeon," he hissed, and I felt myself freeze. "Nil, shut up," she shot back, eyeing their surroundings warily. "If it is, we don''t want it noticing us. Stay quiet." Those merryweather fools. There wasn''t a chance in seven hells I wouldn''t notice them entering my territory. Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. But apparently they''d noticed something about me in return. There was a time and a place for subtlety. This was not now. My creatures rose with a howl of mana, fixing deadly gazes on those damned invaders; even the stone-backed toad, hiding terrified under the mushroom that barely covered a fourth of his bulk, aimed a glare at Nil''s calves. The woman reached behind her and tugged off a bag, something made of patchwork leather with a strap for her shoulders; she popped open a flap on the top and switched its positioning so it bounced in front of her stomach. The two others mirrored her, all with bags of their own. Maybe potions inside, for defense? Were they planning on going further? Nil crouched, raised the flat side of his curved knife, and promptly cracked my toad''s skull in. He collapsed immediately, not yet dead but absolutely stunned by the hit, and the adventurer was able to easily scoop him up and drop him into the bag without issue. Gods. Collectors. I''d heard of them, much in the same way I''d heard about dungeons that were scattered over the world of Aiqith, but I''d certainly never encountered them. No Collector with two brain cells to rub together would ever come after a dragon to try and obtain some of their scales or claws to sell. They went after easier prizes. Like the dungeonborn creatures, full of mana and possibly completely unique to that dungeon. Such as me. My creatures answered my roar, rising up, but the adventurers weren''t exactly caught unawares. Knives flashed and two more toads sprawled over the ground, twitching and shaking, and were promptly dropped into bags. A luminous constrictor flicked out her tongue, coiling tighter around a stony pillar¡ªBrus raised his light and the reflection off her pure white underscales did him in. She tried for a lunge, for a strike¡ªshe got a full stab through the head for that and ended up in a bag. Not all my creatures were caught so unaware, though. One of my cave spiders, narrow and tense, crept his way down a strand of web and sidled closer to the woman. His eight eyes flashed. "Fuck!" She snapped, swatting at her leg¡ªtwo perfect bites, already red and oozing amber venom, stood out on her calf. But if her mention of this¡­ High Lord Thiago''s dungeon meant anything, it was that she wasn''t a beginner. Hardly half a second passed before she had reached into an outer pocket of her bag, tugging out a pale cloth wrapped in herbs and covered in embroidered runes; she pressed it to her leg and murmured some archaic word. More of my mana disappeared. The venom that had been merrily rampaging through her system promptly tugged itself out to soak into the cloth. Gods. My first floor was so weak. Drawn blood, though. I''d seen how well that had worked out for Luthia. "L¨¢lia!" Nil hissed, gesturing forward¡ªBrus had come just far enough that the glow from his quartz-light had illuminated the entrance to my second floor, the rock pond dark and rippling before it. But they weren''t small, scuttling rats or spiders who had to worry about its shallow depths. They were humans. With one jump of his long legs, he was safely past the last threat of my first floor. The other two followed after swiping off the heads of a few more lacecaps to tuck into their bags. Wake up, I urged my other creatures before they had a chance to see my mana moving, singing gentle little songs about ripping adventurer heads off. Wake up, get ready, start moving. When they arrived on the second floor, they fully stopped, eyes wide and awestruck as they looked upon the majesty of my mangrove canals¡ªreally needed an actual name for my floors, that wasn''t very inspiring¡ªand all those that lived within. Already the luminous constrictors strong enough to make it down were waking up, the jeweled jumper darting over hidden thorns as he raced over towards the entrance. But to them, they saw none of them, just a wide expanse of rivers and trees, the green algae-glow from above rendering their pale quartz useless. Brus said another word and the greedy bastard stopped absorbing all my mana. "Woah," L¨¢lia breathed, knives resting at her sides. "This is a dungeon, isn''t it?" "Has to be," Nil murmured back. "Nothing like Thiago''s, though. It feels very¡­ alive." As one, they moved forward. Their eyes were immediately drawn to my canals, grins wide over their face as the green light overhead caught the reflection of something moving deeper within. My electric eel and his brood were further in, the armourback sturgeon resting near the western wall, but the hundreds of silverheads lazily roaming were spread evenly through the halls. "There," Brus whispered, and nodded towards a shallower divot of the canal by their feet. The spot where, so excited over the last time they''d gotten to do this, my little school of silvertooths were waiting impatiently below the surface of the water. L¨¢lia had that cut over her arm, but I wasn''t so sure they would get their chance. They crept closer, seemingly unworried about the vampiric mangrove looming overhead; while they had seemed familiar enough with stone-backed toads to hit them on their head instead of anywhere else and luminous constrictors to not even react beyond collecting them, I knew for a damned fact they wouldn''t know about my mangroves. And not knowing would only make them all the more dangerous. Nil crouched by the shore of the canal, bracing his boots against a lump of stone to avoid falling in; both Brus and L¨¢lia grabbed his shoulders in what seemed like a practiced movement as he leaned over the canal, extending both knives before him. Knives that, when twisted to catch the light of the algae overhead, flashed over the surface of the water. Silvertooths, unfortunately, were still evolved from silverheads and their despicable lack of common sense. They saw movement and lunged, raising out of the depths of the water and striking the surface, jagged fangs open and ready. Nil''s knife flashed. The silvertooth still managed to squirm as it was speared by the thin blade and pulled from the water. A spark of its mana from the kill traveled not to me but to the adventurer, its body going limp. The rest of the school scattered but the trio hardly seemed to care, eyes impossibly bright as they beheld the foot-long corpse pulled out of the river; Nil placed it in his bag with a sort of reverence. At least the bastards knew how powerful my creatures were. But so focused were they that they forgot to look up, at the little spider whose ruby-red colouration blended so perfectly with the vampiric mangrove''s bark. The jeweled jumper crept closer, mandibles dripping with venom; he managed to spot the bleeding wound on L¨¢lia''s calf with its familiarly-sized puncture marks. I could see the moment his rivalry with other cave spiders kicked in and he promptly chose her as his target. Another second where L¨¢lia straightened, peering over the canal like she could see where the rest of the creatures had gone, and he dropped from his perch above her neck and sank his fangs into her skin. She cursed, swatting at her neck; the jeweled jumper''s name wasn''t for nothing and he was already well far away, scuttling back up the mangrove''s branches to hide behind a pale leaf to watch. "Not again," she groused, reaching into her bag for the cloth. Another mutter of the same word and the cloth glowed as it drew the poison out of her wound, but I''d been correct¡ªthe venom had to soak into the cloth, and when it was full, it couldn''t pull out any more. And the jeweled jumper had a lot of venom to give. Even as she tugged the cloth away, almost dripping with scarlet venom, the jeweled jumper sprang at her upper arm and stabbed her once again. "Get away from the tree!" She shouted, panting as she slapped the cloth to her arm¡ªbut from the sudden fear in her eyes I knew she had seen what I had. The cloth sagged weakly in her hand, dripping venom over the ground, and already amber veins were spreading under her skin. "We have to go¨C" Their activity in the river hadn''t gone unnoticed. With a hiss, one of my greater crabs pulled itself onto the shore, emerald green carapace dripping. It brandished its crushing pincer like a sword. Nil cursed, holding out his curved blade; L¨¢lia stumbled back, blood draining from her already pale skin. She slipped over a patch of algae and fell, legs suddenly weak, arms spasming. The jeweled jumper crept closer. The greater crab approached, bristling bulk nearly two feet tall and four wide; to Nil, it must have looked like an impossible beast. He bared his teeth, knives held before him, elbows pinning the bag closer to his chest. L¨¢lia collapsed to the ground, twitching. "Nil!" Brus cried, but I had seen his cowardice before and it had only grown since¡ªhis head twisted, arms tight as his sides, but he didn''t go closer to either of them. Nil roared, swiping at the greater crab as it closed in; but his knives were made for collecting. My beautiful crab''s carapace was specifically made not to be collected. They had made it to the first room of the second floor. The greater crab hissed and charged, swiping a claw low while the other jabbed to meet his knife; L¨¢lia moaned as the jeweled jumper sank his fangs into her arm. Brus turned and fled. I sprung to action, hammering my mana deep into the creatures of my first floor; they surged to life, underbellies ready to unleash and mandibles dripping with venom. One more kill and oh, all the mana I''d have¨C But Brus was tall and guided by panic. He flew over the rock pond, slipping and stumbling over the water-slick algae, eyes bulging from his head and knives clattering to the ground from loose fingers. One of my serpents made a lunge at his leg but he dodged it, charging, arms pumping wildly at his sides. And then he promptly ran out of the entrance. Well. Shit. Chapter 21 - Descending It was not a good sign for my longevity as a dungeon that I was already sick of adventurers. Three days, by my best guess; three godsdamn days after an attack before another party had meandered their way through my doors and decided to plant themselves amidst all the things I needed to be doing but was quickly deprived of the time to do so. Fantastic. And to make matters all the better, they had figured out I was a dungeon just in time for one of them to escape. Someone upstairs was conspiring against me, I just knew it. Full of mana again, though. I let the three souls flow through me, rich and taut with knowledge¡ªCollectors for certain, if what snippets I learned of foreign creatures pointed in the right direction. Half of their thoughts were flooded with stormtoothed jaguars and gemfruit maples and magma-core rock snails, giving me all the more delicious ideas to fill my lower floors with. If I was able to get that far. No Bronze-ranked mana, though, which was unfortunate. Their mana filled me pleasantly only up to twenty-three points; not enough to strain my core or make me lose the excess, which I appreciated. Gods know I needed every advantage I could get. My creatures grumbled and hissed but slowly relaxed back to their previous levels of existence, the sudden increase in ambient mana from the three kills trickling through their system. The jeweled jumper merrily ignored the massive blast flooding through his, sucking L¨¢lia''s body into a dessicated husk with nary a thought to how I might need to break down her corpse into additional mana. Ah well. He''d earned the kill. The greater crab hissed and clicked but did allow me Nil''s body. How generous. For Brus, however? He had run. Run out the cove entrance, ready to head right back to the lawless Calarata and bring the Dread Pirate back. At that moment, I hated him almost as much as the man that had killed me. No sense in festering on that. I had work to do. I dissolved all of their various knives, confirming what I''d guessed; the thin, narrow blade was for skewering soft-skinned creatures and also a scalpel for harvesting materials, and the wide, curved knife more as a general-purpose blade. Nothing too interesting in their clothes. L¨¢lia had leather boots, but as much as I dissolved them and poked my way through what made them up, it just wasn''t enough for me to learn the schema from whatever creature they were made of. Annoying. Looked like I couldn''t use just leather or skin to make a schema¡ªbut maybe if they brought both leather and something else? Surely some adventurers had to build armour sets that focused on one specific creature, and then my Ressurector title could help me bring them all back. Questions I had little doubt I would find an answer far too soon for my tastes. I pushed my way around my first and second floor, healing up creatures with stray threads of mana for those that had been trampled or injured in Brus'' panicked run. My jeweled jumper finally finished eating more than his fill and stepped back, practically vibrating under the pressure of all his new mana¡ªhe sprang back up the bark of the vampiric mangrove and scuttled deeper into the floor. The rest of my creatures finished settling back down. Then I finally started poking through the messages skittering over my core.
Your creature, a Cave Spider, is undergoing evolution! Please select your desired path. Webweaver (Common): Spiders are a territorial species¡ªbut this beast has ignored that and created a communal web, the work of dozens all spanning together to create an inescapable trap. Not yet a hivemind but through releasing pheromones, they communicate across the miles their webs can span, and any foe that falls to them is split evenly between the lot. Spurred Spider (Common): For defense in the open areas it frequents, this creature has grown armoured spikes of bone and chitin. Though this slows it down, its massively increased bulk and puncturing power of its newly-grown mandibles leaves it well-prepared for any approaching threat. Jeweled Jumper (Common): Foregoing webs entirely, it spends its life constantly on the hunt, jumping between trees and stalagmites alike in their hunt for prey. As active predators, they ignore smaller insects and use their potent venom to take down larger prey, draining their insides and leaving the husks as a warning.
I paused. Glanced back at my core. Four more identical messages made themselves known. Seemed like my creatures were slowly starting to reach the point where they had absorbed enough ambient mana that they didn''t necessarily need a personal large kill to evolve; it had still taken the increase in the ambient stuff from the death of the two adventurers, but as I bounced between the five heads, none of them seemed to have done anything with the adventurer''s death. Both originals from the first floor who had been brave enough to migrate down, strong in their own right but not yet enough to feel ready to take down a human. The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. With their evolutions, they might be. Two options I already knew, and then the spurred spider; but however lovely a massive, spiky ball of armour sounded, I had just chosen the ironback toad. Wonderful timing. And however territorial the jeweled jumper was with other cave spiders, I didn''t want to imagine how bad he would be with others of his own species. Webweaver, then. I could see the group of them creating a massive web spreading the breadth of the second floor. Anything that could help them survive the now increased powers of jeweled jumper would be a boon. I selected that for all five of them. The various spiders, all completely separate from each other and really having spared very few thoughts to the invasion beyond the rage I''d incited into everyone, all slumped to the ground as the glow of evolution overtook them. I watched curiously as they all managed to fumble their way back up to a corner of their webs and curl up, clawed legs hooking them in place before they fully went unconscious as their bodies changed. With any luck, they''d hurry the pace up a bit past the casual stroll their predecessor had evolved at. I waited a heartbeat but no more messages joined theirs, no further evolutions or a new level for myself. Even though I deserved it. Ah well. I had already confirmed I didn''t exactly agree with whoever was running these messages. I gathered my mana around me, dissolving the rest of the gear L¨¢lia and Nil had had¡ªmore scraps of unusable leather I stored the bits of in case something else from the creature stumbled my way, a few wooden coins, a handful of my own lacecaps and stone-backed toads¨C And the corpse of a skewered silvertooth. Something I didn''t yet have the schema of. Oh, at least something good had come from this absolute fuck-up of an invasion¡ªI devoured my way through its metallic scales and jagged fangs, dining on the knowledge of its core like the finest of wines. Shaping it told me of all the muscles lining its bones, the strength of its jaws and fins; no wonder even a small school of them had been able to take down a Bronze-ranked adventurer. I couldn''t wait to see what a proper swarm of them would be capable of. I gathered my mana around me, swiveling points of awareness near the other silvertooth school. And paused. Glanced back. Twenty-three points, plenty to try and make a silvertooth; but if the greater crab had taught me anything, it was that there wasn''t a point in trying to make evolutions until I could find some strategy to keep the costs down or increased my regeneration and storage rates. Maybe I could try later, once I''d gotten more defenses up; but for now I could just wait for their eggs to hatch and more silverheads to evolve. With how many bloody adventurers I was getting, I doubted it would take long. Later, my pretty, I murmured, and kept my mana to myself. Seros raised his head as I prodded our awareness, coming to a rest on the bottom of the canal he was patrolling around. The sturgeon lurking near his tail quickly found other things to do. You''re in charge, I commanded, impressing on him a spark of extra mana to do what he saw fit. He nodded, flexing his claws into the sand. He hadn''t made it to the adventurers in time to stop Brus from leaving, and I could feel the guilt from that hanging heavy over his thoughts¡ªhe wouldn''t make the same mistake of being too passive the next time. I trusted him. He would do whatever was necessary. As for me, I made my way to the last room of my second floor¡ªand instead of choosing the back of Seros'' den, I chose a random outcropping of the canal, a little pocket only a few feet deep, and started tunneling down through the stone. My third floor would be a massive expanse of water, endless and impossibly deadly; for too long adventurers had avoided my canals and the dangers present. No longer. If what I really was got out, I would need all the protection I could muster. - She did not enjoy this. Her scales protected her from bleeding but the thorns still tried to break past her palms as she skittered up the trunk, claws digging into the wood in turn; the great tree groaned and twisted as she crept over an extended branch. Her breath caught in her throat. She stayed strong. As badly as it wanted to attack her, she wanted to attack something even more. Those same big thoughts kept running through her head, far too big for a lowly kobold; the Dragon, core of the dungeon, had still never looked at her but she could feel His presence, a fire reawakening in her chest. She was so close. Her chosen target poked its head into her room. It was still so much larger than her, heavily armoured with its strange, shelled back¡ªbut it was slow. It was stupid. It didn''t have the big thoughts. She flicked her forked tongue, gripping tighter to the branch as it plodded closer; it didn''t look up. Didn''t notice her. Her chest burned. It crossed directly below her. She dropped onto its back. There was a second before it reacted, her clawed feet smacking into its back as she scrabbled for a hold¡ªit bellowed, swinging wildly, lashing its feet against the ground. She clung desperately to the tiny plants rooted against its scales, horns clattering against her skull. It didn''t attack back but instead hunkered down, legs popping into its¡­ back? What? She lunged forward to try for its head but another second and it was gone, far away from her claws, safe within its scales. She hissed, clawing furiously at its back; scraps of little green things flew off but they didn''t seem to be attached to it. It didn''t even flinch. A failure. She hoped the Dragon wasn''t watching. Warily, she slithered off its back and scurried away, glaring at it from behind a tree; it stayed hidden away, its scales too thick for her to do anything. Her claws were dull, nothing like His; she couldn''t rip past its defenses. She leaned closer and accidentally brushed against the tree. Its hidden thorns stabbed at her muzzle, doing nothing but shocking her. ¡­but they were like claws, weren''t they? She paused, examining the wood; claws like hers, but not limited by her arms. Claws she could hold further away from her body, claws to attack the head of the beast before it could hide away. Weapons. Chapter 22 - A Third, Begun
Billowing Moss (Common) A long, trailing moss with massive roots; through the strangely limited hold gravity has on its leaves, it grows both outward and upward, disguising the ground below it in rolling hills of pale green.
Well. That was certainly a nice distraction from the mind-numbing chore of tunneling out rock. The snapping turtle hardly seemed to notice the loss, staying curled up safely beneath its massive armour. The kobold who had been so kind as to give me a new schema retreated back to her cave, licking metaphorical wounds with her thoughts running rampant with further plans. She had stopped hunting alongside the other two kobolds but they still lived together, warbling about plans and ideas to each other¡ªcertainly still friendly, even if they were going separate routes. The other two kept up their habitual pattern of hunting and investigating the surrounding land, seemingly waiting for the opportunity to do more. The first wanted to kill. I couldn''t wait. I nibbled through the remains of the billowing moss, idly creating a small patch in a mostly empty room of the second floor; it sprung up in massive, waving strands of pale leaves like fields of grass. Already I could see how it could disguise the mangrove''s roots from suspicion, allowing them to stab their thorns freely, or even hide pitfalls and other various traps beneath its flowing green hills. Once I had finished my third floor, I''d come back and cover the second in moss. Hopefully my creatures would adjust to the sudden ecosystem change with grace. Not that I had time to worry about it, what with how much I''d been working. Those initial twenty-three points had disappeared remarkably quickly with how big I wanted it to be; I''d taken my time to carve a beautiful little entrance tunnel in the bottom of a random section of the canal in the last room, as one last little defense. If adventurers wanted to make it further down my floors, they would need to go into the canals, and hopefully my silvertooths could kill them before they made it to the third. Then I''d taken the time to cover that entrance, so that water wasn''t leaking down while I tried to carve, and then I got to work. Space was the theme of this one, and I was doing my damnedest to live up to it. I started with the initial tunnel, gnawing my way down from the puddle on the second floor; I made it massive and twisting, burrowing deep into the mountain as it extended like a snake. The entrance was on the cove side, enough that I could creep feelers through the wall and hear the ocean past that¡ªI pondered that for a second, wondering if I should avoid that and dig deeper into the mountain on the other side, but I shook it off after another second. I didn''t know what was deeper in the mountain, whether stone-drakes or goblin-hordes, and I could be relatively more assured that there wasn''t anything on the side closest to the ocean. Probably. I grimaced but kept digging that way. Once the tunnel was done, nearly three thousand feet long, I just went back through and started expanding; I ballooned everything out to be around a thousand feet wide, a rough rectangular block of a floor. Then I threw in tunnels, outcroppings, all manners of stone beds and twisting rock formations. Something a city could be proud to fit into with all the grace of the deep water. I layered the bottom in¡­ well, I was calling it sand, but I wasn''t positive if it counted¡ªI''d done the same thing for the second floor, just shredding the stone into a mess of little grains. I was hardly an expert in sand but I was pretty sure it had to be made from quartz, and I only knew how to shape limestone. Ah well. It functioned well enough. In the end, I sagged, exhausted and with mere flecks of mana to my name, and looked out on the new expansion to my kingdom. It hardly felt like much, being so empty of life or water, but I could see what it would become¡ªthree thousand feet long and one wide, uneven and twisting, with tunnels branching off from various ends to reconnect to later sections. I shaped sections where I could grow eventual forests of sea kelp, little ridges where I could try to find a freshwater coral to fill, sprawling dens carved all over the walls with all manners of various levels of comfortable and barely sustainable. They''d have to fight for the best. My preferred form of survival. Only the strongest would make it in my dungeon. I paused, but reached back up to my second floor; strongest though they might be, I didn''t necessarily want all of my creatures to have to be aquatic to make it further into my dungeon. I didn''t have a fourth floor yet, but I carved the barest start of a tunnel in the back of the last room, something that I could eventually around the third floor so that terrestrial creatures could still make it further down. For another day. I needed to actually fill the third first. Three days after I''d started, profoundly empty of mana but with a massive, sprawling cavern below, I finally poked my awareness back up to the halls above. Seros had done his proper duty, taking command while my attention was elsewhere, meandering his way around the second floor and even popping up to the first just to make sure everyone was behaving themselves. They all were, of course, because the threat of the largest creature in the dungeon was plenty to keep their heads on straight. The kobolds had¡­ hmm. They''d stayed two distinct groups when it came to hunting, though still living together, but the female had picked up a loose piece of limestone and was staring at it like the most interesting thing in the world; she held it awkwardly in her dull claws, scrapping at the tip with her eyes narrowed. Was this what it was like watching hatchlings flounder around growing up? Gods, it was infuriating. Just make it into a tool already. Sighing, I shifted my focus elsewhere. A few silverheads, separate from the rest of their school, trembled inside a mangrove''s exposed root prison. All three of them had bleeding gashes on their sides from previous escape attempts but they hadn''t yet fallen, attempting to bash their armoured heads into the thorns to push them aside; I curled up to watch, seeing the mangrove twist and shift as it tried to pull its roots closer to spear them¨C A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation. And promptly messed up. A tug too close and one of the silverheads managed to bash a root out, exposing an opening, and fly for freedom; the other two followed. Not bad, if I had to say anything pleasant. They certainly weren''t the smartest but I could appreciate any creature able to get out of a trap. Apparently, someone else did as well.
Your creature, a Silverhead, is undergoing evolution! Please select your desired path. Armourback Sturgeon (Uncommon): This creature has grown tired of a life as prey and forgone fear entirely¡ªthough it starts off small, its scale plating grows so thick that nary an attack can damage it, allowing it to grow exponentially, unfazed by mortal worries. Electric Silverhead (Rare): If you can''t beat them, join them. This creature has grown an actual head of silver, and this highly conductive metal allows them to magnify an electric eel''s lightning mana, far increasing its lethality. Collecting in schools that serve under an eel, they feast on the remains of the prey they take down together. Silvertooth (Uncommon): Using numbers over size, this creature gathers hundreds of its fellows to create massive schools, swimming peacefully until their blood-frenzy is activated. It will only calm down once its prey is dead, ripping ecosystems apart until their hunger is satiated.
Oho. A little bit more than moderately annoying that there weren''t any new options, but I supposed that made sense; it was only three silverheads, evolving after a minute encounter with a minor threat. Hardly anything new. Both the electric silverheads and silvertooths had mates. I choose armourback sturgeon for all three, letting the hazy glow overtake their scales as they drifted off to an evolution-filled slumber; with any luck, they would dominate my third floor as the creatures with the largest size potential, if I was reading their description right. Maybe. Not like the current one I had was doing much. He spent most of his time meandering about the second floor, rooting through the sand for food. Similar to the cave bear''s level of indifference, really. The thought wore heavy on me. I wished he would come back. But my second floor was stable enough, ready for creatures once I had mana enough to start experimenting, and from then I could properly start blocking adventurers who didn''t have a way of swimming through the water. If they wanted to continue trying to kill me, they''d have to really start working for it. Now I just needed to figure out how to fill it with water. - Velesso pushed his way to the surface, tail swishing through the water; it was always odd, breaching. The air wavered and pushed on him like a living thing, so much thinner than water yet impossible to see through all the same. He disliked it. But humans dealt in air instead of water, and as a merrow, he had to make concessions. At least in Calarata he could make any deals at all. The open-air tavern stood quietly before him, too early in the morning for anyone but those who had been drinking all night with no intentions of stopping to be there. The handful were a rowdy bunch, freshly off the Diving Darling and unwinding after another day''s piracy, but¡­ No Albo. Velesso certainly hadn''t been close to the pirate. But they''d had an understanding, and that led to deals. Underhanded deals, because that was all Calarata knew, and the merrow kingdom he served needed those. It wasn''t exactly like the Le¨®ro Kingdom would be too fond of buying illegally sourced goods and services. But Albo wasn''t there, and Velesso had been sitting on a stolen hoard of crystalized mana for a week now. He narrowed his white-ringed eyes, resting his elbows on the wooden dock of the tavern; the patrons hardly glanced over at him. Maybe they would deal with him; but he couldn''t trust them not to scam him. Most humans knew damn well that merrow didn''t have the ability to properly convert their money outside of Calarata. Velesso couldn''t exactly go ask the Dread Pirate to make them deal fairly. "You''re back." He glanced over. Chelle, with her deep, teal-blue skin and almost white fins, poked her head up next to him; she leaned against the tavern''s side, surveying those drinking with her head cocked to the side. "So I am," Velesso rumbled in response, drumming his webbed fingers over the wood. His claws tore tiny holes through the grain. "I''m¡­ trying to find someone." "You''ve been here every day for almost two weeks," Chelle noted. She would know¡ªthe other half of his guard-patrol, the ones who made sure the merrow city of Arroyo stayed safe in the cove. He hadn''t been shirking his duties¡ªmostly¡ªbut he certainly hadn''t been as present as he should have been. "Who?" "Albo. The man I mentioned." Some of the patrons were staring at them curiously, in the cups as they were, but the merrow language was difficult enough for humans to understand and he doubted any of these could. "I want to make a trade." Chelle narrowed her eyes. "Your group is missing too?" Too? She pressed her fingers together, fangs peeking from her lips. "I had my own humans I traded with, nightmarketers, but I haven''t seen them in three days. We were supposed to meet for a deal." Velesso frowned. Calarata was filled with more death than life on most days, but not to the point where both of their groups should be disappearing with such ease. Maybe there was a new threat the Dread Pirate hadn''t taken the time to deal with yet? "Chelle!" They both glanced as a man burst into the tavern, clothing in tatters and scratches marring his tanned skin; he sprinted over to her, dropping to his knees with a clatter. She blinked, leaning forward. The human tongue warbled from her mouth. "Brus?" Of all the luck to be waiting in the tavern while her contact had come back; Velesso cautiously stayed silent, but the man''s eyes seemed to wash right over him, bulging with panic. And greed. He reached into the bag slung over his shoulder, fumbling at the clasp; another second and he''d torn out the corpse of a death-bloated toad, dropping it between them with the splat of drying blood. Velesso frowned, narrowing his eyes; a stone-backed toad, common enough in these parts, though much larger than normal and well-fed¨C And absolutely dripping in pure mana. Gods. He glanced at Chelle and knew she was thinking the same as him; guard-patrols though they both were, the Priestess of Arroyo would still listen to them if they brought her something like this. Pure mana. "We''re still on for a deal?" Brus asked, rocking back on his heels. He laid his hands forward, revealing his bag still bulging with more creatures. Velesso could taste the mana diffusing through the air. Chelle grabbed at the pouch strapped around her upper arms, laced over her front to keep from interfering with her fins. Velesso mirrored her; any and all coin could be spent if it meant earning pure mana in return. What the Priestess wouldn''t give them in return for this. Chapter 23 - Filterdown Water gushed from within the mountain. I''d managed to twist out a second tunnel underneath the river, guiding the water down in great spiraling loops to avoid punching through the walls of the second floor. I wanted it to be wide enough that creatures could swim down and that enough water would be flowing through to create a current, but not so much that I would destabilize the river and stop my very necessary source of water. It took more trial and error than I was really comfortable with admitting. My knowledge of water as a sea-drake apparently didn''t extend to knowing the subtle nuances of trying to shape ocean currents in an enclosed space to maintain oxygen flow and limit sediment build up. Fantastic. But now water thundered down into the massive room, sloshing about in the sand as it struggled to rise. Being three thousand feet long and one thousand wide, I was well aware it would take a while before it was full, but I was patient. I paused, then reached up¡ªcurrently my main entrance from the second floor was just a random tunnel dug beneath the canal, one last defense for forcing adventurers to have to enter the canal to find their way deeper. Not necessarily useful now, given as I didn''t want to empty out my canals full of creatures just to fill the third floor, but once it was full; I kept up the barrier between the floors for the moment but dug a few smaller tunnels in preparation. Multiple ways for smaller creatures to swim their way between floors. As another idle thought, I strengthened the limestone with flecks of iron to ward it against erosion. Wouldn''t be great if all the shifting water just merrily dug its own way through my floor. But then I could relax, only a handful of points to my name, and listen as the water poured out of the tunnel overhead. Hours, if not days, until it was full; but I could wait. Gods, for even a fraction of the ocean I had once called home, I could wait forever. - The largest of the armourback sturgeons poked curiously down the sprawling tunnel in the canal''s bottom, his shovel-shaped head brushing against the smooth limestone. I perched over him with all the patience of a gnat. Hurry up. He took his bloody time before finally slipping down the tunnel. A few dozen feet straight down, enough that I had felt comfortable my second floor wouldn''t collapse into the third if an earthquake hit, and easily ten feet wide; as much as I would''ve appreciated squeezing the tunnel down to an inch to make adventurers have to burrow their way down, my creatures were just too big for that. I needed to focus on them first. The sturgeon finally emerged onto my freshly-filled third floor. Dark and cool, full of softly swirling eddies, bubbles wobbling up to the surface; thousands upon thousands of gallons of fresh water loomed before him like the most inviting floor I could have mustered. Rock outcroppings and tunnels and great expanses of sandy shallows, filled with the, ah, best I could for plants? Of the five plants I had, only one could grow fully submerged in water; I''d strung great curtains of green algae over as much as it would survive on, its pale glow diffusing through the third floor like emerald dust, but it, well. Listen. I was a vain creature, and seeing algae as the only interesting thing on my latest floor was less than pleasing. I''d created a few shifting pockets of air, tucked away on the surface in little oases of room; in there, I poured dozens of whitecap mushrooms, leaning them so far off the edge that their mycelium dangled partially into the water. Hopefully they''d evolve into something useful for this floor. It was quite irritating how slowly plants evolved. Those with some innate sense of self, like my vampiric mangroves, were actively hunting prey and collecting life mana; I knew they would take a while to evolve, given their already complex selves, but I knew they would eventually. The green algae sitting patiently in my fungal gardens? Yeah. No clue. Maybe it would, maybe it wouldn''t¡ªeither way, the further and further it got from my core as I dug deeper down, the less ambient mana it received. Terrible. At least the massive shaggy carpet of pale, glowing green algae was nice to look at; it would tide me over until I could actually start collecting more plant schemas. Maybe the kobold could be nice and speed up on her little plot to kill the snapping turtle; surely it had water-capable species on its back. But either way, the armourback sturgeon emerged into what I hoped would be his new home, peering around curiously. Like his brethren, he had started at only three feet long; but given as I had politely requested Seros not hunt him down until I had a few more and no other creatures could scratch his massive plated scales, he had blossomed into over double his original length and showed no indication of stopping. Eventually, the canals wouldn''t be able to hold him. If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement. At three thousand feet long, I was a bit more confident in this floor. He swam out, a silver-grey stripe in the emerald light, and started exploring. Above him, I poured dozens of silverheads into a spiraling school, enough that those brave enough to come down from the second floor could join with a school instead of being on their own. The electric silverheads worked better on the second floor, at least for now; the crowded corridors and hidden spots melded better with their style for the moment. Maybe when there were more creatures for them to hunt and use as distractions they would start to head down, but electric eels were far too much an ambush predator to fit into an empty, sprawling hall. So for now, all I had were silverheads, silvertooths, armourback sturgeons, and¨C Hm. You know, I''d gotten far too excited at the pretense of an ocean-esque floor to wonder what I''d actually fill it with. Greater crabs, I guessed, and Seros too¡ªhopefully some more evolutions would start popping up soon. I was quickly finding myself in need of them. But for now, I let the siren call of my mana trickle up to the second floor, urging all creatures too big for their britches to start their pilgrimage down. Already the greater crab who had earned a human''s mana was staring down the tunnel entrance. As it should. Maybe three points of mana left to my name after the silverhead school I''d spawned, and the emptiness weighed on me as I finished poking around my other two floors. I took some scraps to layer the areas around the mangrove''s roots with billowing moss, the sprawling, feathery fronds waving delicately in a breeze that didn''t exist. Even just a small patch perfectly disguised the vampiric thorns, all the better to tug in more mana. It would take a day or two for me to gather enough, but already I could see the second floor, pale green algae above and waving fronds below, with the harsh white leaves and scarlet-red trunks between. In comparison to the brilliant distinction between grey and green of my third floor. Hm. Something to worry about for later; I reached out to Seros. He poked his head out of the canal he''d been meandering around, entertaining himself by pretending not to notice the kobold stalking him. Maybe she was looking to mark him as her next target after the turtle. I dipped into her thoughts. It took me approximately half a second to realize that no, that wasn''t a hunting instinct in her eyes; it was pure wonder. And no, she was certainly not interested in hurting Seros; she wanted to worship him. And, absolutely worst of all, she thought he was the one commanding the dungeon. Excuse me? She hardly seemed to notice my attention, still clutching her vaguely-sharp limestone chunk and peering around a stone wall to watch as Seros pulled himself out of the water, shaking droplets off his seagreen frills. Her thoughts ran rampant with praise and admiration. She thought he was a dragon. I¡­ I honestly didn''t know how to react to this. She had to know she was wrong, right? There was only one bloody dragon in these halls and it certainly wasn''t a lizard. Even besides that, it was me who commanded the dungeon, who had created her; surely she could hear me? Could feel my mana when I reached out to my creatures and told them to attack? A horrible little thought snuck out to me. When the attack before last had come, with the Bronze and her lackey, I had told my creatures to prepare to attack; the other two kobolds had come together with their insane rat plan and successfully won. But I remembered being confused at why the third kobold, the first and the strongest, hadn''t answered the call; she''d been too busy trying to hunt down the turtle, on the clear other side of the dungeon. As if she had either ignored my call, or not heard it. Good gods. Had she sworn herself to Seros? What the fuck. - He huddled further against the wall, claws scrabbling at the stony floor; the two goblins moved closer. Their black eyes pinned him like darts. "''e''s a bit small, eh?" One croaked, adjusting the hand on its stone-tipped piece of wood. It looked painful, looked sharp; like the things that had stabbed him. He rumbled, his cuts aching; he just wanted to go home. Back to his mushrooms and water and freedom. "Some kind of runt, are ya?" He shuffled further against the wall. Maybe if he pulled up on his shadow mana he could hide from them, could get them to leave him alone¨C The other goblin marched closer, tapping its weapon against the ground. It peered at him, its teeth still exposed. "An akkyst, looks like. ''ittle baby who never learned to fight." Akkyst? He didn''t know that word. But he¡­ he knew how to fight. His legs bunched, claws digging into the stone; he was bigger than these goblins. The two humans had been monsters with magic and metal; these were small. He could fight. And if he beat them, then he could leave, could try to go back to the dungeon where he would be safe¨C The goblin saw him try to rise, chortled, and slammed the butt of its spear across his muzzle. He fell to the ground, bawling; all of his cuts stung anew, muscles tired and shaking after days of running away; he didn''t want to fight. He just wanted to sleep. "Useless," one of them snorted. "Jus'' kill it so we can finish scouting." The closest goblin frowned, leaning in; it poked a finger about his face, pulling up a lip to stare at his ivory fangs. He whined and curled tighter around himself. Its black eyes glinted. "Akkyst or not, still a bear. The horde will never turn down a war animal." He didn''t like any of those words. Those his cuts stung and cried out at the motion, he huddled against the wall, claws dug into the wall like that could protect him. Maybe they would just walk away. Run away. "Come along, little Akkyst," a goblin crooned, jabbing him with its spear again. "Up you go. The horde''ll find some use for ''ou." Chapter 24 - Waters Below Bubbles meandered their way up to pop cheerfully against the ceiling, kicked up by the armourback sturgeon shuffling through the sand for food. He had been joined by one of his brethren, a foot shorter and even less attentive to the dangers surrounding her, and they both swam merrily on without a care. The rest of the inhabitants on the third floor couldn''t say the same. The school of silverheads had already done what most in their position would fulfill over the course of years; they''d found nests to lay eggs, got around to doing that, and then almost immediately were killed by the new tyrants of the silvertooth swarm. One blood-frenzy that had taken hours for them to come out of and the silverheads were still cowering in the little nooks and crannies they''d managed to find so far, maybe half surviving. A good sign my third floor was working. I couldn''t have been more proud. The greater crabs had poked their antennae around, curious, but found the second floor more to their liking, and Seros had taken approximately ten seconds to run the quick errand of bringing my heart down to a hollow on the third floor before never leaving again. His hydrokinesis ran wild with so much water surrounding him, endless and flowing; I''d never seen him more happy. Unfortunately for me, there were still tasks to complete on the floors above. I slipped a point of awareness into a den just as a pale glow subsided, five spiders shaking off the last of their evolution to look at the world with new eyes. Webweavers. They had stayed about the same size as a cave spider, half a foot in diameter¡ªmaybe that was normal for spiders? Growing massive might take a very specialized evolution¡ªbut instead of a ruddy red they were a pale white, scuttling like ghosts in the night. Even their eyes were milky, the exact hue as the silk of their webs; better for disguise, I guessed. I certainly enjoyed it more. The same claw-tipped legs, the same jagged mandibles. The real change was in their intelligence. Even as they just woke up, I could see them communicating; their thoraxes trembled and little puffs of pheromones drifted out, quickly caught by the others with the favour returned. In seconds they had all grouped up, twitching legs and mandibles as if explaining a plan. Utterly fascinating. I dragged more points of awareness in to watch from every angle. They didn''t seem to talk in a manner I recognized, not looking at each other or really even acknowledging other presences, prodding their front legs around their den. But still, all of them patiently took in the pheromones and sent their own back, clearly saying something. Hm. I looked closer. There were the pheromones, yes, microscopic specks I could only see through my omnipresent gaze, but there was something else; a thin little trail of mana, anchored at the heart of one webweaver and connecting to the others. And again. All of them had it. As they spread out around their den, the connecting strands of mana woven between them all almost looked like a web. That was absolutely worth looking more into. I pressed a soft, guiding influence into one of the webweaver''s minds, nudging it to look to the great outside; it followed my hint blindly, scuttling outside with its eight eyes looking everywhere. Her four fellows were right on her trail. I led them along a little march, sending pulses of soothing mana to the horned serpent in their path; she raised her antlered head, watching the little process of ghostly spiders scurry around her. Her thoughts were lazy contentment, an enormous stone-backed toad dissolving away in her stomach. She flicked her tongue at the new creatures before curling back up to sleep. They arrived at a stalagmite, tucked away in a corner relatively safe from the larger dangers of the floor; right above the still bloody evolving ironback toad, actually. Gods if the little bastard hadn''t taken forever. His metallic coat must be the reason for the delay; it had better be worth it. At this point my kobolds would start mining themselves before they could get access to the new material. The first paused at the base, mandibles not quite twitching as much flailing, and started to scurry up its base; her clawed feet dug into the stone and propelled her neatly up the shear wall, her milky white carapace blending in with the silver-grey of the limestone. Her brethren waited until she sent some clarification that it was safe and then they all scurried after her, examining what would be their new home. Temporary home, though. The stalagmite was large but not immensely so, enough that one or two spiders could cover it in webs. I had five webweavers and a hankering for more; I would need to find them a larger spot to rule over. Although¨C how effective would they really be? That had always been my problem with my various cave spiders in the past. With the notable exception of the jeweled jumper and his bullshit venom, none of my spiders could really do anything against adventurers. And as much as I relied on the steady stream of refilling mana my spiders reclaimed for me through insects and larger creatures, it really wasn''t so much that I could afford to devote myself to working on them instead of my other creatures. Maybe I should just stick to giving them the stalagmite for now, wait for more to join their ranks or another to evolve¡ª The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Something new darted through my first floor entrance. Or¨C new in a relative sense, insofar that this little bastard had been bugging me for days now. It was a bat, small and wretchedly shrill, screaming as it bobbed and swayed through my fungal gardens. And, as always, it managed to find a spider perched on the edge of its web and promptly snagged a midnight snack. But unlike the other times, something actually noticed. The webweavers stiffened, raising their heads off the stalagmite as if they could see up a floor. More pheromones drifted through the air, but there it was again¨C the little bolt of mana colliding with the rest of the group like lightning loosed from a storm. Like they were connected. I wished I could have gone back in time to prove whether there had been a connection of mana from when the cave spider died, but I''d bet gold there had been; a communal species both to themselves and others on their evolutionary line. Okay. And there was always the counter to how ineffective spiders were against humans; where one failed, a whole fuckin'' bunch of them probably wouldn''t. A coordinated attack of spiders, whether stationary in a web or scuttling about on the floor itself, could devastate a group of invaders. Spiders were naturally easy to overlook, both camouflaged and rather small, and so they could sneak up on unassuming invaders shooting for the more visible threats of serpents or crabs. That could be their undoing. And if the webweavers could evolve to the point of not just connecting with their evolutionary line but commanding them¡­ Well. That settled it. So far I''d been content to have spiders as a roaming threat of my floors, letting them fight for scraps or control a limited territory, but no longer. I''d give them a proper place on the second floor and I''d really start thinking about building my fourth with them in mind. Also, I wanted that bat. - Velesso swam closer, twisting prone to avoid scraping his lower fins against the rough stone; he disliked swimming so close to the walls of the cove, without the freedom of open depths and nothing to tear at his scales. But in a case like this, he was certainly willing to ignore it. Himself and Chelle were at the front of the pod, leading the others to where she had watched her nightmarketers go, with three other merrows taking up the back. Other guard-patrols, he didn''t know them, but the weapons they gripped and the magic they wielded told him they were plenty strong enough for the mission. And in the center, the Priestess. Taller than any of them, fins draped in strands of pearl and amethyst and fossilized kelp, an enormous staff with a diamond worth more than his lifetime salary, she swam peacefully as if this was a normal morning''s call. Not the potential discovery of a new dungeon. More to the point, a dungeon that merrows could actually access. Their pod slipped through the rising dawn waters, dodging around the Dread Pirate''s underwater shelters and the posts embedded in the ground from the docks, Chelle leading the rest. He followed at a distance, running his claws over the kelp-wrapped trident over his back. Until eventually, they came across the slump that stood for the eastern side of the cove. Chelle nodded at the shear wall ahead, rough and cragged; it descended almost straight down, smoothed by time but still holding the original shape of the meteor that had carved out the cove, the mountains lying beyond. If the dungeon was like any of its brethren, it would dig down; dig down to an area where it was below sea level. An area they could access. The Priestess swam forward and all the merrows dutifully parted before her, bowing their heads before her dignified approach. She inspected the cove wall curiously, white-ringed eyes narrowed. She swept her staff forward, the diamond thrumming with magic as she sent some sort of detection spell deeper into the stone. Whatever it was, it came back positive. "To obtain a dungeon''s core¡­" she hummed, clicking her claws together. "To become the first merrow High Lord of the Le¨®ro Kingdom." Her voice was nothing but quiet awe. "Our own dungeon. Abarossa above." Velesso knew damn well what she meant. There was no king of Le¨®ro, not since the elder days of the Last King; his descendents still lived as the prince and princesses of the realm, having nominal power over the Citadel itself, but that wasn''t where the true authority rested. No, that was purely with the High Lords. The Last King had made the decree that those who held power equal to him could join his royal ranks, a workaround for the archaic dynasty laws; a way for even the most peasant-born of Le¨®ro to rise to the upper ranks. The exact meaning of power equal was made pretty clear when set next to his obsession with the dungeon he controlled below the Citadel. If any member of the kingdom obtained a dungeon core, they would be raised to High Lord and given a territory to rule over. For the merrows that had gone so often overlooked by the Lords that tried to take their oceans and refused to trade with them, that would give them true power. And while they might not have had the best grasp on the inner workings of Calarata, Velesso was still pretty damn sure the dungeon was new and unknown. For there not to be a massive rampage of unranked adventurers with gold in their eyes swarming it, they had to have been relatively quick in discovering it. The other High Lords¡ªmost of them, at least¡ªleft their dungeons open to adventurers, either to train or gather mana-rich supplies, but with the harsh restriction that there was never allowed to be an actual attempt on the core. Death was the kindest punishment for such a crime; the Lords were not fond of anyone trying to remove their power. So for a baby dungeon with its core still intact, it would be nothing but a beacon call for any adventurers with half a rusty dagger to their name. And thus the perfect target for the merrows. The Priestess swam forward, closing her eyes. She pressed her palm flat to the stone, angling her staff so the diamond pointed deep to the waters below, light splashing through the currents around. "Abarossa, lend me strength," she murmured. Boom. Chapter 25 - Front Door Knocking The ironbacked toad croaked at me. Or, more specifically, at the little tendril of mana I was meandering towards his feet. He puffed up to his actually rather impressive height of three feet, chest inflating like a bellows for a squawk that wouldn''t have been out of place from a bird, posturing with all his metallic armour. It was a significant upgrade from his last look, I''d give him that; where once his protection had been a vague, half-hearted collection of lumps over his back he just had to pray would be in the right spot, this time he had proper silver-grey plating stretching over his torso and face. His limbs were more barren, just a few patches of scale-esque iron over the flat fronts to leave the joints free, alongside a face a battering ram would be proud to take home. Glorious little bruiser. And gods if he wasn''t taking his new job a touch too seriously. He''d evolved mayhaps an hour ago, shaking off the haziness of mana overload. Taken a few minutes to snap his tongue at the closest cave spider to refill some of his empty stomach, examined the new billowing moss flooding through the second floor, tested his new armour by bashing it against the stone with a pleased croak. Then he''d promptly plodded off to the nearest burrowing rat den and sat there. It wasn''t even one of my dens, the rats living up to their name and carving it out themselves; they were one of the smaller families, too small to be able to threaten one of the more massive colonies out of the large, pre-made dens. So they''d dug out their own little slice of paradise and promptly lost many generations trying to defend it. The way of the world. But now, with a beast so many times their own size sitting before their entrance, they didn''t have to worry about luminous constrictors poking their head into the crack that made up their entrance, a greater crab angling its crushing pincer in. All threats of the second floor still existed when they went outside to gather food but for rest and recovery, they would be safe. All the better for evolution. Gods, I wanted them to evolve¡ªthey''d been with me since before I''d carved out the second floor, scampering little bastards with their highly-honed senses. I doubted one evolution would be enough to take them from prey to apex predator but giving them a chance would be lovely; and seeing one of their own reach such peaks would be enough to push the others up. And if the ironbacked toad could give them that chance, I''d be more than grateful. I retracted all the various probes of mana I''d been teasing him with, letting him return to his silent guard with only a slight narrowing of his grey-black eyes. Seven rats behind him curled up, content even past their fear, whiskers and twin-forked tails twitching constantly. Soon. Leaving a point of awareness in their den I spread out to the rest of my floor, poking in to watch the various comings and goings; a school of silvertooths welcomed a newly hatched youngling to their midst, the rest of the eggs wobbling and twisting behind. The horned serpent sang her siren''s call to a blissfully unwary toad, antlers glowing. An electric eel with its dozen or so loyal followers geared up for a fight, itching to claim another eel''s territory. The kobolds were back in the den I''d originally shaped for them, all three¡ªeven though the two groups had wildly separate goals, the first looking to kill the snapping turtle and the other two just looking to survive, they still worked together. Even if the original no longer could hear me, sworn to bloody Seros as she was. Gods. Just the thought made me a strange mixture of furious and confused. The first kobold proudly brandished a length of branch she''d managed to claw loose from a mangrove, the rest examining it with wide eyes and warbles. The splotched kobold who''d done such a lovely job with the rats pushed his own contribution forward; a fang from a luminous constrictor, far too small for the piece of wood but moving in the right direction. All three bent their heads over it and warbled in unison. One day they''d understand tools. Whether by making them themselves or by me finally losing my patience and dumping buckets of swords in their laps. I had only just started to give the idea more merit when a low, distant boom echoed through my halls. Every creature paused. All of my points of awareness flared to life, blitzing about the place as I searched for an intruder I''d somehow missed; the snapping turtle, huddled against the wall of a canal and gnawing down chunks of a dead silverhead. The screaming bat, digging its claws into strands of algae for an upside-down nap. A multitude of bugs far too small to make the sound. I shoved my awareness as far against my entrances as I could handle, jabbing invisible eyes at the dark like I could magically start to see through it; nothing. The sound didn''t feel like it came from there. I darted through my floors, tugging on mana still reverberating with the echo; Seros raised his head from his languished sprawl on the third floor, ivory teeth bared and tail lashing. Water swirled around the quivering fins over his neck. One section of my third floor shook slightly. I sprang for it, pressing great loops of mana against its surface to try and pick up where the sound had come from. It echoed, the last lingering remains of some distant attack, before fading out. I frowned at it. An earthquake, maybe? From the thoughts I''d pieced together from the Calarata natives, the area was prone to them; it could have been one of those strong enough that there was a tangible sound and I''d be hit by the shockwave in short time. Or¡ªmy core twinged unhappily at the thought¡ªone of the threats I''d heard lived in the Al¨®mbra Mountains. Goblin-hordes and iron giants and maybe even a stone-drake, waking on top of its shining hoard. My mana sharpened. Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author. Dragon I was no longer, but I''d be damned if I let some upstart try to muscle in over my territory. Boom. Another, closer. My mana filtered through the cracks in the limestone, feeding me bits of information; something was hitting the stone, heavy as a thunderstorm. I could even hear vague whispers of water, the slosh and gurgle of misaligned currents, and the deep, water-dark smell of open ocean. And¨C hm. This was the side of my dungeon that was closest to the sea, wasn''t it? Right beneath the cove entrance of my first floor. Boom. Cracks raced over the limestone, roaring, and the whole wall collapsed. My mana exploded, tugged out of my control towards the opening like a whirlpool; two opposing forces of water slammed into each other, the raging bully of the ocean and the meek, uncurrented freshwater. Boulders and pebbles and great slabs of rock went flying, crashing through the sand and algae and outcroppings. I howled, thrown, spiraling through my floor; my mana flew away from me, wrenched out of the hole in my defenses, writhing with jagged edges as it flew. My awareness shrank to only vague colours as I spun, helplessly ricocheting off rubble and chaos and¡ª No. I refused. My mana fled from me but I wasn''t drowning; the water was equalizing and my core was up and out of it, safe overhead, even if the water level was rising far too fast for my comfort¡ªI wrenched my points of awareness back under my control and jabbed them towards the intruder. Intruders. Many of them. Five¡ªno, six¡ªmerrows floated within the tunnel they''d bored through the mountain, rough and uneven but plenty wide enough for them to swim; through my escaping mana I could see a glimpse of the sea beyond, the wild toss and wave of untouched mana, the faint, lingering smell of a deep-ocean goddess. Six of them, five armed with spears and swords and tridents and one with a looming, diamond-tipped staff, all tensed to the teeth and gearing for a fight. I bared unfortunately metaphorical fangs. Who the fuck did they think they were, busting through my wall? My mana surged, waking up any deaf creature that had somehow missed a bloody hole being torn through my floor¡ª And none answered my call. I spun, throwing points of awareness up as fast as the mana drain in the floor sucked them away; the drain. Not just of mana, but¡ª Of freshwater. Replacing it with the ocean''s salt. One of my armourback sturgeons had successfully escaped the explosion of rock and grit and had probably had time to be proud of herself before the water imbalance struck; she laid prone on the sandy bottom of my floor, fins flailing, mouth open and gasping. Her gills fluttered but already I could see them shriveling, all the hydration fleeing her cells. She twisted and writhed as her internal organs shrunk, muscles pulled taut and unmoving, still gasping helplessly. And then she died. Around her, silverheads and silvertooths trembled, saltwater they''d never had to survive before flooding their systems. What healing mana I could muster past my shock was wrenched out of my control, caught in the whirlpool of the opening, pulled out towards the ocean. They were dying. They were all dying. I exploded. Seventeen points of mana to my name and losing it rapidly; I tore five loose and slammed them into the stone by the hole, wrenching it up with all the grace of a hurricane. The limestone shuddered, crawling over the gaping wound in its side, but the merrows had been casting spells. My mana trembled, caught between racing out to open sea and refilling the intruders¡ªeither way, it certainly wasn''t staying with me. I roared, shoving another four points into the stone; my control eroded away under the onslaught. I couldn''t fix the hole. I just couldn''t, too much happening at once; I flinched as another sturgeon died a horrible, writhing death, silverheads lurching overhead as their school lost half its numbers. But I could control it. It would be making it an official entrance to my dungeon, ripping free the primary control in favour of an intangible shield¡ªI''d worry about it later. I poured mana between the gaping stones, the stream of my escaping freshwater, and slammed a command down. The mana held, wavering, and was promptly ripped away as more of it filled the merrows and escaped out to open sea. I didn''t have enough. Then gods, I would make mana. I ripped the sturgeon''s soul back from the whirlpool, shredding apart flesh and memories alike; all my dying silverheads crumpled as their minds flayed under the pressure, flecks and sparks racing back to me. Not enough. I tore at the upper floors, wrenching back the ambient mana as my creatures fell apart. Not enough. The second floor shuddered, walls trembling and dust rising as my stabilizing presence fled. My core filled to bursting and then once over. Then I turned and hurled it all at the entrance. The water howled, lashing at my mana¡ªit wanted to flow as water did, run freely, carrying mana in currents as it raced to fill every crevice. But this was my dungeon, and it would obey. With a deep, vibrating snap, an entrance closed around the stone. My mana stopped racing out towards open seas, bouncing off the barrier and floating languishly back to me; I reached deep and spidered my mana through the water, hunting down every fleck of salt, every scrap of worthless corruption. My core room was the only area free of water. I heaved and threw a massive sprawl of salt out of my floor. With a horrible, trembling emptiness, my core fully rid itself of mana but completed the task. My points of awareness popped like bubbles, no mana to maintain them; I clung to a precious last two and fed them directly from the Otherworld, clutching my last senses as the others faded away. I was empty. I was beyond empty. But as much as the entrance was now stopping saltwater from entering and my scraps of mana from exiting, it was still an entrance. My creatures gasped, dead or dying, mere fractions of what my already understocked third floor had held; my core sat a mere three thousand feet away from the entrance, only murky water between. I was out of mana, out of creatures, and my life was feeling very limited indeed. Because those merrow? They entered my third floor with nothing left in their path to stop them. Chapter 26 - Hardfought Gods. My last two points of awareness spun around the invaders, scouring for any advantage I could claim¡ªsix, all armed, all ready. I didn''t know the intricacies of merrow mana channels, our interactions being limited since I was a creature of the open ocean and they stayed near the coasts, but they didn''t feel like Bronze-ranked adventurers. Except for the Priestess. I didn''t know what god she served, but there was no other way for me to interpret the tunnel she''d bored through the mountain and the mana sparking off her diamond-tipped staff but Bronze. Gods, I was so dead. "It''s in here," the lead merrow murmured in their strange, warbling tongue, adjusting her grip on her twin spears. "Priestess?" She nodded, angling her staff so the pale diamond shone deeper through the murk of settling water. "It''s young but not untested. Defeat the creatures in our route for me to pass. I will need full concentration to bond with the core." Bond. What a pretty word for enslave. As one, the other five merrow nodded. Their various weapons shone in the green light. If they were coming through like normal, polite adventurers, I''d have had plenty of opportunities to stop them¡ªbut they had punched a hole right through my third floor. The one I''d barely begun. I''d crush my other floors just to stop them here. My mana, what scraps of it remained, howled. Creatures dozens of feet above presumably raised their heads, hungry and awakening, but it wasn''t like I could see¡ªI clung desperately to my last points of awareness but kept them on the third floor, mirroring their positioning to try and see all the merrow at once. I just needed more defenders. With a hiss, those still alive on the third floor swam to life. The original armourback sturgeon picked himself off the sandy bottom, movements stiff and twitching with even his minimal exposure to saltwater, but at seven feet he was nearly as long as the merrow themselves and built like a tank. Silvertooths spiraled overhead, their school reduced by half but still dozens present, bloody red fins flashing in the algae-light. Even silverheads poked cautiously out from their dens, my mana inciting a hunger they couldn''t ignore. I could feel those above resist my call¡ªsome from fear of going deeper, some from a pure inability to brave the water¡ªbut I didn''t have time to worry about individuals now. I just had to pray enough would come. A splash, and the twin greater crabs who had spent all their time terrorizing my mangrove canals fell into the third floor. I could feel stone-backed toads and cave spiders gathering at the edges of the canal, answering my call but unable to find a way down to the third floor that didn''t involve drowning. Luminous constrictors slipped into the depths with their long and twining lungs, electric eels filtering it from deeper in the canals. More creatures. For one, though, I felt a disconnect. Still born of my mana, shaped by it, but no longer listening. The original kobold. Seros was already racing, tearing through the tunnels of the third floor as soon as he''d felt the wall break. No time for stealth; he emerged from a side wall with a twist of raw muscle, iridescent scales gleaming in the light, fangs bared and fins quivering. At the same time, he closed his eyes, mana picking up through his currents¨C And on the second floor, something I could feel more than see, the firstborn kobold raised her head. As lovely as it was to have that fact confirmed, I had bigger problems to deal with. The Priestess raised her clawed hand, pointing to Seros. "Don''t kill that one," she commanded, and her voice rang with mana¡ªI could see her soldiers straighten, a little more adrenaline in their eyes. "But incapacitate it. Slaughter the others." Seros hissed, bubbles erupting from behind his fangs. Of course merrows would be interested in capturing and studying such a beauty of aquatic life. At fourteen feet he was nearly double their length, armed in all manner of scales and fins and raw power. I''d also have to be dead before I let them capture him. Which, hey! Might be today! I roared. My creatures surged to attack. The greater crabs with their glorious lack of self-preservation were the first to spring forward, scuttling over the sandy floor with their massive pincers raised high. The merrow with her twin spears shot forward to match. Brawlers versus a bladedancer. She swept one spear low and I could see mana at work, a kind of passive ambiance that kept water from slowing down her strikes; my crabs could only try and match that with brute force. A spear tip punched through one of the male''s legs. He chittered and snapped, pushing off the ground with his back two legs built for swimming kicking to life; the merrow danced back with her spears flashing. Between the three, the female crab was far more cautious, a clutch of eggs clinging to her underbelly. They''d been in the process of trying to find a den for her when the attack came. The merrow lunged her spears forward, sliding one around the crab''s outer carapace and one up under his left claw. The crab spun and knocked the higher with the armoured bulk of his body, nudging it off course, and slammed his crushing pincer against the spear''s shaft. His mate scuttled beneath and snapped at the merrow''s tailfins. A rather perfect tag team. The merrow spat some sort of curse in a cloud of bubbles and shot up, abandoning her follow-up attack in favour of a slap of her tail. No contact but it kicked up enough of a wave of water to push the female crab back, her mate lurching in from the other side. The merrow twisted, one spear clumsily shooting for the crab''s face. We both took great pleasure as he chose not to dodge, taking the hit across the top of his carapace, and gave himself just enough of an opening to lock his claw around the shaft. The merrow recoiled, tugging back; the crab''s pincer twisted and snapped it in half. My mana burst into a cheer. But it had only been a feint gone wrong, and the merrow had two spears. She spun, dorsal fins taut, and used the momentum of her breaking spear to lunge the other up. My crabs were built for hunting on riverbeds. To protect his mate, he had pushed off the ground to fight in open water. He had no way of moving quickly. The spear punched right through his underbelly. He flailed, legs twitching and writhing. His mate shot from the ground like a loosed cannon. The merrow was still desperately trying to tear her spear free from the crab''s dying body but in one last rebellion he wrapped his pincers around the shaft. No more strength left to snap it so he merely held it, jostling it deeper into his body, keeping the weapon away from her. The merrow gave up and shot upward, dodging a pincer snap that would''ve taken her arm off. She fumbled at a sack tied over her shoulders and pulled out a coral knife, one meant for cutting polyps and stone. There was panic in her eyes now, only matched by the raw fury in the crab''s. She fell upon the enemy, smashing her emerald claws into anything she could reach. The merrow screamed, slashing with her knife; the Priestess'' enhancement sang true and a lucky hit cleaved through the crab''s outer armour, ripping her pincer off in a burst of blue-green blood. But same as her opponent, she had two weapons. Her other claw took the merrow''s head off. There was no time to celebrate one victory; in the minute that had taken, the other invaders were swarming forward. One with a trident that my stolen memories found vaguely familiar took up guard by the Priestess, a pair with swords and spears alike darting forward, the fourth dropping low to slink over the sandy bottom. Seros bellowed like an avalanche and shot forward, hydrokinesis pushing him with all the raw fury he could muster. The pair of merrows raced to match. For all the clumsiness in water I''d mocked when he''d first evolved, Seros had not so much lost the weakness but made it his strength. The twin fins over his tail quivered and a current sprung to life from the ceiling, pushing him down in a perfect spin to dodge the sword coming in to cleave his head. He spun around the pair and lunged, claws ripping at their back; they split and shot away, mana swirling to life around their tails to match his. I didn''t know if merrow followed the same categories that humans put themselves into but I could guess; between spellcasters and warriors, they looked to be warriors, those that used mana to enhance their movement and attacks rather than external spells. Faster, stronger, ignoring pain and injuries¡ªnot a clue on what specific subclass but that wasn''t important now. Seros just needed to attack. He spiraled back, raking his horns against a merrow''s arm as he passed¡ªshe shouted and lunged. Her sword clipped her back and punched through a stripe of scales. Definite strength enhancement. Seros roared, surging forward to match her. The other merrow lunged back, swimming prone low over the ground as he rose for a spear jab. The seabound monitor spun, whipping at him with his tail as his claws extended¨C And a lone little creature, one who''d swam down from the second floor, poked its head out from behind a wall. Get back! I roared through our connection¡ªSeros stiffened and flung himself away, tail lashing to give him just an inch more distance. The two merrow paused. She raised her sword, pressing a clawed hand over her bleeding arm, and moved to follow him. This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it The electric eel lurking behind an outcropping slunk forward, electric silverheads spiraling out into their perfection formation, and released a blast of lightning-attuned mana. By himself, the attack would have been deadly. Lightning-attuned mana wasn''t exactly the same as real electricity but it was close enough, and there were plenty of imperfections in my water to carry the attack wide and far; but it didn''t need to lose its strength hitting the largest area possible. It had electric silverheads. A dozen or two per eel was the general rule of thumb I''d seen. Too many and there wouldn''t be enough kill to go around, too few and they wouldn''t be able to direct the electricity. He had fourteen. A lance shot from his sides and slammed into the conductive metal that made up an electric silverhead''s armour, hissing and spitting, and then sprang off to bounce against another head. The game of catch sped up until it was only one spear, impossibly white and blinding, and exploded forward. The merrow had perhaps a second to regret her life choices before the lightning skewered her stomach and burned her from the inside out. A glorious second of silence as her husk floated gently to the bottom. The other merrow shouted something incomprehensible and lunged forward, spear raised to pop through Seros'' skull¡ªand above, one of the luminous constrictors merrily floundering through attempting to learn to swim activated its underbelly. Seros lunged through the blinding flash and sank his jaws around the merrow''s throat. Or at least he would have, if the Priestess hadn''t raised her staff. "Stop." The water around him froze. Icicles grew over his scales, locking his tail down and stopping him inches from the merrow''s face with fangs extended. Seros'' eyes bulged as the ice shocked through his coldblooded system, mana quavering, the chill creeping into his heart. But he had the blessing of the depths, the power of deep waters. He held. With a crack like a splitting glacier, the ice sloughed off his tail and he flung himself forward. The merrow didn''t so much flee as disappear, shooting up to brace his tail against the ceiling and ready his spear; but free though Seros was, being half frozen didn''t do wonders for mobility. Seros barely managed to change the trajectory of his attack to not crash into the bottom, writhing as he broke more ice off his scales, movements stiff and unwieldy. I needed more creatures. It hurt but I tore away the point of awareness following the single merrow slinking along the bottom, sending it bursting through to the second floor; dozens of beings lurked at the canal''s edge, filled with a pressing hunger but no way to satisfy. Spiders and rats would never survive in the water, toads would be next to useless for the few minutes they wouldn''t die, most of my luminous constrictors had already gone down. I tugged on the strand of mana connecting me to the horned serpent, waking the lazy beast from her digestion¡ª A red blur from one of the room''s entrances. The original kobold shot from whatever room she''d been holed up in, sprinting like her life depended on it, and dove into the canal without an ounce of hesitation. I spared a brief thought of happiness for Seros. As far as first followers went, she would be hard to top. Her brethren, less so. They were crouched at the edge of the water, tapping their claws over the stone, but entirely unwilling to go in. Godsdamned cowards, still clinging to their fire-drake legacy¡ªtheir thoughts warred with hunger and a latent fear of water. Bastards. That was all the time I could spare. I darted back to the third floor. The merrow with the trident swam forward, leveling the three jagged points as Seros drew nearer¡ªhis lantern-esque eyes stayed fixed on the Priestess as he circled them, ignoring the spearman floating above. The ice attack had made it personal. She recognized that, her own white-ringed eyes flashing with mana. "Go," she murmured, gesturing to the merrow with the trident. He nodded and swam back, guarding the entrance; their back up plan for a hot exit, probably. Not that I''d let them have one. Creatures poured through the tunnel above her, snakes and fish and eels; the merrow with the spear shouted a curse and darted forward to engage, spearing a silvertooth before it had a chance to go into a blood-frenzy. Familiar with the species, it looked like. Maybe there was a saltwater equivalent¡ªor, honestly, given how bloody unaffected all the merrow were by swimming in my water, they were capable of swimming up rivers and entering freshwater. A spell or natural protection, hells if I knew. Infuriating all the same. The Priestess and Seros circled each other, neither wanting to make the first move. I perched overhead with my mana fluttering like a wounded bird. Seros was damned strong but she wasn''t the type he could afford to¨C He sprang at her with a roar, horns sliding up in a feint as he tucked down and lashed at her tail. The Priestess swung her staff forward. The water between them flashboiled¡ªSeros howled as the scorching water caught him on his side, searing over scales and far-weaker gills alike. He panted, half his breathing laboured and pained, struggling to swim out of the pocket of superheated water. Gods if she didn''t know how to fight sea creatures. Cold to hot¡ªhis mana went wild in his channels, desperately trying to smooth over the cracks building in his consciousness. Something dropped from the tunnel overhead, swimming with as much grace as a dead fish, and lunged for the Priestess. The kobold, her grey eyes as focused as I''ve ever seen them, kicked off the surface and charged. The Priestess blinked and released her boiling spell, shifting back as if to let the reptilian drift past her like a particularly lackluster bit of algae. Neither her nor Seros were ready when the kobold instead floundered her way closer and ripped a fin off her tail. The Priestess screamed, water whipping around her as she flung herself back; the kobold was blown back, thrashing awkwardly in the water, but her dulls claws¡ªno, not dull, she''d sharpened them with a rock¡ªhad blood drifting hazily around them. First scratch. Seros took no time in wasting the opportunity. Tail lashing, he spun overhead and whipped it at her, catching the edge of her shoulder and tearing one of her strands of fossilized kelp free. She shouted more words I didn''t recognize and her staff glowed, water solidifying as a shield in front of her; but it was slow. It seemed she was very used to fighting at a range. No longer. The merrow with the spear howled as the silvertooth school he''d been so determined to slaughter finally drifted close enough to the corpse left by the greater crab, blood filtering up to them through the water. Their eyes flashed red. Kobold and monitor swam in tandem as they charged, claws extended. The Priestess'' staff flashed and another spell surged around her, water stiffening around the slash in her tail and sharpening elsewhere. Like swimming into a field of knives. Unfortunately for her, Seros had hydrokinesis. He roared, lashing his tail; the water between them shivered, caught between a mental war. Seros would never win¡ªhe didn''t have nearly the experience she did¡ªbut the moment of hesitation was enough. Propelled by another current he''d kicked up, the kobold rocketed into the Priestess'' extended arms and ripped another chunk of flesh free. A blast of freezing cold, but the kobold was tucked so close to her she missed wildly in her attempts to avoid icing herself. The reptilian hissed and spat bubbles but the Priestess slammed the butt of her staff into her stomach, wrenching the kobold away. Seros lashed his tail, water frothing as he kicked up a fledgling whirlpool to force the Priestess to switch attention¡ªthe kobold took the opportunity and struggled her way to the surface, breaking through the water to one of the dozens of air pockets I''d sown around the ceiling to try and evolve my mushrooms in. She inhaled greedily, almost panting, and dove back under to continue. Not an ounce of hesitation. If Seros didn''t treasure her, he was more a fool than I thought. The Priestess was far from finished. She spun her staff, diamond glowing every shade of the rainbow, and threw a rippling wave of force through the room; an electric eel doing its damnedest to sneak up on her was ripped in half, its school shattered, even the trident-wielding merrow behind her crying out as a cut appeared over his stomach. Seros roared and darted forward, covering the kobold with his back; scales flayed as she tore a line down his spine, blood clogging the water between them. The kobold squeaked, bubbles flying from her mouth, and clawed her way past him to charge. Indignant fury filled her eyes. The silvertooths finished cleaning flesh from bone of the spear wielding merrow and I shifted my point of awareness elsewhere; maybe there was another creature that could aid the fight between the two tyrants, something to distract her while Seros moved¨C That was the problem with having spent so much mana that I lost my normal dizzying cloud of points of awareness. I only noticed the last merrow when it was almost too late. One from the beginning, who''d slunk off to the tunnels to make his way to the back; a sword clutched tight in his hand, eyes narrowed, and mana swirling over his body. Some sort of stealthing spell. He swam less than ten feet from the tunnel that would lead him to my core. Seros! The seabound monitor spun, saw the situation, and exploded. I''d never seen him swim faster; limestone groaned as currents whipped up along their sides, eddies and whirlpools kicked up in his wake, fins fully extended and tail lashing like a hurricane. He cleared a thousand feet, two; the merrow glanced back as his death approached with fangs aimed for his throat. But the Priestess was faster. She raised her staff, the diamond within losing its luster as she seemed to bleed the power out of it; babble spilled from her lips as mana swirled around her, faster and faster, some sort of spear made of light coalescing above her head. A spell over her sea-green skin shimmered as it tried to protect her from the water boiling with excess mana, the entire rest of the silverheads on the floor not so much dying as imploding¡ª It could be excused, really. Not a problem I''m sure she''d thought of. The Priestess had perhaps never encountered kobolds before, or at least never seen a group defend a dragon. Self-preservation simply never factored into the equation. But she elected to think that the boiling water would stop the kobold from attacking her, and that had never been a worse mistake. Eyes lit up with grey fire, the kobold howled and sprang. Teeth that no longer deserved the title of fangs scrabbled at her side, at her neck; claws sharpened by amateur hands tore at her face. The Priestess screamed, spell dropping. She tried to kick up more boiling water, enough to flashboil any living creature less hardy than stone, but it didn''t matter. She''d attacked a dragon. And a kobold never forgets. And perhaps some latent gift from her fire-drake legacy kicked in; the boiling water clung to her, ripping at her scales and tearing at her sensitive eyes and mouth, but she didn''t die. She bit down hard, thrashing at the Priestess'' skin with her sharpened claws, ripping blindly at whatever she could reach. The merrow died screaming, her protection fading and the boiled water sweeping in to consume her whole. Seros, unhindered, cleared the last thousand feet and spent half a second ripping the stunned merrow head from tail. Mana exploded through the room, rich and powerful and so welcome I wanted to cry; I immediately grabbed a strand of Bronze-ranked and flung it at the kobold, drifting away from the corpse of her kill. Seros threw his own power a second behind, wrenching the water away to give her air to breathe. She wasn''t bound to me any longer, but she was dungeonborn, and I shoved as much healing mana into her as her body would handle. She slumped over, but the milky shade of her eyes started to fade, scales regrowing and blood refilling through her veins. She would live. And, as my points of awareness slowly started to reappear as mana returned to my system, I could see the merrow with the trident had fled through the entrance he had been guarding. Silence rippled through my third floor. A merrow had escaped, off to tell Calarata about my true position as a dungeon and soon there would be more raids, more invaders, more people desperate to steal my connection to the Otherworld. I should have been panicked, furious. All I felt was a desperate, desperate relief. Chapter 27 - A Healers Touch Even as I shook off my rippling fear, I had to move. The Priestess'' soul exploded into a blast of Bronze-ranked mana, thick and rich like water from a melting glacier, but I didn''t exactly have time to sample it. I snatched the mana and rushed to my creatures, to those dead and dying. Seros'' kobold was injured but stable, her eyes milky and scorched by the boiling water, scales ripped loose and horns twisted; an electric eel curled and twisted around the spearhead embedded in his side; the armourback sturgeon left tried to flee from the sword pinning his back fin to the ground. Gods. They''d brutalized everyone. I grabbed the Bronze-ranked mana and did my best. Blood hazing through the water got sucked back into its original body, flesh regrowing and scales popping over top like a coat of armour once more. I tugged the spearhead out of the electric eel, the metal clattering to the ground. A handful of silverheads gasped, thrashing, and though I sprang for them I couldn''t clear the salt that had crystalized in their gills; they died a truly horrifying death. Sparks of mana drifted towards my near-full core. Seros. The seabound monitor shot up to attention, the fins over his tail quivering as he held the waters at bay, circulating air over his kobold. Take her to safety. He nodded, leaning down with almost hesitance in his eyes; I''d never seen him so worried before, tension all but rippling under his scales as he bent down. He wrapped his jaws carefully around the kobold''s upper arm, every ounce of his hydrokinesis coming to play as he kept a bubble of air around her face even as he kicked off the ground and swam up¡ªbut not back to the second floor. He wriggled his way up the farthest tunnel, laying her carefully next to the pillar that held my core. That was¡­ a choice. I guessed he wanted to make extra sure she would be safe? Nothing I would begrudge; not quite a dragon, but having a kobold''s loyalty was something I imagined spoke right to the draconic part of his soul. I curled an errant piece of stone around the entrance. No one would be sneaking up on her in any meaningful way. And then I took stock of my dungeon halls. From all of my creatures, perhaps a third had been killed, if not more; the Priestess'' ranged attacks hadn''t been limited to just Seros and his kobold but had also hit the massive schools of silverheads and silvertooths, leaving only scraps sadly drifting through my third floor. On the upper two floors, only those incapable of swimming had stayed behind, alongside the cowards; everywhere was depleted. All the floors were strangely silent. My points of awareness bled back upwards, guiding the last scraps of the Bronze-ranked mana to help repair the floors; when I''d wrenched my ambient mana away some of the walls had weakened, trembling under the weight of the mountain above, and I slammed as much reinforcement into them as the limestone would hold. I was rather interested in not having my dungeon home crumble around me, thank you kindly. Something tickled at the edge of my thoughts. I glanced back at my core.
Your creature, a Luminous Constrictor, is undergoing evolution! Please select your desired path. Colossal Boa (Uncommon): Growing to titanic lengths, this constrictor lurks in the shadows and strikes at passing victims. With its immense strength and size, there is little that can successfully fight off its fatal hold. Umbral Constrictor (Rare): It foresakes its previous life in favour of its new hunting style, shrouding itself in shadows as it slinks through the undergrowth. Its prey never sees it coming, and they rarely have time to regret that mistake. Silver Krait (Uncommon): Adapted to life both in water and on land, this creature strikes at night. Its bite causes no initial pain, fooling its prey into never noticing they were bit at all, only to suffocate later.
Oh. Oh! I narrowed in on the constrictor in question; the one who had tried to help Seros kill the merrow. He was old, practically ancient by my dungeon''s standards, and his size had given him the increased lung capacity to actually fight on the third floor. Glorious little bastard. He hadn''t exactly been successful, given as Seros had been frozen the next second, but apparently just being present in the battle was enough for it to count towards his evolution. It was the thought that counted. One familiar option, with unfortunately the same problem as I''d had last time; I wasn''t sure a boa potentially long enough to stretch between two full rooms of my second floor would be all that effective a hunter. Maybe once I got a jungle floor it could run rampant, but I didn''t want to risk wasting this evolution on crippling the constrictor. The umbral option; huh, a darkness affinity. Either a corruption of the luminous constrictor''s previous ability, or a learned element from my lunar cave bear. My mana tightened at the thought. I knew he was strong, the way he''d nearly killed my first floor very present in my mind, but I was starting to run out of hope that he would return to me. Lost to the monsters deeper within the Al¨®mbra Mountains. Not enough time to think about that. I returned to the options. Umbral constrictor would be best utilized on a floor that didn''t have a constant source of light in the green algae overhead, more useful for hiding away from adventurer''s lights instead of an ambient glow. A shame to waste another mana specialization, but ah well. Silver krait, however. Not a full sea snake with gills, but with massively expanded lung capacity and a tail built for swimming. I remembered kraits from my explorations around coral reefs, vain little beasties who knew damn well how powerful their venom was and lorded it over the rest of the critters there. A glorious addition. I selected that. The luminous constrictor curled up, a glow blooming under his scales, and I shifted an errant curl of mana to safely push him back onto the second floor. Didn''t exactly want to risk his expanded lungs coming in too late. But his message wasn''t the only one crawling over my awareness. Though I''d expected this one a little more.
Your creature, a Kobold, is undergoing evolution! Please select your desired path. Kobold Warrior (Rare): In a world of dangers, one rises to match. This creature fights with a brawn well beyond what its body should hold, ending battles with the sheer strength of its will and an unwillingness to concede. Lizardfolk (Common): Some dreams are so large they crush those who dream them. Abandoning its previous legacy, this creature turns to its own strengths, growing in both physical and mental prowess as it seeks to carve its own destiny. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. Kobold Chief (Rare): A group of scavengers no longer¡ªa leader rises to claim dominion over its brethren, leading them to greater peaks than ever before. With a vastly improved intelligence and sense of self, this chief commands its fellow kobolds to rise above.
Seros raised his head as he felt my awareness focus in on his kobold, curled around her in the safety of my core room. She was still healing, one eye paler than the other and arms twisted, but Bronze-ranked mana roiled through her channels. The Priestess'' mana had split evenly between Seros, her, and I, but that was plenty for an evolution. And what an evolution it would be. Most of her evolutions were rather separate from what I was used to, staying the same species but changing her position within them, with the exception of lizardfolk that was expressively a switch of thinking. Maybe that was what happened with humanoid creatures? Idly, I wondered whether it wasn''t the gods protecting specific races, but rather the difference between sentience and sapience; I could only collect schemas of sentient creatures, but I couldn''t create sapience. Unless my creatures could evolve up to sapience? Something to ponder later. Lizardfolk was out, though. As much as a massive increase to strength and intelligence would be fantastic, I knew the kobold would fight the shift with every aspect of her being. She had sworn to Seros when he was just a lizard. Being crushed by her dragon dreams wasn''t a possibility. As for chief versus warrior, all I had to do was glance back at the other two kobolds. They still worked together, although split up into the male with the variegated scales who had come up with the idea to utilize the burrowing rats and the female with the branching horns who was more focused on finding how to use tools. But the original hadn''t taken a leading role with them. Hells, she''d actively abandoned them to fight her own battles. Warrior was the only choice for her. The evolutionary light settled over her like a comforting blanket, her giving a hissing sigh as she curled tighter up. Seros crooned over her, nosing at her blinded eye, before slipping back into the water of the third floor. Already I could see how those two would drastically change the dynamic of my floors. Evolutions were truly revolutionary. I paused, then flicking through the rest of my creatures¡ªonly two evolutions, then. Unfortunately for the electric eel who''d scored the kill, all the mana from the merrow had been split between him and the fourteen electric silverheads of his shoal. It''d take them a bit longer before they''d all be ready to evolve. It wasn''t the last evolution I had, though.
Congratulations! You have reached the threshold for evolution. As a reward, the gods have deigned themselves to offer you gifts, if you believe you are worthy to accept them. You may choose an Otherworld schema and either an expansion to your mana pool or regeneration.
I could have purred. Gods if I hadn''t deserved it¡ªI was still shaking off the realization that there was a bloody third entrance into my dungeon I hadn''t exactly planned for, and for me to survive that, I was damn full of experience. Still the infuriatingly rude message. Someone upstairs wasn''t pleased with my existence and I had no way of knowing why. Not that I would care, mind you, but I was curious. It wasn''t a question of what to pick, though. I already collected nearly a point an hour and I didn''t have any more creatures I was angling to Name that would cut that number down. And with the drastically rising increases of creating creatures, my twenty-five points I was able to hold was the main limiting factor. I selected expansion to my mana pool. Everything shuddered; I felt my core tremble and almost crack, the marbled red and black spiraling as the golden letters over its interior rewrote themselves. I gave the equivalent of a mental gasp as something tugged deep at my being, wrenching clawed little fingers through my awareness, and¡ª With a sort of pop, my core expanded a few inches in diameter. Honestly? Ouch. I wasn''t supposed to move or expand. It felt like bloating, like I''d eaten a full whale with no regards to time or stomach size. Not exactly what I''d called pleasant. But with a quick glance back at my core, I could see it was worth it.
Dragonheart Core
Mana: 49.2 / 75 Mana Regeneration: +0.9 per hour
Patrons: None
Titles: Resurrector
Oh, a glorious seventy-five¡ªalready the dead and dying merrow''s mana filtered through me, bright and bold, their souls full of thoughts and memories and ideas. I''d poke through them later, when I''d finished saving my floors and recreating all the creatures I''d lost. And once I''d selected an Otherworld schema. I''d actually played this rather wrong; given how useful the kobolds were, I''d misplayed them by only creating three. I''d fix that, giving them a proper tribe to rule over and work with, both for the second floor and whatever my fourth would be. Because yeah, I needed that fourth floor. If invaders were going to be able to merrily skip my first two floors by just jumping into the cove, I needed to move my core further down. With both the merrow and Brus out there spreading word of my existence, I could only expect their numbers to rise. So hopefully I had good options.
Please select an Otherworld schema: Lesser Harpy (Rare): Beings cursed in their pursuit of immortal life, this twisted descendant soars through the skies in search of prey to fill its insatiable hunger. Its humanoid face fools prey into letting their guard down before its claws rend heads from their shoulders. Iceborn Mammoth (Rare): Not so much akin to ice as shaped from it, this creature announces its arrival with both a shout and a charge like an avalanche. Its tusks are made from ever-growing ice, carefully sharpened to gore all those in its path. Highland Goblin (Rare): Unlike its forest or swamp brethren, it thrives under stone, growing wide, searching eyes and impeccable senses. Though its strength is limited, its population grows quickly and it holds a touch of magic in its veins, leading to immensely powerful shamans. Oceanic Slime (Rare): Water bound together by an immense mana-gem, this patient predator disguises itself as a massive body of water, attracting all manners of prey. Because of its biology, smaller creatures can swim freely through its body, fooling larger creatures into trusting its waters, a mistake they can only make once. Cloudskipper Wisp (Rare): The lowest form of an elemental. Useless in combat, this creature born of wind and water delights in creating swirling clouds to rest within, controlling them in a dizzying dance that serves as the home for many other creatures.
Ohoho. Very much a delivery. Some of them were familiar¡ªmaybe I would always have a few old faces whenever I got to pick?¡ªbut those that weren''t had some very appealing looks to them. I hadn''t seen a mammoth before but it sounded quite pleasingly enormous and threatening; and goblins were built for the mountain and looking to start with a few more advantages than kobolds. Cloudskipper wisps might be useless in combat but oh, I knew elementals, beings shaped of raw mana capable of absolutely devastating the surrounding land in environmental traps that could never be undone. Oceanic slime, I had my same problems with; slimes were made for evolution but I doubted I could easily un-evolve them. And it wasn''t like any of my floors had good spots for them, although technically I supposed I could replace the rock pond of the fungal gardens with one. A thought for the future. Lesser harpy, the same question; I was already thinking of making my fourth floor have something to do with the open air, a counter to the merrows, but they needed so much space. I wasn''t strong enough. My thoughts strayed back to the cloudskipper wisp. Useless in combat, and even their final forms of elementals rarely fought so much as lived through their environments. I doubted I could ever get a warrior out of one. But as a dungeon, my environments were everything. I wanted to expand past my vaguely tropical setting, to go to impossible heat and colds and deserts and jungles and canyons. And unless I could find a way to just wander merrily into the knowledge to both create and maintain it, I would need elementals. My mind was set. I selected wisp. Endless thoughts of wisp shoveled themselves into my thoughts; I gagged and spat but the schema found its way to me, filling my awareness with all levels of knowledge. They were small, diminutive creatures, taking the form of small eddies of wind and cloud. I couldn''t wait to see how they worked. But before that, I had to rebuild. Chapter 28 - A First, Again I''d finished evolving my creatures, choosing my schema. Repairing my walls, healing my creatures, settling the water level. All the standard steps I always completed when I was invading, perhaps with a touch more repairing than typical, and now I should have started on figuring out what I''d make with my fourth floor. Instead, I had settled a point of awareness over my third floor and was merely watching the empty water. Empty, because it definitely was¡ªonly a few brave silverheads were swimming around, free to nibble at the algae without worrying about being killed by a silvertooth hungry for a meal; because there were none of them. My one surviving armourback sturgeon had fled back to the comfortable canals of the second floor, Seros had stayed curled around his evolving kobold, the greater crab was still hunting for a nest for her eggs, nursing her missing claw. They''d nearly not made it. If I wanted them to actually survive this, I couldn''t just rebuild. I''d have to remake. Two people had escaped from my halls, making their way out into the wider world where Calarata could properly learn of my existence and come out to squash me like the bug I''d so well proven myself to be. Gods. It''d been easy to handwave away my weaker floors, brimming with pride as I was about my mangrove canals and the underground lake; but I was a dungeon. Most races didn''t see me as an oasis from the Otherworld, a saving grace to Aiqith bringing all manners of new mana in to heal the world from the scars of mages. They saw me as a battery. I didn''t have the luxury of only building powerful levels when I felt like it. Invaders would murder me whether or not I took my time to make sure every plant and creature was arranged in an aesthetic pattern. The thought was painfully harrowing. How many wake-up calls could I afford to keep waiting for? The original attack had told me to start actually acting like a dungeon, the second reminding me to dig deeper, and now this one telling me that I was a fucking idiot who had been so determined to stay alive by not defending myself. Gods. I kept the melancholic points of awareness above the third floor, some sort of reminder, and dove to the corpses of the merrows. With their deaths and souls I had almost full mana, and I was saving dissolving their bodies until I could actually use the mana I''d gain from that. But they did have other things I could take from them. All the merrow held various weapons, and I nipped and dug into the metal that made up their blades; most of what I already knew but with the addition of some¡­ crystalized sand-based metals? I didn''t fully understand how it was made but as I dissolved through its core, I could pick up faint memories of gathering sand from the sea floor, wrapping the particles in boiling water, and shaping the molten glass alongside a mixture of bits of iron. Impervious to rust, unable to dull, but prone to shattering. Interesting. I saved the metal for further study. Unfortunately, no merrow wore clothing beyond sheaths, so no further schemas for me¡ªwith the notable exception of the Priestess. She had been bound up in all manners of jewels and artifacts, ones I hadn''t yet had the pleasure in obtaining; diamonds and sapphires and rubies, carved in all manner of pleasing shapes and half-bursting with mana. Used as some sort of mana battery, I could guess¡ªI gave a mental frown and poked around some aquamarine, the pale blue of its surface flickering faintly with leftover ice. She''d used this mana for her freezing spell, and¡­ I searched and managed to find a garnet on one of the strands Seros had ripped free across the room, also empty but with a lingering warmth. This for her fire spell. Gems stored mana, I knew that¡ªbut could I use that? Something to keep me from worrying about invaders stealing all my ambient power whenever they used spells? And storing specific types of mana as well; a trap I could leave maybe, building patches of citrine into the wall just waiting to explode into lightning the second they were mined. But the Priestess had another prize. Some sort of a mark of pride, easily over a dozen on her body; little strands of fossilized kelp. This time, I wouldn''t let it take three days. I felt my Resurrector title flare to life as I reached out, digging little needles of mana into the white strands. A point, three; the fossil shivered once, twice, and unfurled back to life.
Bloodline Kelp (Uncommon) It grows in massive forests that have no limit, with every strand connected by a greater awareness. Endlessly it grows, searching to overtake the oceans it exists in, and the forest never forgets those who attack it.
It was a beautiful amber-gold, with long, flowing fronds like willow leaves and a thick stem studded with gas bladders to help it float. Not the deep emerald green variant I was used to in the open ocean, but I imagined they were similar, able to grow to impossible heights and form an underwater forest of mystery. If I could gather a few polyps from the outside cove, I could stitch them all together to form a proper coral reef for my fourth floor, full of mystical colours and hidden predators¨C No. I gritted metaphorical teeth and let the idea slide away, releasing my hold on the kelp. It drifted away, grasping in vain for any sort of ground, but I had the schema. I''d help it adapt to its new life later. For now, I turned my attention to the first floor. After days spent on my third, this one felt properly cramped, barely three hundred feet long and half that wide. More creatures for later, but now I needed to make sure that the floor holding them would actually be worth it. I sat there, spreading my points of awareness around; where to start from? If I was an invader, where would I go? Well. I created a pair of points of awareness and glued them together in the style of primitive eyes, floated them a few feet above the ground, shoved them towards the cove entrance, and looked out upon my floor like an invader would. It was beautiful. I purred. But it was straight forward; literally, in the sense of what they had to do. I could see directly to where I needed to go, the pale algae-light illuminating my path like a rolled-out red carpet. There were no blockades, no secret passages or tunnels beyond dens, just forward with a quick hop over my rock pond before they were at the tunnel down to the next floor. Not particularly dungeon material. I wrenched up a slope of stone, tugging up the entrance so there was a sharp decline right when they entered¡ªalthough I didn''t raise the actual tunnel. Let them crouch when they entered. I''d take pleasure in making it as uncomfortable as possible while still letting wild creatures wander in. Actually¡ªI swiveled my points of awareness up, as if standing up after being crouched; they''d pick their way down the main entrance, avoiding a bunch of jagged stalagmites and sudden drops to avoid stabbing themselves, but I''d love if I could get them to look up. All the better to trip them with. And the Priestess had been kind enough to bring me not only jewels, but coins. I tugged down a stalactite, large enough to sprawl in front of both entrances; basic silver-flecked limestone beneath, but I ringed it with great loops of gold ore and clusters of crystalized diamonds. Gods if creating diamonds didn''t take an exorbitant amount of mana¡ªI kept shaping more until it looked like a proper chandelier, faintly glowing in the green algae I shaped around its base to reflect up onto the precious materials. Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. And then, right as they would presumably pause to stare at the unfathomable riches overhead, I carved out a six foot deep pocket in the stone and filled it with jagged spikes of iron. No protective layer of stone that could potentially hold if someone light enough stepped on it; I pulled up a patch of billowing moss instead, rooting it deep into the surrounding dirt so that its gently waving feelers extended over the hole, hiding it from view. A proper little spike trap. I created a mirrored one in front of the entrance deeper into the mountain. And then, around their metaphorical ankles, I spun dozens of dens into the stone of the incline and surrounding bottom. Anything to keep them from leaving like those before. Alright, so if my faux invader both managed to get down the incline and avoided the pitfall, what next? I angled my points of awareness back at the floor. A perfect straight line to the tunnel down. There was a reason I was trying to fix this. I didn''t have enough time nor mana to fully expand my first floor, although the thought definitely lurked in my mind¡ªinstead I just grabbed a stalactite and stalagmite roughly in the middle on the path and tugged them both down, spooking the poor cave spider who''d been using it as a nest as I wove the two around each other into a perfect pillar. Not enough to really stop any invaders, but hopefully enough to make them pause and think about where to go¡ªI flew to each of the side walls and carved dark pockets with subtle hints of going down, extending deep like tunnels. Hopefully any invaders would be foolish enough to mistake them for the exit; I worked a little more magic and conjured up soft beds of algae and a trickle of water. Perfect dens. Now they''d walk forward, unsure of which direction to go. I left the ground around the main pillar relatively clear, the better for them to let down their guard, and wove more veins of gold into its silver-flecked surface. Maybe they''d pause and start mining, and my creatures would happily correct that mistake. But the smart ones would continue forward and find one final obstacle in the rock pond. I paused. It was maybe four feet deep and ten across, enough for a few silverheads to nibble on algae scraps and keep a population surviving. Only enough to make invaders have to rub their two brain cells together to remember how to jump. No longer. I dug my mana into the surrounding stone and ripped it to dust, expanding it into a sprawling mess easily thirty feet across and ten deep. Water gurgled and sloshed as it was merrily reduced from a placid pond to a lump of a puddle, the algae wall spilling droplets to help it rise back up. I could wait. The silverheads, the great bloody cowards who hadn''t mustered the courage to go to the second floor, abruptly disappeared into their one tunnel den in fear. At least they were consistent. Though it would probably erode before too long, I tugged up limestone spikes at the bottom of the pond, as sharp as I could make them. Something to regret for those that tried to just walk across. But I was able to look out and see a newly remade floor. Time for creatures. I woke the various survivors, mostly stone-backed toads and burrowing rats, alongside the dozens of webs spanning over the ceiling. The cave spiders could continue as they had. It pained me but I couldn''t think of anything different to do with them; even with the webweavers having some sort of liminal connection with them, they were just too small with too weak of venom to do anything at the moment. I asked them to spin more webs, to fill the ceiling with endless silk and strands, and hoped that would be enough. The stone-backed toads; nothing for the moment, being the apathetic little bastards they were, but the ironback toad would be their inspiration. He was still sitting his ass in front of a burrowing rat den on the second floor but I''d get him up here soon enough, ready to lead all his little brethren into becoming proper dangers in my dungeon hall. Their earthen mana was perfect for deflecting blades; I just needed them to know that. Luminous constrictors were honestly doing a flawless job. In nearly every kill of my halls so far they had been involved, and their evolutions were only growing; I carved them more dens around the entrance and veins of precious metals, but let them be. They worked best when they stayed hidden to the shadows, striking only when their enemy didn''t expect it, and they were very adept at that. As for the rats, well. Maybe their digging ability could help them make their way past invaders armour, or they could serve as frontal attacks like the one kobold thought¡ªbut instead, I focused on their other trait. That of being vermin. The merrow memories didn''t exactly tell me anything of them, but Calarata natives had plenty to share; rats were inescapable monsters who stole anything they could get their claws on, ripped apart bedding and housing, contaminated food and supplies. The sight of them invoked a stronger reaction than most monsters. So I would have them be vermin here, too. Their twin-split tails were perfect for sensing approaching foes, and their large ears and nose only helped them more. So they could figure out when to attack, when to run away, and when to steal. I shifted the surviving population to one spot of the floor, soothing the surrounding luminous constrictors to look the other way while their favourite prey meandered past their noses. They curled up, squeaking and trembling out in the open, but watched with ready eyes as I made a little lump of sapphire bloom from the stone. Then I released my hold on them and waited. Nothing happened at first, not that I''d expected it. They were still shaking off the fear of being prey. But one rat, whose eyes had gleamed the second I''d set the gem in front of him, inched forward. No one moved to stop him. He picked up the gem in his front teeth, glanced around, and scurried back to the group. He didn''t move quite fast enough to stop me from stabbing him with nearly a full point of mana. Most of it went to waste as usual, filtering away in little explosions of power; but that was the point. Every other rat felt the mana go into him, saw him stiffen as more power than his little ratty mind had ever felt infused through him, the gem in his teeth flashing. And suddenly they were hungry, too. I used nine full points to create various gem nodes around the first floor, the larger tucked away in difficult places or even buried in the ground so the rats would have to live up to their burrowing name. Gems, moreso than any other substance, absorbed ambient mana like a sponge; they''d sit there and grow fat while the rats collected them. The rats would get some mana out of the deal, enough to excite them to keep collecting, and I would build an army of mana batteries that I could use whenever invaders tried their damnedest to steal my power. And for any invaders who came in foolish enough to bear gems, well. My rats would enjoy themselves. Life scurried back over the first floor, darting every which way as they relished in the new jobs I''d given them; toads harrumphed and bitched about the new movement disturbing their precious lacecaps but I did see them pause at watching the burrowing rats move so freely. They were both the bottom of the barrel on the first floor and seeing their fellow prey abandon the cover of the dens to search for something was interesting. A few even poked their own heads out of their dens. The luminous constrictors, as always, were there to punish the most foolhardy. And then I really sat back and thought about it. I''d created two twin dens on either side of the floor, what should have been just decoys for the real exit; but then I''d layered algae beds and dug through so that a thin trickle of water from the river pooled at the bottom. Dens of the highest accord, far too large for any creature already present. But not for a bear. It hurt, it really did. I wanted him to come back, to prove he was still alive and ready to laze about and eat whitecaps all day, but I needed defenders. I couldn''t afford to wait around and be passive any longer. So, with the last scraps of mana I''d gotten from the merrow attack, I wove together two juvenile lunar cave bears, one in each den. They blinked to life, shaking their enormous, shaggy-furred heads and yawning their ivory fangs; the female, smaller than the male, poked her nose out of her den to survey her new territory with lazy eyes. That laziness disappeared when she looked across the way and saw an identical face looking upon what he thought was his new territory. They both narrowed their eyes. The floor wasn''t fully large enough for the both of them, but if they were anything like my previous denizen, they mostly just needed food enough to eat and a place to curl up in. It took almost no energy to grow mushrooms on my part and I would keep the whitecap population up, plenty to feed them. Although mushrooms couldn''t scream, I imagine they did at seeing their oldest enemy come back to life. As for the carnivorous part of their diet, most of the creatures on the floor were too small. I would leave it up to the invaders to serve as that meal. And I wouldn''t coddle them, like I had the one before; these would grow in a rivalry, fighting each other as they both learned combat. They wouldn''t be caught unawares like last time. I imagined he hadn''t known how to fight because he was still a juvenile, young and unafraid of the world around them¡ªnot this time. Gods, I''d drag Seros up just to teach them to fight. I wouldn''t lose these as easily. My newly remade first floor rumbled to life. I still needed to do more, increasing its size and coming up with more ways to prevent invaders from merrily skipping their way back outside whenever they felt like it, but it was success enough for now. My other floors were next. Chapter 29 - Deeplake The problem, I was quickly finding, was that upgrading my floors came a mite easier when I had the mana to do so. Creating the two cave bears had exhausted what last pieces I''d collected from the merrows'' souls, and with the vast majority of my creatures dead, my steady stream of replacement from the constant cycle of death in my floors was no longer replenishing me. Fortunately, I hadn''t dissolved their corpses yet. I slapped a few points of sharpened awareness at a trio of silvertooths feeding on the Priestess'' corpse, chasing them away with an apologetic press of mana. They''d gotten their fill from the deaths, but I needed the rest. The merrow shivered once, twice, and started to blur around the edges; the water stirred and trembled as I tore them apart, learning the detailed intricacies of their biology with, once again, the infuriating lack of a schema. Either a protected race, or one that had earned sapiance that I couldn''t recreate. Fantastic. But they were fascinating creatures. Ages old, part of the same family as selkies, sirens, and mermaids, although interestingly not the aicaya. Not as transformative as the selkies, not as powerful as the sirens, nor as civilized as the mermaids, but a blend between the three. This particular branch of the species lived in Arroyo, the underwater city beneath the cove, led by the Thirteen Priests all speaking for a different watery god. And the youngest of those Thirteen had met her violent end in my halls. An uncomfortable thought. I doubted the merrow would be fond of her final moments. But while this earned me far less mana than their souls did and deprived my creatures from their well-earned meal, it was still a very welcome twenty-seven points to fill my coffers as the last of them and their equipment dissolved into white motes of light. The third floor. It was still my newest and its creation was fresh in my mind; I could piece out where I''d decided to widen the tunnel a touch so that Seros could swim through more easily, where I''d opened up the den entrances to make sure that schools of silvertooths could swim safely in to lay their eggs. That had been the theme, really; openness. I''d wanted something to remind me of the open ocean. But it wasn''t ocean, was it? My little bout with the saltwater had shown me that in a rather pressing reminder. I wanted it to be freshwater, or at least needed it to be. I had only freshwater creatures and those that came through the shiny new entrance in my walls would be safely killed and then promptly adapted to these new waters. And I would be able to gather new creatures, I knew; while freshwater creatures tended to die almost immediately as they lost all of the water in their cells and shriveled on impact, saltwater beings could survive the switch, certainly not indefinitely but a bit longer. They started to absorb water, swelling up and growing slow, but with a quick pop back outside they would be fine. I rather predicted I''d soon have a merry new stream of those hungry for mana poking their head in for a bite. Although, theoretically, I could turn the third floor into a more brackish environment, with an increased but not level amount of salt. Enough for my creatures to survive and for those of the outside world to come in safely. From what I''d picked apart in the merrow''s biology it didn''t matter to them whether their water was fresh or salt; they regulated their own internal salt level by means of their separate respiratory system and highly-specialized gills, releasing or holding sodium depending on where they were. They''d find their way through my third floor no matter what I did to the water. Something very important to study for when I did go about changing gathered creatures over, though. Unless I changed my floor over to not-fully-fresh. ¡­and mangroves were known for surviving saltwater. I shook my points of awareness. A question for a later day, certainly not at the beginning of my great rebuilding; I needed a lot more mana if I was going to adapt all my surviving creatures into things that could survive such a blended environment. I''d stick to freshwater for now. First things first. If this truly wasn''t the ocean home my starry-eyed na?tivity had tried to make, then I needed to choose what it would be. Not another set of canals, nor river; but a lake. Something for the sturgeons to root around in, the crabs to bury in deep, silty mud, the silverheads to chase distant beams of light from the murky surface. Alright. It pained me, deep in my heart, to shred the fledgling theme I''d been building and start anew, but it was needed. For one, I tugged the ceiling down; from nearly two hundred feet deep to half that, shaped in endless twists and bobs and hills. No easy navigation for invaders¡ªmy creatures would just have to learn the patterns and follow them. All the advantages they could take would be helpful. As for the walls, I shredded them into dozens more tunnels, stretching further and further into the gloom. I wove great veins of gold into the most narrow, placing flecks of bioluminescent algae so that the light would catch on the precious metal and attract those with a bigger wallet than sense. But much like my first floor, this one had a problem; from when the invader managed to find the opening on the second floor and made their way down, they had what roughly accounted for a straight line to my core room. And if they''d already made their way from my first floor, then they''d be expecting another distracting pillar in the center. I hummed, mana rippling through the water around me; though I''d removed all the excess algae in favor of limiting it only to what grew on the airy ceiling above, mimicking the sun to the best of my abilities, the water was still too clear for the proper murk I desired. I needed something stirring up the silt at the bottom. And something to keep people from moving forward. Oh, that was an idea. Seros raised his head, nosing once at the evolving form of his kobold before slipping into the water to heed my call; he wriggled up through the shifting currents as the floor slowly adjusted to the new tunnels and size I''d carved for or from it, head cocked curiously to the side. In front of him was a hole. It wasn''t a terribly impressive hole, I''d admit¡ªdirectly in the center of the floor, maybe twenty feet across, roughly circular and another twenty feet deep. No algae grew near it, shaping for a dark, dreary little place. Above it, I''d shaped a plateau of a stalactite, extending through the air and maybe ten feet down into the water itself; without my favoured loops of gold and diamond, no one should look twice at it. Just another dip in the already tumultuous ceiling. Help me, I asked across our connection. Seros churred curiously, bubbles spilling from between his fangs, but reached out with his burgeoning hydrokinesis to meet my shaft of mana. Together, we started to swirl. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it. In the ocean, there were what was called in polite company crushing holes; deep pits formed by errant currents that dug forever down, endlessly into the abyss. Forever, of course, because no being could actually survive long enough to go check how deep they went. Something in the area above the water just seemed to tug the current downs, pressure building and building and building until any woefully idiotic being that happened to meander down tended to pop before they could live to regret their decision. Immensely dangerous, almost impossible to escape. Now, I had no expectations that I would be able to recreate one¡ªthough I was holding out hope for a miracle¡ªbut I could do my damnedest to mimic it. The water slithered against the surface and then ran abruptly into the stalactite. With nowhere else to go, it went down; and while the majority of it just ran up the side of the stalactite and continued on the other side, some of it went down. All the way to the hole. The black pit gurgled as there was suddenly more water than it could hold filling its vast maw; but while the water wanted to rise back up, gravity wished to hold it down. It rightly trembled with indecision. And where it wavered, pressure built. But currents had to be created by something, and I couldn''t very well ask Seros to sit on his claws here and keep spinning the water until my dungeon fell apart. Currents could be maintained by water density differences, gravity, storms¨C Or wind. And I had a delightful new schema I''d been meaning to try. I left Seros to maintain the spin of the currents, great practice for his hydrokinesis, reached inside to gather up the points required, and¨C Hm. Twenty-seven mana from the corpses of the merrow and all the mana-ladden equipment and weapons they''d brought with them. Not a bad haul, really, and even with the fifteen I''d used on shaping the floor there were still plenty twelve more for creating new creatures. Even for my most expensive creature, a greater crab, I could still make it with that much mana. Surely the cloudskipper wisp wouldn''t be any more intensive than that. That optimism was failing me as nine points merrily drained away before I''d finished even half of the thing. Not a chance I''d wrap things up with three left. I grimaced but collapsed the rough ball of wind and water, losing two points to the ineffectiveness of the system; great. More waiting. Then I settled in, rejoined Seros on spiraling the water, and waited. - I aimed the best glare I could at the spinning ball of cloud above the lake. Almost impossible to measure because the damn thing never stayed still, it was roughly a foot in diameter and made solely of ever-shifting winds and vapours, dozens of "arms" extending in every direction to grab onto surrounding stone to tug it forward with greater speed. It left a trail of mist as it traveled, and the mist eventually collided with other paths and joined together to form low-hanging clouds, heavy and rich with water. Then, inevitably, the wisp would dart right through the center of the cloud, scattering it back to vapour so the process would start again. Twenty-one points for that. It was intelligent, though, at least compared to the majority of my creatures; in the first seconds after it had been born it had seen what Seros and I were doing and had perfectly matched its patterns to that, running along the same routes to keep the currents maintained. It seemed to delight in kicking up waves on the surface, sending the algae-light spearing through the water in jagged lines, only partially illuminating the waters darkened by the silt kicked up in its endless currents. It? Them? I wasn''t terribly aware of elemental concepts of gender, but from what I could scrap together from its frankly infuriatingly whimsical thoughts, I got the vaguest sense of a more feminine voice. That would have to do for now. When it evolved up to a proper elemental, it could tell me what it wanted to be called. For the moment, she spun a dizzying maze of clouds and lines above the lake, never pausing for a second to think about consequences or actions or any silly thing of that sort. Ever running, ever creating mist, ever dancing on her clouds. Wild little thing. Perhaps it was best she was contained in the few feet of air above the third floor. I shuddered to think of her loose on the second. But with her expert, innate care of the currents, Seros and I were once again free to wander and take care of our land. Itd taken almost a day of gathering mana before I felt confident enough to try creating her, and I still had almost eight points left. Enough to finish up the third floor''s design, though not creating enough creatures to fill it. Case in point, the piece of bloodline kelp sadly drifting against a piece of limestone it couldn''t take root in. This was still going to be a lake, even if I filled it with brackish water, but I''d be absolutely damned if I wasn''t going to fill it with a forest of kelp. The murky, silt-filled water just begged to have an extra threat to swim through. I dug through an extra piece of floor, churning the limestone into silt, and started to grow a patch. No clue on how to adapt a plant to a freshwater environment, but if I could just watch it die a couple of times, I could poke into what was wrong and hopefully adapt it before the plant started to just absorb my mana instead of change. Three points later, a beautiful stalk of amber-gold speared through the murk, waving gently as its air bladders inflated and carried its fronds reaching to the surface. Little runners started to grow along its base, ready to conquer the water around it. I waited rather patiently. The kelp waved merrily on. An hour later my incredulity wore out and I dove into the kelp with a great number of points of awareness; but it was fine. Its cells were a little more inflated than normal, the stalk stiff and struggling to bend in the current with its rubbs fully filled out, but the plant was fine. Honestly, in this well-maintained water and ample "sun" above, it was thriving. I¡­ could kelp survive in freshwater environments? Did it have the same sodium problem as animals? What? Gods, I was a sea-drake. I shouldn''t be having problems with water. This whole mess with the merrows and now this was just turning out to be one gut punch after the other. I should be good at this. Infuriating. I slapped two more stalks down to help it grow and stalked off to focus on other things. My third floor, while not complete¡ªI needed a stronger ecosystem of smaller creatures and apex predators¡ªwas certainly looking better than it had been. Not saying I was necessarily excited for more invaders, but I was curious how new ones would fare. As soon as I could whip up a fourth, anti-merrow floor. Very important step in the process. In terms of creatures, well. I''d have to wait before I could fully replenish my numbers back to what they had been and even past that, but I could instruct who I had remaining. The electric eel who had gotten such a lovely kill hadn''t moved back to the second floor; he seemed quite content here, slinking through the endless tunnels in all manners of predatory. While his kind were built for canals and rivers, the looming murk of the silt-filled waters and the sheer range his school of electric silverheads allowed him meant that this was still territory he could very much dominate over, and his thoughts were full of an intention to do so. Too long had he hunted lesser prey. I''d leave most of the electric eels with the mangroves where they could simply follow their instincts, but I''d certainly be asking others to follow him down. This place could do with more ranged attackers. The singular surviving armourback sturgeon had carefully slunk back down to his feeding grounds, though hesitancy crawled over his thoughts; he had evolved in order to lose that fear of mortal death, trusting his armour to protect him when all else failed. Well, armour couldn''t do anything to internal attacks. He was very aware of that now. But where hesitancy plagued, anger followed. He wanted to be protected, to live unburdened by concerns; and if the world couldn''t be trusted to give him that, he''d have to take it. I flicked little soothing bits of mana into his mind, filling it with thoughts of his powerful bulk, the strength of his armoured head. He sifted through the soil with perhaps a touch more determination than before. Three of his brethren had died where he had survived; he couldn''t afford to stand meekly on the sidelines. Silverheads were still cowards, silvertooths were still brawlers with no sense of self-preservation. The most I could do was try and sketch out roughly territories for them to lay stake over, giving them another reason to constantly fight and bloody up the waters a bit. All''s the better for competition. But with that in mind, I had another task. Between all of my floors, the first and the third needed the most long-term help; massive expansion for the first, more creatures for the third. The second, however, was mostly done. All it needed were a few final touches. Chapter 30 - Those Above It took nearly two days of waiting to fully refill my mana, now that my creatures on the first floor had been replenished and they could safely decimate the insect population that had been enjoying its vacation off and supplement my normal mana stream with their own small sparks. Plenty of other creatures had filtered their way in, mostly stone-backed toads and burrowing rats common in the area¡ªand most infuriatingly, also the bat with its shrill shrieks, still too large for my cave spiders to wrangle and too blind for my luminous constrictors to distract. Fantastic. I hated it. But it was two days of sitting and watching my floors react to their new strength, budding though it was; the fungal gardens were the most secure, of course. Not enough time nor energy for a proper expansion so my changes had been more minor, and already my lovely beasts were thriving in it. The burrowing rats had safely located around a quarter of the jewels I''d set out for them and tucked them away in their dens, already on the hunt for more. And in a beautiful twist of fate, it had created two subgroups of rats; those that hunted, and those that stole. A few of the more clever rats had figured that there was no need to brave the dangerous outside world full of snakes and bears when the jewels were just sitting there contentedly in their brethren''s dens. A quick pop inside and now they could absorb sparks of mana from the jewel as it grew fat in my presence. So now rats had to worry about finding food, finding jewels, protecting jewels, protecting their nests, and staying alive on top of it all. The ironback toad would still be needed to defend those on the second floor, but the rats above were quickly developing a backbone. I couldn''t have been more proud. Down on the third, the greater crab had finally found a nest, safely sequestered away from all the various silverhead and silvertooths schools I''d been recreating whenever I had the spare mana¡ªher missing claw had almost convinced some of the larger schools that she was an easy target. Hard to believe that when she was still ten times their size, but they managed. She was still digesting the remains of her last attackers as she carefully released the eggs from her undersides, little orange-gold spheres drifting down to rest in a hole she''d dug in the sand. From what I''d picked apart from her schema, she''d sit and guard them for the handful of weeks it would take for them to grow¡ªor sooner, as I had a pretty good guess my ambient mana vastly decreased incubation time¡ªand then they would be independent from their first moment out of the egg. Very helpful. But now, with my mana counter settling up in the high sixties, I finally returned to my second floor. Cracks in the walls from the removal of my ambient mana, vastly diminished creature count, a lingering presence of destruction. A right mess, really. I''d already shored up the walls the second the attack had finished but I fluttered around them again, growing limestone to fill in the gaps, adding veins of iron right beneath the surface as some sort of way to strengthen it. Strong as I was, I doubted I could save my creatures from a total collapse if it happened. Terrifying thought, really. I flew through the rest of my floor, inspecting the hordes left; the stone-backed toad and burrowing rat populations were fine; more than fine, really, given as they''d lost some of their predators in the luminous constrictors who had gone below and hadn''t managed to come back out. I''d change that soon enough. The flora was still thriving, if a little shaken by the momentary lack of ambient mana, with the notable¡­ exception of¡­ What? I slapped near ten points of awareness against the tree just to confirm. Yes, it was dead. Very dead, rather, its deep scarlet bark bare and hundreds of bone-white leaves littering the ground. The vampiric mangrove, first brought back after who knew how many centuries extinct, and I''d killed it. Not great. My other points of awareness flitted through the floor and found more; maybe a dozen dead and more weak, leaves wilting and thorns dormant beneath their bark. Fury surged through me¡ªhad some bastard of a beetle perfectly built to kill my precious extinct species managed to enter my halls when I was otherwise distracted, or a disease I didn''t know? Gods. I''d murder every offender in an instant. I tore into the closest dead tree, ripping through its cells. Its strangely dehydrated cells, really, shriveled and worn¨C Almost like what had killed my fish down below. Ah. Mangroves were capable of growing and thriving in brackish water. But, ah, more so mangroves that had actually been exposed to it. I had given mine only freshwater and those within my halls were built to evolve; they''d slowly started to lose their ability to handle it. Fantastic. I was fucking myself without even realizing. That sped up my plans to introduce some brackish quality to the waters, though; these trees would have some level of resistance due to surviving the first batch, and hopefully I could get them properly content with salt by the time they started laying their seeds en masse. My plans for a much-increased kobold population wouldn''t do if the trees they needed for their tools were too few to help them. Some mercy, though. I pushed healing mana to those still fighting off the efforts of the saltwater, freshening their leaves and pushing water to cycle back through their trunks; they shifted in an intangible breeze in what I could almost take as thanks. Truly, I couldn''t wait for their evolution. It would be beyond belief. But for now, I had to take care of the dead trees; while it would be nice to give the kobolds an easy source of wood, I didn''t want to make it too easy. I swept my mana through the clouds of white leaves at their base, sweeping them into the canal to decompose into little chunks to feed the algae. The white leaves. The very white, very pale leaves that covered the many spiking branches of the mangrove. The point of awareness I had aimed at the webweavers in their little corner of the second floor paused. For the moment, I''d had them start to shape their web over a random stalactite in the corner for a lack of anywhere better to put them; already they''d swamped the limestone in great bunches of pure white, twitching and writhing with bugs as their indistinguishable white bodies clambered all over it. But there was only so much they could do in a corner. It wouldn''t be a perfect disguise, of course. There was only so much that webs could look like leaves. But if invaders had their attention elsewhere¡ªsay, on many attacking beasts¡ªthen perhaps a dead mangrove posturing as alive with its scarlet bark and white leaves would go unnoticed. Just long enough for them to get close. Oh, I very much liked that idea. I popped the suggestion into the lead webweaver''s mind, laying down a relatively easy path for them to get to the first dead mangrove; she paused, mandibles twitching, but activated that little spark of mana connecting her to her brethren. Pheromones hit the air and they started talking about what I could only assume was the pros and cons of the scenario¡ªfar too much credit, they were still evolved from the idiot cave spiders¡ªbut eventually peeled their way off their nest, skittering like little ghosts over the ceiling as they made their way to their new home. Once I could get birds or the like in here, they would have to choose very carefully what branch they wanted to rest on. Or the fucking bat. Whenever I could catch it. Only five webweavers for now, enough to take one tree¡ªbut they were very close to laying their first clutch of eggs and I knew how fast spiders reproduced. A dozen or so dead trees would be an excellent start to this new trap. And I could see them covering living trees as well, though perhaps not to the same extent or efficiency; either way, just blurring the lines between what was safe and what wasn''t. A dungeon''s greatest dream. I let them start their weaving process, enough pheromones drifting through the air as they planned that a few cave spiders lifted their heads in confusion. Still plenty of mana to my name to finish up. Billowing moss was the first goal; feathery fronds galore sprouted from stony soil, rolling hills of pale green to disguise various pit traps and thorned roots adorning the limestone. It wouldn''t do much to someone with any sense of awareness, since I imagined few adventurers were quick to trust stepping on something they couldn''t see beneath in a dungeon, but I was rather hoping the rest of my floor would make it so they had other, more pressing things to concentrate on. This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version. The vampiric mangroves were incredibly deadly and paired so very well with my silvertooths'' blood-frenzy, but they still needed help to function. Their thorns were only so effective when the main trunks were rather stationary. So billowing moss bloomed around their bases, waving willow leaf-esque fronds over their scarlet bark and trailing over the water. The water I also needed to change, unfortunately. The merrow showed me I was being far too kind. For all my invaders, I''d given them such a choice of the environment they wanted to peruse; with the fungal gardens, they could choose to stay on land with the shrimpy little rock pond I''d had before, and with this floor, there was a clear path to the ending where they could stay on land for all of it. At least until they needed to enter the canal to find the tunnel to the next floor, but still. Not exactly something that would let all my various creatures in the canal do their best work. So I dug my mana into the limestone and widened the canals. Tricky work, considering all the dens that creatures had already claimed in their walls, but eventually I managed to boost them out to a more proper river. Of the roughly ten rooms I had¡ªincluding the massive one in the middle from my, ah, temper tantrum¡ªI made it so three of them could only be traversed by entering the canal. One from the entire room being filled with water, one from the entrance to the next room being fully water, and one from a glorious little fallen stalactite like a felled tree blocking the land access. If any prissy, too-good-for-water invaders wanted to merely take my creatures and leave, they''d have to get wet. And my truly flawless combo of the vampiric mangroves opening wounds and the silvertooths going into a blood-frenzy would nip that little problem in the bud. Beyond terrain changes, I reached for my creatures; the ironback toad croaked and rose to attention in front of a den of his unevolved brethren, his battering ram face and iron-plated back blocking the entrance from a luminous constrictor frankly losing its mind as it tried to find a way past him. He needed to step up his game and I took no qualms in telling him so; the kobold population was about to rapidly increase, and their favoured prey wasn''t terribly great at defending themselves. He accepted his mission with the same honour and dignity as everything else in his life. Little suck-up. The horned serpent raised her antlered head, digesting an electric eel she''d hunted; she hadn''t made it to the water in time to help with the merrow attack, lazy as she was, but she had seen the other constrictors slither in. The concept had stuck in her mind, ever since her first foray into water as she had crossed the rock pond to make it to the next floor. Not to the level of the still-evolving silver krait, but I imagined she was still quite the aquatic predator. Her near fifteen feet of length and her psionic mana call meant few could resist her. But if I was now going to let her hunt kobolds, that''d be competition. Back when I''d been rather leery of creating any creature that took over a handful of points, I''d stuck to my three kobolds and focused on maintaining their number; no longer. I''d create as many as I could and let them run rampant. They weren''t big enough to pose a serious threat to either the horned serpent or the bears upstairs, but their pack hunting would start to decimate what my creatures had previously taken as bountiful prey. Soon enough, they''d have to start hunting each other. And oh, that would be a glorious sight to see. She hissed, flicking her pale tongue out. Her antlers flashed with light. She uncurled from the nest she''d claimed¡ªone of the best in the dungeon, of course, sprawling with a fresh pool of water¡ªand poked her grey-black head out, scanning her surroundings. She''d figure it out. I had the utmost faith in her. In terms of her twin evolution, the jeweled jumper was only immensely happy at the thought of new prey. His constant movement and rich venom meant he was a gluttonous beast comparable to his size, and a kobold would be a few days worth of food. An excellent target. With all that sorted, I gathered my roughly fifty points of remaining mana and started shaping kobolds. My last three had all been fire-drake descendants. Theoretically fine, but that didn''t exactly mean I was pleased with it; sea-drakes were superior in every conceivable way and there were dozens of other subspecies that fit better with my mountain home. I reached through my connection to the Otherworld and thought of deep places, cool water, coral fields¨C The first kobold came out the deep red of magma with igneous horns and claws. Fantastic. I concentrated harder. The next was a pale grey, shorter than his brethren but with pebbled scales like armour; stone-drake, presumably. Another came out with the rich emerald hue of the deep jungle, eyes a gleaming gold. One with twisting, layered horns like shards of glass and the pale silver colouration of ice-drakes, two with the pale blue scales and long limbs of the sky-drakes. In the end, I had ten more kobolds; five were still fire-drake descendants, because of course, but I had a few new faces to explore. They all blinked, glancing at each other and running dull claws over their bodies with quiet awe. A whole new world they were trapped in, full of dangers and mystery, but they were kobolds. They were rather used to being the smallest man. With a tug of my mana, the other two kobolds emerged around the corner to see their new siblings; the female with the branching horns who had always been more focused on discovering tools was the first to step forward, churring and chittering in the primitive, halfway draconic language they used. The male who had come up with the rat idea stayed to the side but he added a few words here and there as the leader kobold explained what was going on. A right little tribe they were building. Within minutes, the leader¡ªshe was clearly already the chieftess, it wasn''t a question¡ªstarted leading the others back to their original den, the one I''d dug out for them. I paused. I pushed a guiding thought into her mind. She cocked her head to the side but accepted it without question, leading them a different route¡ªto the very last room and the den that Seros had once held. He barely left the third floor anymore, and slept in my core room. He''d be fine without it. I widened it to fit their new numbers, carving facsimile beds from stone with layered algae and tugging a tunnel from the river to drip steadily down the wall for water. A little paradise, if they could defend it. Depending on the horned serpent''s competitive streak and whether one of the lunar cave bears would be banished to the second floor, that was a monumental if. The first kobold stayed silent in my core room, Seros curled around her, still evolving. I doubted she''d end up in the tribe, too much of a lone wolf, but she''d probably still defend them. Her warrior instincts would need tests. I couldn''t wait to see her in action. With my creatures handled, I darted back to the third floor; no time like the present, even with my measly five points left, to start that salt plan. I couldn''t just snap my metaphorical fingers and make everything change to partial saltwater, unfortunately. My powers were awe-inspiring and majestic and incredible, but still rather limited. What I could do, however, was find a small, most isolated corner of the floor and create a block of salt. A lumpy, misshapen chunk of pale white with a current running overhead; within seconds I could see the water tugging fine little grains off its surface and dispersing them to the wider world. Excellent. I''d keep a close eye on it for salt levels, but worse came to worse I could force all the salt back outside the ocean entrance and try again. I only needed a small amount of brackish water. Hopefully I could keep it low enough that my terrestrial creatures could still drink it, but if they couldn''t, I could just create little oases off the original river. It''d be fine. Around the second floor, my creatures bustled around, adjusting to their new life and the circumstances with it¡ªwebweavers spun, kobolds planned, the horned serpent hunted. All a new wonder of life in my newly honed floor. Honestly a work of art. Sublime genius, if I did say so myself. Hmm. Art was normally named, wasn''t it? I hadn''t heard of dungeons naming their floors, but I had also never interacted with many dungeons before. Hells, I''d never so much as poked my snout in one before Calarata. But if I could Name my creatures, surely I could give a title to my floors? I hoped it didn''t absorb more of my mana. My second floor glittered before me, greater than any silver or jewels; the water, lapping quietly at the stone walls; the trees, both those alive and those clustering with spiders; the kobold tribe, those setting up the cave and those out hunting. All working in a beautiful tandem. It came down to water, and it came down to the vampiric mangroves. The defining features, I felt; when the time came, I knew the kobolds would eventually migrate down into further levels, as while this space wasn''t exactly cramped they would still be increasing at a very steady clip. Mangrove canals was far too boring, Blood, maybe? Bloodwater canals? Or bitter? I thought of Mighty Luthia, the Bronze-ranked adventurer who had so easily bested my cave bear falling to the water, of the jeweled jumper leaping from tree to tree to strike from above. All of their prey fell down. Most of it was dragged to the canals. The Drowned Forest. Mana burst out of me. I felt the name settle in¡ªnot a Name, not like Seros, but a true title, rooting deep into the stone and laying claim to those within. The Drowned Forest, hideaway of murderous trees and fatal waters, land of death. And then I felt a message scrawl across my core.
Congratulations! Your floor has attracted the attention of the gods. Some wish to become the Patron of the Drowned Forest. Please choose from the boons they present.
What. Chapter 31 - Symbiosis I paused. Blinked. Read that again. The message, unlike last time someone above had offered me the equivalent of a golden carrot, didn''t change. I took another moment of sitting there, rather stunned, before reaching for the intangible thing beyond the message. It wasn''t a list, not like choosing an Otherworld schema; instead it felt vaguely like someone had reached down and plucked off the top of my head like a jar''s lid, opening over seams I hadn''t known were there. Some part of me glanced up and there was endless there, endless space and endless time and endless presence, just endless, stretching over into the furthest reaches of the universe. Quite easy to get lost in, really. And in that endless, gods lingered. Spread out, only faintly there in a bubble-esque state, they loomed overhead as just a fraction of their attention came down to me. I reached out in tandem and felt their influence slide over me, felt the raw prick of their power as they impressed upon me how they would claim domain over my Drowned Forest, giving it a fraction of their power to serve fit. But just a spark would already be power beyond my capabilities, far past what I had access to. A blessing for only one floor, to be specific, not leaking into the others unless I gave the god domain over those as well, but. Still so much of a good thing I couldn''t help but cough uncomfortably. I wasn''t exactly a fan of insulting the gods¡ªclearly they''d had some hand in my rebirth, whether being the instigators or the ones who had allowed the spell to go through¡ªbut when a deal was too good to be true, it often was. I extended¡ªwith the utmost head-bobbing and flattery and general yellow-bellied groveling that drove daggers through my pride, you must understand¡ªa hesitant question to those godly bubbles up above. With a touch of raw amusement, one of them¡ªa goddess whose magic stank of fired sand, the smell of rain off glass¡ªflicked an answer back at my core. Ah. They would also have some measure of demands for me; the ability to store wayward souls within my halls if need be and some nondescript requests that I would be compensated for but very much expected to complete, alongside giving the god an access point for their mana to reach the world. Similar to my Otherworld connection, really, just opening another semi-entrance to fill Aiqith with more mana. Because in the end, that was what it came down to. Gods had three ways of influencing Aiqith: through their priests, who gained access to near limitless potential in return for serving an oath; through their more general worship, where they could extend small favours or punishments to their followers; and their domains, where they could freely spread their mana in hopes that some creature would wander by and start serving them. But a god couldn''t just claim a random section of the woods; for one, no traffic meant it''d be a pretty shitty use of their mana, and for a second, they couldn''t just pop on down to Aiqith. Even in their weakened form, they would rend the earth and tear the heavens and all manners of nasty, unwelcome things. They needed a gate. One that dungeons were uniquely suited to provide. Already they had an Otherworld connection they maintained, they had high numbers of potential worshippers traversing through, and perhaps most important of all, they could have beautiful halls that the god would be able to claim. Bragging rights, of a sort. Maybe the gods got together every few months and chatted about the various dungeon levels they had domain over in a way of a pissing competition. Though I couldn''t help but notice that out of the thousands upon thousands of various gods, only around a dozen were extending patronage offers. My floor not up to your liking, lords? Ah. Bad thoughts. Keep civil in their presence and all that. And it was most definitely a presence. I didn''t have the greatest grasp of it all but I could sense that time was, if not stopped, than at least slowed; and I also sensed that this wasn''t exactly the decision that I could let simmer in the back of my mind while I worked. If I tried to leave, think about it, and then come back, I imagined I''d find even fewer gods willing to work with me. It still seemed too good to be true, but ah well. I couldn''t afford to turn down more power now. I looked through all the bubbles. In one, a minor deity of a certain river somewhere not even on this continent showed me the potential of my canals; I saw them leaping and thrashing over invisible rapids, tearing unwary foes down to depths far more crushing than their actual size would merit. A lady of fireflies who would fill my halls with numerous, impossible glowing lights, dazzling invaders and guiding my creatures to their prey. One halfhearted display of replacing all the walls in my forest with midnight-black obsidian. Another sent my canals bubbling, boiling with restrained heat. All deeply inviting. But my gaze was drawn to one in the back. Of all the options, this one seemed the most tailored to my halls specifically, not just replacing stone or creating balls of light. The vision showed me my plants, the whitecaps and moss and algae but most specifically the mangroves, and shifted beneath the stony soil to show me their roots. Their massive, spreading, connected roots. I saw a burrowing rat step unwarily onto a frond of billowing moss and a ripple spread out, mana sparking through every other root until each plant in my hall knew of the creature, where it was, where it was going, and the closest mangrove tree fucking moved as it shifted a branch lower to hopefully catch the fool. Rhoborh, God of Symbiosis. A minor deity, to be sure. I doubted he''d be putting as much time into planning out his boon for me if he had the power to tempt however many other dungeons there were out there. His presence rolled over me like the feeling of moss, the rumble of flora and fauna working in harmony. Not unpleasant. I spared one last glance back at the unfortunately also very nice offering of bone-like spikes that would grow freely from my walls and floor every time blood was spilled, but I needed more planning. More intelligence. And a floor-wide alarm system would never go amiss. I felt Rhoborh sort of¡­ smile, in a sense? He didn''t have a corporeal body, at least not one I was privy to see, but the redwoods of his smell seemed to freshen a bit. Then his power coursed through me and out onto my second floor. Everywhere it touched, plants and animals straightened, a spark of adrenaline in their eyes; mangroves unfurled new leaves that had been only halfway to bud and burrowing rats poked their heads out of dens as fear washed away. It settled deep into the stone of the place, lining the canals, crawling up the walls, bringing an otherworldly sense of being much older than these caverns had been just a minute ago. This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. And beneath it all grew roots. Fine, grasping mycelium of mushrooms; the deep, threading maze of mangroves; the twist and defensive heaps that made up moss. Each grew and grew until they happened to brush against the other, then kept growing in the opposite direction, weaving endlessly through the stone. And I saw what an expanded consciousness brought. Billowing moss always moved in an effervescent wind but now it seemed to poke up with deliberation, extending its leafy fronds to slither over the ground. Whitecaps angled themselves away from the algae-light, lacecaps oozed more digestive fluid over flies caught in their web, and the mangroves rumbled and groaned as they shifted, bringing branches low and tensed. The air filled with the faint hum of their communication. Oho. Glorious. I felt Rhoborh fade away as his mana spread through my halls, not quite replacing my own ambiance but certainly contending with it. Of course. It''d be too handy to have a god at my beck and call, though I did my best to send general thoughts of pleases and thank-yous as he left back to whatever gods did when they weren''t terrorizing mortals. But holy shit. Blessing of a god. Hard not to be humbled by that. I could feel that it would take a while for his blessing to truly settle into the floor, letting the plants utilize their new connection to its fullest potential. But already I couldn''t wait to see where it went. Gods, I''d just given my plants some real minds to think with¡ªshared minds, of course, because it took all of them connecting to have enough collective neurons to start making choices¡ªbut that didn''t matter. One step infinitely further than I''d gotten. You know, I enjoyed that quite enough I wouldn''t mind doing it again. I darted back up to my first floor, to the quiet rasp of scales on stone and the buzz of endless insects. I gathered my mana around me, letting it diffuse through the floor, closing my metaphorical eyes¨C Fungal Gardens. Nothing happened. Twin reasonings, I could guess¡ªthe floor wasn''t completed yet, not to my standards, and my mana knew it. No point in giving a name to a half-baked creation. And none of the gods wanted to claim it as a domain. Pricks. Just to be absolutely sure, I flew down to the third. Underlake brought nothing but the endless darting of the cloudskipper wisp. Well. No one could say I hadn''t tried. - The silver krait paused almost hesitantly at the edge of the canal, peering into the shifting waters below. He''d leapt at the chance before, swimming down to aid in the merrow fight, but I supposed it was different now that it could potentially be his new home. Up until he needed to come up to breath air, but that wouldn''t be common. His newly-improved lung capacity worked wonders. He was easily twelve feet long, though had traded his previous bulk for a much thinner, more streamlined body. His tail had a wide, paddle-shaped fin, almost like an extended dorsal fin, and already he was moving awkwardly on land where he''d once slithered freely. His scales had shifted to a beautiful pale silver speckled with asymmetrical white splotches, so that he would look like nothing but a flash of passing sunlight in the water. A perfect ambush predator. With a deep inhalation that inflated him to near double his normal size, the krait finally pushed off the soil and slipped into the canal. Immediately, I could feel his joy. What had once been clumsy, horrible swimming now came as naturally as breathing¡ªrelatively speaking, considering he still couldn''t do that underwater¡ªand his new prowess was evident. He darted past the den of an electric eel before the poor thing had the chance to zap him and shot down the tunnel into the third floor, twisting merrily and darted right for the fledgling kelp forest to entertain himself by swimming around their leaves. I''d dug a few smaller tunnels from the ceiling of the third floor and connected them to dens of the Drowned Forest; not enough for anything larger than a stone-backed toad to get through, but enough that fresh air would maintain a constant flow. And who knew? Maybe a rat or toad would get adventurous enough to test their mettle in the water. They''d either die spectacularly or discover a new evolution. A win-win, really. I needed new schemas. I hadn''t actually gotten any new creatures through the entrance yet, though. An uncomfortable thought; half the reason why I''d been content to not try and shave off a piece of my third floor and try to close it was my lingering hope of all the new creatures I''d get through its opening. But at the same time, the merrows had opened said tunnel by blasting through solid rock. If I were any form of beastly little shark, I''d certainly wait more than three days before investigating. I wafted a bit more mana inticingly near the entrance, though. Better to be safe than sorry. - Brus was, to put it politely, shit out of luck. It''d been over a week since Chelle and her merrow friend had upended their purses for a single stone-backed toad, more money than he''d ever earned running two-bit deals with L¨¢lia and Nil for whatever exotic scraps could be found around Calarata. That was the problem with a pirate city, he was finding; too many pirates. There was nothing he could try and sell that a more experienced nightmarketer wasn''t already doing. Nothing, of course, except a dungeon. But Brus hadn''t been the man with the plan when it came to their trio. Nil had scoped out their missions, L¨¢lia had found the sellers, and he''d been the muscle. Half the reason he''d been the only one to survive their little encounter. Muscle didn''t help when trying to find someone willing to pay him piles upon piles of gold for the location of a dungeon. Moreover, what did he even want from the deal? To start his own Adventurer''s Guild? Every dungeon had one, he knew that¡ªtheir trio had adventured in High Lord Thiago''s dungeon a handful of times when they were still getting their feet beneath them, staying on the first two floors and only gathering what they could afford to slay. The Guild had been the one to screen them, to allow them entry, and to collect a fat fucking percentage of what they carried out. A pretty nice gig, all things considered. Brus could easily imagine himself in a nice frock coat, high collar and all, running his hands over newly-slain creatures as he chose the best pickings for himself. He''d never have to work another day in his life if he became the Guildmaster. Yes. That was what he wanted. Now he just had to convince other people to fill in the rest of the Guild, somehow get the ball rolling underneath the Dread Pirate''s nose, and then start making a tidy profit. The shit out of luck he''d found himself in seemed both very far away and still very close. He''d avoided telling anyone about the dungeon for fear of someone stealing the prize from him, a very real threat in a lawless city, but that had to change. The money had already been wasted on pretty drinks and prettier girls, and he didn''t have any other jobs to fall back on. Gods know he wasn''t about to go become a pigeoncatcher down on the docks. No, he had a dungeon, and he was going to rule it. Mind made up, he uncurled himself from the little alley he''d tucked away in, right next to the Center Plaza. The jumbled mess of market stalls and merchants hawking their wares at high noon echoed right past the rickety wooden wall he had his back against; surely someone who would listen, who would give him all the power he wanted. He had a dungeon. Brus exhaled, turned to face the Plaza, and promptly froze. Not of his own accord, leg quivering as he tried to take a step forward; but shadows crept from the surrounding wall and slithered up his boot, gentle and cloying and impossibly strong. "The fuck?" He murmured, reaching down to tug on his knee. The shadows captured one leg, two, and reached up to twine merrily around his fingers. It was bitingly cold. "Brus Lama?a Fam¨®n?" His full name echoed in the pressingly quiet alley. He twisted, as best the shadows allowed. A man strode towards him, smile bright on his tanned caramel face and black hair pulled back in a loose ponytail. Dark clothing, all high, gold-studded boots and buttons, waistcoat flaring at his hips in an intangible breeze. He moved with all the casual manner of someone who owned the place. Which. Ah. He did. Varc¨ªs Bilaro, the Dread Pirate, Lord of Calarata, Keeper of the Underthings, smiled. It wasn''t a nice smile. "I''ve been meaning to talk with you." Chapter 32 - Restoration I''d always been vaguely aware that most of my plants were more intelligent than their outside brethren. More was a strong word, of course, because the bar was set at a particularly low point when it came to plants, but there had always been an undercurrent of something else. The algae growing in gentle waves like the sand of a beach, the mangroves shifting their roots in intangible breezes to catch prey, things like that. Enjoyable, but still tame. Now they were beating out an uncomfortably large percentage of my creatures. I still hadn''t quite figured out if that meant they were profoundly intelligent, or my creatures were profoundly idiotic. Either way, it was still a sight to behold. They didn''t have to worry about figuring things out on their own, not when their every thought was connected; great strands of consciousness flowed between every living plant on the level like the finest of wines, carrying information or plans or little details like how a cave spider''s web had blocked a section of the algae-light and now a whitecap was free to grow there. Then the spore would land, sprout, and there would be a few more specks of consciousness to add to the growing collective. Already I desperately wanted Rhoborh''s blessing on all of my other floors. Whole fields of strangling bloodline kelp, tidal masses of moving algae on the first floor¡ªbeautiful. Unfortunately, that wasn''t how blessings worked. Although I would definitely find a way to mimic it. The mangroves were the undisputed monarchs of the Drowned Forest, though. Their massive size and ability to go on the offensive with their thorns stood far out compared to the rest of them, and even with the greatly increased kobold population, they''d barely been able to score more than a handful of branches for use as tools. They''d have to get much more clever about this. And the kobolds were merrily improving as well. Twelve of them meant they could split into shifts, half going out on great hunting missions and bringing back corpses of the rats and toads the ironback hadn''t defended. One fire-drake descendant had set up in the back of the cave, twisting billowing moss strands around each other to create sort of facsimile bandages, and he spent his time healing those injured on the hunt. And then the other half went out on gathering missions. In the week it''d been since the attack, I''d had a handful of creatures evolve¡ªmostly small ones, all without any new options. Half a dozen more webweavers I''d guided to a tree of their own, a few armourback sturgeons to replenish their lost numbers, and most excitedly, three more burgeoning ironback toads. They were still evolving but considering it would take the kobolds a hell of a lot longer to figure out how to mine than it would to kill the toads and take their armour, I was counting on them to give the kobolds proper weapons. Theoretically, I could shape them blades from what I''d collected from the invaders. And if another massive army came tramping in I doubtless would¡ªbut not now. I wanted them to discover it, to harness it from their own power. It would be all the more meaningful. Not that the mangroves were planning on making it easy, though. In fact, I was also counting on them to¨C Oh? One of the points of awareness I always had aimed at my various entrances sent a rush of information back to me; the underwater one, with its gaping tunnel stretching to the cove beyond. Over the week I''d seen plants start to grow through the rock, little tendrils of seagrass and even polyps eagerly claiming the new land, but not nearly fast enough to reach me yet. But maybe the presence of more normal flora was enough to convince them it was safe. Because a jellyfish merrily bobbed its way into my third floor. It wasn''t quite the fifty-foot long beasts I remembered from the open sea, but it was impressive, easily dozens of tentacles trailing like ribbons ten feet below. It barely made it through the entrance, long as it was, some vague sort of mana flickering under its pale blue hood to propel it into this new territory. Or¨C not blue, because the second it passed in front of the limestone it flickered, a silvery grey washing over its body. Interesting. It drifted into the first part of the room, dark eye spots roving the space. A new hunting ground, presumably, especially since a silverhead was the perfect half-foot length to fit into its mouth¡ªbut something else made the choice for it. From the murk of the shifting currents and the tangling protection of the kelp forest, the original armourback sturgeon appeared. He was the only one to survive the merrow attack, his size of near ten feet¡ªthree times what he''d first evolved as¡ªgiving him just enough leeway to survive the breakdown of his cells. And though I''d successfully evolved a few other silverheads up, his new family sifting around in the silt behind him, he had risen up to protect them. If I counted back to what had triggered his first evolution, that desperate charge against the electric eel, this was twice his family had been cut down around him. He didn''t look to want to let it happen a third. The jellyfish, of course, ignored him; they were good at that. Their massive, stinging tentacles meant you had to be an idiot to attack them without the armour or size where it wasn''t worth eating the very low-food meal of the jellyfish, the mana of their kill notwithstanding. They had few predators. What they did have, though, was a defender. The sturgeon shot up from the silt, his massive tail swishing almost clumsily as he pulled on speed he''d never had to use before. A hundred feet cleared, two¡ªhe slammed into the jellyfish''s base with all the grace of a hurricane. They both flinched away from the hit, great red lashes opening up over the sturgeon''s side as he floundered away. The jellyfish''s hood fluttered as mana pumped under its translucent surface, colours flashing wildly as it reoriented itself. The sturgeon''s armour had been just dull enough by lack of use not to rip a few tentacles off. He circled back around. The cloudskipper wisp''s current kept the jellyfish drifting, sliding closer and closer to the crushing pit in the center; but with my luck, it''d get tangled in the surrounding kelp before actually being sucked down. The sturgeon needed to finish it out in the open, where he could choose how to target it. Both he and the jellyfish knew that. Its mana hummed and its tentacles spread, lifted by errant strands of water-attuned mana; a massive spider''s web wove itself beneath, a circle with nearly ten feet of danger bobbing through the water. A poor sap of a silvertooth didn''t swim away fast enough and got trapped, thrashing, in one of the tendrils. Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. But as far as the jellyfish could reach, its tentacles still stopped beneath its bell. Not enough mana manipulation to raise above its hood. And the sturgeon, with my dungeon-granted intelligence, recognized that. He ignored the bleeding lashes over his side and darted up, bulk cutting through the currents easily, and slammed his head into the beast''s bell. Before it could shrivel away he reared back and heatbutted it again, and again, and again; the cloudskipper wisp''s current held it in place as he rammed it, great wounds open in the cracks between his plates as a last defense toxin spilled from a gash in its hood, until all of its tentacles went loose and it floated sadly to the ground. Well. That was certainly a way to do it. I shoveled soothing mana over his injuries, guiding him back to where he stood guard over the rest of his family. He accepted it tiredly and swam back, resting on the silt. But the mana from the kill lurked heavy in his stomach. Well done, I impressed on him. And then I promptly devoured the corpse. A delightful little creature, really; capable of mimicking whatever colour was behind it in a combination of its own natural coloration being clear and various semi-attuned mana, it found busy sections of water and rooted itself deep into the environment. When it was hungry, it would spread a great net of its tentacles to catch prey and drag them all into its mouth, tugging all its tendrils back into one straight line when it was done as to not scare its prey too far away. In the kelp forest, I could already see it being a proper menace. Very nice.
Mimic Jellyfish (Uncommon) It sits, lashing its tentacles to the ground below, and waits for unwary fools to wander closer. If creatures fall prey to its web of tendrils, they retract once they are full, keeping the population up to feast again later.
All the better to prevent invaders from escaping. I poked around the schema, trying to see how intensive it was; fantastic. As always, the mana I''d gotten from its kill¡ªa bit under two points¡ªwasn''t even a quarter of what I would need to create it. Sometimes I missed the old days where it took half a point to grow a section of whitecaps, and that was all the schemas I had. A lot more difficult when I had little mana-sucking beasts like the wisp running around. And speaking of beasts. Seros shook himself, rising from the slumber I''d started to become genuinely worried was hibernation with a rusty hiss. His fins flicked, tail whispering over the stone, and he dove into the third floor to find something to hunt. No need to defend his quarry anymore. The kobold warrior had awoken. - Her eyes snapped open. The world was hazy and grey, but blessedly dry; her last thoughts were of water and burning and drowning. Unwelcome. She raised her head, flicking her forked tongue at her surroundings, and stopped. Her head came¡­ farther off the ground. Not just her head, but what was within it too¡ªthe big thoughts came easily to her, words she didn''t recognize but understood and once-foreign concepts made clear. Her limbs were longer. Strength more apparent. She glanced down and saw, instead of the dusty red she was so used to, a much deeper maroon, almost purple. Like a blend between her primitive colours and His beautiful blue-green. Her claws no longer needed sharpening, like fangs attached to her hands, her tail long and lashing. She was scale-kin no longer. No, she was something more. And, all around her, she could see His presence. He had guarded her while she slept. The urge rose within her stronger than anything she''d ever felt before; the gnawing, biting need to prove something, both to Him and to herself. A pride in her abilities she hadn''t even tested yet marched alongside her thoughts, ever-present and heavy enough to drown in. She needed to be strong. Stronger. So she stood, shook off the dust that had gathered on her much-higher shoulders, and dove into the water at the end of the cramped tunnel. Swimming was still a pain, but He swam, so she would figure it out. Her tail helped, shoving at the water as she clawed her way past the new and confusing plants, popping up then and again for air as she searched for that original tunnel. Then it was up and up and up until she emerged back into her original home. The land of forest and trees and water. The land where her prey lurked. She scrambled up the riverbed, claws scraping and bouncing over the stone, and inhaled; she hadn''t had them before but she somehow knew how they worked, dit pits scored in twin lines above her mouth. Light flickered over her eyes, hazy outlines of heat and shifting creatures. A serpent, lurking in a den to her right; a rat, thrashing as a mangrove speared its gut; one of the skittering folk disappearing up a stalactite overhead. And, just a few rooms over, the large, lumbering form of the beast. She bared her fangs. She would not lose again. It raised its head as she charged into the room, lazy and unworried¡ªit didn''t even recognize her. Why would it? She had changed, becoming anew, reborn stronger. There was no room for failure. So she charged. It blinked but stood to match, the greenery and plants over its back sliding as it rose to its full height. Strategy laced with rage raced through her mind; if she attacked it, it would hide, just like last time. When she had failed. So she simply couldn''t let it do that. It lumbered forward to match her, keeping its scale ready to absorb the rest of its body. She lunged and it opened its mouth, beak out and gaping¡ªshe swept her arm between its jaws. It crunched through skin and scale alike. She howled, thrashing, but shifted her grip; even as it bit down she wrenched a hold of its beak, digging her claws into the sensitive roof of its mouth, scrabbling for a grip against its leathery skin. Pain flooded through her veins. But when it let go, she still had a hold. It bellowed, swiping at her legs with its stubby claws, and tried to pull its head back under the protection of its scales. But it couldn''t. Her arm ached, both with the pain and the effort of keeping its head out; it tried to move forward, bringing its scales to his head, but she lunged her other claw out and snapped a hold of the ridge of its shell. No. Not again. With a howl, she dug her grip into both pieces and started to pull. It truly panicked then, thrashing and lashing out. At her previous size, she would have been swept under its frenzy, unable to bear the weight; but she was stronger. She was larger. She held. Its skin started to tear, scarlet bubbling through the gash, and it roared anew. A swipe tore the scales from her legs, its bite cleaving through her arm and digging at bone; but she kept tearing. Until finally, finally, she ripped the beast''s head from its body. It slumped, blood gushing over her form as she fell back. She struggled back to her feet, dropping the head at her side; everything hurt. Even the welcoming burst of mana through her chest couldn''t heal the agony crackling through her. But she had won. That liminal connection in the back of her mind, the same one she''d gained when she''d hesitantly tried to pledge herself to Him, flickered to life. She turned, still gasping for breath and clutching her wounded arm, and found her Dragon there. Even with her new height He still towered over her, the frills around His face flared and golden eyes bright. He lowered His head to peer at her, tail swishing. She reached behind with her good arm and heaved the corpse forward, displaying the beast; her greatest kill, made in His name, to prove herself. He leaned forward, eyes started to glow with some internal power. There was almost something like hesitancy in His gaze, but that was impossible; He was a Dragon. They never feared anything. A voice, faint and crackling, echoed through her mind. Rihsu. She froze. The sound replayed, again and again, her resting the word with every ability she could muster¡ªRihsu. A name. He had named her. Rihsu. Chapter 33 - War Beasts The snapping turtle slumped to the ground, very, very dead. To be precise, half of it slumped to the ground¡ªits head was still tightly gripped in the kobold''s bleeding claws. I couldn''t peer into her mind anymore, her having sworn to a different lord, but I could read Seros''. He was a bundle of awkwardness, not really knowing how to deal with his new sworn underling but being guided by instincts anyway, and choosing something in his own, reptilian language. Rihsu. I didn''t know what it meant, but by the way she stood up even straighter past the scarlet bleeding over her scales and the actively-spurting turtle head in her claws, I imagined she liked it. Precocious little beast. I pressed soothing mana over her, stitching scales back together and pressing skin back together. She nodded her head to Seros. As if he was the one doing it. Fantastic. As she went off with Seros, I poked back around the turtle''s corpse. It had grown in its time in my halls, ballooning out until its shell was nearly seven feet across and four off the ground, heavily ridged and a deep, emerald green past the mosses growing off its back like threadbare wings. Its jaws were built to snap mountains in half. All in all, precisely something I would want in my halls. I dissolved away at its outer edges, shredding through its mana and soul; it presented a unique view of my dungeon, being present for attacks and growth but without my voice overhead instructing my creatures on what to do. It had mapped out some areas of the Drowned Forest I hadn''t considered as worthwhile, so I''d be changing that. Beyond that, it was a slow moving ambush predator, content both on land or in water, and it damn well knew it was invulnerable. An armourback sturgeon but with fangs. Glorious little addition.
Lichenridge Turtle (Uncommon) Slow and lumbering, from birth it grows various mosses and lichens upon its back to disguise itself as it hunts. The plants are fed as it feeds and breathes as it breathes, eventually growing large enough to completely hide it.
Huh. That would explain, at least, how its mosses had survived switching from terrestrial and aquatic life, and that did clear out another of my worries; I could, as always, only collect schemas of dead things, and while the turtle had been politely ripped in half, the mosses over its back were still green and fresh. Hopefully without being fed by it, they would die soon. I could poke my way through around¡­ three species there, including the billowing moss. Plenty of lovely elements for my floors. Including the thoughts I''d been having for my fourth. Today was the day I was starting it, I knew¡ªwhile I didn''t exactly have a lot of mana, I needed to move my core. No one had attacked in the around four days since the attack, but I couldn''t count on that forever. I needed to prepare for invaders like they were actively knocking on my many front doors. And, given as the most pressing of those front doors was all the way on my third floor, I needed a very specific anti-merrow floor. My first thought had been fire, of course. Magma pools and dry heat and sand dunes, all beautifully combined in some combination to stop any merrow from so much as thinking of heading in that direction. Would''ve been lovely, really. But I was somewhat stopped by the fact that no, I not only didn''t have access to any fire-mana I could use to create that environment, but I also had no creatures to survive there. Great. Nearly all of my creatures were if not semi-aquatic, at least enjoying a more damp environment. Only the kobolds would have a chance of surviving there. Not exactly the massive threat for a creature heading that way. Next I thought of heights, of a thin, rickety walkway made near impossible if you were dragging yourself across the ground with a tail to unbalance you, with a profoundly fatal fall right over the edge filled with all manners of nastly pointed spears. Flying creatures overhead, battling and buffering and doing their damnedest to drag invaders off the side. A glorious idea, exciting enough I had already started to plan it, when once again I fell short. The only flying creature I had was the bat, who, once again, I didn''t have yet. And it wasn''t like the rest of my creatures were likely to get an aerial evolution, at least none that I could see. And the floor would have the same problem as my last few¡ªa straight line from entrance to exit. The kind of place where all someone had to be was moderately strong enough to brute force their way through my carefully built little traps and then they''d succeed at killing me. Not exactly what I was looking for. So there I''d been, trapped in a circle of endless ideas and even more endless reasons why they wouldn''t work, when I happened to have gotten Rhoborh as a patron. The blessing of the symbiosis. Namely, the presence of plants. This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience. No surprise it''d ended up being what I settled on. When I''d started my journey, I''d had only two plants and I''d been fine with it, far too focused on creatures who could rip and kill and snatch. But now, with the vampiric mangroves and my ever-growing collection of flora, they were appealing to me more and more. Now I could find a way to put them to use. The overall concept was simple, really. Answers to all of my problems. I couldn''t have the merrow be able to come through¡ªso it was a dry environment, admittedly humid but with no water except for small drinking ponds scattered throughout. I''d line the ground in plenty of plants with hidden thorns to rip them to shreds if they tried to just drag themselves through. I couldn''t have it be a straight line¡ªso I''d make it a maze, full of endlessly twisting paths with no correct way and my core room hidden at the end of an impossible task. I couldn''t have those stronger than me able to beat it easily¡ªso it''d be full of threats not feasible to defeat with strength alone, like traps and poisons and hypnotic abilities. The horned serpent would run rampant here. In short, I had grown so overwhelmingly proud of my vampiric mangroves that I was building an entire floor modeled after their roots. Identical tunnels, layered in algae and moss, snaking through the mountain in patterns impossible to map and built to struggle in. Full of creatures who were there to lure invaders into going the wrong route, leading them farther and farther away from the end, until they eventually succumbed. Perhaps some wandering threat, calling out so that invaders could constantly hear it coming but would never know from where¡ªor a sort of mindless army, throwing themselves in endless waves as the invaders grew more and more exhausted fighting them off. I shook myself. Not yet¡ªI still had to build the bloody tunnels, and fill them with a suitable environment. I didn''t know which plant would take the center stage, though. Billowing moss didn''t quite match what I was searching for, given its more carefree, waving appearance, and the mushrooms were too fragile and spindly to really drench the tunnels in an identical cover. Algae, then. Who knew? Maybe I''d even get an evolution out of the mix. So I gathered my mana around me, all the scraps from regeneration and my dungeonborn creatures killing invaders, and set out to the third floor. Once the two new plants died I would go about creating lichenridge turtles to populate the second floor with, just so they would have their normal spread of plants available to disguise themselves with, and I''d also go around placing the flora¡ªbut later. For now, I needed to dig. - Akkyst. Weak, stupid, useless. Worse of all, his apparent new name. The goblin-horde filled one third of the mountain, endless and sprawling, but the vast majority was tucked inside one cavern with a ceiling so high overhead he couldn''t see anything but shadow. Houses made of crumbling stone walls and rotten wood teetered higher and higher up the walls, goblins shouting and cackling to each other as they swarmed over their home, the war-bellows of training soldiers down on the stone floor. Quartz-lights, he''d heard them called, lit everything with a hazy, flickering glow, the raw stench of meat well past due and blood filled the air, the houses creaking and groaning under weight they weren''t meant to hold. And, behind it all, the war animals. Dozens of them, most mountain residents kidnapped in some way or another to join the goblins; they lay cramped and disheveled in dens dug straight into the stone, dust and grime covering fur and scales and skin. The goblins didn''t care for their war beasts; if one died, there were hundreds more in the mountain ready to take their place. They weren''t worth taking care of. Akkyst had been there for under a week and he hated it. He peered cautiously past the wooden bars that made up his prison home; a legion of goblins trained under barked command, jabbing spears at invisible enemies. It wasn''t invaders¡ªhumans, he supposed, was their actual names¡ªthey were fighting, but other goblins. Three hordes lived within this mountain and they fought constantly. One was the¡­ miners, he was pretty sure, and another the mages; this horde was the warriors, fighting with brawn and brawn alone. Their brawn and brawn alone included whatever war beasts they picked up in the mountain. There was nothing to do but get hurt or listen, and Akkyst found he enjoyed listening more than the alternative. His species was intelligent, something deep within him said, and that flicker of archaic knowledge and power had let him try to learn the goblin''s language. Not enough where he could fully know everything being said around him, but enough that the scraps he had been born with had evolved into true understanding. It was his only defense. That made it hurt all the more whenever he thought of where he had gotten that slight knowledge of all languages, the basis for his understanding¡ªback at the gentle hills of his previous life. With the mushrooms and the fresh water and no creature foolish enough to challenge him. He wanted it back. He wanted to go back so badly it hurt. But he couldn''t, and neither could the creatures trapped in there with him. Just three of them, curled up in one of the dens; there had been seven, but there had been a patrol out near goblin-mage territory, and its loss had spurred a responding attack. Akkyst and two others had been deemed too weak, too small to stage a proper assault and left behind. And now they were the only ones left. One was a narrow, slinking beast, covered in fur like him; although hers was a pale green-grey, with a tail tipped in shining blue. But that had been when she was first dragged in, four days ago¡ªnow she was all grey and covered in dust, her long claws dulled and ears pressed flat. She had no name for her species, calling herself only one of the old hunters; the goblins called her a stalking jaguar. The other was even smaller, a slump of iron-red feathers and gold talons. He had four wings, what he called his strange, misshapen limbs, and a jagged mouth longer than Akkyst''s claws. Anger burned fiercely in his black eyes. He called himself a sharp-wing; they called him a bladehawk. But as strong as they could have been, they were nothing to the lumbering elephants with metallic armour growing out of their skin, or the rhinos with lightning crackling up their horns, or the salamanders with smoke roiling out of their lungs. And so they stayed in their den, waiting to be sent out on a death mission; war beasts earned their food by killing opposing goblins. He was already starving. And unfortunately, looking by the goblin sauntering over to their den with a spear gripped loosely in her clawed hand, he might just get his wish. Chapter 34 - Tree Roots It was simple, really. Find a spot, choose an angle, dig a tunnel. Continue ad infinitum until I had a tangled mess of turnbacks and roundabouts and convergences and dead ends. A right proper labyrinth, buried deep below the mountains, containing what I hoped would soon be traps beyond compare. It was also mindnumbingly boring. No time to put up algae-lights, or do my best mimicry of those quartz-lights I''d absorbed off of Nil''s body, so I was just tunneling through the endless black as my mental map of the space expanded. I ran into a few new materials as I had on previous floors, strands of calcite or iron or quartz, but nothing that was as good as building as my limestone. So I absorbed the stone for flecks of mana, replaced it with limestone, and kept digging. And digging. You can probably guess what I kept doing. My fault, though. I didn''t want another straightforward room, where anyone with half a brain could trip and fall onto the exit, but even this was pushing my patience with the amount of identical tunnels. A truly fantastic turn of events only made worse by the fact I was the sorry bastard who had to dig it all out. It would be beautiful, though. Already I could see the endless expanse, nothing but more tunnels in every direction, culminating in a wide cavern for my final predator to rest within. Something stealthy, built for stalking prey through the tunnels, but suitably large enough to try and chase them back into the tunnels for a pleasingly messy death. Best of both worlds, really. No schema like that yet under my belt, considering Seros wasn''t exactly stealthy, but I''d make it work. Although, in terms of new schemas, I couldn''t help but find myself rather disappointed. I''d shaken it off when I was digging the Underlake, too excited with the prospect of water and able to ration out that maybe there was good spacing between them, but to be two floors deep and not having gotten another fossil since the vampiric mangroves was itching at me. I wanted more extinct species¡ªor at least new ones. It wasn''t fair that I got such a new and shiny title of Resurrector and I didn''t even get a chance to use the bloody thing. No, the fossilized kelp with the merrow Priestess didn''t count. I knew that thing already existed out in the world; I wanted something new. Something unique to my halls. And to find nothing? Well. Disappointing. It didn''t even make sense; limestone was famous for being mostly made with fossils. The vast majority was far too small for me to ever be able to recreate a creature from the minute specks I found within the stone, but to not find anything for two whole floors now¡­ unprecedented, to say the least. Infuriating, to say more. Nothing I could really do about it, though. Maybe I was digging too shallowly? The Underlake had to stay relatively close underneath the Drowned Forest so I could still make an exit that wouldn''t flood all the floors beneath it, and I don''t know, something in me had kept my focus pretty close when I was digging out this floor. I casually started to bore my current tunnel on a downward slope. Maybe the fossils were deeper? Gods. Irritating. I wish someone would just tell me. Rhoborh, if you wanted any more cool floors to swear to, I''d give you a great discount if you could lead me to wherever the shiny fossils were. No response. Couldn''t blame me for trying. With a sigh, I got back to digging. - Three miserable days later, I had gripped and bitched and moaned my way through an entire sprawling network of interconnected tunnels. It was a work of sublime genius, really. I''d taken my original inspiration from the roots of my mangroves and their ever forking patterns, but I''d reworked it so that while they did split up and branch off, they also reconnected, serving so that there would never truly be one correct path. They joined together in little pockets, almost like oases, so that invaders wouldn''t know which fork was the original one they had been following; and with the identical, ten foot diameter tunnels I''d carved out with slavish care, they couldn''t point out any markers. Thousands upon thousands of feet of labyrinth, ready to hopelessly confuse and entangle any foolish enough to enter their depths. Yeah. I''d like to see the merrow get through this. But it was hopelessly dark as well, and as much as I liked the idea of invaders fumbling their way through pitch blackness, my creatures wouldn''t fare much better in those conditions. So it was time for algae. But not the constant, ever-present glow of the second and third floor, where I''d wrangled my original green algae into one with buds of bioluminescence, casting a hazy green glow to help aid my plants growth. The algae and moss I wanted to grow here needed only minimal light, and I wasn''t about to give my invaders any advantages I didn''t have to. If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. Thankfully, as with all my schemas, there was an amount I could manipulate their base form before they just started to absorb my mana. And it certainly didn''t take a surplus of mana to manipulate algae. I ignored buds and stems and instead went for their spores. Green algae, like all others, reproduced with spores¡ªlittle cells they released to flit around and try to find a suitable environment to develop into a fully-fledged plant. Simple enough. This one had microscopic specks that drifted until they could plant themselves into a stone wall and start to grow. But what if they were less simple? I ballooned out their size, growing from tiny to still tiny but at least somewhat noticeable, and then I pulled up all of my knowledge from the luminous constrictors and made them glow. Took a few attempts, more than I cared to admit, but soon a little patch of algae across the first tunnel shuddered and released a wave of spores. They all glowed with a pale, dim little light, barely visible except for their sheer number, drifting softly around the tunnel; and whenever they landed and went out as they started to develop up to real plants, more spores were released to take their place. The end result was something barely visible, a pale glow only highlighting the edges of the tunnel and the flicker of water beading on the surface, and perfectly hid anything else. I resisted the urge to cackle. Oh, I''d love to see an invader get past this. Approximately no time was wasted in spreading the new spore-glow green algae around my tunnels¡ªor, when I said no time was wasted, I should have clarified that a lot of fucking time was spent sitting around and doing jackshit because of how much mana it took to create this new variant. Surprise surprise, making plants give off light instead of absorbing it took a lot of work. Who would have guessed? But before another three days could pass, I created the last batch of algae in the tunnel I intended to be the way out and promptly sagged back in relief. Gods, that took forever. I was still left with the question of the ending room. What would eventually be the passage down to my next floor, I knew, but I didn''t want it to be like all my previous floors; not just a find-the-last-room-and-go-down type deal, but something to actually challenge them. And, well. I had had enough of cramped tunnels. I still made it nondescript from the opening, of course. The last passage I''d constructed, sloping gently downward with numerous other passages branching off, eventually ending in a long, drawn out tunnel perfect for something to be chased and trip over my many algae roots. And after that tunnel, on an upward slope to hide its scale, was a cavern. A true cavern, one of those enormous, endlessly sprawling ones, even though in comparison it was a little less than the size of my first floor. Jagged ceilings cushioned by the true glowing algae variant from the second floor, billowing moss that grew taller and even more billow-y like actual clouds layering over the ground. Glittering puddles lined with gold and emeralds studded the ground, mushrooms flashing iridescent whites in hidden corners. A little paradise. Where something large and unforgiving would live. I hadn''t decided what yet, because I didn''t necessarily have anything that translated well to the apex predator of this floor¡ªagain, really something I should have thought of before jumping in, but damnit if it still wasn''t a better idea than my sky forest plan¡ªbut I knew the rough basics. Large but subtle, staying hidden in the algae filling the tunnels, a proper ambush predator. And thankfully, my creatures and I were very fond of ambushes. Most of their evolutions leaned in that direction. Not anything of the toads, if only because chasing things in the tunnels required speed; maybe an evolution of the rats, those protected by the ironback toad or those who had grown bold and daring with their stolen jewels? Perhaps a spider, one scuttling without worry through the underbrush just to strike from above. The jeweled jumper in particular would love this floor. Ah well. Thoughts for when my creatures started to explore their way down to this floor. As I was about to do. Seros was gentle as ever, but gods if I didn''t want to claw his eyes out for listening to my instructions and moving my core down to the fourth floor. Everything shuddered and twisted and ached¡ªI wanted to hurl, which, as you can probably guess, is difficult as a rock. I managed as best I could with a blast of mana. And almost immediately felt the difference. As my core moved down a floor, the ambient mana dramatically decreased on those upper and skyrocketed on the one I was on. It was what called my creatures further down, seeking to grow stronger to have just a taste of the purest raw mana; also what called wild beings and invaders to seek my depths. A system that had led to my current growth. But even I hadn''t felt what I felt from the algae now. It shuddered in the presence of such increased mana, twisting and writhing as emerald green stems grew triple and new glowing spores filled the air; whole tunnels seemed to shrink as the algae lining its walls swelled in size, spilling over and trailing down like the jellyfish''s tendrils. Woah. The cavern where my core now sat was the most affected, green algae blooming up like great hanging stalactites of their own¡ªit trembled in the way I was only used to my vampiric mangroves doing, moving in an almost deliberate shift. Like they had awareness. It took me a second but I found something to connect it to¡ªin all my previous floors, most of my ambient mana went to creatures; not by anything of my choosing, but more that they were able to go out and actively absorb it, using their own abilities and mana to then suction in more of the stuff in the air. Shit luck to plants but the only way they could do that was to grow in size or manage to kill something; so while the mangroves and the lacecaps were well on their way to advancing, the others just had to sit there and hope a dead body full of mana would start to decompose on them. Or, perhaps, if they were the only living inhabitants of the deepest floor in my dungeon. And, as I watched the algae twist and grow as more mana filtered out through my Otherworld connection, maybe I was okay with that. If not okay, then at least interested¡ªmy only other plant evolution had come from my own meddling. What would a natural look like? I was fine with waiting a day before bringing any creatures down just to see that. Chapter 35 - Tidy It was, to put it shortly, pure agony to leave behind my beautiful burgeoning fourth floor and pop back up to the others. To look upon their graceless, un-algaed walls, to their primitive lights still clinging to stone. It would have been easy to grow my new variant on the walls, to fill this place with their sublime spores, but, well. I wanted it to be a surprise. And my first three floors were still excellent and lovely and I very much appreciated them, thank you. My subconscious retreated a bit. I finished carving out the last little tunnel snaking its way through the limestone separating my floors; a last air tunnel, connecting to a nondescript den in the Drowned Forest, just to make sure it never ran dry. I had hundreds of the buggers for every floor, all small enough no invader would think twice about snaking their way through and with easily ten times the amount I needed just so I didn''t have to worry about a burrowing rat covering the entrance in dug up silt. Back-ups upon back-ups, as it went. I was a fan of contingencies. One such was the damn near thousand points of awareness I had aimed at my fourth floor. The algae had kept growing, though admittedly not with the same flashy gusto it had when I originally moved in. It slithered over the walls with all the grace of something truly blind and immobile and dead, flicking its spores and roots with a very pressing awareness. I couldn''t have been more proud. No evolution yet, though. I could wait. I had other plans. The first of which was something I had been procrastinating on with all these tunnels. See, I''d named the Drowned Forest, right? Given it a proper title and all the prestige that came with it. That likened to reason that the name was awfully important. As in something that stood as a marker. As in, I probably shouldn''t add any more creatures to the second floor lest I upset the balance. But gods, the lichenridge turtles were right there. Truly, I don''t think you understand the agony. ¡­Rhoborh would tell me if something was wrong, wouldn''t he? The Drowned Forest certainly wasn''t his but it had a kinship to him now, enough that any invaders would be able to feel his presence and let him bring it to all his latest pissing contests with the other gods. He had no reason to want to see it destroyed. So he definitely wanted more defenders. Mind thoroughly made up, I grabbed the near forty points of mana I''d generated and slapped them together into the rough shape of a turtle. The schema flowed through me and almost politely shifted what I''d snagged to the side, gathering a mere eleven to shape as scales and shell popped into existence. Gods. I''d gotten too twitchy with the cloudskipping wisp. Not every large creature was a mana-sucking bloodhound. The four turtles I wove together blinked, shaking their lumbering heads from side to side as they lazily drank in their new surroundings; a bit like the bears upstairs, really, although the bears tended to respond with more guttural bellows and clawing when they spotted their brethren instead of another slow blink. Almost embarrassing how long it had taken Rihsu to kill hers. Although these didn''t have the camouflage of their predecessor yet. Turned out I was remarkably impatient when I didn''t have the distraction of a new floor and the looming fear of new invaders; the two new species of moss and lichen hadn''t died yet, slowly but steadily browning in the corner I''d shuffled them to, but I was sure that''d go soon. I wasn''t willing to risk destabilizing the floor by trying to remove their carbon dioxide or squishing them with a stone¡ªwhile it''d certainly work, these were two limp, bedraggled plants. Not exactly prime material. They could wait. The turtles would just have to make do with my regular green algae and billowing moss for now. Plenty of time before the real shit started to take over. At least I hoped so. It hadn''t escaped my notice it''d been a week since the merrow''s invasion; certainly a time period I was very happy to have received and nothing to scoff at, but with the ever-present threat of my discovery I didn''t know why more invaders hadn''t come. Hells, I would have expected a whole Calarata army of drunken pirates to come charging in and start hunting for my core; that was why I had built the labyrinth of the fourth floor. Something to hopefully distract and separate them so my creatures could work overtime on saving me. But no threats had come. In the absence of war, the mind wanders, and mine was very far away from thinking about peace. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. The only spy I had was Seros, with my ability to see through his eyes outside of my domain through his Name; and while he certainly was large enough to defend himself from a Bronze-ranked invader out in the wild, he wasn''t exactly built for stealth. Fifteen foot long monitors tended to attract attention. And while I had room to name another creature, I couldn''t think of anyone who would let me learn what was going on with Calarata. A rat, maybe¡ªsmall and scurrying throughout houses with all the grace of an acrobat, alongside all the survivability of a dead one. Half a swipe and my precious spy and Otherworld mana would be a smear over the ground. Same for a spider, or a toad, or any of the small scuttling creatures of my floors. The opposite for a kobold or bear; large enough to survive, far too large to get anywhere. And unlike with my lichenridge turtle conundrum, I didn''t have an easy way to convince myself of what was right. Hrm. Irritating. I shifted half my attention to continue puzzling over that problem as I turned back to my turtles, the lumbering beasts glaring at their uncovered back like their nakedness was somehow causing world wars. Half a twist of an idle mana thread and a few spores landed between their scales, mostly billowing moss to match their predecessor, and with another twitch of my mana that gave root and started to grow. Something to appease the little buggers. Because I had a plan in which I was hoping they would be very, very content. In my efforts to make all my floors more difficult, I''d switched up the routes of several canals; now a handful blocked off access to rooms without wading through, or led invaders down the wrong path, or forced them to jump over in order to continue. It was that last one I was interested in striking. See, I''d covered most of the ground on my second floor in moss, both to hide the mangroves'' deadly thorns and to give the dirt something holding it in place. The end result was a constantly waving, shimmering field of green. Something that the back of a lichenridge turtle looked almost worryingly like. The turtles did their damnedest to ignore me but eventually listened to my prompts, shuffling to stand in the select spots I''d raised in the canals for them; just deep enough their heads could pop up for air, but shallow enough their backs rose from the water like the most inviting of stones. I kicked up a few eddies and rapids around their bodies with the help of other stones, just to disguise the scales and jaws beneath. A final little touch. In the end, four flawless stepping stones were made to help guide my invaders to their next goal. In a way. If their end goal was me, and they were fine with it only being their mana to make it there. I certainly was. - Lluc sat and he twisted. It was a new hat, purchased with all the grace that being the first mate of the Golden Ghost and second in command over the Dread Crew allowed him. A fine thing, really; not with the flashy old feather of a common sailor but the more distinguished scarlet strip of wolf fur around the underside, acting as a bandana. It would have cost a normal man a year to earn it. He was also rapidly ruining it as he kept winding the canine''s pelt around his fingers. It wasn''t his fault, really. No one could be expected to stay calm with the stench of agony and raw screams filtering under the crack in the door. A pleasant enough room for it, he supposed¡ªhis time in this position had made him wait for far worse in far worse places. The old gaze-weed run in Le¨®ro, ending in half the crew either dead or wishing they were; or the surprised head of the previous first mate, tumbling away from her equally surprised body after the pitch-shark had reminded her why it was best not to steal from the captain. On paper, they were both worse. This room had expansive couches and a glass-lined table, soothing quartz-lights in carved sockets on the wall and the borwood floor protected by a pelt as soft as silk. Most places he waited, though, it was because he wasn''t waiting¡ªit was fleeing for his life, or dealing with his new and unexpected promotion, or whipping the rest of the crew into shape. It wasn''t waiting. He hated waiting. Bad things always came after a wait. He twisted his hat more. And of course, as with all things, it was the moment that he moved onto twisting the brim that the door, a fine polished borwood that looked to have gotten a new varnish of the scarlet hue, banged open and Varc¨ªs Bilaro walked out. Grey trousers, cinched tight at the waist with a frock coat overtop with its sides tied behind him, gentle slippers and gloves over his extremities. His work uniform, then. He had a nasty habit of running through them. Same for today, if all the blood meant anything. Varc¨ªs stripped his gloves off, tossing them behind him without so much as a glance¡ªthere was no final cry for help, no grunt of surprise or panic as the door swung close. "Clean it up before I get back," Varc¨ªs said, bracing his chin on his hands. There was some dark curiosity behind his eyes. "Brus broke like a fat merchant ship. Told me everything, matched what the merrow had said, they both filled in what parts each other didn''t know." Lluc winced. The merrow had taken forever to clean up. "And?" "Some sort of dungeon. Neither knew whatever deity is sponsoring it, nor what it spawned from¡ªley line? Eclipse? Shouldn''t be anything too powerful." Two dead for half an answer. Gods if this wasn''t why you couldn''t know shit in a pirate''s town. Lluc frowned, setting his hat down. "Any chance it''s something more alive? If what the merrow was saying about the new entrance is true." Varc¨ªs smiled. It might have been nice if not for the splash of scarlet under his left eye. "Lluc. Do you know of any sentient-born dungeons?" Ah. Suddenly his legs weren''t fond of moving. "...no?" His breath was tacky in his throat. It couldn''t hurt to be polite. "Sir?" "You''re damn right." Varc¨ªs splayed his hands with all the serenity of a slit wrist. "That''s because they don''t survive. The gods don''t like them, we certainly don''t, and they get killed before they finish half a floor. So go scout it out to see how far along it is, and if it''s developed enough to have opened its pathway to the Otherworld, I''ll come and take it. Unless that''s a problem?" "No. No sir. Not a problem." Chapter 36 - From the Ground Up The sad little moss seemed to find a way to deflate even more as I pressed my power on it. Slivers of limestone crushing its outer fronds, water drained away and the barest form of pressing heat I could muster drying it out even further, pure stone and no nutrient-filled soil around¡ªand the damn things were only just starting to die. Moss was needed for the environment, but gods if it didn''t still act like a weed. But now the two distinct species were finally starting to brown, their greenery shriveling and collapsing to little rotten heaps of stubbornness. Forget what other attributes they had. If they could teach my other creatures how to survive that long in an environment that could not have wished them more dead if the gods themselves willed it, my dungeon would never die. But now I could consume.
Jadestone Moss (Rare) In parallel to its amber-producing brethren of trees, this species stores water inside its outermost leaves until they eventually die, in which they solidify into a hard, gemstone-like mineral that defends the inner core.
Razorleaf Lichen (Uncommon) It lives in an endless cycle of death and rebirth. Underneath its medulla, its lower cortex is a brittle, bone-like substance exposed after its section of plant dies, lining its edges in a sharp, unforgiving weapon.
Huh. Did the billowing moss have anything to do with dying as a defense? Twice seemed too convenient. I could see the symbiosis, though¡ªthe billowing moss over top, providing the helpful disguise as nothing more than a gentle flowing field of moss. Then, whenever something scrambled overtop to try and attack or even just walk right by as the turtle''s disguise defense, problems would arise. Only bad luck that Rihsu, a rather scaled being, had been the one to clamber over first. Others wouldn''t be so lucky. But I was certainly pleased with my newest schemas; the lichenridge turtle¡ªalthough, why was it called lichenridge? It had two mosses and only one lichen¡ªhad proven its worth time and time over. Although my greater crab was still caring for her eggs down on the third floor, soon they would hatch and the newest swarm would safely return to terrorizing the Drowned Forest where they would encounter all sorts of delicious new prey and rivals alike. How the world worked best and all. I bunched up a few pockets of mana over the backs of the four turtles dozing about in my canals, weaving together partial sections of the moss and lichen; not enough to actually drop fully-formed plants on their back, but some sort of halfway stage. The spores needed to root past their shells into a symbiotic relationship in order to thrive. Already the billowing moss spores were starting to grow, little green leaves trailing off the edges of the emerald scales. Within a week or so I imagined they''d be fully covered. Precisely what I wanted. The mana condensed, trembling, as I picked and prodded my way through its internal code to try and sift out what I needed; half a frond emerged, paused, and promptly dissolved again. Another twist of what could have been the brittle cortex of the lichen, roots grasping at air and disappearing; then I managed to stumble face-first into whatever part of the schema was needed and a cloud of spores drifted peacefully towards their backs. The turtles, as little as they were moving, hardly noticed. I imagined it would take a week before they would finish their blink and finally notice that they had a whole ecosystem growing on their back. If I had thought my cave bear had been lazy, I truly hadn''t met these turtles. Maybe that had something to do with how they were formed? I tugged up my mana in a rough approximation of a frown, peering closer at the turtles. Their predecessor had still certainly acted in line with the turtle line, spending most of its time lazing about, but it had still hunted down prey and moved dens as it searched for easier food access. Well. If my current ones didn''t, would that be a problem? I wanted them to be a hidden stepping stone to rip the legs off of any invaders, but that would be reducing them to nothing more than a feature of the caverns. I wanted my creatures to thrive. I still wanted them as traps, but not at the cost of their own lives. Some medium ground to be found, because damn they were still really good at being traps. I poked my way around the canals, dipping through the water and up along the sides; where I''d originally pulled up the four spots, they were at the perfect locations to trick invaders to hop across them to the other side. But would that be suspicious? If there were perfect stepping stones in a dungeon that was trying to kill invaders? This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work. If I was an invader, I''d certainly not want to jump on those. So I started tugging up more pillars for the turtles to rest on, some huddled close to the canal walls and some much too far away to properly jump to; little dens carved into the sides in preparation for eggs, hide-a-way spots for those recovering from injuries. Something for them all to survive alongside. Hopefully that would help. And, well, once my current four turtles found time in their busy, busy schedules to get around to increasing their population, they would need perches as well. Metaphorical fingers crossed and all that. I had hope. I pulled away from my focus there, popping back down to the fourth floor to check on my algae¡ªin the three or four days since I''d initially planted it, it had remarkably proven why it was dangerous to have only one category of an ecosystem filled; with nothing to prune it back with disease or feedings, it had so rapidly overgrown throughout the tunnels that what had once been an almost ten foot diameter was now a rather oblong, squished four. The evolution was coming, though. I could feel it. The algae twisted and writhed like a spectral form, with the same care and intention as the cloudskipper wisp''s wild, inane movements; but there was movement. Something I could manifest from my knowledge of Rhoborh''s blessing that I was infecting all my other floors with; it wouldn''t come naturally and it wouldn''t bind my whole floor together in such a masterful display as my Drowned Forest, but I''d be damned if I wouldn''t at least take some advice from that blessing. ¡­I hoped the god didn''t mind. That did feel uncomfortably close to smiting territory. But alas, still no glorious notification crossing my awareness; another day, perhaps. I made to rise up to my third floor, to see how the greater crab''s eggs were doing and whether the silver krait had won his battle against the much larger armourback sturgeon when something tugged at my mana. Not a large tug, mind. But plenty enough I was able to notice it. I shot up to my first floor. One poor burrowing rat froze halfway through adjusting her pile of gems as she felt the full force of my awareness fall on her back. No invaders, at least. Phew. ¡­It was a rather impressive pile of gems. She was a larger rat, near two feet long with lanky limbs and a twitching tail, and it looked to have been purely fed by her jewels; she was tucked in the far back of a den huddled at the base of a stalagmite, narrow enough she had to wriggle her way past a great lump of whitecaps to make her way inside. A fantastic disguise, though¡ªno other rats had any reason to suspect that such a rich rat would choose such a miserable home. And rich rat she was. No diamonds, because even the burrowing rats hadn''t quite figured out how to reach the diamond-studded stalactite on the ceiling, but every other gem under the sun; sapphire and citrine and garnet and tourmaline and jet, all huddled together. And turns out that was a rather large advantage I hadn''t thought of. Jewels were, of course, something like sponges for mana; their crystalline nature meant they could contain intangible things by having them move alongside the fractals of their shape, keeping the mana moving constantly as to not fizzle out by leaking or corrupt itself by staying still. Similar to sentient things'' mana channels, really. So they were perfect in a dungeon, because they could absorb from my ambient mana and constantly build up their storage until they were little stars full of power. And, as it turns out, they were capable of bouncing mana between them. So for every gem the rat brought back and shoved into the pile, they were sparking mana constantly throughout the stack until every one of them was glowing. And she was, in return, fairly stuffed with mana. Beautifully close to evolution, really. Something I could very much get behind. She was far from the only one, too. Apparently I''d blinked and been distracted; a whole damn society was building on the first floor, shaped by rats who had no time to be worried about hungry cave bears or lurking constrictors because gems were out there. Precocious little bastards. I had underestimated just how precocious, though. Rats, unsurprisingly, had large families; and while not to the point of Le¨®ro''s fanatic die-for-my-family''s-honour type loyalty, it did make it easier to build groups. So now there were whole hoards of them who were living in the same dens, gathering gems together, and generally fighting for their life against their own species instead of their predators. Fascinating stuff. What was even more interesting to me was that they weren''t the same¡ªlike before, some rats had figured out that they could just steal jewels instead of trying to gather them from the various places I''d hidden them all around the floor, but now they had made it an art form. Some would even willingly scamper across the field, stirring up a predator or two to scare away whatever guard was at the front of a den, just so the other rats of their family could sneak in and steal a prize. Some, maybe even most, died in the process. Then the next day they did it again. More guards came to be, not the guards of the old days where they would huddle by the entrance with their twin-forked tails twitching furiously as they tried to spot a predator to warn those inside; no, these were those that actively plopped their fuzzy behinds right at the entrance and fought other rats who approached, using their gnashing teeth and claws to keep them back. Then the adventurers, those who sought out the gems, would come back late after a long shift out. Those often had the most scars, whether close saves with a predator or wounds from trying to burrow through unforgiving stone to search for gems. They were always welcomed back into the den with food and care and comfort in much the same way I imagined Gold or Mythril adventurers were welcomed into taverns. I sat there, in not quite surprise but moreso disbelief, as a little society sprung up around me on the floor I''d callously written off as going to need to be adjusted later down the line. Any invaders looking to come through with anything even remotely mana-touched on their presence would have hell to pay. And that was before the evolution I could feel was coming. ¡­maybe it was time I started putting jewels on the other floors. Chapter 37 - The Growth I had been, as a dragon, a rather front-forward type of fellow. Any problem worth having was well and easily fixed by my claws or fangs, and I had no issue with using both liberally and at any opportunity. So the precision and care I was using now was deeply antithetical to my being. I nursed a section of green algae, plumping it lovingly with mana even as I snuck a tiny section of jadestone moss around the base of its roots. Half of the section I¡¯d already planted was dead, swallowed up by the algae¡¯s insatiable growth, but damn if I didn¡¯t at least have to try. Part of the problem, really. It had taken so long for my two new plants to die that by the time I was able to add it to my all-flora floor, that floor was no longer quite as welcoming to outsiders. The algae had done me quite proud, honestly, with how territorial and ornery it was, but that pride which would have been so lovingly lambasted all over a different creature was somewhat wasted here. Because in all my great efforts to give my fourth floor the same symbiosis of my Drowned Forest, I hadn¡¯t succeeded so much as made stubborn. Stubbornness without even a fleck of intelligence to back it up. Genuinely the worst. I went back to cramming jadestone moss in and hoping it''d survive. Algae rumbled and shifted as I scurried my way around its base, leaves trembling with vicious anticipation like I was something they could target. Admittedly, I had already cleared out some of the algae that had once been in my core room. I was rather uninterested in some moronic flora attempting to strangle me as I tried to concentrate on more important matters. I had to have at least some in the room, though. There wasn''t a chance I was missing out on the gently floating luminescent spores drifting over my core. The deep scarlet looked magnificent in the light. With a shudder and a disheartened flop not unalike a dying animal, another section of jadestone moss managed to survive the rooting process and start growing. Barely. I breathed a sigh of relief. It was a welcome sort of humbling, though. A nice reminder that no matter how much of the world I could shape beneath my mana, it still wasn''t mine to command fully. I''m sure I would have appreciated it a lot more if it were just a touch less irritating. Irritating it was, however, and I continued to grumble unsweet nothings as I shoved endless plants in the cracks between the algae. Most of it was rooted lightly to the ground, in the thin layer of proto-silt I''d spread over the walls, but certain sections were dug deep as anchoring points; I spread the jadestone moss around that to serve as an extra sort of protection, just in case any intrepid invader or hungry creature tried to dig it up for the juicy morsels beneath. The algae, in turn, took very poorly to anything trying to grow near its most sensitive points, and responded in kind. The razorleaf lichen was going at least somewhat better; I spread it just beneath the algae, in little clumps like collections of knives. So if something¡ªsay, a merrow who had learned to survive the terrestrial air but perhaps not so the mobility beyond dragging themselves over land¡ªtried to just walk over the ground, they''d be slicing themselves to ribbons before they''d even appreciate it. I wanted to try and cover them in a thin layer of the silver krait''s venom, the one with the numbing agent to lure the invader into not even realising they were injured until it was too late, but that had been too complicated for the little plant to properly produce. For a later date, then. I was patient. To a point. But for now, I didn''t have to worry about patience, because my fourth floor was wrapping up. I pulled my points of awareness back with the best mental approximation of a sigh as I could muster, relaxing my mana enough to make the algae surrounding me recoil from the blast. Exhausting work, though. It''d been, what, two days? Three days? Of just pampering the fourth floor as I did my damnedest to feed it more mana in anticipation of welcoming new creatures onto the untouched land. New creatures I hoped, really. It wasn''t like any invaders had wandered in yet. A handful of wild ones, like the sleek, flashing fish with teeth like daggers who had been too fast for any of my current predators or the bulky, wideset shark who had barely poked its head in before swimming out, but no invaders. No real threats. I had been worried before; I was truly panicked now. Had the merrow told? What about the brat from before? All terrible things that curled my mana in my core. I didn''t have the experience to fight someone from Gold or gods, even Mythril down. I just wasn''t strong enough. But I didn''t have any eyes on the outside. All I had was Seros, and he was far too bulky to actually be stealthy enough to go see what was going on; so I just had to wait. Wait and hope that my fourth floor would be¡­ strong enough¡­ Oh? Past the ever-glowing spores, a new light picked up on the fourth level, starting soft but quickly spreading to a pure white blur; it raced over the floor until the army of tunnels burned like a sun, mana audibly hissing out into the wider world, heat lashing at the ceiling. If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it. An evolution. And though I waited with excitement clambering at the ceiling, only one message crawled over my awareness; only one for however many thousands of plants I had. Like there was only one evolution, despite this many creatures. Like it was only one plant.
Your creature, Green Algae, is undergoing evolution! Please select your desired path. Thornwhip Algae (Rare): United as a thousand vines, this plant takes a more proactive approach to hunting; it extends long, grasping tendrils to snatch at prey, dragging them back where other, shorter arms with do the dirty work of providing fertilizer. Green Riverweed (Uncommon): The name is a misnomer. Instead of being found within a river, this plant instead coaxes its environment to match itself, filling the air with a humidity so dense breathing is painful and all of its many fronds shifting in unison with a current nothing else feels. Radiant Algae (Rare): Blessed with abilities opposing its core nature, this plant glows with a constant, soothing light, up until predators or prey approach; then it burns through its outer layers in an explosion of heat and light, cooking those approaching before they have time to reach.
United grasping vines, feeding as one, shifting in unison¡ªoho. Ohoho. I''d done it. Nothing to beat Rhoborh''s blessing, of course, but I''d done my damned best to replicate it; all my plants were grown together, strung together on the same roots and the same walls and pressed so close together it wouldn''t be incorrect to call them one plant. And that was what I wanted; one plant, working in unison. Thousands upon thousands of little fronds and blades and thalli, but counting just enough as a cohesive unit for evolution to hit them all at once. And what evolution options they were. Riverweed immediately grabbed my attention; drowning on land sounded all sorts of horrifyingly lovely and I wanted it immensely, but unfortunately another thought was quick enough to clear it for me. I wanted this floor to be strictly anti-merrow, not enough for them to survive while just dragging themselves through. Unfortunate. Then it was two. Thornwhip or radiant; the radiant would somewhat undo my little trick with the darkness for the level so far, but I didn''t have anything that worked with heat before; steam-broiled merrow sounded delicious and well what my creatures deserved. But then thornwhip. Reaching hands from the dark that couldn''t be harmed so much as removed; what plants felt pain? And there would always be more hands, always be more replacements. I could imagine trying to creep through the dark, hunted by the shrieks from a creature you could never see and trying to avoid the blades hidden beneath your feet only for a limb to grab your neck, drag you down, drown you in endless greenery and¨C I had selected it before I''d really even finished the thought. The green algae''s glow softened somewhat, sinking down to a more manageable level that wasn''t frying all the moss and lichen I''d worked so hard to plant, and settled it on itself. Its endless growth ceased, movement stilling, and it merely existed, evolution churning inside. Thousands of feet of tunnel, all glowing in readied hunger. Holy shit. I''d done it. Mostly. I scuttled a point of awareness around one of the plant''s bases, where the hard little armour of the jadestone moss sat quietly undisturbed. Not symbiotic enough to count either that or the razorleaf lichen in the evolution, I suppose. Damnit. - "Up! Up and go! Up and go!" The goblin shrieked more than spoke, voice shrill and piercing; but still Akkyst rose to his paws, far more scared than tired, and shuffled to the front gate. The bladehawk¡ªsharpwing?¡ªwobbled upright, managing to flap up in their cramped conditions and land on Akkyst''s shoulder in a sort of practiced exhaustion even as his wings sagged. The stalking jaguar loped out alongside them as if nothing bothered her, but he could see the great tear still healing in her side. It had only been getting worse. Listening, listening, listening; the only activity he could do that was safe and unharmful. His fellow captured ones couldn''t do it, only hearing the goblins'' tongue as squeaks and mutters, but that same power let him understand. Something was moving against the horde. Stone grew from stone like plants, covering old entrances and blocking tunnels the goblins had used for centuries; and as the war horde of the mountain, these goblins knew damn well it wasn''t them that had caused that to grow, and the miner goblins wouldn''t have left their endless mines long enough to do anything. It had to be the mage goblins. But the problem was the growth had blocked off some of their tunnels as well. That, of course, wasn''t enough to stop declarations of war, and the horde goblins were determined to win. Akkyst rumbled as a goblin got too close, but even as he towered over their spindly height they laughed at him, jabbing their bone-tipped spear at his side before losing interest and sauntering back to the training groups. Endless squadrons trained, jabbing weapons at empty air, hurling themselves at each other in massive, screaming dogpiles as they tried to bite eye from face in a mockery of a win, shoveling more and more creatures into cages as their army grew. It always grew. Even as the creatures died, it grew. They were being sent on patrols, loops of the mountain searching for even the tiniest hair of a mage goblin out of their territory, and then sneaky ways into said territory as well; anything to claim back what they had lost to the Growth. The mountain wasn''t supposed to grow. But Akkyst remembered when stone grew, when it bloomed like mushrooms and extended before his eyes. He remembered home. There was no home now, though. Just the endless bite of spears and fangs and deeper things in the dark, and the creatures he had to protect alongside himself to survive. Chapter 38 - Patrolling Tendencies Patrol. He lumbered more than walked, chipped claws splaying over the dripping stone; the mountain-water¡ªriver?¡ªroared alongside them, hiding the more quiet shrieks of the goblins as they griped and hollered various complaints. Not that they had any room to complain. The muscle of their group had more ability to. Half a handful of bedraggled animals, chained not by any restraints but just the fear of running away, eyes fixed both on the darkness ahead and the glint of the goblins'' spears. Akkyst found himself oddly poetic at times. He shuffled forward, easing onto his front paws to keep the bladehawk steady; he was taking a break from his endless swoops and dives through the caverns, keeping watch ahead but always lured back by exhaustion. Not a creature built for the mountain, for the dank and the dark, but he had been captured by some opening overhead. Because that was what the war horde did, wasn''t it? Bred like crazy to grow their army and supplemented it with whatever beasts they picked up on their endless territory patrols. The miner goblins were too busy trying to develop better weapons and the mage horde had their pursuit of greater magic, so the war goblins had only their number to increase. His mysterious senses told him chip-on-the-shoulder. He didn''t know what that meant. And so they walked, two dozen goblins alongside a dozen beasts; most were common enough mountain denizens, boulder-beasts and magma-salamanders and earth-shakers. The bladehawk was a commodity, chosen for his ability to fly¡ªthough unsteadily in the dark¡ªahead and warn them of danger. The jaguar was dragged for her silent paws and keen eyes. Akkyst was taken for his muscle, and in comparison, he had only had to fight other beasts for scraps of food at the end of the day. Most patrols were quiet, never running into opposing goblins or threats larger than a hungry cavern jackal. Thankfully. They went out, they came back, and they fought each other for what food they were offered for a job done. But there would always been patrols, what with this new threat and the rising concern over territory and war, and he was starting to run out of hope he''d escape before they''d run into other goblins. All goblins feared the Growth. "This way," a goblin hissed, stabbing their¡ªher? He was getting better at telling them apart¡ªspear towards an entrance carved under a rocky shelf glittering with mica. "No filthy mages should be patrollin'' this entrance. We''ll slither in an'' do a look-see to find a way to their base." The other goblins, rather than seeing that as a horrible idea, cheered. The war beasts looked at each other¡ªthough many of them couldn''t communicate as freely with each other like Akkyst could, there was still some understanding. A handful of the older creatures were too far gone, fanatic beasts bred and bathed in war, but the newer additions still wanted to leave. But they would listen. Akkyst rumbled, dropping flat to his stomach¨Cthe bladehawk clambered off his back and hopped awkwardly under the shelf, the jaguar''s lithe agility getting her through the gap without problem. He and his new bulk gained from the constant fights and battles had slightly less ease, jamming his massive shoulders against the stone to the jeers of the goblins already through. No time to waste; he growled, claws scrabbling for a hold, the jaguar offering a quiet purred encouragement. With a deep, tearing scrape of skin against stone, Akkyst burst through the gap, panting wildly. Stars. He had gotten larger. The fang-rat, even more monstrously sized than him, howled and threw itself at the wall, one remaining eye bulging and red-veined in frenzy. The stone shuddered, dust billowing, and hardly another second passed before the beast''s raw power ripped a new hole and let it stagger through, thin fur patchy and scarlet but hardly seeming to notice. Akkyst, rather befitting of his name, awkwardly shuffled back to let it pass. He watched it, though. It had been there well before he had been captured and the goblins seemed to like it; a favoured pet they could point in a direction and let it attack. Driven mad by how many years? And how many for him? There was no passage of time under the mountain, no dimming of the quartz-lights; but he knew it had been long enough. The taste of mushrooms was all but forgotten; the comfort of the green beds gone. He shook his head. Not the time. He stooped, letting the bladehawk rest once more on his shoulders, bristling up to let the jaguar hide in his shadow opposite the goblins, and lumbered on. Mage goblin territory. It looked the same as the war horde''s, if better kept; he could see tracks and paths maintained throughout the surrounding stone, the river bent into shape to avoid a tunnel or hand-holds carved into a wall to lead to a bat''s den. It was peaceful, somewhat. The drip of water off stone-spikes, the rumble of the river moving deeper beyond, the click of his claws off the ground. Then they rounded the corner and came face to face with another group of goblins. Everything went wrong very quickly. There were less of them, maybe a dozen, and they were short and even more spindly to boot; they carried no weapons, wearing only clothing made of mushroom flesh and with bits of bone dangling from their ears, and looked profoundly unsuited for combat. But they were very clearly not from the war horde. Their skin was more blue than the pale green of his captors, marred with twisting black patterns, and a glow flickered to life on their fingers once the shock wore off. Mage goblins. Akkyst didn''t consider himself smart, but he could pick up on clues. He roared, rearing to his hind legs; the bladehawk managed to flutter off in time and hide behind, his thin, fragile bulk no match for the opposing goblins. The jaguar snarled, ears pressing flat to her grey-green fur; the many-fanged rat large enough to compete with a mountain squealed and charged, goblins flooding in after. Old scars ached at the thought of combat, but Akkyst knew he was larger than his fellow two prisoners. They wouldn''t survive an actual fight like this. So he bellowed, fangs bared, and charged as well. A mage jumped to her full height, hands glowing a sickly red; she barked a few words he didn''t understand and fire poured from her grip, swallowing the dim glow of the quartz-light and billowing through the caverns. The war horde goblins shrieked, ducking behind their creatures; the fang-rat howled, thin fur burning, and threw itself at her. She disappeared beneath its bulk. This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. Akkyst ran, the stone shuddering beneath his bulk. A mage with bone embedded into their face stood to match, fingers glowing yellow. He slammed his shoulder into the wall and dust exploded out; the mage paused, coughing, hands losing their light for just a second. He buried his fangs in their throat. Above, he could hear the bladehawk''s shrill cry; a feather loosed from his wings impaled a mage''s lower leg. She howled but still managed to duck underneath a magma-salamander''s burning spit. He shook his head, bellowing; the blood ran down his throat in the sickliest of ways. Another mage threw out his hands and pale light dove into the surrounding mountain, stone trembling with magic. A warrior goblin shrieked as she fell into a pit that hadn''t existed a second before, the stench of copper filling the air. Someone behind him howled. Akkyst lumbered forward. A mage spread her hands as two warrior goblins engaged, spears flashing as a third snuck around to hit her exposed back. Deep purple leapt to her fingers and the two approaching goblins froze, the same colour crawling over their eyes; they twitched, dropping their spears, and made to lay down. He bellowed, the mage startling bad enough to lose concentration, and the third goblin stabbed her from behind. But beyond that three more goblins fell to another burst of fire, the fang-rat howling as stone grew over its hind legs and pinned it to the floor. Akkyst roared, charging; he dug his claws into the rock and heaved. The rat helpfully thrashed and writhed and finally tore itself free, one limb hanging loose in its socket. It didn''t seem to notice as it ignored him and threw itself at the closest mage. The bladehawk swooped overhead, four wings flashing; in the confusion no one noticed where the launched feathers came from. He was safe. Akkyst lashed out wildly at the nearest mage, forcing them to stop trapping a magma-salamander in another prison of stone, and ran; where was the other? Two goblins decking out in a scrabbled pile of ghostly glowing light and spears, a boulder-beast shrieking as it dropped into another tunnel, warrior goblins freezing as purple light overwhelmed their senses. He ran, heart thumping, searching¨C And saw the jaguar, sprawled on the stone floor, twitching weakly past the lightning coursing over her fur. There was someone in front of her. Akkyst didn''t think. He just moved. The mage shrieked as he barreled through whatever spell they were casting, fingers flashing through every shade before they settled on a pale grey; stone erupted from beneath and caught him in the leg. He heard more than felt it break; a terrible crack, echoing even in the midst of the battle, and only a second to prepare before agony raced through his every sense. And with that blow, he missed his mark; he fell right before the mage, howling, and didn''t manage a single injury. Failure. Akkyst writhed, heaving for breath; his front leg seemed less broken than shattered, and there would be no more walking. But the jaguar was paralyzed behind him, though alive, and still the war raged on. The mage before him seemed to still be gathering his wits, not yet acting; so he had to act first. Maybe it was the presence of other mages, maybe it was the desperation; but he reached for powers he hadn''t used since the defeat that had started all of this, the subtle twisting of shadows and light hidden deep in his being. He felt his shadow lengthen, growing blacker than black, and twine around the jaguar''s limp body. He knew, more than saw, that she was now veiled. And with that he sagged, clutching his useless limb, and waited. But the mage just looked at him, eyes still wide with surprise, and turned to fight something else. What? The mage spread his hands and launched a blast of lightning, roiling messily through the space and slamming into a collection of warriors; their spears and armour caught most of the attack but still they yelped and hollered, pulled away from their attack on another mage; and then they looked across the room. The fang-rat had finally fallen, fur still smoldering weakly as a mage collapsed to her knees beside it, blood leaking from her eyes; boulder-beasts and magma-salamanders howled from their various stone prisons, trapped well below the battle; the bladehawk had rather correctly seen how things were going and had huddled himself up in a hollow near the ceiling, wings tucked tight to his body. What war goblins left were either injured or fleeing. And so the last group of the warriors fled as well, abandoning their beasts and scurrying home. Akkyst closed his eyes. He''d escaped, at least. A short time was as good as any. The bladehawk would be able to flee if he waited until they were either distracted or gone, and there had to be an exit from this mountain nearby; the jaguar would stay in his shadow for as long as he could maintain it and run when she healed from her paralysis. They would be free. It was what he had fought for. The thought was strangely comforting. He had at first protected them just because he was the largest, growing endlessly from his juvenile stage and easily able to hide them behind his bulk. But there had always been the underlying thought that it was for them all to escape. But he found he was quite content that at least they had. That comfort disappeared when he opened his eyes and found a mage standing before him. No injuries, no exhaustion; nothing he could even try to exploit to eke out a win in his condition. He growled, ears flat, and shifted so his good paw was braced to move. The goblin tilted her head to the side, dangling bones clicking against each other. She reached forward, extended a knobbled finger with a hazy glow, and made a sort of gentle calming sound ruined by a typical goblin rasp. Akkyst flinched, baring his fangs, and answered in kind with a swipe for the offending reach. The goblin squawked and backpedaled, finger flashing an decidedly less friendly shade of red; Akkyst scrabbled against the ground, ignoring his broken leg, bellowing even as he kept the jaguar hidden behind him. He couldn''t let her get past him, not with his two other beasts to protect¨C Another goblin got to her first. Not so much arriving as just appearing from the shadows, a goblin marched up and swatted her finger away, He hardly looked to have enough muscle to kill a cave-fly but she recoiled like he''d stabbed her, arm clutched to her chest. This one was even shorter than his fellows, spindled and knobbly; but where the other mages had bones hanging from their ears and clothing made from mushroom flesh, this one had swooping¡­ ribbons? robes? made of something that looked like stone but clearly wasn''t, jewels bobbing from his extended ears. White fur sprouted over his head. "Idiot," he said, voice crackling. "It doesn''t know what you''re doing. Bloody hard to heal something when it''s attacking you." Akkyst paused. He hadn''t exactly encountered a surplus of magic in his life¡ªwhatever the old caverns used didn''t count¡ªbut he supposed her spell could have been for healing. It would explain why she had to get close instead of just firing from a distance. Maybe. He dropped from standing on his hind legs, fangs still bared but no longer snarling. His magic shadow stayed firmly over the jaguar but he settled onto his haunches, narrowing his eyes at her finger. Did the colour of the light say what spell it was? He''d seen the bright red for their fire spells, but it had been white. Healing, or at least something less violent? He happened to glance up and see both of them staring at him. The jeweled goblin blinked once, twice. He couldn''t have been more than half of Akkyst''s height while sitting down but he marched up with no fear, knobbly fingers pressed together and eyes bright. "Oh. Oh." Akkyst fought the fairly intense desire to kill him for getting that close. It was difficult to do. "You can understand us?" Oh. He paused; because while yes, he could, was it a good idea to reveal so? He''d never shown the war horde that, too scared of what they would do to him, and because they talked around him when they didn''t think he could understand; but these goblins were trying to heal him. Would they treat him like more of an equal if he could communicate? Well. Roughly. He still didn''t know how to speak. But he did know some basic movements he''d picked up from the goblins. He nodded. The goblin''s eyes gleamed very bright in that moment, jewels bouncing against his ears. "Well then. Hello, mighty one; I am Bylk, Chieftain of the Magelords." Chapter 39 - Rewelcoming The thornwhip algae had finished evolving. What? It''d been¡­ maybe a day since that pale glow had overtaken my fourth floor, the algae retreating into a faux-slumber to be reborn. I''d been quietly profoundly pleased even with the failure of integrating the jadestone moss and the razorleaf lichen, but I''d also realized that I''d been neglecting my other floors a tad with the new focus here. It wasn''t the same as the early days, where I could afford to just dig away at my second floor and let Seros manage the first; too much going on, nowadays. Good, though annoying at times. And then I''d gotten promptly no time to baby my other floors before the algae had finished evolving. It''d gone from its previous bright, almost spring green to a rich emerald hue, deep with shadows and lined with¡­ well, the thorns from its name. I frowned, angling a handful of points of awareness around its base; from its description, I''d imagined them to have taken inspiration from the mangroves, great mighty thorns several inches long and ready to stab. Instead, as I poked my way around my new creature, I found them to be sharp in the manner of coral, each "whip" ridged and sharp with narrow little edges built into the stem. Maybe it had taken more inspiration from the razorleaf lichen than I''d thought. It was nice to see a reminder from my old days, though. I was still holding out hope that old memories would join me as schemas¡ªwhether coral, if not for my Underlake than for a massive reef floor, or some variation of the old growing stone, shaping underwater empires of tunnels and pathways where no living thing had dwelt for centuries. And, well. Who knew? Maybe, even after I''d been killed, I could solve the mystery of those great sea-titans. The beasts that fed on whales and dragons, that terrorized the seas without fear, up until it had died in the hidden trenches of the world and had never been seen again. With my Resurrector title, if I could just revisit the spot I had struggled a week to reach, the dark place under the world where I''d found its bones. If I could have. Before the Dread Pirate killed me. I spat a blast of mana as if that could clear out the violent thoughts wriggling their way through my mind. Not the time, no. Revenge would come later. It had to. I refused to believe that everything I was doing was for nothing, that I would learn to love these creatures and build homes for them just for the damned man to stomp his way back through my carefully-constructed world and murder me again. I refused. But now wasn''t the time. So I forced myself to relax, let my mana unsharpen, and focused back to the thornwhip algae. In its evolution, it had shrunk¡ªsomewhat¡ªand no longer filled the entirety of my tunnels, returning their diameter to not quite the original ten feet but close enough that creatures could walk through unhindered. Jadestone algae still protected its bases and razorleaf lichen still guarded the ground below, but the thornwhip was the true master of these halls. Already its thousand arms twitched and lurched as if searching for prey. And in the cloaking, vivid darkness only broken by its glowing spores, it looked truly like a beast of nightmare. I couldn''t have been more proud. Time to focus, though. My beloved thornwhip algae wouldn''t exactly survive long if I didn''t give it some food. So I wandered my way through the endless tunnels, appreciating once more the wild majesty of these halls I had claimed and built, and approached what the entrance would be. Just a simple tunnel, wildly sloping and absolutely dripping with excess water from the Underlake it emerged from, but still decidedly unfriendly to merrow. For one last good measure, I grew a few batches of razorleaf lichen on the path down. No need to let invaders relax. And then I broke down the stone and rewelcomed the new floor to my others. Immediately, my creatures stiffened¡ªclosing off my core and the fourth floor had vastly decreased the ambient mana found and they could feel it return to my halls, just enough of a taste that their thoughts would turn towards trying to make it lower for a feast. I purred. From the entrance room, I carved a dozen smaller tunnels, far too little for an invader but enough for a creature or two to slither through, connecting them to dens on the second floor; if someone wanted to make their way down, I wouldn''t force them to learn to swim first. Maybe. For a future floor. I was still a sea-drake at heart. Also immediately, I saw Seros'' head snap upright from where he''d been curled up in the third floor den, eyes going wide and tail flicking; he dove into the surrounding water and not so much moved but charged for the new entrance. He wriggled his way up the narrow tunnel, arrived into the dry section, and dropped into the new floor. His eyes widened further. He''d seen the original section when he''d brought my core down, but not the overgrowth and the evolution. I was very well pleased by his awe. Seros flicked his tongue out, head cocked, and something deep in our connection twanged; his eyes slid to the rightmost tunnel and he started through it, nosing curiously at the walls and floor. His scales protected him from anything the lichen would dream of and the thornwhip algae, while certainly not what I''d call intelligent, did seem confused about him. Their first real prey encounter. One grasping tendril emerged, almost hesitant, and Seros wasted not a second before he''d sunk his fangs into the proffered limb and torn it clear out of the wall. This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there. The thornwhip algae decided it had better things to do and retracted its arms. Good man. Even with his innate sense of where I was, it took him almost twenty minutes to find his way to me, and that was without any wrong turns. I couldn''t wait to see how long invaders would take. Seros poked his head into the ending room, eyeing his surroundings curiously; the thornwhip algae in here was too far away to be a real threat, with how massive the cavern sprawled, but it did provide an interesting emerald backdrop for the spectacle within. I''d carved up limestone and regular green algae into approximations of trees, gentle rolling hills of billowing moss and lacecaps curled in stony shadows; a forest, of sorts. I was still rather low on flora schemas to make that work. But his awe warmed the cold jewel of my heart. He trotted up to me, eyes bright; his thoughts spoke merrily of the going-ons of the first floors and everything he figured I should know. The society of rats had started to explore the Drowned Forest in search of more gems; the greater crab''s eggs had finally hatched and were terrorizing the third floor with all haste; several kobolds were expecting eggs of their own. What made it all the more endearing was that this wasn''t like the case when I''d first claimed my title of Resurrector, when I''d been closed off to the wider world; I still very much had my points of awareness out as I worked on the fourth floor and knew everything he was telling me about. I certainly didn''t tell him that, though. I just basked in the report from my first friend. I did truly care for him. It was a thought I hadn''t anticipated; of course I cared for him. I''d Named him, given him a piece of the Otherworld mana I survived on, protected him since my very first day. But no. I cared for him. He was precious to me. Seros'' thoughts drifted off as he felt my attention on him deepen, reaching through our connection. He churred in that facsimile of a draconic language and curled up around the pedestal of my core, settling back into the nap I''d so rudely interrupted. I hesitated a second but pressed a soothing curl of mana around his body, settling over his iridescent sea-green scales until they glowed. Gods. I was such a hatchling. I left far too many points of awareness around him than was necessary but flew back up to my other floors, extending my mana out to my other creatures; I couldn''t just have Seros live here. He liked the Underlake more, anyway. And the thornwhip algae needed both competitors and prey. First was the creature I''d had in mind since I first came up with this idea; the horned serpent raised her head as I called to her, crystalline antlers flashing in the algae-light from above. She was wasted on the second floor, unfortunately. Psionic mana worked best when it came from places unknown and while the Drowned Forest had plenty of areas for her to hide and capture prey, everything else was just too busy. Half of whom she could properly hunt as prey promptly went off into another room or remembered their path and wouldn''t be strayed from it, or were just killed by another, more proactive predator. She needed a maze of confusion, where her guiding call would be met with relief instead of suspicion. So. The fourth floor. She hissed, forked tongue flashing, but rose; her growth had slowed since the kobolds had truly taken over the second floor, eating all the smaller prey and being just a hair too intelligent to wander alone, but she was still a massive seventeen feet long. All smaller creatures fled from her as she slithered through the mangrove roots and slipped into the river. Ungainly as the silver krait before he evolved, but she managed to wriggle her way through and emerge onto the fourth floor. Mana visibly flowed through her channels, deep and rich, and she stopped for a second to take it in¡ªthen continued, more determined than before, in search of new hunting grounds. The next to call was Rihsu. She spent most of her time blindly following Seros, even with her more-than-subpar swimming skills whenever he hunted in the Underlake; but I wanted to see how she performed in this environment. A warrior was built for more open plains-esque scenarios, but she had proved herself nothing if not adaptive. I had hope that even if she didn''t choose this area as her current haunting grounds, she''d at least gain something from the experience. And by the next to call, of course, I meant prodding Seros until he eventually unwrapped around me and went to go grab her. The whole not being connected thing wasn''t exactly beneficial to either side. But she had sworn to Seros, and I wouldn''t take that away from him. She raised her head from her curled up position on the second floor, the closest den to the water that she could get whenever she wanted to sleep but at least knew her limits enough to not try sleeping in the water when she was still very much terrestrial. All sleepiness disappeared in an instant as she saw Seros crouched awkwardly to shove his muzzle through the opening in her den, scrambling to her feet. The den was far too small for either of them, with Rihsu''s new, towering height of near nine feet and Seros'' own excessive length, but she seemed content with the struggle. Not a creature who spent much time lounging about her den, Rihsu. What a surprise. She immediately jumped into the canal to follow her lord, floundering awkwardly even as her tail beat in rhythmic patterns and the thin, budding webs between her claws helped her downward; it''d take another evolution before she really started to learn the water. Not that Seros would help in that regard. Honestly, he wasn''t even a dragon. I had no idea why she had sworn to him instead of me. I shoved that thought deep down. She wriggled her way up through the tunnel, shaking water off her dark scales and peering around at the darkness. Dragon at heart, it seemed, given as she used her forked tongue and heat sensitivity more than her eyes, but from the bare thoughts I could still gleam through my connection with Seros, she seemed uncomfortable with the darkness. Made sense, after the permanent algae-light of the Drowned Forest. There was no darkness there. But still she marched determinedly inside, claws raised and tail lashing. Ready for prey. Prey that I, ah, hadn''t added yet. Would the rats fit better? I''d leave a small trail of jewels leading to one of the tunnels. The ironback toad needed dens to guard, the constrictors would thrive in the gloom, maybe the spiders¡­ It was at that moment, of course, right in the middle of my musings, that two distinct alarms went off. The first was the silver krait, who spent his time curled up around the bloodline kelp forest in the Underlake; his eyes, built for motion, flashed towards the cove entrance. Something was entering. And then Rhoborh''s blessing, the great symbiosis of the flora, was also promptly tested as something ripped a piece of glowing algae out of the ceiling, the cry of alarm filtering through the roots of the area. Two invaders. Half panic arose first, of course¡ªit''d been a mighty two weeks since the merrow attack, and I hadn''t seen hide nor hair of anyone since. That was plenty of time to amass a Silver, Gold, or Electrum to come kill me; or hells, even the famed Le¨®ro Mythril if they were feeling extra spicy. So it was with not a small portion of relief that the two presences I felt were still firmly Bronze or below. One was small and screeching, one was large and looming; but both non-sapients. Perfect. My halls could use a bit of sport. Chapter 40 - Strength Anew My mana kicked up for just a second as the silver krait locked eyes with the intruder, curled up in the bloodline kelp as he was¡ªit had made its way through the tunnel without suspicion and now poked its wide head into my halls, black eyes swiveling as they took in the ripe feast of mana flowing through the currents. Shark. And one floor above, a piece of glowing algae ripped from the ceiling cried out in an unseen voice to all the other plants in the Drowned Forest as a final alarm; something new and skulking. Or, by new and skulking, I meant the same fucking bat that had evaded me so far. It''d grown in its insolence, able to safely sprint past the first floor before I''d even noticed¡ªand, with the silver krait only noticing the shark when it''d entered my halls, I was beginning to understand just how powerful Rhoborh''s blessing was. My home-built alarm system only worked as long as one of my creatures actually looked at my entrances. Not exactly a good thing. The bat cried out, shrill voice reverberating in the narrow space of the first room it was so casually exploring; more creatures raised their heads to squint at this irritating annoyance but it had moved on before they could track it down, its hooked wings and massive ears disappearing before they could blink. I kept up with it of course, unlimited by such pedestrian consequences of gravity and air resistance, but I didn''t want to. Though it was frankly impossible, my points of awareness managed to squirm out of my control and angle themselves away from the wretched thing''s screams. Yeah. Shark first. I shot the majority of my attention back to the Underlake. The shark fully emerged into my hall, and it was a beast; maybe thirteen feet long, riddled with mottled grey and white patterns arranged like the sun shafting through the water''s surface. Common camouflage, if a bit flashier than normal¡ªmost sharks just went with grey on top, white on bottom¡ªbut I could respect it. Its fins were large and edged in black, the typical shark mouth filled with gnashing teeth; a streamlined brute. Something I was rather suitably interested in. My third floor had all manners of smaller predators, but as the armourback sturgeons were still figuring out how to defend themselves and others and Seros hunted infrequently, there wasn''t a true top predator. And I was looking at one that would slot well in. I nudged my creatures to awareness. The krait was the first to move, having been the one to spot the shark¡ªhe wriggled free of the bloodline kelp, wide, paddle-like tail swishing as he popped loose of the forest that was quickly overtaking the available space. Honestly, it was kind of concerning. I''d planted three whole stems and in a few weeks, it''d swallowed over half of the claimable space in the Underlake. I''d need the baby crabs to grow up so they could keep the population in check. And speaking of the baby crabs¨C Hundreds of them, all less than a foot in size but with those same enormous, crushing claws and the vivid emerald carapace. Pint-sized monsters. I loved them. But it was definitely still concerning to see what were essentially infants merrily start trotting towards the invading shark. Hm. Of course I''d had births in my dungeon before, given with the staggering rat generations that had already come and gone, but it was different seeing the children fight. Ah well. Crabs were independent from birth and while this group still had plenty of rounds of molting to go through before they reached their full size, that didn''t mean they were weak. I did nudge the krait out first. He swam forward, plenty of air in his lungs to support this fight without needing to take a break, and waited until he was just free of the kelp before starting to spin, over and over as the algae-light from above broke over his scales and scattered rippling light throughout the lake. The shark took about a heartbeat to see the light and immediately lash its tail, enormous bulk prowling forward. Hm. I''d assumed the krait''s silver and white colouration was for camouflage, hiding in the ripples of water, but maybe it was equally a distraction. For a darkwater hunter, the flash of his tail would trigger nothing but an urge to chase. Which the shark was very much doing. The krait disappeared back into the kelp but the shark wasn''t a woe-begotten scavenger; its eyes easily picked out the silver amidst the amber-gold fronds, shoving its way through with its enormous head. It looked strangely at home here, stalking through the kelp. Just unfortunately for it, not all of the strands were kelp. The krait had lived here plenty long enough to know where the traps were. A mimic jellyfish, its tendrils the exact size and shade of the bloodline kelp, welcomed its new prey with the sort of enthusiasm that was supposed to be impossible for something without a central brain. Its tentacles all lashed together, wrapping around the shark with their thousands of micro-barbs all perfectly poised to release their venom¨C And failed miserably. The shark''s skin repelled the barbs but not the tendrils; they seemed to hook and latch over the mottled surface, caught on invisible rough edges and breaks. The shark swam forward and all the tentacles the jellyfish had rooted into the ground below were ripped free, tearing away from its body, its bell tugged along for the ride. Half a second later and the shark had realized what had happened, spun in as tight a circle as it could manage, and swallowed the bell whole. It looped in great, sweeping rounds as it continued to tear into the jellyfish''s corpse, gnawing down the tentacles with the same care as if it was beef. Given how it hadn''t seemed to notice it was systematically ripping the jellyfish''s tendrils off, I would guess it was a biological reason instead of a mana one; intriguing, though. Armour? It just looked like regular skin. Its meal was rather interrupted, though, as the silver krait returned with a friend in tow. A few friends, actually. The electric eel waited a second for its electric silverheads to get into position before releasing a blast of lightning-attuned mana. The shark exploded¡ªno organ to make sound but I could see that it wanted to, thrashing with its mouth gaping and gills writhing. The baby crabs spooked, disappearing back to the kelp''s base, but the shark had no such escape, seizing and paralyzed. The silver krait, rather peacefully, swam around to its relatively still back and nipped his fangs through its dorsal fin. Yeah. Turned out that no matter how strong an aquatic creature was, they really didn''t have an answer for electricity. The little krait-eel duo stilled as the mana from the kill flowed through them, rippling through their channels; nowhere near close to evolution for either, but the burst of strength was welcome. They''d need it with how many of these sharks I was planning on adding. Speaking of.
Roughwater Shark (Common) The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. It never stops swimming, hunting evermore for more prey to stave its insatiable hunger. To protect itself, it rubs against stone walls to sharpen its skin, preventing anything larger from stopping its hunt.
Huh. More of a mundane reason than I''d thought, but still very much viable; that kind of raw power didn''t need special gimmicks. And there were always evolutions. I immediately wove half a dozen of them into existence, all spaced so that they couldn''t see each other past the kelp forest, a bit shorter than the one I had killed but with plenty of room to grow. They woke up, blinked, and immediately went on the hunt. Gods, I loved sharks. Up above, my creatures weren''t loving the bat. It had successfully flown its way throughout the entirety of the second floor, darting in and around mangroves as it scooped up the plentiful insects thriving in the humid environment; several creatures had tried to swipe at it, namely the toads and the constrictors, but they hadn''t fought a flying prey before. New and rather unwelcome experience, it seemed. But I wanted that bat dead. My mana slithered about, sneaking its way into the den at the back of the cave that had once been Seros'', and woke up the kobolds. The tribe had both grown and shrunk, several killed off by mangroves or cave bears whenever they lumbered downstairs for a drink and more to come with the eggs currently heavily guarded at the back of the den. A good seven padded outside to investigate the situation, led by the original two, and were promptly divebombed by the bat flying towards the next room. Dragons at heart, still prey in stature. They scattered. Five minutes later, they''d regrouped enough to start actually tracking the thing. A few made halfhearted efforts to jab at the thing with their bone-tipped spears, but they seemed to figure out pretty quickly that wouldn''t work. It was just too fast. And then came about the prized kobold intelligence. They huddled under a mangrove, although carefully just far enough away that they were protected under its pale white leaves but not close enough for it to shift a branch and catch one of them, and churred to each other. The newest kobolds were brash and ready to prove themselves¡ªI saw a lot of ideas involving climbing stone pillars and jumping at it¡ªbut the original two had more cunning to them. More curiosity. And I watched as one of them, not the chieftess but the male who had come up with the rat idea, slowly slid his gaze up the mangrove they were hiding under. Towards the white leaves. And then carefully looked to their left where stood a fake mangrove, pale webweavers scuttling over what could almost pass for leaves. What would certainly pass for leaves to a blind bat. I could have purred as I watched him connect the dots. He said his plan fast and the kobolds listened without hesitation¡ªthey split up, spreading around the room with their spears clutched tight in unwavering claws. The bat flew and rested in tandem, either tired or taking stock of the room, but either way it had only stopped on the ceiling before. The kobolds wished to change this. By being irritating. I could respect the drive. They started to holler and shout in their strange, guttural language, waving spears and slamming the wooden tips against the ceiling¡ªthe bat startled and dropped, wide wings fluttering as it tried to reorient itself. The kobolds swept in, still shrieking and howling. Two stood at each entrance of the room, vastly too small to actually block the opening but armed with a big stick and willing to try. The bat kept up its shrillity, bobbing and ducking around the army trying to bludgeon it¡ªbut every time it tried to rest on the ceiling, a kobold would scamper up a pile of rocks for enough height to bang their spear against the stone, startling it off. Its motions got more and more frenzied as it tried to evade them, next trying the trees; but only the same story whenever it tried an alive tree. One kobold got too close to a mangrove in an effort to scare it and promptly received a thorn to the side for their trouble, doubling over with a gargled hiss. But the bat finally, finally, swooped towards the dead tree. Every kobold froze. It landed, wrapping its hooked wings around itself, and just managed to brush the edge of a faux leaf. Every webweaver scuttling over the tree felt the vibrations and turned as one to see the intruder. I would have been lying if I said it wasn''t deeply satisfying to see the bat suddenly become aware of the new threat and try to take off, only for its wing to keep it pinned to the branch; and to see its thrashing and shrieking and writhing come to a very welcome stop with the addition of some venom. Apologies to the webweavers, though. I spawned them a cloud of common mosquitos directly in the center of their web even as I dissolved my newest conquest.
Baterwaul (Uncommon) This creature doesn''t limit its echolocation to only movement; it cries out in a shrill, piercing voice, disorienting prey and predators alike so that it can both hunt and escape with ease.
Just as irritating as I''d thought. Fantastic. Though it was an impossibly small kill, the kobolds still hooted and cried out in victory as the mana split between the seven of them and the dozen webweavers entered their channels. Barely more than a speck but won through victory; their little prides were well and truly inflated. They marched back to their den with heads held high. At least for the poor one who was being dragged back before she could bleed out. She''d be fine. The baterwaul. My first flying schema, perfectly built for annoyance and general confusion. All it needed was a place to roost and insects to feast on, both of which I had in great numbers. I wouldn''t be adding it to my floors yet, though. My Drowned Forest needed one, maybe two new creatures; something for atmosphere, to keep things prime and maintained for those living there. I was already coming up with a way to add the cloudskipper wisps. But past that, if I kept adding more things, I''d just upset the balance. There wasn''t enough room there for fifty species. I needed to focus on my deeper floors. In the same vein, the Underlake wasn''t done yet, but the roughwater sharks had certainly started it in the right direction. I could see room for a few more plants, just as competition to the kelp, and maybe one larger creature to compete with the sharks whenever I added too many floors that Seros wouldn''t go hunting here, but that was it. Make things too complicated and that was how floors started to fall apart. So for now, I''d just hang onto this schema, and wait until I had a floor ready to use it. Although¡­ Hm. I''d wanted a spy, just to see what was going on outside¡ªwould the bat work? Limited to night, small, weak, unable to actually see what was going on. Irritating. Unintelligent. Maybe I''d wait a little longer. - Nicau sat in the darkness of the same alley he''d once lived out of and thought. It wasn''t difficult; thinking was all he could afford to do, now. His scheme was falling apart. Something had happened and now the merrow of Arroyo had disappeared from Calarata, some internal strife ripping them apart; and that meant people were watching the cove. People were also asking questions about the missing folks, spurred by members of the Dread Crew poking their heads around as well¡ªand that meant he certainly wouldn''t be able to get anyone else to go die and leave their position open to him. He''d lost his opportunity. Make them remember you, Romei whispered, and gods, he wanted to. He wanted to be something more than a streetrat, than a smudge under someone''s shoe they could kill with no consequence. He wanted to matter. But that door was well and truly closed, now. Dare he go back to being a pigeoncatcher? It was a rough life, a hard one, and both unprofitable and oversaturated. Every orphan with a rumble in their stomach tried selling cooked bird to the pirates on the docks. Whatever slim pickings he could find would never fill. But he didn''t need filling. He just needed to survive for the moment, up until he could get on a ship and leave this cursed place behind, traveling to¡­ to Le¨®ro, if he had to. Just outside of Calarata. Whatever success he''d wanted in this palace had been wrenched from him. He''d had a moment of autonomy, the searing potential of knowing that he could have done something with that dragon''s heart, that he could have been the next best thing to rise above his fellow streetrats, and that he had failed. Because Arroyo was consumed, people were watching, and he had lost his window. Nicau grimaced, hugging his arms to his sides, and stood. Pigeons, then. He''d catch a few, sell even less, and try to build up enough wealth to serve as a bribe if he got caught as a stowaway. The same thing he had done to get to this gods-foresaken place. Maybe he could strike it as someone important somewhere else. Something moved in the darkness. Nicau screamed¡ªor tried to, at least, when a cloth wrapped itself firmly around his mouth. Hands gripped around his sides and plucked him up with ease, not so much arranging him as shoving him into a small and more easily-carryable size; the cloth was wedged between his front teeth and tied behind his head. In seconds he went from a free man to a lump shoved under someone''s arm. "You''ve been causing trouble," a voice hissed, and Nicau froze; an unfortunately very recognizable voice, which was heard spitting with rage more often than not. Lluc, First Mate of the Dread Crew. "You''ve been causing untold amounts of trouble, and by the gods, you''re going to solve these problems for me." And with that, Nicau was brought away. Chapter 41 - Forest Drizzle Some species of cave cricket I didn''t care enough about other than maintaining their population had managed to make their way over the rock pond and set up on the second floor. Even with the algae-light overhead they had found enough dark corners to be convinced it was endlessly night and thus they needed endless chirping; with the looming mangrove shadows and the endless rustle of the billowing moss, it set a frankly beautiful scene. Some morrow-side canal, eery and shifting in the late dusk glow, unsettlingly peaceful. Peaceful, of course, unless you were the ironback toad. It was the original one, the other three having finished evolving but not yet reaching his impressive bulk; he croaked, splaying his webbed toes over the pebbly soil, and leered his great battering-ram of a head. The kobold crouched behind a tree like that would disguise her shifted an inch back. It''d been a glorious constant battle between them, the ironback protecting the rats and unevolved toads of the world, and the hunting parties of the kobold very interested in food. Though they were growing in number and ability, all carrying spears with the heads fashioned from sharpened bones, they weren''t quite up to the task of successfully and consistently killing the larger prey. Sure, every now and then they brought home a luminous constrictor or greater crab, but for fear of targeting those large enough to kill the hunt, they mainly settled for stabbing their spears into the canal and bringing up silverheads, as well as their normal hunting runs of rats and toads. Something that the ironback rather disagreed with. Him and his brethren had evenly spread out between the Drowned Forest, each choosing one room out of the roughly ten that they would protect. Of course, being only four against the several hundred dens I''d carved out wasn''t the best strategy, but they still gave it their damnedest; and the rats and toads had learned that the handful of dens they switched between were safe. For the toads, it gave them something to strive for; if they hid in those dens and learned from the great toad master, one day they too could be strong enough to defend themselves from the constrictors and kobolds of the wider world. So they huddled behind their evolved brother, watching him, learning from him. Already another handful more were nearing evolution. And for the rats, well. What I could only describe as an oligarchy was forming. There were two types of rats who hunted down the gems; those who wanted them for the mana that came with being in an enclosed space with them, and those that wanted them because others wanted them. The first type of rat often stayed small, tucked away in a hidden den with their sequestered pile of riches and always searching for more. The second were making a business of the ironback toads. They would lay claim to one of the dens that an ironback would protect on their patrols, setting up guards and scaring away anyone else who tried to hide in there. They would welcome other rats to join their family, so long as they swore some sort of pledge I hadn''t yet puzzled out, and then spin around and use those as more guards. And then, whenever another rat family, scared and panicked and desperate for just an ounce of protection, begged to be let into the den, all it would take was one small payment of a single jewel. Which of course they would pay, because the little rat tyrants had done a fantastic job of waiting until a kobold was physically looming over the den before making the offer. I honestly was waiting until they started to train the other creatures of the floor just to terrify rats into paying them more. I gave it maybe two weeks. The rats had gained intelligence on a level I''d only see from Seros before. I couldn''t wait for their evolution. But for now, their little ironback empire would continue running amuck, up until the kobolds would figure out a way to combat that and then the whole cycle would begin anew. The ironback toad, perhaps realizing that he was being horribly exploited and wasn''t seeing an inch of the profits, croaked again as the kobold shifted behind the tree. The various stone-backed toads behind him huddled up, but they trusted him¡ªthey relaxed and rested within the den, some sleeping, some merely sprawling out. But they were content. And in the grand scheme of things, they were only one small part of the Drowned Forest, and the rest would continue with or without them. Including my last plan. A few days ago, I had decided I no longer wanted to add anything to the second floor, for fear of ruining its fragile ecosystem or getting so distracted micromanaging it that I never worked on anything else. It had been over two weeks since the merrow attack and I''d seen neither head nor hair of any other invader. It was getting to the point I wanted to be attacked again just so I would know what was going on. But it never came, and I panicked, so I needed more floors. Thus the Drowned Forest had to stay the same. But with other small additions. The cloudskipper wisp had been having a jolly old time over the Underlake, stirring up all the madness that came with my endless shifting currents. She''d grown in size too, feeding on my mana like sustenance and growing more stable, less a roiling cloud of mist and instead something that looked vaguely¡­ canine? I wasn''t positive, but there was the rough impression of four legs as she ran about with a trail of clouds in her wake. But I only had the one, and I''d made the same mistake with only creating three kobolds off the bat. Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel. So for my final change to the Drowned Forest, I would be completing the atmosphere of a proper coastal mangrove forest with roiling clouds of mist. I hadn''t spent much mana since creating the roughwater sharks, beyond the general upkeep of the prey species whenever they became just a touch too endangered for my predators to eat or keeping up the whitecap mushroom population for the bears. As well as the dozens of bug species spotting the area, though that counted for barely a point of mana a day. So I had plenty to make some. Although it fucking hurt to spend forty-two points of mana on what was essentially two lumps of mist. I created them both in an unoccupied corner of the Drowned Forest, just to give them a chance to explore themselves a bit before starting off. I wasn''t sure if my other creatures could hurt them, being as rather intangible as they were, but I wasn''t exactly about to risk it. I''d spent far too much on them for some cave spider to be hungry for prey. No shape yet, both far too young to have deepened into anything more than just grey-silver blobs, but I was curious if they would all switch to a more canine-esque form. Was it specific to each element, or more depending on their personality? Who knew. But I''d be curious to find out. They spent half a second looking¡ªsomewhat? They didn''t have eyes¡ªat each other before immediately scattering, darting through the halls with vague hissing sounds of joy. Clouds of mist exploded in their wake, dropping low to slither over the billowing moss and slide over the canal''s surface, the humidity skyrocketing. Every creature paused to look up at them, wondering at this mystical new addition to their already magical lives. I imagined they would go absolutely insane to learn what was on the fourth floor. But that was it. The Drowned Forest was done. I could feel, in the vague part of me connected to the Otherworld¡ªwhich I was starting to get the sneaking suspicion was where the gods lived¡ªthat Rhoborh was pleased with my final addition, that he enjoyed how the floor had gone. As he very well should be. It was magnificent. And one day, I hoped that my mana and his blessing would deepen, so that every creature would connect to each other instead of only plants, but who knew? I had plenty of time to find out. Or maybe I didn''t, depending on what Calarata was doing. Gods. I needed a spy. I flew up to the first floor instead of worrying about it. The two juvenile lunar cave bears were curled up in their respective dens, bellies full of whitecap mushrooms and safely cradled by their green algae beds. They''d grown, both in size and combat proficiency; the male had started to use his shadow-attuned mana more, hiding in ambush for whenever the other bear went down a floor for a drink or snack; he''d managed to rip a nasty scar over her left haunch in one such attack. In comparison, she had started more on her general lumbering protectiveness, slowly encroaching her territory over his with displays of power. Both of them were plenty strong enough to venture below, maybe even to the fourth floor¡ªbut my intentions of their creation had definitely worked. They both refused to go down a level, even to the sweeter food and the irresistible call of my mana, because going down would mean giving up their territory to the other bear, and both absolutely refused to even stomach the possibility. It certainly worked for me. I''d been training them in the moments between their territorial pissing contests not to react when invaders came in from the two mountain entrances, to stay slumbering in their dens whenever adventurers came a-traipsing into my halls. The rats, constrictors, stone-backed toads, and cave spiders were free to attack, just strong enough to show that this was a dungeon and just weak enough to soothe the invader''s concerns. A basic, regular pathway to shoot them directly forward with no worries¡ªI''d even removed the pitfall I''d made, moving it to a side slope that led out to the mountain. The same slope that would be used when the invaders tried to leave. Because that was when I was training my bears to attack. Everyone was welcome to enter. No one was allowed to leave. That would be how I survived. I was still building a similar plan for the Underlake, something primed to attack in the tunnel to keep any merrows or similar aquatic builds from leaving, but this would suffice for now. My lack of knowledge was killing me. I shook my points of awareness enough that Seros raised his head from where he was wrapped around my core to flick his tongue curiously out at me. I couldn''t keep focusing on them. I had other problems. And other solutions, judging by the current movements of the rat on my first floor. It was the original one I''d noticed, curled up in her den filled with many sparkling jewels. She had grown from her proximity to the mana-sinks, from a foot long to nearly three, hunched over with clever, grasping hands. Her twin forked tails twitched constantly as she kept guard over her tiny room, desperate to keep her gems out of other ratty hands. But now she had a new problem, as seen by how she scoured over her mana-filled collection. She wanted to go to the fourth floor. It would be a perilous journey. It was easy for me to forget that my floors weren''t small, when I could be any size and see a thousand angles at once; but the second floor was enormous, a thousand feet in diameter and crawling with deadly creatures. I''d placed all the tunnels to the fourth floor hidden deep within the Forest, so she would have to venture far into the darkness to get to her goal. And by the time she made that journey, she wouldn''t be able to guarantee that the other rats wouldn''t take advantage of her lack of guard. And if she tried to come back up to the first floor, there was always the threat that she would risk her life on the journey only to find nothing left back at the top, all her jewels stolen, and then she''d have to go back down again. Any time was a risk. So she could only afford to carry one gem with her down into the depths. And that came about the problem of which one. She had easily a half dozen different types that I''d grown, and beyond diamond which seemed to absorb pure mana¡ªwhich I''m sure was very useful outside of my dungeon, but rather pointless within given my general ambiance¡ªall others slowly attuned the mana within them to a specific element. Quite helpfully, they were very clear to tell which was which, whenever she brushed her little ratty hand against one giving her a breath of the power. But her little mind couldn''t comprehend which power would be most useful to have on the mysterious fourth floor, and so she sat here and debated. Hunched over, tail lashing, whiskers twitching. A little picture of contemplation. I was terribly excited to see her and her brethren on the fourth floor, though. No real dens but instead open oases where the tunnels connected, set up with mana and a slight reduction in the thornwhip algae, plenty of threats but also opportunities for them to succeed. And of course, the jadestone moss, growing constant gemstones for the rats to harvest and use. Very helpful. They would thrive down there. As soon as she figured out which shiny thing to bring. Chapter 42 - A Tyrants Rise The fourth floor, while certainly not bustling, was starting to pleasantly trot its way towards filling. The horned serpent, of course, had started to stake out her territory; she''d spent her first few days just exploring the endless tunnels, psionic magic at the ready and her crystalline antlers glowing to light her path, but now she had found her way to the final room of the labyrinth and decided she liked it, with its faux stone trees and emerald walls. She claimed it as her den and went into the tunnels to hunt¡ªthough she did, of course, not quite complain about beasts invading her territory when Seros stayed by my core. She was too smart for that. Seros split his time evenly between the fourth floor and the Underlake, swimming about and hunting at his pleasure; now that the armourback sturgeon population was more stable and I could recreate them should the need arise, he had initially enjoyed working his fangs past their bulky armour, hunting them whenever he felt both the call of hunger and the urge to sharpen his skills. But now the roughwater sharks presented an equally interesting opportunity; while the sturgeons were just starting to learn to fight back instead of living out their passive lives, the sharks were only too happy to fight, and some had even attempted hunting Seros as he passed through their waters. A glorious challenge. He rarely came back to the fourth floor hungry. Rihsu also learned the darkness of the tunnels. Her eyes had sharpened in the gloom and she could find her way around with careful flicks of her forked tongue and the sheen that flashed over her eyes whenever a glowing spore passed in front of them. Still clumsy and fumbling, but she was a normal kobold no longer¡ªshe had a warrior''s spirit and heart, and even her stumbles looked predatory. Not that she had much to hunt, unfortunately. I''d sent out the great mana-filled call to my other floors but as it turned, the fourth floor wasn''t great for hunting; the only dens available for smaller creatures were the oases formed whenever two tunnels connected, small pockets with fresh water and a bit of breathing space away from all the grasping walls. For stone-backed toads who lived their life in constant fear of something grabbing at them from the shadows, it wasn''t a fantastic deal. Luminous constrictors had made their way down, though. Their flash attack had never been more effective than in these dark, dreary halls, and it made hunting them even a challenge for Rihsu or the horned serpent. Their scales protected them from the worst of the thornwhip''s attacks and so they could slither free through the darkness, ever hunting. And their prey were the rats. Most still stayed on the first and second floor, the little ratty empire oh-so very proud of their burgeoning tenant system, but others more filled with mana and hungry for more had made their way down, clutching whatever jewels they could find. The original and strongest, the one who''d been debating which jewel to bring to her new depths, had done a rather fantastic job at coordinating and taken a large slab of jade, almost too big for her clever, grasping hands. It had come from the patches of jadestone moss I had scattered around the Drowned Forest and now nature-attuned mana filled its gemstone heart, wisps drifting out to the rat''s own channels. She really couldn''t have chosen a more useful jewel, and I imagined her hoard would grow full of more pieces of jade. And her evolution was so, so close. Triple her normal size, able to rise and walk around on her back legs, clever and quick enough to gather jewels and make the journey down to the bottom floor. Soon. I couldn''t wait. Unfortunately, just staring at her with enough points of awareness to frighten off an eyebeast wouldn''t make that evolution come any quicker, and I moved on. Back to the fourth floor. See, the problem that only rats had come down was weighing on me. They would be a fine food and a plentiful annoyance, but that wouldn''t be enough. The thornwhip algae didn''t need much sustenance but it certainly would prevent others on the floor from getting it, and after a while the saturation of my mana wouldn''t be enough to keep the prey populations from coming down here. Rihsu and the horned serpent could train here, popping up to the upper floors for feed when need be, but I needed beings that could stay on their floor without need of smaller creatures to hunt and still be a threat to invaders. I pursed intangible lips and pondered, drifting through my tree root tunnels; not nearly enough safe spaces for the kobolds to take up shop here, and they''d lose their access to the mangrove trees for their wooden tools. Perhaps the cave bears, but they were slow and lumbering, and invaders would only have to avoid tripping on the razorleaf lichen to avoid them. There were small pockets where perhaps the bat could hide in, and it did only need bugs to survive off, but one glancing blow from a thornwhip''s grasping arm would stop its flight before it could even begin. ¡­only needed bugs. If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. I flew back up to my first floor. Hundreds of species of bugs lived there, drawn from the cave by the richness of my mana and the ever-present rolling waves of mushrooms and algae. They feasted until they grew fat and bloated, laying down the new generation, and then were promptly snapped up by a hungry stone-backed toad, were caught by a cave spider''s hidden trap, or fell victim to a lacecap''s bile-covered web. Numerous unpleasant ways to die, really. I collected every schema when they died, of course, and when all added up their hundreds of deaths did give me a fraction of a point every day; but it was only partially that I did not care for nor see the point of bugs that I had ignored them. What pointed bite could a mosquito offer against the beloved thorns of my mangroves? What deadly fear could a moth with two faux eyes on the backs of its wings inspire against the rumbling power of my cave bears? What cursed distraction could a cricket muster against the shrill shrieks of my baterwaul? So I had been rather content to merely keep their populations up to feed my creatures and let them be. They didn''t have anything like the ironback toad, nothing to protect them on their endless quest to gather enough mana to evolve. There had never been a chance. But perhaps I could manifest one. Bugs were small, fragile, but ultimately wanting of little; they fed off smaller bugs or plant matter, both of which I could create in endless numbers even if the fourth floor killed them. And bugs could potentially be that extra last distraction, just enough to get an invader off their guard so that they would get lost, would be taken by the thornwhips, or would not notice the hungry attention of my few larger beasts. This would be a wanderer''s floor, filled with those gathering mana and strength for plunges to deeper floors, but not their den. There merely weren''t enough opportunities for food and rest for creatures to make their permanent lives here. I knew Rihsu would wander the halls, hungry for a challenge, and the horned serpent would build her powers and abilities here, and perhaps I could finally find a creature to live fully in the stone forest of my final cavern, living there and stalking outside as a fast and invisible foe; but not now. If this worked, the main combatants would be the thornwhip algae and these potential bugs. I reached out with grasping tendrils of mana to the stone shelf I''d originally built all those weeks ago when I''d hoped that I would find a vegetarian schema willing to fight for the best food; I scattered mushroom and algae alike and carved a shallow divot into the limestone, perfectly round and smooth with a small island in the middle. A twist of mana brought a protective stone shelf overtop, to keep the curious paws of the cave bears away, and then I turned back to the island. Concentration bubbled at my core. I pried open my connection to the Otherworld, reached deep, and pulled out a single drop of raw, condensed mana. It glowed like a miniature sun, spinning and sparkling and burning with light; I very carefully carved a smaller divot into the island for it to sit upon, letting it splash into the shallow depths. Barely more than a thimbleful, but near five points of mana sat in that tiny hole. Plenty for some bugs to evolve. I called to the creatures on the floor. The largest would have no way past the rock shelf, and they both respected and feared me enough not to break it. But the bugs, the scuttling little monstrosities who could fit past the gap in limestone, would be able to go further. To see the mana I had so generously placed out for their potential consumption. Where they would, hopefully, encounter other bugs with similar thoughts. Then, if they could rub two braincells together to create a thought in their insipid little minds, they would realize that there wasn''t enough mana for all of them. A gladiatorial ring. The winners would evolve, or at least be strengthened by the mana, and I would gain some new beasts for my fourth floor. A win for all parties involved, really. Well. Except those that died. But I couldn''t please everyone. - She raised her antlered head, peering at the darkness around; this new world with its moving walls and empty halls called to her, filling her with power anew and boundless possibilities. Her eyes had always been underdeveloped but she had no need of them here, not when her powers reached wide and far and showed her where all her prey and competitors were, little glowing lights in a world only she could see. Her horns glowed stronger. She was nearing full. It wasn''t like her previous fullness, where the death of a few furred things had been enough to bring her near bursting, to fall asleep and wake up changed. Now a kill would bring her but a fraction of what she needed and then she would use that power on her hunts, her intangible goal stretching farther and farther away. No one else had been born again twice, shedding their weak previous selves for new elegance and power. But she was close. Endless hunts and rests and always delving deeper to the richer, more plentiful power, and she was nearing her limit once more. But who would she be then? Her previous rebirth had taken her from a lowly beast hunting even lowlier vermin in the shadows to a predator, crowned and deadly, calling prey to her as they obeyed like helpless fools. But was that enough? Was that who she wanted to be? She hissed, white light rippling out of her horns and splashing over the walls. The green-growth shriveled away from its touch. Using her powers that could touch minds and sense thoughts to merely hunt was a waste. She was a predator, still armed with fangs and size; using her call was just making things easier for her. She didn''t need things easy. This place was rich with power and hungry for authority. It didn''t need another brutish beast, content to skulk in the shadows and use boundless powers for little more than her previous form''s blinding light. It needed a leader. And, well. She had never been one to reject the call. Chapter 43 - Karmic Stirrings To the surprise of no one, no bugs had managed to rise above their piddly scuttling status and claim their fill of the mana in the center. I shuffled about my points of awareness in the little gladiatorial ring, idly glancing at the dead and dying corpses scattered over the stone. Easily dozens, maybe a hundred; all killed by each other. Yet still, the thimbleful of raw mana sat undisturbed. A few were interesting; the mosquitos, large and swollen by their time feeding on my mana-rich creatures, buzzing and irritating. I could see a place for them on the fourth floor, swarming in the endless tunnels until invaders quite lost their way in focus on hitting the bugs out of their way. Lots of potential there. But my gaze was more drawn to the others fighting their way to the center. There had been only two so far, their soft and spongy bodies easily trampled and stabbed by the grasping pincers of other bugs, but the caterpillars were deeply intriguing to me. I still missed my old flight, as much as the Underlake and Drowned Forest soothed me, and with every creature I''d yet found capable of soaring the skies called to me. None had reached butterfly status yet, but they were striving for it, as natural and common an evolution as could be found. I couldn''t tell what they''d evolve into but these caterpillars were deep blue things, rich and velvety; a jewel rather separate from the greys and blacks of their surrounding cave insects. They''d come from somewhere outside, though I couldn''t hazard a guess as to how. The little worms weren''t exactly fast. The moths were the same way, though their caterpillars were fuzzy and ridged with spikes. The other bugs avoided them, fearing perhaps some poison I didn''t know, but while they were more numerous in number than the butterfly''s caterpillars, they were even slower, and often died to a spare hit from some of the more gladiatorial bugs who had not so much decided that they would be getting it, but that no one else would be getting it. But soon they''d reach it, I suspected. Few bugs had ever had access to the feast I''d laid out. I''d spawn a few more outside just to give them the chance. Of course, there were the other insects proud and ready to claim it; great lancing beetles with grasping arms like blades, or round, carapace-hard walking mountains who shrugged off hits that came their way. Plenty of options for who would grow strong enough to join my halls in true sequence. But my thoughts went back to the flying critters. I had the bat, I knew, and doubtless though they could survive on the fourth floor I knew it would be a constant battle of respawning them as their numbers died in droves to the thornwhip algae. No, I wanted to give them a place to actually thrive. And, well. I was a deeply selfish creature at heart. The fucking Dread Pirate had taken away my wings, my flight; I wanted it back, even if in part. ¡­my fourth floor was stable enough I could technically move to a fifth. But what would it be? My points of awareness spiraled through my halls as I pondered, glancing around as if for inspiration; as much as I wanted to shape it like the open skies, just two tunnel openings on each side for entrance and exit and nothing but open air between, cloudskipper wisps kicking up great storms and lightning while birds and beasts and bats all swarmed overhead, I couldn''t. Because while I had hope Seros would gain his wings eventually, he didn''t yet have them, and I would not deprive him a way down to my further levels. And my other creatures too, I supposed. But Seros first. So then what? I wanted the storms, for whatever lightning-attuned evolution I could coax out of the cloudskipper wisps, and open air was as important to me as it could be; while narrow channels and spiraling halls would make for a far more difficult flight, I wasn''t building this for the select few flying races of the world. This was for my creatures. With the added bonus that the vast majority of invaders would have to walk exactly the path I laid out for them. Maybe a few fliers would find this a wildly easy floor, able to soar above the majority of my traps, but then I''d just make the sixth something to fear. So now something for Seros to stride on. Not just a stone path, stretching and prone to crumble; while he hadn''t yet evolved, I know that seabound monitor wouldn''t be his final stage. And judging by his previous route, he would be continuing to increase in size. I needed a path to support him. One of my points of awareness swiveled towards the Drowned Forest, where my canals sat, unassuming and quiet, with a variety of moss-covered stones sticking out of the white-ridged water. Or, at least what looked like stones. The lichenridge turtles, as stepping stones for invaders to get across the canal with. Though I didn''t hazard that I could somehow summon turtles large enough to serve as faux stones for an aerial level, I could take inspiration. Massive, spiraling pillars, jabbing into the sky, with bridges stable but impossibly thin stretching between. Strong enough for Seros to worm his way across, though I rather doubted this would be as favourite a floor for him as the Underlake, and exceedingly dangerous for invaders. They would have to focus on concentrating on their balance, keeping their head, and avoid the myriad of flying dangers I could summon. The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. And if they lost their way? Well. It would be a long fall, a truly unpleasant one, onto perhaps jagged iron spikes or a poisonous river, with no way back up once they had fallen. My scavengers would feast. Oh. I liked this very much. The bats and the bugs, and whatever other flying beasties I could gather; algae-light, because I was fond of seeing and the fourth floor''s trick could only be pulled off so many times; hidden beasts on the pillars, ready to snap and tear and all manners of unpleasant things. Massive pillars stretching to the sky, swarming clouds of beings sharp and angry, knotted messes and monsters. Oh yes. I could make that work. But not yet. I still didn''t know what was happening in Calarata, and I couldn''t afford to use all my mana carving out stone and constructing pillars when an invader was threatened at every corner. I suppose. Annoying, at the very least. I could continue to swallow my frustration and fear and call it irritation, wishing I knew what was happening on the other side, or even deeper within the mountain. Something had to be happening. There was no other reason I could have gone so undisturbed for so long, not when the fucking Dread Pirate was still out there. He wouldn''t have just¡­ died, would he? That thought was harrowing. Surely a man that damned powerful had enemies, and while I didn''t have an inkling on what gave him the powers he had, it couldn''t have been natural. So what if that power had been temporary? What if some other accursed enemy of his had gone in and killed him? Not that I didn''t want him dead, because I can very much assure you, I did. Only I wanted to be the one to do it. I wanted him to enter my halls¡ªonce I was ready¡ªand be squashed on perhaps the first floor, maybe the second, all while having the knowledge that I was so much more powerful than him. Then I''d cut out his fucking heart before his eyes and let my creatures feast on his mana. But I couldn''t, because I didn''t know where he was and what he was doing. Gods. I''d been so refusing to die, so hungry and starving for revenge, but now I couldn''t fight back yet. It''d been weeks since I''d last seen the man who''d killed me. I''d comforted myself with building and expanding, endless creatures and schemas and powers. But I wanted his death. I wanted it more than I''d ever wanted for anything in my past life. Soon I would get a spy. Maybe one of the bugs, maybe the bat, maybe whatever evolution was coming soon to the rats; I would Name another creature and they would show me what lay beyond my halls. Soon. - His hands were not bound, his feet free. He had been set loose to wander over the past two days, in a courtyard with open doors and lax guardship at best. Every opportunity to run and try to flee. Nicau had not. Foolish though he was finding himself to be, he was not yet foolish enough to try the trap so cleanly set out for him. Lluc had seemed almost disappointed when he''d returned after the two days. With him he brought Aloma, a lower member of the Dread Crew; she was tall and she gangled, arms ridged in scars and skin pulled taut between. Cold brown eyes, like deepwater mud, frowned upon him even as a grin wrote itself across her face. "''Ere''s the little brat," she cooed, twisting a blade thin as spider''s silk between her fingers. "My new leader, eh?" "Shut up," Lluc snapped, jamming his wolf fur lined hat further onto his head. "Boy. Come along." Nicau was rather cognizant enough to sense the overall mood these two were delivering, and he followed quietly behind. They strode through the worn and weary streets of Calarata, along buildings well past repair dates and hovels built of packed mud, past beggars who stretched desperate hands before they recognized the First Mate and huddled back to their shadows. An unkindly place, but not one without character; storm-warnings written by children''s hands on the walls in fruit-paste, a seamstress humming an old fisher''s song as she stretched out a new tunic. Even beneath the grime and dirt, there was light here. Nicau had just never been privy to it. On they marched, over wharf and dock, until their boots clambered on pebbled shores and they arrived at the base of the Al¨®mbra Mountains, where the dark things dwelled. Lluc stared up at their peaks, mouth drawn in a low frown. "The Dread Pirate was very clear," he said. "Go in, explore the first few levels, then get out. Don''t go collecting treasure nor creature. We''ll let him do that. Savvy?" Aloma shrugged, eyes sharp. "Clear as rain, your lordship." Her shoulders bobbed as she turned her back on him, hand placed in faux thoughtfulness on her chin. "''Course, can''t help but wondering why it''s me who''s going in there, when the Captain saw fit to give you the order. Or why you''re sending this ''ittle brat in as well. Can''t be that you''re scared, no, not the First Mate." She didn''t look at him but her eyes sparkled. "Or that you''re awfully angry right now, and your eye''s looking a trifle twitchy. Had some poor news, o'' leader of mine?" Aloma tried to continue, mouth opening, but no sound came through. No air either, face paling and purpling all at once, lips gasping like a fish. Nicau curled tighter over himself. Lluc lowered his hand, the ring on his finger losing its glow, and Aloma sucked in a heaving breath. "Go in and report back," he snarled, and marched away. Nicau watched him go. Maybe it was best he hadn''t been able to make it onto the Dread Crew. They all seemed less like the unbothered, all-powerful group he''d always imagined them as. Aloma hissed, massaging the sides of her throat, but she turned back to him with an unchanged grin. "You heard the man," she said. "Up and at ''em. You first." The mountain loomed before. He''d been here before, those other half dozen times he''d sent other unwary adventurers into its depth to fetch a prize he didn''t know. He wrapped his arms around his thin shirt, to the cold, stiff lump pressed against his ribs. He''d had two days alone after learning that it was a dungeon instead of just a dragon-heart, two days to think and plan; gods, he hoped his gift would be enough. He wanted to survive. But he was losing hope, now. Nicau didn''t much believe in karma. It was hard to, in a lawless city where the rich plundered and the poor died. But looking in the gaping maw of the mountain where so many others had followed his guidance, he felt uncomfortably like he was being told he deserved this. Chapter 44 - Negotiations More silvertooths spawned at my rippling wave of mana, spinning about with their red fins flashing and eyes already hungry for prey. Of course, it was that current nasty habit of theirs that was causing me to have to make more; with the Underlake''s newest addition of roughwater sharks, who were more than happy to survive their blood-frenzy, their foolish posturing and territorial disputes had suddenly stopped going their way quite as much. Idiots, the lot of them. Hopefully they''d be able to find some sort of equilibrium, because they were far too expensive to constantly maintain. Fortunately, I was so irritated with their general existence that I was quick to turn my attention away from them, which meant that I felt when one of the cave spiders that had spun their web over the cove-facing entrance noticed something approaching. Two approaching somethings. All my various points of awareness swiveled towards the first floor by the time the two invaders stepped through into my Fungal Gardens. The first was a woman, tall and lean, covered in pockmarked scars not from blades or fire, but seemingly fists and bruises that had merely been layered so many times they upgraded to scar. Her eyes were bright and her mana strong; Silver, I guessed. Strong enough to make it to the advanced adventurer stage, well above most commoners, though not yet at the upper echelons of Gold. The boy at her side, however, wasn''t either¡ªhe wasn''t even Bronze, his mana still weak and untrained, arms skinny and eyes hooded. A child, really, with ratty brown hair and umber skin, wearing clothes that hardly deserved to be called so. He was¡­ Familiar, actually. Certainly not from my time as a sea-drake, given I hardly interacted with any humans when I had far better things to be doing, but some of my stolen memories reignited. Of every single human invader, they remembered a young boy, eyes welling with tears, telling them of treasures hidden within the mountain. Oho. My mysterious benefactor. He looked decidedly less confident now, the woman shoving him forward as she slid lazy eyes over her surroundings. Neither carried weapons but she had cloth wrapped over her knuckles and feet, and she moved with the sort of grace I only saw in predators. "Huh," she exhaled, raising her hand to brush through a collection of webs. The spiders scattered from her touch. "Not exactly the hive of death and destruction you spun to all those others, huh?" The boy didn''t respond. Smart, I thought. She hummed, padding deeper into the floor. I''d kept the Fungal Gardens to look rather underwhelming in terms of threats, only a few constrictors and toads meandering around, and she appeared to have bought it entirely. Every creature was given no more than an appraising glance before she''d moved on. One creature did get a second glance, though. A stone-backed toad who''d gotten too big for his britches made a sort of war-croak and charged at her, safely tucked beneath his clearly impenetrable armour. She looked over, raised a foot, and squashed him so fast even the smear across the floor was a memory. Ah. I''d started to figure out the power of the invaders¡ªthough there were subtle differences between human and, say, merrow¡ªso I was able to take a guess. There were two main fields of magic-users, either casters or enhancers; casters expelled their magic into the wider world, often being priests, getting their power by being a god''s mana-gate to the world, mages by studying spells and rituals, or any numerous others. Enhancers used that same magic internally, strengthening themselves or giving themselves abilities and augmentations, and had their own suitably numerous styles they ran with; berserkers for sheer strength, warrior for enhancements and agility, and so on. Far too many piddly little details. But it was important to know which group they were in. I knew the Priestess¡ªthe Thirteenth Priestess of Arroyo, to be specific¡ªhad been a caster, changing the water''s temperatures and casting beams of lights, and Lady Luthia from so long ago had been an enhancer, reversing gravity over herself to run on the ceiling. Judging from that little kick, I''d say this one ran more in the enhancer circle. She grimaced, shaking her foot; something that had once been a living thing with dreams and emotions sloughed off to fall with a splat against the stone. "How fuckin'' weak were those cowards you sent in here? This isn''t anything like ol'' Thiago''s dungeon. A real pipsqueak of a challenger, eh?" Perhaps she felt the thrash of my mana, because she laughed next, striding forward. "Well! At least there''s something present here. C''mon, brat." The boy trotted behind her, not out of obedience but instead the very real knowledge that if anything attacked them, it wouldn''t be him winning. She was his only hope. And I could only imagine what was outside the cavern to make him not just run away. Though it didn''t make sense. Three weeks since the last attack and this was what they''d sent to defeat me? Sure, I''d never defeated a Silver before, but this was one enhancer and a boy who''d probably never touched mana before. This wasn''t a threat. Gods, I needed a spy. They trotted through my first floor, avoiding the various dips and curves in the terrain, at least taking the time to admire my more elegant sculptures of limestone or gentle slopes of whitecap mushrooms. The woman seemed to be using some sort of tracking artifact, pointing the roughly-carved stone at walls and letting it glow, though she seemed rather disinterested in the results. Fascinating. What was going on? But it was only when they reached the very edge of the newly-enlarged rock pond that something finally got her attention. One of the rats had carved out a den on the side of a pillar, plenty out of sight for other rats but on the perfect eyeline for a human¡ªand the jewels held within its caverns were bright and glittered. Her eyes gleamed. Another second and she materialized by the pillar''s sides, thrusting her hand into the den¡ªthe rats awoke and raged to screaming awareness, biting and gnawing and writhing against her arm. But whatever enhancer technique she had didn''t end with only speed; she shrugged off the hits, swatting away the most annoying of the rats with enough force to cave in their little skulls. But the boy didn''t follow her, hands wrapped around his chest despite the muggy temperature. He twisted away, angling his back towards the pillar while he faced one of my walls, eyes darting, voice hurried and panicked. "Ah," he tried, speaking at the limestone like I was hidden behind it. "Hello, ah, o'' great dungeon?" I could appreciate the attempt, but the deliverance was terrible. "I''ve been the one delivering¨C ah, guiding people to you. Weeks ago. When they would come in. That''s how you feed, right? So it''s a good thing? That was filling you up?" Nice to have it confirmed, at least, but that didn''t exactly explain what angle he was shooting for. Would flattery keep me from killing him? Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings. Ha. All it''d do was make me come up with a suitably dramatic way of killing him. He shuffled nervously, pressing one hand to the wall. "And I''m good at it. I can get you more people, lots of them, all of Calarata if I have to. Just don''t kill me." A tempting offer, really. One of the cave bears, coincidentally tucked right around the bend from him, opened one lazy eye as I prompted her, though not waking yet. The Silver was the bigger threat. "And I, ah, brought you a gift." And from his ragged, lumpy coat he tugged something loose and displayed it to me with all manner of graceless hesitance. But it was intriguing. A corpse sat in his hands, stiff and cold by at least a few days, covered in dusty white-grey feathers. A bold yellow beak poked from one end, the tip a deep scarlet, and talons hung limply from the other. A bird. Something I didn''t yet have. My memories of the boy were limited¡ªI was vaguely aware his name was Nicau¡ªbut while he hadn''t seemed altogether clever, he had come up with a rather perfect little scheme. I didn''t know how he had been caught but it seemed he ran under the attention of most people in Calarata, gangly and underfed, and had a habit of ending up in places he wasn''t supposed to be. And, well. I had been looking for a spy. He seemed to realize the silence had been stretching and pushed the bird a little closer to the wall, glancing once over his shoulder to where the woman was still murdering all my precious rats. "It''s more dangerous than regular pigeons," he tried desperately. "Bigger. And fierce." There were healing scratches all over his arms, though not exactly deserving of the word fierce. But who was I to reject a gift offered so generously? I reached out and dissolved the corpse, slowing down the process a hair in only to impress him with the glowing motes of light. A pigeon, as said, though not the normal ones my other stolen memories remembered flocking about the city. This one was near double the size with talons built for grasping and a beak far too sharp. A bit like someone had grafted predatory aspects onto a pigeon, but that couldn''t exactly erase it was still a pigeon.
Greater Pigeon (Rare) Grown hungry from an urban life, it has learned to stop scrounging for scraps and instead feed off its unevolved brethren, hunting in great flocks.
Another of those mystical wild evolutions, though in the same vein as the crab, nothing too special beyond a size and skill increase. And predatory habits, I guessed. Looked like they needed an outside influence in order to actually grow unique and deadly. Something I would rather humbly offer myself as. Nicau waited, eyes far too hopeful, as the pigeon finished dissolving. Nothing happened after, of course. While I could¡ªoccasionally¡ªwith much bribery¡ªbe convinced to assist those needing of help, that certainly didn''t mean I was there to come and jump at their call. He''d discover that soon enough. He looked forlornly at his empty hands. I''d almost feel pity if I, well, didn''t. "Ho, brat," the woman called, Nicau snapping back to attention. "You first." He nodded miserably and plunged into the rock pond, obeying without hesitation; another trait I was all too ready to take advantage of. Water sluiced to either side as he struggled his way through, but I threaded my great mana through my halls, implanting a vague mental approximation of him into my creatures'' heads. Do not harm him. The Silver, though? Unbelievably fair game. Nicau seemed faintly shocked when he emerged through the pond unharmed, though I had to work overtime to keep the idiotic silverheads from ramming his legs. The woman jumped across in a single bound, shook her hands clean from some imaginary dust, and continued pushing him in front of her as they traveled down to my second floor. Alright. Showtime. I had the bears wake up, in preparation for anyone attempting to flee, and I had their guards suitably lowered. No more playing around. They both stopped when facing my Drowned Forest, eyes wide, and I took great pleasure in both that and the alarm ringing through the connected roots of the floor, the mangroves shifting and twisting their branches in that direction. With the cloudskipper wisps, it could almost pass for moving in wind, though the light breeze present wasn''t near strong enough if they paid it more attention. The woman whistled, rocking back on her heels. "Well I''ll be," she murmured, padding to the closest mangrove. "You''re a beaut, huh? Never seen the likes o'' you before." You''re damned right you''ve never seen anything like them before. They marched on, her still pointing her tracking rock at her surroundings with bored indifference; Nicau hung awkwardly at her side, too terrified to leave her, too terrified to disobey. My creatures stayed out of sight, gnawing at the bit but listening to me; I had to use only scraps of mana in separate rooms to keep from the invaders sensing my commands but I was getting better at it, as long as I had time to prepare. A threefold purpose of my first floor. It truly was coming in handy. And then they came to the fourth room, one with a massive, spanning canal and a few inconspicuous stepping stones marring the shifting water. Mangroves hung overhead, billowing moss below; another seemingly normal room. The woman seemed almost annoyed at the lack of challenge. She did send Nicau over the river first, though. He wavered at the edge, fists tight at his side, but managed the first delicate hop onto the stone; he nearly slipped off its moss-covered surface but held, arms thrashing. The next jump was easier, and the following even moreso¡ªunder a minute and he was safe on the other side, though panting heavily. Baby. The woman shrugged, rolled her shoulders, and made to follow the same path when I released the hold I had on my most ambitious creatures. Kobolds poured into the room behind her, hooting and hollering and waving their bone-spears in the air; each barely came up to her shoulders but they were numerous and uncaring of their personal fates. I saw her eyes light up. "Finally!" She roared, and leapt into the fray. The first kobold swept at her, chittering and hissing; she reared back, fist glowing from within like an ethereal torch, and slammed the kobold''s muzzle so hard the poor thing hit the ground before it''d even had a chance to show off. She did wince, retracting her hand; even with the cloth wrapped around her knuckles, scales were built for brunt force damage, and human hands decidedly weren''t. "Fuck," she hissed, pulling back. "That''s why I stick to other humans¨C oh no you don''t." The other kobold who''d tried the sneak-around approach promptly got its face introduced to the ground as well. Nicau dropped to his knees, squeezing his eyes shut and covering his head; no kobolds attacked him, though. I had other plans. Easily two dozen kobolds charged the woman and she answered in kind, fists and kicks flying; she switched up her seemingly normal strategy, tripping and twisting and deflecting attacks with all the grace of a siren. Group fights were simple for her and as opponents, kobolds were cheap and she knew it¡ªwhich was why I had called for Seros. From around the corner, a shadow darkened, and Rihsu strode into the room. Her nine feet dwarfed both kobold and human, tail lashing and fangs bared; the woman paused halfway through choking out a writhing opponent and locked eyes with her, both squaring each other up. If she''d had problems with punching scales, I couldn''t wait to see what happened when she encountered Rihsu''s armoured bulk. I could see almost the exact moment she decided the fight was no longer worth it, throwing the kobold down and taking a furious step back. "Lluc didn''t tell me to clear this damned thing," she spat, and turned. Not back the way they had come, where Rihsu now prowled from, but instead to Nicau, who stood hunched and cowering across the canal. She wasted no time in jumping to him, but even with her enhancements, it was too wide for her to risk it; and not that she had to. Why, she''d just watched Nicau march across those stepping stones with no worse for wear. So she didn''t even look down as she stepped onto their backs. Her foot landed on a lichenridge turtle''s shell and it surged upwards, jaws snapping blindly; it fit its maw around her ankle with a bonecrunching crack. She had just enough time to open her mouth, eyes wide with shock, before the turtle dove off its perch into deeper water. Strong as she was, she was unprepared. Its weight dragged her into the depths. Rihsu howled, a fierce, bellowing sound, and dove into the water after; electric eels and silvertooths and greater crabs swarmed at the motion, wrapping around the struggling Silver, churning the water scarlet. And in all the confusion, in the thrashing water and deep, guttural yells, the chieftess kobold had no issue marching up behind Nicau and bopping him quite cleanly on the head with her spear. He crumpled to the ground. Mission success. Chapter 45 - Windwolf Even with Rihsu, the electric eels, the silvertooths, the greater crabs, and the lichenridge turtle, the Silver took an uncomfortably long time to die. I kept my points of awareness outside, watching only the churning water and crackle of lightning-attuned mana. Rihsu had to poke her head out of the water, breathing large, desperate gulps through her unfortunately still not aquatic body, and then diving back in for combat. It seemed she strengthened both her muscles and her skin, and even as the lichenridge turtle dragged her to the bottom, she kept struggling up to the top, ignoring the multitude of little fangs doing their damnedest to gnaw past her enforced skin. It was honestly fascinating. While my floors had been strengthened and could take down one dangerous person with pretty relative consistency, she was convincing me of the threat level of Silvers. Of the base three, being Bronze meant just being a strong enough adventurer to be ranked, and could encompass a wild variety of skills and levels. But reaching Silver meant that there was both talent and skill, plenty enough to impress a guildmaster and earn that fabled title. Gold, even moreso. So I welcomed the ability to test my creatures when she finally, finally, died. Mana, rich and powerful, burst through me, but I shoved that aside in favour of poking at her memories. The woman, Aloma it seemed, had been instructed by some furrow-browed man with an overly flamboyant hat to investigate the rumours of a dungeon off the side of Calarata, with whispers that the job had come from the Dread Pirate himself. At least that confirmed they knew of me. It looked like the information had only come out recently, but they weren''t interested in killing me immediately? Why else send a Silver and a streetrat? Speaking of. The boy, Nicau, slumbered if not peacefully than at least completely, though a welt was building on the back of his head. The kobold chieftess with her bone necklace and poorly decorated spear poked curiously around his slumped body, though she obeyed my previous command and didn''t attack him. Just seemed vaguely disgusted. Which made sense. If you were a glorious being, albeit descended and diminutive, covered in beautiful scales and horns, the fleshy skin of humans was not exactly appealing. Honestly, even if you weren''t a dragon. Human beings were strange, squishy little things. Nicau was no different. But he would be a helpful thing, if he wanted to survive. And I was also prevented from having to Name a bloody pigeon for my spy. Rihsu dragged herself out of the canal, hissing and spluttering through a mouthful of water where she''d apparently gasped when the Silver ranked mana went through her. Understandable. The last she''d gotten in a big way was the Bronze stuff from the Priestess kill, and she''d evolved immediately after. Figured this would be an upstage. The rest of the aquatic beings scampered off to celebrate their cut, easily two dozen silverheads who''d just been in the vicinity of the kill and had tried their shot immediately evolving; I shifted a few to replenish the electric eel''s schools of electric silverheads and made the rest armourback sturgeons for the third floor. It could use the aggression. The kobolds, what dozen remained, slowly picked themselves up; Aloma hadn''t been fighting for too long before she decided to cut her losses and run, but she''d decimated their forces. Half of those that had come were now dead from blunt force trauma, or on their way; the strongest and uninjured scooped up those they could still try to save and started to drag them home, the mana from their assisted kill flowing through them. Not a lot, because it had to split up between all of them, but plenty to soothe their wounds. Losing twelve kobolds wasn''t even that big of a detriment anymore. They were breeding like mad and had a whole little family lineage spreading out; sooner or later I''d need to build a floor below for them, if they kept expanding like this. It''d need trees and water, and strong competitors for the challenge; a jungle, maybe? It''d have to be massive if they ever truly unlocked their potential and became dragon-born. I bonked a point of awareness against a wall in the best approximation of slapping my head. Not now. Worry about the present. I reached deep through my connection and called out to Seros, who slept as normal on the fourth floor, wrapped around my core''s pillar. He yawned, flashing his ivory fangs, and raised his head; I''d only awoken the first three floors for this battle, not wanting to get everyone excited when they wouldn''t have a chance to fight. So it took him a second to properly get moving with the haste I requested. He meandered through the tunnels, ignoring the thornwhip algae with all the care of the idle rich. They tried to attack him¡ªsometimes¡ªand he rewarded the foolish arm with a quick and snappy amputation. Clever beastie. The rats of that floor avoided him, and he and the horned serpent did their best to never interact. He was stronger physically and she was stronger psionically, and they were quite content to leave it at that. Seros slipped into the water of the Underlake, giving the roughwater sharks a momentarily hungry look, but swam quickly through the bloodline kelp forest, dodging all the mimic jellyfish in the way, and popped back up in the Drowned Forest. His over seventeen feet of length meant that everyone was quite considerate in avoiding him. If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. The kobold chieftess saw him enter the room, squeaked, and disappeared. Seros sniffed the air, felt the still-dissipating Silver mana, and whipped his head in my general direction with a look that was uncomfortably similar to betrayal. What? He bared his fangs and did a rather slow mimicry of biting something''s head off. I sighed, poking through our connection with an overly thick layer of sympathy. Yes, I''m terribly sorry that I didn''t let you fight in this battle, you lazy lump. Yes, I''m aware you didn''t fight in the last battle, because if you haven''t noticed, we''ve been rather battle-less for a while now and the last battle was against the sharks you now fight on the regular basis. Yes, it was fun. Rihsu proved herself well. That seemed to excite him, lantern-esque eyes glancing around as if she was still there ripping Aloma''s head off, though I could feel her making her way back down to the fourth floor to heal. He poked his nose curiously into the water, scanning the battle scene, and then his eyes landed on Nicau. The very much still alive Nicau. He perked right up and marched over, hydrokinesis dragging up a path of water for him to swim through so he never had to break eye contact with the boy. I pressed the mana equivalent of a sigh over his back. Seros pouted, but begrudgingly stopped his charge and settled for just pacing around Nicau''s lump of a body, fully encircling him. I think I need him, I pushed through our connection, though I didn''t doubt he could hear my hesitation. For a spy. Seros hissed, nosing at the boy''s arm. He seemed less than confident in that idea. He gave me a schema, I said, tugging up random strands of greater pigeon for Seros to sense¡ªthe seabound monitor tilted his head to the side, though did seem intrigued at the flying beast. And this attack knew I was a dungeon. I think it''s time we start planning for consistent invaders. That got his attention. As much as he liked staying safe, he''d never turn down a proper battle. It had been near forever since he''d last evolved, and he was growing antsy in waiting. He pushed various thoughts of cages and traps to me. Which, fair point. My plan wouldn''t exactly work if Nicau escaped. Grab him? I asked, and Seros nodded. He sprawled flat next and reached out, cautiously grabbing a wrinkle of clothing and pulling him over; the boy skipped and slumped over Seros'' various back spikes and frills but managed to get roughly stable. Seros looked a little put-out on being a glorified pack horse, but he rose back to his full height and stomped off in the direction I offered. The kobold''s den was the most heavily guarded area of the Drowned Forest, and I didn''t want to deal with trying to get enough guards past the Underlake and onto the fourth floor to put him there. Seros nosed his way curiously¡ªand a bit tightly, the opening really wasn''t built for his size¡ªinto the main entrance of the den, and got the welcome sight of four dozen kobolds freezing in awe. Not quite the hero worship Rihsu had, but it was pretty clear to notice that Seros was powerful and draconicly-inclined. They bowered their head awkwardly as he padded past. I poured mana and dug out a side tunnel, next to all the awkwardly-made dens that the kobolds had dug themselves with tools and claws alike. I shaped a soft-ish algae bed and a stream of fresh water trickling down the wall, all manners of great comfort, and let Seros slide Nicau onto its surface. Then I shrunk the entrance and sides so that while the boy could leave, he''d have to work for it, and by then the kobolds would be ready. Not imprisonment, in the most permanent of ways, but enough to inspire that glorious obedience I''d seen with him. I wanted him subservient, but not enough that he would want to run away more than he was scared of me. So no terrible treatment, but the threat of it. Right. Seros seemed less than impressed. Well. He wouldn''t know quality if it hit him upside the head. Although I did use the last of my unranked mana, nearly forty points, and whipped up another half dozen kobolds just to fill in the ranks. They were born, blinking, and immediately bowed their heads as Seros padded back through their cave to head outside. No need not to be safe. Guard him, I instructed the kobolds, all of them blinking with wide, awe-filled eyes. But do not hurt him. Hopefully that''d get the point across. I''d watch them closely over the next few days just to be sure. But I still had something else to do. With Aloma''s death, while half her mana had gone to those who had killed her, the rest came to me, and it was rich, beautiful Silver ranked mana that I was only too happy to spend. Not for digging or constructing other schemas, but for feeding. The Drowned Forest and the fourth floor were well on their way to completion, and it was time to bring the Underlake up to the same level. This mana would be the thing to take it there. ¡­it really wasn''t that much mana. I was hyping it up like some great gift from the gods, but it was barely more than I could create an evolved schema with. Definitely notable, but not really serving this level of celebration. Ah well. Up above, the cloudskipper wisp darted to and fro, happily churning her four legs and whipping her tail; she looked like a wolf now, though still hazy and indistinct. I drummed up a few scattered drops of raw, condensed mana, all Silver ranked, and plopped them in her path; she dove for them like the greatest feast I could have ever created. Even her little mouth moved like a canine as she ate. Very interesting. The other wisps on the second floor hadn''t started to develop a form yet, but I got the strangest sense that it wouldn''t be wolves for them. I wished I''d researched more into elementals before I''d died. But hopefully this would feed her well, because I had plans; I reached into her mind and slowly pushed around the paths she already knew to run, kicking up wind and wakes over the water, being the sole reason there were currents sifting through the Underlake and a crushing sinkhole in the center. I wanted more. I guided her along new pathways, great spiraling runs to specifically kick up silt and sand from the area the armourback sturgeons fed in, another run to make the bloodline kelp forest twist and wave like a dancer, a third for creating a suction-like pressure to pull creatures in from outside and prevent them from easily swimming out. Little things, but they would build, and once she was powerful enough to strengthen them, I doubted anyone would be so easily leaving my halls. Because with Nicau, I would be able to see what was going on outside and predict attacks, and that meant time to build my fifth floor. It was time I delved deeper. Chapter 46 - Small and Clever Akkyst had very little idea of what was going on. This¡­ Bylk was the Chieftain of the Magelords, apparently. He could only guess that this group of goblins called themselves the magelords. And had a chieftain? That was already far more organized than the group he had come from. But they were still goblins. Bylk, with his wide, snaggle-toothed grin, leaned closer, waggling a finger. "You''ll need to be up and walking if we''re going to chat." Akkyst glanced down. Ah, right, his front leg was shattered; frankly, enough had been happening he''d rather forgotten. He squinted at the goblin''s extended fingers, glowing a pale white. The stalking jaguar was hidden behind him, curled up under the spread of his shadow-attuned mana, and the bladehawk was hidden overhead, tucked away in an alcove. If he was up and walking, that would be all the more defense he could offer, and if Bylk was betraying him, then they still had the opportunity to run away. Certainly not the best option, but it had enough of a chance. He nodded. Bylk''s grin widened to a degree that really shouldn''t be possible and he bopped his finger on the tip of Akkyst''s nose. A warm, sort of soothing feeling flowed through him, spilling down from his face and wrapping around his paw; it felt like water, but warm and comforting in a way caves hadn''t yet managed to be, like he was back in the living halls, curled up on his algae bed with a stomach full of mushrooms. It felt like home. And with a snap, his bone wove itself back together, muscles reconnecting and skin knitting across the wound. Akkyst blinked, gingerly setting it back on the ground. It held his weight the same as all his others. Bylk did cough roughly, one of the jewels hanging from his ears losing its glow and going dim. "Damn," he hissed, spitting some backed-up phlegm on the ground by his feet. "You''re mana-dense, ain''t ya? Took a hell of a lot to heal you." Akkyst settled for looking at him. The secret he could talk? He wasn''t happy he had shared it, but that was important for getting understanding on both sides and having them see him as a sentient being. That was important. Exposing that he came from what he was pretty sure was the Growth and born of pure mana? Yeah, he''d be keeping that one a little closer to his chest. Judging by how much the war horde goblins had hated and spat at the very name of the Growth, he doubted it was popular ground. And if he was going to survive this and get his fellow beasts out, he needed them not to attack him right now. Bylk stared at him for another moment, pale eyes narrowed, before twitching his shoulders in what probably counted as a goblin shrug. "Suppose you cave bears take a lot. Never healed one of ya before." Akkyst bobbed his head. That seemed like the safest response. "Well then." Bylk cranked his head from side to side, cracking his knobbly fingers. His strange stone-esque clothing flowed as he turned around, ears jangling with jewels, and promptly stopped at the dozen of goblins encircling him. Their wide eyes were fixed on Akkyst. Who was also rather frozen. Turned out those goblins could be silent when they wanted to. Bylk snorted, waving his hands. He couldn''t have come up to the chin of most of them but they all unerringly followed his movements, their own bone-studded ears flicking in his direction. "Out of here, brats, you got work to do¡ªyou can talk to him later. Go on and heal." One of them groaned but they all obediently spread out, fingers lighting up in a myriad of colours. Akkyst shook himself, dust billowing off his fur, and did his best to convey at least some sort of question to the Chieftain. Thankfully, the goblin seemed to pick it up. "Well." Bylk flashed him another appraising look. "You''re a listening animal. Not too many around here, least not the ones that aren''t already stone-drakes or elementals, and you still look young." He spread his hands, letting a glow rise over their tips. "You look like you''ve got some unknown mana, and we love studying it. Nothing better. So of course they''d be plenty interested in what you have to say." He shrugged. "Figuratively speaking." Well, Akkyst didn''t want to be too fast of a judge of character, but he certainly liked these goblins more than the last. He didn''t know their intentions yet but they spoke in the sort of cadence his burgeoning appreciation of wisdom appreciated, and they had tried to heal him even before they knew he could understand them. And speaking of¨C The other goblins, though not those helping to heal their brethren piled up in one corner of the cavern, were walking around to the other animals. In deep pits below the stone magma-salamanders roared and thrashed, trapped but still alive; goblins stood in careful positions overhead and threw down blue-tinged mana until the magma-salamanders stopped screaming. Akkyst bared his fangs but then the goblins shifted to using a pale grey mana, raising the stone back up to its previous height, and revealing the salamanders, curled up and asleep. Still alive. Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work! Boulder-beasts had their broken limbs reset, their hides regrown; lightning rhinos had their horns repaired and their spines resharpened; the fang-rat, already dead, was carefully laid to rest beneath the stone. The goblins, rather smartly, didn''t try to heal any creature without putting them to sleep first. They''d learned from their attempt with him, seemed like. But why were they healing them? Bylk puffed up a bit proudly when Akkyst swung his massive head in his direction, fiddling with his empty jewel and prying it out of his ear. It disappeared into his flowing robes. "We like to heal them up and release them back in the mountain; keeps the war horde from more monsters, and half a chance they''ll go back and take revenge on their captors. Works for us." Ah. Partially magnanimous, mostly for their own advantage. At least they didn''t try and pretend it was all for the sake of the creatures. Akkyst could appreciate that. And it certainly made them better than the war horde. "Been decades of war," Bylk groused, watching his people scuttling around and fixing the cavern, smoothing back the walls to their original shape. "We all started as one goblin tribe, then different factions, then different tribes. The miners didn''t care about anyone, digging deep and fighting with the dwarves, and we just wanted to study mana. Live in peace as best we could. But that war horde just wants to rule the whole mountain. Fucking idiots." Akkyst huffed. He understood that. "And we''re goblins," Bylk said. He sort of shrugged, though something past his usual excitement or amusement flickered through his eyes. It looked like sadness. "Ain''t like we can just leave the mountain and go live outside. So we''ll keep on fighting them or die trying." Well. Akkyst rumbled, low in his throat, and looked around at the gathered goblins; they were small and scurrying, more blue than green with their skin marred by black patterns, but they certainly seemed to care. They were healing the animals, fixing the caverns, generally taking care of each other. He still wanted to go home. He wanted his mushrooms, his gentle caverns and the softness of algae, the comfort of food and water and safety. But he wanted to know more about these goblins as well. He liked knowing things, he was quickly realizing, spurred by his ability to learn them at all. Knowledge was power and while he had his bulk, he wanted more. Would need more, if he was to continue surviving outside of the Growth. And Akkyst was smart enough to guess that going with the goblins, though he didn''t fully trust them yet, would probably get him more knowledge. He glanced up, at the sheltered alcove hidden above the battlefield, and the two flashing eyes within. The bladehawk needed to escape, to fly in freer pastures, but Akkyst certainly didn''t know a way out. Flying around in the endless caverns with the hope that you''d eventually stumble onto the outside was just begging to be eaten by all manner of nasty things. They needed to stay together until they knew it was safe to move on. And for the jaguar. Akkyst turned, shuffling his bulk to the side and looking back; hidden under the shadow he''d laid on her, still twitching from the lightning coursing through her veins, she was still. But her eyes, impossibly vivid gold even against the dusty grey-green of her fur, locked onto him as he turned. Paralyzed but still very much aware. He knelt, awkwardly grabbing her side with one massive paw and dragging her onto his back; she slumped there, her long tail with its feather-like growth on the tip just beginning to twitch, but stable. Akkyst stood and cast his gaze up, making the odd, almost chirping sound he''d picked up from their times walking patrols. The bladehawk did trust him, but he did receive a rather cautious squawk back. He chirped again. With a flutter, he spread his four wings and swooped down from on high, his metallic wings catching in the mana''s glow; goblins blinked and watched him soar past with a strange mixture of curiosity and awe. Made sense, if Akkyst had to guess. It wasn''t like he was a native. The bladehawk landed on his hunched shoulders, curling his wings tightly to his sides. His black eyes swept over the assembled goblins with a cautious air, but he knew his wings could bear him away faster than their mana could work. The jaguar stayed sprawled over his back, but she''d start to wake up soon. Either the paralysis or by the goblins healing her. Bylk looked at him, one eyebrow raised. "Ready to head out, eh? Off to whatever caverns you came from?" Akkyst knew a few movements that translated his lack of speaking abilities. He shook his head. Both of Bylk''s eyebrows shot up. "Oh. Oh?" He squared up his walk, careful to keep both creatures stable on his back, and swung his head towards the entrance the goblins had come from. Wherever they''d head back, he''d follow. It was time he figured out this mountain mess. And maybe they would know the way back to the Growth, because he certainly didn''t. - She was the smallest, but she was fierce, and she did not bow to those around her. Her carapace was thin and flexible, still hardening after her birth, and she used that to weave around her opponents, her jagged, grasping claws snapping out at flies and beetles alike; most of the time she bounced off their monstrous carapaces but it was enough to turn them away, to direct their gaze elsewhere so she could slip away. She learned about herself, in this fight. She was a creature built for stealth and sneaking, for tricking her prey closer and feasting on their corpse, but that did not mean she was weak. The other creatures expected her to be weak like her siblings, who stayed in the corners and struck out only when struck, and thus they paid no attention to her. Enormous beetles with their round-shell backs, larvae dragging themselves out of water with their many-faceted eyes glinting in the dark, flies and moths flitting overhead with cautious, spinning circles. Lancers stayed around the edge of the pillar, fending off others instead of striking for home. Tanks rumbled through the midst of the battle, ignoring all attacks in their slow and endless charge. Biters swarmed overhead, searching for an opening the others would never provide. But she was small. Still the pale grey of her youngling carapace, still small and unhardened, but quick. Clever. More focused on the underlings of the things surrounding her. So she charged, her grasping claws snatching up foes and slicing off limb and head, scuttling through the cracks in combat and skulking against the side, letting her grey carapace hide her against the stone. Until finally, she snuck underneath a final dragonfly''s corpse and emerged on the top of the pillar. Other bugs saw her then, of course. It was hard to pretend to be small and weak and young and foolhardy when she stood upon the prize of victory. But they could not stop her, and she saw that little pool of mana, of potential. And she drank deeply of that mana, of the pure power, and felt light explode through her. Chapter 47 - Open Flying That was a welcome break from the digging. Back in the gladiatorial ring on the first floor, the first bug had struggled and clawed her way through the pool of violence, using her still-flexible carapace to slither and snake through the combatants. Then she''d managed to get to the top to claim her sip of the mana, which of course she did so immediately, and had promptly been consumed in the deep, glowing light of evolution. I threw several protective strands of mana around her, helping to guide her off the platform in her last few steps before the light consumed her so the other bugs wouldn''t kill her. A minute passed. Two. A message finally crawled across my awareness as she collapsed in a lump of pale light in one corner of the first floor.
Your creature, a Praying Mantis, is undergoing evolution! Please select your desired path. Hunting Mantis (Common): Born and raised in violence, this creature ventures forth with a deep desire to prove itself better than its brethren, using its massive claws and camouflage to strike unwary foes.
I waited patiently. Nothing changed. Well. Certainly a lot of potential paths, all one that was offered to me. I angled a glare at the mantis like it was her fault. I thought I understood, though. For humanoid races, they started at Unranked, then had to grow strong enough to be called Bronze; creatures didn''t work exactly the same way, needing to go through evolutions to reach further levels until they eventually reached the fabled peak of five evolutions to achieve what was pretty close to perfection, but they didn''t necessarily start at Unranked. Seros as an underground monitor had been Unranked, but with his evolution to seabound monitor he''d grown past that; same for the path from luminous constrictor to horned serpent or silverhead to armourback sturgeon, but that wasn''t always the case. Bugs in particular had a nasty habit of being Underranked, well below something that anyone with even a speck of mana would have trouble defeating. They had to evolve up to Unranked, where they could actually start their evolution journey. So I guessed that the pipeline from praying mantis went almost always to hunting mantis. At least it validated my previous plan of just ignoring the bugs beyond as a food source. Even the gods were telling me they were useless. With the bountiful options offered to me, I selected hunting mantis. She curled up in the little den she''d tucked away into, lesser wings wrapping around her body as she lost her outer edges under the glow. Judging by my previous history with smaller evolutions, namely the lacecap mushroom, I hoped she''d finish evolving soon. Mainly because I needed a distraction from the digging. Gods, as much as I loved designing and building new floors, it was a right pain to have to actually dig the bloody thing. And it wasn''t like I could scrounge on size, given as this would be the flying floor with all manners of room to flit around and about. Truly hell to dig. All my floors were behaving as perfectly normal, all my creatures were either resting, fighting, or dying as perfectly normal, and my entrances were quiet and dark as perfectly normal. Even Nicau hadn''t woken up yet, the lump on his head a shiny, taut red. So yeah. I''d welcome the distraction. - Which I received. Turned out that the mantis had been a sort of motivator¡ªtwo more species of bug managed to clamber past their fellows, three of one species of caterpillar that had been working together, using their strange, fuzzy antenna to somewhat hypnotize other bugs into letting them pass through or be tempted closer into a convenient charge from a lancer-style bug. The other was a massive, lumbering lump of a bug who seemed to peacefully ignore every attack laid over its back, occasionally curling up into a ball whenever something too fierce targeted it. But all of them struggled and strove their way to the top and claimed their own sips of the mana. I then did my helpful overseer thing of guiding them away from the writhing mass of bugs for their evolutions. So kind I was, really. I greedily dug into the messages.
Your creature, an Eye-Spot Butterfly, is undergoing evolution! Please select your desired path. Eyeblight Butterfly (Uncommon): Using the wide, eye-like spots over its body, it hypnotizes creatures around it, either chasing predators away or luring prey closer for it to feast on their blood.
Your creature, a Pill Bug, is undergoing evolution! Please select your desired path. Platemail Bug (Common): It grows ever in size and fears nothing. With its highly sensitive antenna, it meanders around scavenging for dead plants or bodies, hiding under its massive armour and surprising quick feet.
Stolen novel; please report. Huh. I''d still been holding out hope that I would get more options, but it looked like for Underranked creatures, there were only a few paths they could walk until they unlocked their hidden potential. Fine, I guess. Didn''t mean I wanted that. Although these options were very interesting. The butterfly¡ªalthough still technically a caterpillar for the moment¡ªwas another flying danger, perfect for my fifth floor, with more of the hypnotic or psionic powers I was rather intrigued at the potential of. Feasting on their blood, as well; a companion for my vampiric mangroves. I would be bringing those trees down to later floors eventually. And the platemail bug; a familiar concept, like the armourback sturgeon. Maybe most tanks had similar basic forms, then their further evolutions would refine them further. That was my hope for Seros, at least. I imagined large, lumbering boulders¡ªalthough more bug-shaped¡ªtrodding through the fourth floor, impossible barriers to fight around while something snuck up behind, and perhaps for the younglings, tripping hazards in the dark. I didn''t know how intense their armour would be, but I was hoping for a lot. Maybe Rihsu could enjoy fighting them. She had currently taken to beating the fresh shit out of the ironback toads whenever the opportunity presented itself, though not killing them. Just testing her own skills, I guessed. The toads certainly didn''t appreciate it. Of all my creatures, she was taking the most direct approach to training; Seros hunted constantly but he spent the other part of his time guarding me, wrapped around my pillar and staring out at the surrounding darkness. The horned serpent kept exploring the fourth floor, staking out her territory, but most of her training was in the form of summoning lesser serpents to her side. Only Rihsu tended to constantly seek physical fights. A reason she was a kobold warrior, it seemed. Proud of her. I wavered there for far too long before morosely plodding back to my digging. The distractions had ended, it seemed. Progress had definitely been made, though. I''d finished carving out the main chamber, over five thousand feet in diameter and using every scrap of my mana to carve; and then plenty on top of that, as I went around the edges and inlaid the limestone with great veins of iron ore just to hold everything together. Even with the few pillars dotted over the place, I could see a situation with an earth-attuned mage just so happening to collapse the entire cavern. Wasn''t hoping for that, surprisingly enough. So pillars and iron ore veins. Hopefully that would hold everything together. Maybe I could reverse engineer an earthen elemental from my cloudskipper wisp, just to make doubly sure. I would be livid if all my hard work went undone. But now that I had finished the overall room, I could finally start doing the actual design; I spent a while shaping out the rough outline, redrafting it enough times that even the bugs living in the walls must have gotten bored, but now I was ready to begin. And what a floor it would be. Massive and jagged, looming overhead with stalactites and hollows galore, I spent an indescribable amount of time digging through the schema of the greater pigeon, baterwaul, and now eyeblight butterfly in order to understand what would make for a perfect nest for them all, then recreating it up on the walls. For the pigeons, I bored at the limestone until the iron veins were exposed, poking out. I took inspiration from the stone forest I''d shaped at the center of my sprawling Jungle Labyrinth and made them like branches, hugging tight to the walls but with enough room for them to build nests along the roosts. The bats I carved thin lines over the ceiling, the butterflies I added impossibly thin iron "leaves" to the branches, ridged for them to sleep on. From a distance, it was absolutely stunning. Silver-grey limestone took up the majority, as with my other floors, but snaking over the surface was deep, rust-red veins, poking through the limestone only to wriggle back underneath until nothing was exposed. Great faux bushes of leaves and vines clumped on walls, pitch black hollows between, stalactites glittering with crystalline jewels and golden ore. A myriad of treasures, forever out of reach, barely visible in the far corners of the chamber. And that was just the outside. For the entrance, I had the narrow tunnel widen out from its ten foot diameter, the thornwhip algae begrudgingly stopping its spreading tendrils and staying on the fourth floor. Maybe later. But it dropped for a few dozen feet, plenty of stable stone between floors to chase away fear of a collapse, before opening on one side of the newest addition to my halls. Fifth floor. Kind of a milestone, really. Once they left the tunnel, they emerged onto a ragged platform, sloping gently down to a fall several hundred feet below. No reason to make it easy. The landing extended a few hundred feet out in a rough half circle, the largest area of open land on the floor; I wanted something as a sort of introduction for my creatures, a place of not-quite rest and respite for them to meet as one large group and head forth. As well as plenty of room for an assault to keep invaders from managing to leave. Because I was still very allergic to that idea. But stretching on from there were a dozen¡­ islands, for lack of a better word; massive pillars that extended upwards to expand out like mushroom caps, floating columns of stone dotting the endless expanse; they ranged from only twenty feet in diameter to almost two hundred for the largest in the center, all curved and sloping with no place for easy footing. I did keep them roughly flat, no raised beds or structures, just basic ledges all funneling people off the edges and various small clumps of stone for smaller creatures to hide beneath. Floating oases, if oases came with curved slopes and jagged rocks and all manners of various creatures I would only be too happy to put there. Then, stretching between those islands, I layered great stone bridges. None were connected to the ground below but merely rooted to the island columns next to them, making them temporarily stable but certainly not structurally sound. That was a very notable advantage of being a dungeon architect, rather than a dwarven delver or elven carver. I didn''t have to worry about making the bridge strong enough to last a lifetime. I could recreate it anytime I needed to. So it might be a strategy for my creatures to destroy the bridges to keep away invaders. So a dozen islands with narrow, maybe five feet wide, bridges stretching between them; there wasn''t one straight path, but about three branching routes, all the islands connecting to each other with multiple bridges extending off of each. It practically burned with potential for someone to slip on my sloped surfaces, tumbling hundreds of feet below. I didn''t quite know what to do with the floor yet, so it was just rough rock, flat with no way back up to the islands above. The fall would be enough for now until I came up with an idea. But above¡­ The islands towered, impossible and beautiful, with bridges extending like spiderwebs between; and even beyond that, lit up by the layers of algae-light and quartz-light I''d studded liberally over the room¡ªmy flying things needed copious amounts of light, so unfortunately so too would invaders receive it¡ªand glowing with all manners of precious minerals I''d placed around, open air ruled. Beautiful, glorious open air, the kind where I could envision bright skies and pale clouds overhead, with the rich scent of fresh air and distant lands. Only the blue of the sky above and the blue of the ocean below, flying, flying forever. Oh. It''d been a while. The Underlake had given me a taste of it, a reminder of my elder days when I dove through water and currents and waves. But I had been limited by size, caged in by my growing fear of the invaders, and it had been freshwater, no matter if it was brackish now. But this. This was freedom, the wide skies and the impossible heights, the swoops and the thermals and the gliders. Gods, I missed flying. Missed it more than just being a dragon, more than my old life; I missed flight. I couldn''t help but remember that I could see through my Named creature''s eyes. Nicau would serve as a spy, once he woke up. I had demeaned him at first, but perhaps the greater pigeon wasn''t a useless gift. Perhaps I did need another spy. A thought for another day. I returned to my digging with thoughts full of flying. Chapter 48 - Centuries Unspoiled Huh. So. It''d been, what, two floors? Three? Long enough that I''d gotten past my annoyed stage and frankly forgotten about the possibility. But of course right as I was digging out the literal final spot of my cavern, a little niche in the wall where the tunnel to my core room would be, that I finally ran into something that wasn''t my standard limestone and mineral fare. A fossil. It was a twisted thing, bound up and jostled like it''d suplexed into the ground, but undeniably bone. I tore into its surrounding limestones to expose it fully, practically purring with glee at every new sliver of white exposed¡ªfinally. I''d found fossils before in my digs, but they had been small things, bare crumbs scattered around by general erosion or the shifting of the mountain; not enough for my Resurrector title to properly work. Same issue with stupid invaders only wearing the skin of an animal, not even a scrap of bone or flesh as well for me to compile together. All powerful I was not, apparently. Infuriating. But this one¡­ deliciously complete. A whole skull fell gently onto a bed of algae I''d woven into existence as I dug it out of the wall, easily ten feet long and riddled with fangs. A spine slithered out next, ridged with dorsal spines, clawed skeletal feet clattering down too; plenty for me to shape. It was a beast, though shrunk and twisted by age. Perhaps thirty, maybe forty feet long with an overwhelming number of them going to the head, long and twisting like a lizard. A triangular skull with wide, snapping jaws and a tail snaking down to a jagged tip. Not a creature I could remember having heard about, but one that I certainly knew of its descendants. A crocodile. I could have purred. For my last fossil, I''d had to design a floor around the mangroves, perfecting somewhere for them to survive. An aquatic reptilian monster, however, would fit beautifully onto several of my current floors. ¡­would Seros get jealous? Hm. I know I certainly would be in his position. No matter. I brushed across my Named creature''s mind, settling a gentle suggestion to watch over my floors; he stirred with a lazy yawn but unwrapped from around my core''s pillar, meandering through the labyrinth to head up to the higher floors. There wasn''t enough going on in the fourth floor beyond the scheming little rats and their jewels and the horned serpent to keep watch there. The second and third floors were far more busy. But hopefully his guard would be a moot point. If my Resurrector title didn''t reduce the time to reawaken a fossil from the bloody three days it''d taken me last time, I would scream. I reached out and shifted the skeleton back to a rough approximation to how it had probably looked while alive, stretching out its spine and legs, having to really strain my creativity in order to make the stone move in a way that wouldn''t damage but just move it. My floors had been busy, constant cycles of death and predation, mostly from those within and the constant stream of fools hungry for mana that clambered within my halls. Nothing too new yet, although there''d been a half dozen fish species that hadn''t yet tested the new paths the cloudskipper wisp ran over the Underlake, creating a suction to keep them from freely fleeing back out the entrance. None of them looked too interesting, but I''d always welcome new species. Which. Back on track. I glanced at my core.
Dragonheart Core
Mana: 38.4 / 75 Mana Regeneration: +0.9 per hour
Patrons: Rhoborh
Titles: Resurrector
I was still tickled very pink by seeing both Resurrector and Rhoborh in my heart. I''d come very far from a collection of mushrooms and spiders I''d started as. But thirty-eight was plenty of mana to try and rebirth this monster. I gathered all but five points, just as a fall back, and let them loose in great billowing clouds; around me, little spores of algae exploded in growth and the stone trembled as extra tendrils of raw power burst through them, but the vast majority surrounded those pale bones. I dissolved just the barest tip of a fang and knowledge surged through me, ancient memories of strange trees and unfamiliar coasts, back when these mountains had been just an ocean shoreline, back when the world was green and new; but I''d done this before. The schema I was collecting was just shaping more fossils. Not the creature. So I gritted my metaphorical teeth and poured mana in. The bones writhed, greedily drinking the Otherworld power but refusing to change; stubborn bastards. I redoubled my mana, surrounding them, infusing them, pounding into their stupid little heads that I was very much interested in reviving them and I would not be accepting no as an answer¨C With a deep, booming crack, the calcium shattered. Fresh marrow bloomed over its strangled remains, leathery green-grey skin shaped in pebbled scales stretching taut between, massive muscles blooming underneath. Uh. Actually way more muscle than I''d thought. When I''d just seen its skeleton, I''d imagined it with a rather Seros-esque build, slender and agile. Still strong, but with a whip-thin tail and a more lanky build. Perfect for quick turns and maneuverability in water. This thing was built like a tank. Thirty-five feet long and maybe five wide, squat and lumbering, with a tail that looked more akin to a battering ram than anything that should be attached to a living creature. Everything covered in spikes, scales like platemail, fangs bristling even out of its closed mouth like a sheath full of knives. After a fantastic thirty points of mana had drained from my grasp, the monster awoke on the land that had not seen it in centuries. Gods. I was fully intangible and even I held my breath around this thing.
Sarco Crocodile (Exotic) In ages old and past, it hunted beasts many times its size to sustain its own growth. Its enormous fangs and mana-attuned bulla were too efficient, however, and it culled its prey to extinction and so passed itself. But once more it has been unleashed. The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
I watched it for another stunned second. Goodness. I''d gotten quite used to Seros being the largest thing in my halls, although technically the horned serpent beat him in length, but he was utterly dwarfed by this beast. Its description didn''t speak much to any overall specialization, which presumably meant that even though I was pretty sure this was an evolution, it still had further paths it could walk down. This thing could evolve even more into a predator. Yeah. I''d accept the long breaks between fossils if they kept giving me things like this. I tore through the information in its schema¡ªits bulla, a large, misshapen lump on the tip of its snout, functioned as a sort of tracking device, following trails of mana in the air to lead it to its prey. Its tail was both for swimming and battering opponents, claws webbed for aquatic maneuverability. It hunted by grabbing hold of its prey and ripping their limbs off for them to bleed out. The spines over its back were just for aesthetics, I guessed, because there wasn''t a bloody chance that something would get the opportunity to attack it. It blinked its slitted green eyes and looked at its surroundings. I felt a momentary flash of panic that its first sight would be an unfinished floor, only empty limestone and rough walls, before remembering that I wasn''t exactly looking for its approval. I was the master here. Still, I very gently reached into its mind to see what it thought. Unfortunately, it looked like I hadn''t technically revived it; as with all of my creatures, they were born anew by me crafting a new soul from Otherworld mana. So I didn''t get any memories of the old world from it. But I did get plenty of instincts. It seemed a bit confused by its stony surroundings, the back of its brain looking for the marshy soil and coastal banks it knew it was supposed to be around, but it didn''t seem displeased. He didn''t seem displeased, actually. His thoughts were ponderous, flexing his tail and shifting as if he''d forgotten how to move; which I supposed he had. This was his first time being alive. Sort of? The intricacies of my Resurrector title confused me at times. But a new monster was mine, and I had other things to focus on. I pushed a vague map into his mind, a sort of guiding path up to the Underlake; I doubt he''d be happy in the dry, stony crags of the fifth floor nor the humid greenery of the fourth. He was an aquatic beast, and it would be a fair while until I would start on the sixth floor. He shook his enormous head hard enough that dust flew off the stone under his feet, his ten foot tail swishing like a felled tree. For such a massive bulk, he moved surprisingly quickly, lumbering over the careful little bridges towards the entrance on the other side. I flew underneath him, strengthening the stone as he passed over; the limestone creaked and groaned under his weight but begrudgingly held. Gods. The thought of creating such a beast and then losing him to a trap I''d created was a particular sort of embarrassing. I threaded a few more iron ore strands through the bridges. He clawed his way up the sloped tunnel, shredding holes through the stone, and poked his snout into the fourth floor; immediately the humid air seemed to appeal to him, making a not-quite purring sound as he dragged himself up the final ledge. His thoughts were still coming around to the concept of being alive but he seemed at least decently intelligent, though mostly driven by hunger. Not insipid, though not necessarily the chatting partner I''d come to find with Seros. ¡­would Naming him improve his mental capabilities? It''d certainly done so for Seros. I shook my points of awareness. Focus, fool. I''d created the sacro crocodile a whole ten minutes ago. Not exactly the time to think about Naming. He clambered through the thornwhip algae, shrugging off its grasping hits with nary a thought; he had investigated it at first, though, with a keen-eyed paranoia I imagined was born from the time he''d come from. I certainly thought he was a beast, but his schema had spoken of hunting creatures even larger than him; perhaps the old world had been far more dangerous and he hadn''t been considered an apex threat. Terrifying thought, really. I was fine with the prey I had hunted when I was a dragon instead of these old monsters. It took him a second to follow my guiding nudge through the labyrinth, lumbering through the endless identical corridors. His green-grey scales blended perfectly with the darkness and only his size made him visible, the glowing spores of the algae glinting off his slitted eyes. My poor rat, the first and strongest of her kind with her jadestone jewel clutched tight in her little ratty hand, turned a corner and promptly froze. The vague powers she''d been building, something about stopping the algae from attacking her so she could walk freely through the halls, tried to twitch to life. His bulla shone with an inner power, sensing her mana, and he shifted his fanged head in her direction. She squeaked, dropped to all fours, and fled. Fitting. He made his way through the rest of the tunnels and once more clambered up my sloping tunnels, clawing a bit futilely to drag his enormous bulk up the stone. It seemed like he would be a rather stationary threat, finding one area and sticking to it; changing floors seemed to be too difficult for him, and that was without the potential evolutions I was hoping he would have. Fingers crossed and all that. But finally he emerged into the tunnel overhead, water stretching before him, and I felt surprise flicker over his thoughts, quickly replaced by joy. He made another low, crooning hiss and surged forward, dragging his bulk into the water with a crash. In the Underlake, his potential was even more revealed; while he''d been faster than I''d expected on land, he certainly hadn''t been fast, but now his enormous tail could actually help and his webbed claws could drag him forward. He poked his snout above the water, taking a breath so large his chest swelled, and dipped below to explore. Everything fled before him. The electric eels and their entourages suddenly found better things to do in the corners of the room, silverheads and silvertooths schooling off to hidden shadows, the silver krait disappearing into the bloodline kelp forest. Crabs and sturgeons alike were rather difficult to be found, and even the always-starving sharks decided to find easier prey. The Underlake acknowledged its new ruler. With the notable exception of Seros, who had been doing his surveying rounds and promptly came face to face with this terribly rude intruder. The sarcro crocodile''s fangs glinted in the algae-light. I took a moment to compare them; they could have been brothers, but with the notable difference of a few centuries of evolution. The same long tail, the same pebbled scales, the same hooded eyes and dorsal spines. Not much past that, though. And though Seros was far more beautiful in my unbiased opinion, the sarco was easily twice his length and three times the bulk. I pressed my influence hard into both of their minds, calming down the quickly-building desire for a fight. The sarco hissed, bubbles spiraling out of his snout, but begrudgingly turned away to continue exploring. Seros flashed his fangs at his retreating back. That could be a problem moving forward. What do you think? I asked him, half out of curiosity and half out of amusement. The violent string of lizard-y cursing I received satisfied that little moment. Fair enough. He narrowed his eyes in my general direction and flounced back off to the fourth floor. I left the sarco to his exploration, taking a moment to admire the looming shadow he cast over the ground from the algae-light above. Only a little bit of the floor would need to be changed to fit him; the breath he''d taken had been proof enough. Still working with lungs instead of gills. Previously, I''d just had the tunnel to the fourth floor slope upwards and onward to keep the water from flooding my other floors, but from what I knew of at least modern crocodiles, they did prefer resting on land. So I dug my feelers into the tunnel and widened it, dissolving my previous core room below to make room for a wide, swooping platform; still less than fifty feet in diameter, but plenty of room for my glorious little crocodile. Little being a relative word. I created a little sky of algae-lights above for him to sun himself with, but let it be with that. I didn''t want to baby him too much. The floor was already built for him. He certainly felt like he completed the space; the roughwater sharks were violent and deadly, but they weren''t quite powerful enough to be the apex predator. The Drowned Forest had the kobolds as numerous, intelligent¡ªsomewhat¡ªthreats, and the unfinished Fungal Gardens had their cave bears, but the Underlake needed a singular, immensely powerful boss. Something that I don''t think anyone could argue the sarco crocodile didn''t fill. Maybe a few smaller fish, a handful more silver kraits, but then the Underlake would be finished as well. My musing was broken off by a message from above, the kobold chieftess peering curiously into the little den I''d carved into the back of her home; a room where a thin, gangly boy was now stirring. Nicau was awake. Chapter 49 - Communer Nicau awoke with the vague sort of realization that he hadn''t expected to wake up. So already, things were looking up for him. He blinked up at the cragged stone above him, a dark mess of shadows except for a strange, vaguely green light coming from somewhere he couldn''t see yet. Something soft was below him, though wet. His head hurt. But he wasn''t dead. Maybe? He didn''t know what happened in the afterlife. Maybe everyone who died just appeared in a dirty cave. He stiffened. There was a certain cave he was thinking of that seemed more likely. Nicau closed his eyes, tugging on that bare power he had; it came awkwardly at his call, stiff and unwieldy from unuse. But still he managed to wrangle it, searching for trails of mana and power¨C And immediately had to shut it off as his mana-sense screamed. Yeah. There was magic here. He winced, sitting up; it was a small room, walls rough and cramped, made of a pale grey stone he remembered from the Al¨®mbra Mountains, though more¡­ silver? than what he was used to. Common green algae was below him but glowing, and water trickled down the rock on the wall opposite. And ever so faintly, in the back of his mind where his mana-sense was still reeling from the power it''d beheld, there was the barest scent of dragon. Dungeon. The same one he''d begged for life from, and apparently got, but in his mind he''d had a bit more of a thought that not being killed also meant being let out. Looked like that was not the case. But if it had wanted to kill him, it would have done so already, and he stood up from his algae bed with a bit of hope from the idea. And immediately came face to face with a lizard. He squawked and fell back, back pressing against the stone; the monster poked its head through a crack he hadn''t noticed before, golden eyes bright. It had speckled red scales, horns curling over its head, muzzle lined with fangs. Maybe a bit taller than him, bipedal but hunched over, claws clutching a deep scarlet spear tipped in bone. A kobold. Before, he''d only seen them as heads and horns sold as trophies, but now he''d seen them fight. And as easily as Aloma had been defeating them, she was Silver ranked. Nicau certainly wasn''t. He was fucked. Fantastic. Not an ounce of combat magic in him and certainly no physical prowess, but maybe the kobold couldn''t recognize that. Maybe. Nicau raised his fists, still pressing his back to the wall. The kobold blinked at him again, forked tongue flicking out, but didn''t enter the room. Its slitted eyes were almost¡­ curious? Nicau''s heart was pounding so hard it physically hurt, but he couldn''t help but be curious too. The dungeon had taken his pigeon and presumably killed Aloma, but left him alive, tucked away in this little cavern. He could recognize the blood-red wood of the kobold''s spear as the same mangrove trees from the second floor, the same golden eyes as the other kobolds, though they''d had different coloured scales. So. Still within the dungeon. "Hello?" He tried. Never hurt to be polite. The kobold made an odd hissing sound, tilting its head to the side. Then it promptly decided he wasn''t a threat and squeezed its way past the crack in the wall, setting its spear down. Its tail swished curiously as it padded towards him without fear. Nicau certainly had a lot of fear but it wasn''t like there was anywhere he could run to; he settled for bracing his arms over his face and whimpering. But the kobold didn''t attack, instead bending its digitigrade legs and narrowing its eyes at his chest¡ªhis clothes. It seemed confused, reaching out to almost hesitantly run its claws over the rags. Nicau could feel its cold touch through the thin fabric. It looked up at him and warbled. "Uh." He grappled for an appropriate response. "My clothes?" The kobold blinked again, hissing something that could have potentially been an attempt at mimicking him, and poked the fabric again. ¡­it reminded him of the other streetrats. A strange comparison that came out of absolutely nowhere, but there was a sort of child-like innocence in its motions, curious about the world with a desire to learn. And though it was nightmarish and powerful and monstrous, it clearly had some form of intelligence. Did it want clothes? Did it know what they were for? Covered completely in overlapping scales like plate armour, it didn''t need them, but it seemed fascinated by the concept. What about something like the merrow, where they had decorative strips of fabric and jewels, not covering anything but merely to accent? Nicau remembered once more that he was trapped in a dungeon and whimpered again. The kobold stiffened, jerking away from him; its eyes slid to the ground, closing in a sort of worshipful awe. The spines running down its back twitched like a storm was racing over them. Then it shot back to attention, grabbed his wrist in a grip like iron, and tugged him out of the relative safety of his cave. He squawked, stumbling behind; it grabbed its spear with its free hand and maneuvered them both through the crack in the wall. Nicau held back a very sincere scream as he came face to face with an easy two dozen other kobolds, all watching him with wide golden eyes, all crowding around like he was a Mythril ranked hero. They were in an even wilder cavern, filled with little hollows carved into the walls with algae beds, fresh water dripping off stalactites and pooling in gentle ponds for drinking, kobolds sitting in clumps and carving slivers of bone or preparing corpses for he guessed eating. A society. Then he was dragged further on. They emerged back out onto the second floor, the mangroves rustling quietly with their bone-white leaves, the canals rumbling beyond, moss billowing and small things scampering between. A paradise, really, or at least he certainly would have thought so if he didn''t know the truth. He also probably wouldn''t have thought it was a paradise if the massive snake was present. It was easily twenty feet long, covered in mottled grey-black scales with no visible pattern. Pure white eyes, slitted pupils mere pinpricks, fangs like daggers. And atop its raised head, two massive horns spiraled out, ghostly and crystalline. Sitting outside open-air taverns in Calarata and listening to adventurers brag about their travels had been enough to hear about threats like goblins and winterwolves. Certainly not anything like this beast. He lost a few inches as he shrunk in on himself. The snake hissed, flicking its tongue, and the kobold obediently let go of his arm and stepped back. He felt very alone. At least, up until a deep, rippling presence brushed against the outside of his mind. Something within him calmed down, immediately acknowledging the serpent before him as so much not a threat that it¡ªshe¡ªwas in fact a friend, and he could trust her. Really, she was both incredibly safe and so fascinating that he needed to go to her, to welcome her into his life, to bow before and serve her. Nicau stepped forward, raising his arms. She narrowed her eyes, something like frustration building up in her mental presence, and pulled back. The feeling snapped and he promptly took several steps back. The psionic attack stopped pulling on him but he still shuddered, chasing away any last lingering thoughts of trust and peace¡ªgods, why had he ever wanted to be an adventurer? This was hell. The serpent shook herself, a pale glow building through her antler-like crystals; her presence touched his mind again, but far less calm, more fluttering. Like she didn''t know fully what she was doing. This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it. A voice rumbled alongside his thoughts. Gift. Nicau blinked. There were a few key words missing in that particular sentence. Had the snake¡ªdungeon?¡ªaccepted his gift? Was there some gift for him? Some question? The serpent''s eyes narrowed further and he could feel the frustration rippling over their shared connection; and just for a second as she shifted closer, he could feel what she was doing. Her psionic mana served as a bridge, loose and untested, to a presence beyond her. Something dark, something looming. Something with that same faint hint of draconic power. Ah. He was talking to the dungeon. Subservience was probably the right angle here. Nicau bowed his head, arms awkwardly clasping behind his back. "I''m glad you liked it," he tried, keeping his eyes fixed on the ground. The serpent''s shadow bobbed against the green algae-light. "And thank you for sparing me." The presence in his mind lost just a touch of its frustration. In return, serve. Collect information. Creatures. Live here. Spy. There were a few other words in the mix well past his understanding. He could barely pick out the ones he had. The message was still, unfortunately, clear. He''d really hoped that the pigeon would be enough of a gift to cover the entire sparing-life thing, but it wasn''t looking like it. Serving as a dungeon''s spy, collecting more things for it to recreate, living inside it? Far and above from him to question the being that currently controlled an over twenty foot snake directly in front of him and an army of kobolds behind, but Nicau could pretty confidently say this was a one-sided deal. He shuffled his feet. "I, ah, would agree, o'' dungeon. But. Why me?" Her shadow swelled as she lowered her head, close enough he could feel her breath brush against his hair. He glanced up and saw the unfortunate picture of light glinting off the snake''s fangs. In return for your life. Be bound. Serve. The serpent''s horns glowed brighter, and he felt both her and the dungeon''s question echo as one. Not so much words, but merely a curiosity; what did he want out of the deal? It wasn''t a question of them actually offering anything. Nicau was pretty sure they knew he would accept, because to not would be death, and it certainly wasn''t them that needed to sweeten the pot at this offering. It would all be on him. But being bound¡­ he knew of deals like this. Often creatures, but sometimes people, being put under a dungeon''s command. For most, it was a willing thing, because being bound to a dungeon meant power. Meant gifts. The dungeon sensed that. Be soul-bound. Mana. Nicau couldn''t help his intake of breath. He heard Romei whisper, somewhere hidden within. Do you want to be worth something? And he did. He wanted it desperately. The trickle of mana-sensing power he had wasn''t enough, the potential of tricking endless pirates into a death trap just to take their place wasn''t enough. He wanted to live, but more than that, he wanted to be powerful. In any way he could. The normal routes were dead for him. If he left the dungeon without Aloma and without a map to the dungeon, Lluc would kill him. The Dread Crew''s First Mate had sent him in here to die, he knew that¡ªAloma had been there to witness what happened when the dungeon fed on someone killed within. Either by letting a monster do it or killing him herself; that had been why he''d been sent in alongside her. It certainly wasn''t because Lluc thought he could fight the beasts inside. It had just been a way to kill two birds with one stone; stop any knowledge of the dungeon from being spread without control, and figure out the dungeon''s abilities. Nicau had figured that out quickly enough. So his only option was within. He abandoned his position and dropped fully to both knees, bowing like he was before the High Lords of Le¨®ro. The stone was ice cold beneath him. "I accept, o'' mighty dungeon. I will serve you to the best of my ability for as long as I can." There was a moment of silence where his breath stuck in his throat and made his chest hurt, but then the serpent lowered her mighty head. The barest tip of her scales touched his forehead and he felt a spark, a single speck of mana jumping between them, and then the entirety of the crushing weight of the dungeon''s presence collapsed over his back. He gasped, crushed flat to the ground. Something raced through his channels and touched deep within his soul, mana kicking up and spiraling; everything in his body ached and hurt and trembled as something moved within, searching and gnawing and ripping at his innermost being. He saw his mother, reaching out to her newborn, his father, glancing down at his son, a nameless spirit, deep cavern walls, gods above without number. They all spoke as one. Nicau. - Well. I thought that went well. Nicau was, once more, completely conked out, sprawled bonelessly over a section of billowing moss with his eyes rolling into the back of his head. The horned serpent flicked her tongue, her psionic abilities slowly detangling from the sort of web she''d needed to wrap around his mind in order to let me communicate with him, though I could tell she was still very curious. Not about Nicau in general, but more about his thought process; what he had wanted in return for service. I imagined she''d make some headway on her little tyrant side goal she''d been working towards. But my thoughts were focused on Nicau. My newest Named creature. Yes, I''d Named him. Yes, I did regret it almost as soon as I did it. But that was the only way I knew that I could welcome him into my dungeon. Same as with Seros, I''d had to Name him in order to implant my mana within him, and while I''d been coming up with some strategies I''d been testing on bugs that I could sort of bleed them dry of their natural mana and quickly replace it with my own to make them a technical dungeonborn creature, Nicau was a sapient person. The exact thing that the gods protected my mana from. So. The Naming. Was I pleased about it? In part. Nicau, after a little threatening and reminder of his own mortality, certainly seemed like the groveling loyalist that would function well as an underling. The fact that he also had enough intelligence to actually be able to collect information for me, as well as a standard, boring human body that wouldn''t arouse suspicion if he went out gathering schemas, was another plus. And his Blessing was only another bonus.
Blessing of the Communer: all who speak shall be understood.
I wasn''t positive, but I was holding out hope that by speak, it meant sentient creatures. So perhaps not the squeaking of the lesser rats nor the chittering of bugs, but certainly the kobold''s warbles and Seros'' hisses. Not as useful as the Blessing of the Depths, which I knew we''d only unlocked part of with Seros'' hydrokinesis, but still very applicable for the scenario I wanted Nicau in. Although I couldn''t help but feel like it was a slight against me. The horned serpent had done her job, letting me settle in her mind and then connecting to Nicau''s, so it had been all my own incompetence in that communication. I had consumed dozens of souls who all knew the same language; I should have been able to talk freely with him. Instead I''d stuttered my way through the topic as he tried to parse through my words. Horrifically embarrassing. I''d be better by the time he awoke. But while I was certainly pleased by his potential, that didn''t mean I didn''t wish I could have Named someone else. The horned serpent was certainly working her way towards a Name, same for the little mage-rat; even the first wisp or the kobold chieftess. But instead I''d gone with Nicau, and now I had to wait. Because rather unfortunately, the downside of Naming something had come into effect again. I glanced back at my core.
Dragonheart Core
Mana: 13.2 / 75 Mana Regeneration: +0.6 per hour
Patrons: Rhoborh, God of Symbiosis
Titles: Resurrector
Just like Seros had, this greedy bastard was taking my precious Otherworld mana. Roughly a third of a point an hour, gone. Disappeared. Beyond my control. It was less disastrous than it had been with Seros, given as I hadn''t had four floors all generating me their own supply at a very constant rate, but this would still be irritating. There was a lot I could do with those points, stuff that Nicau certainly couldn''t. Come to think of it, what was he even doing with that mana? From the blast of thoughts and information I''d gotten from him, his only skill was sensing and following mana trails, certainly not enough for how much he was taking. And his new Blessing wasn''t exactly the type to use a lot of mana. And the same for Seros¡ªgiven by how often he took great pride in hunting down roughwater sharks, he wasn''t even using the mana as sustenance. Little bastard was just feeding on me. Nothing had changed when he''d evolved from underground monitor to seabound monitor, but I had a very sneaking suspicion that when he evolved again, he''d start taking more than a third of a point. So. If my next evolution could come quickly so I could replenish my mana regeneration, it would be much appreciated. It would be up to Nicau to prove his worth past the disadvantage he''d so generously given me. But I would leave all those questions for later days, when Nicau woke up from his newest nap. For now, I needed to keep focusing on my fifth floor; it was so close to being fully carved, where I could finally start placing various plants and creatures around, but I wanted a second look. And who better than my first Named being? The Named being that was currently getting his ass kicked by the sarco crocodile. Fantastic. Chapter 50 - Reflections He flew through the forest. Over one branch, around another¡ªhe had no need of webs but his silk still carried him to where he needed to go. Avoid a thorn, twist around a branch, skitter under a stalactite. Faster, faster. In the Drowned Forest, nothing was faster than the jeweled jumper. They had no time to run away but he knew they feared him, those furry scavengers and scaled beasts; all slow and lumbering, unable to even recognize him as his shadow flittered overhead. He wasn''t looking to pick a fight today, having already drained a rat down to desiccated husk, but he would never reject an opportunity to prove his superiority. For he was. Though he took care to avoid the more active of the trees, those with treacherous leaves disguising pale bodies. He should have felt a kinship with them, their matching eight legs and eyes, but he didn''t. They were slow, stationary, simple. They didn''t understand the desire to move. But he avoided their nests. It would be a fool''s death, to die in their webs. If any death were to befall him, it would be one in battle. And so he patrolled his territory ever on, skittering over stone and branch alike as he raced from one edge to the other. His unenlightened brethren learned not to build nests on his paths, learned to avoid his brilliant red carapace. He punished those who didn''t. The other creatures stayed to their terrestrial world, stuck on the ground, slow and ponderous. Never free, never yearning. He lashed a line under an undershelf and darted around, gaze snapping to any motion around him. The twitch of a retreating spider, the shift of algae blown by wind, the flickering tongue of a rising serpent, the¨C The flash of red. He stopped. Not once had he seen another jeweled jumper. If the voiceless thing that had built him dared to build another, he would not hesitate to consume it whole. So this was a challenge. He stabbed his hooked legs into the tendrils of algae and reared, mandibles flashing and grappling at the air¡ªdistract them with an outer charge, drop on a line of silk, spin around the side, tuck underneath the rock outcropping, curl around, lunge forward and sink his beautiful fangs into their false body¨C He was halfway through with his plan when he realized that his target wasn''t attacking back. It seemed like quite a terrible spider, really. No legs, no eyes, not even a pair of mandibles. All it had was its deep red carapace. And even then it was strange and like water, letting him through to its insides, which were just more sharp lines and angles. Not a jeweled jumper in the slightest. ¡­it wasn''t moving. He scuttled forward, jabbing it hesitantly with one claw. It stayed still. It hardly seemed to be aware of his presence. Even more of an idiot than he''d thought, then. It seemed at least somewhat able to protect itself, its carapace jagged and sharp. Rock-like, almost. But he''d only seen this colour red on himself, so therefore it must be a creature. But what a stupid creature. He tried not to critique the voiceless being that had made him, if just to avoid them overhearing him, but he quite thought this was one of their worst creations. Even the lizard-beast with its only four legs was better than this. It didn''t have a single way to move. But he was curious. It was a new emotion, one he''d only gotten recently; it had taken time for him to think of things other than the hunt. First he''d started expanding his territory to new places just to see them, then he''d taken breaks from his patrols to explore around his area, then he''d even ventured back up to his hatchling floor to remember what it looked like. He could feel the mana he consumed expanding within him. But that curiosity matched his other recent emotion. Boredom. Everything in the forest feared him, ran from his presence, and so they avoided him. Even the larger things, those that could reach his fragile body, fled. The only things he fought were those too young or too stupid not to know to avoid him. He wanted a challenge. If there were new creatures like this, slow and motionless and terrible as it was, then surely there were new threats. Maybe something as fast as him. Maybe something faster. The idea was beyond insulting. This couldn''t be allowed to stand. He scuttled to one of the hidden entrances with renewed haste. Perhaps it was time to delve deeper. - The silver krait poked his head above the water in one of the many air pockets around the floor and inhaled hard enough it hurt. Longer, this time. But as always, eventually he had to come up for air. It wasn''t fair¡ªevery other creature he saw could stay beneath the waves without fear, sleeping peacefully beneath the waves until they woke for their next hunt. He could swim through the kelp and tunnels alongside them, but without fail, soon he would have to surface to breath. The mighty Seros, when he had changed, could now breath without need of air, traveling freely on both land and sea. And yes, while it was Seros, greatest being in these halls, the silver krait couldn''t help but feel like he''d gotten the shorter end of the stick. Why did he still have to breathe air? He still remembered what evolution felt like; the raw mana from helping to kill the fish-person exploding through him, reigniting every channel and firing them to new peaks. He''d felt strength. He''d woken up in a new body, having to figure it out once again. But that joy had now faded, and no longer did the silver of his scales and the bite of his venom excite him. Slow and ungainly before, unable to swim properly and barely able to hold his breath; but now that he was able to do those things, he was once again limited. All he could see were those looming shadows of the beasts surrounding him. The arrival of the floor''s newest threat was teaching him, however. The crocodile, scourge of the waters, predator of all but mighty Seros; it lounged through the waters with neither fear nor worry. He knew it still breathed air, judging by its resting place up on the tunnel wall, but even that weakness wasn''t enough to outplay its size. Because it was massive. The silver krait was barely a third of its length and not even on the scale for its weight. He could curl up peacefully within its mouth without touching a single of its enormous fangs. And with that size, it had power. The sharks couldn''t touch it, the crabs bounced off its scales, the fish fled from its grasping jaws. It commanded a presence through the halls and damn well knew it, throwing its weight around with the simple reasoning that it could. For the crocodile, it didn''t have to fight to be strong. It just was, in the same way he had woken up in a new body; it was a fact of these strange halls. But if he wanted to be strong, he would have to work for it. Well. He was doing his best to resist it, but there was another option. Deep below, in the floors too dry for him to want to live in, something sang a siren''s call; he remembered her from back on the second floor, with her crystalline horns and vivid white eyes, but she had never tried to hunt him. He''d seen what her powers did, though. Watched many a rat and toad jump cheerfully into her maw without a second thought. But now she was calling to all serpents to venture to the lower floors and serve her. He knew others were answering¡ªhe had come across the drowned corpses of his unevolved brethren who hadn''t known about the secrets tunnels nor been strong enough to survive the underwater journey¡ªand evermore her presence scrapped at the back of his mind, speaking of an serpentine army where he wouldn''t have to be strong if he was one of many. Quietly, he knew that only his strength as an evolved creature had let him reject her call. Even then he barely clung to his own sensibilities, the raw idea that it was him that wanted to be strong, not some formless mass of multiples. But if he didn''t follow her, then he would have to carve out his own path. Did Seros or the crocodile feel hesitation? He doubted it. So therefore he couldn''t afford to. He would have to be bold, challenge something with enough mana to trigger another evolution that would take him far away from the limiting air-filled world, to deeper waters where he could thrive. He twisted, dipping back into the water; his silver scales caught the light and he knew he would be visible as nothing more than a streak of light. Anything he chose to challenge wouldn''t see him coming. He could dart over, sink his fangs into their side, and retreat as they died¨C He stayed frozen for long enough that the fear of open water gripped his heart and he disappeared into the closest cavern. But he was scared. Not an outright attack, he knew. That wasn''t how he fought, wasn''t how he would survive. He needed a different angle. But he needed to act. Something passed overhead. Against the fear that told him to hide back in the shadows, to keep to the hidden places of the world, he poked his head out of the den, venom already building in his fangs. A shadow, dark and looming, drifted overhead in low, sweeping movements. Not the crocodile, thank the Scaled One, but almost equally bad for something as small as him. The largest shark of the third floor, older and rougher than any others. It had survived not only through its massive size but also its wits, quick enough to avoid the mighty Seros or the crocodile and destroy anything else. It was twice his length. Maybe more. A monster of the waters yet unchallenged. That one, he decided. If he was going to prove himself, to gather mana he hadn''t yet earned and reject the serpent''s call for one of his own, he would have to earn it. No longer could he fight merely fish and crabs. He would defeat that shark or die trying. - It sat and it grew. The stone-backed toad didn''t have many thoughts, still young and undeveloped as she was, but sometimes she would find rest beneath rocky outcroppings that let her look out over the floor that had become her home. And there, in that small and terrified place, she could watch. Observe. Learn. But as much as she tried to watch the other creatures, to maybe find a strategy that would allow her to feed without being fed upon, her gaze slid back to the lacecap. The lacecap, because there was only one like it. All the toads on the first floor knew to treasure those green-white mushrooms whenever they spread, for they lived often short lives¡ªthe monstrous bears found them some sort of delicacy and feasted whenever the opportunity presented itself. But when they survived¡­ A lacecap with full bile-covered traps could feed several toads to completion. In every sense, her discovery of this newest lacecap should have been a joyous occasion, tucked in a corner where it had a chance of surviving, and already full of wriggling bugs. But in those scant few brain cells bobbing around in her skull, she felt nearly every emotion except for joy. It looked normal enough, with its squat, inflated center holding an enormous cap with a sprawling web of traps for various bugs. The same pale colouration, the same entrancing bile, the same everything. She would have trusted it if she didn''t know this was the direct path that led back to the bear''s dens, and this was a fully grown lacecap. There wasn''t a chance that a bear wouldn''t have seen it and feasted. She had watched one of them walk by less than a full meal ago. But the lacecap sat, untouched, and continued to grow. And now that she watched, huddled as safely as she could under the stony ledge, she saw more. It dug deep into the surrounding stone, far deeper than others, and the algae that grew around its base seemed¡­ weak, a paler green and not spreading like algae in other sections. Leeched, almost. Its cap extended further, its base taller, shifting in an unfelt breeze. And though its outer tendrils were covered in bugs, wriggling masses of every delicacy, it didn''t bother dissolving them down for food. It left them exposed. Like it wanted something else to eat them. She couldn''t help but fear it wanted greater prey. - He was the youngest, the last who had struggled from his egg into the wider waters, and already he was behind. Hundreds of them had swarmed free, shells still soft and untested, hungry for mana and respect and power; and in their first few hours alive, dozens had been snapped up by the various predators of the floor. For newborn crabs were not a threat. Those a touch smarter decided to stay within the den, but they were still hungry, and so off to their siblings they went. A softened claw wasn''t a threat to anything but an equally unsoftened shell, and there went another dozen of their number. It was to this bloodshed that he finally managed to wriggle free of his egg and emerge into this new world. But it had perhaps only been that he hadn''t been focused on killing each other that had let him glance up, where he saw himself but infinitely larger, emerald carapace gleaming in the light, claws impossibly massive. Or. Claw. Because of his mother¡ªfor that was who she was¡ªhadn''t healed yet from where it''d been cut off in some event he wasn''t old enough to have seen; and only a thin, still-forming claw extended from the stump of her limb. He was young but instincts already layered fully in the back of his mind, and he knew that for most creatures, when something was cut off, they merely lost it. Perhaps died. But not him. Not his mother. He got to watch her give one last look at her squabbling children, maybe confirming they''d at least been born, and then pushed off the stone wall, disappearing back into the murk of the water outside. His instincts also told him that would most likely be the last time he saw her. Greater crabs trusted their young to figure things out. So he would. He had struggled out of the last trappings of his egg and floundered off to the furthest corners of the den, curling up and observing the world around him with eyes that had never seen before. But he thought, and he remembered. After weeks of feeding on only scraps of kelp and dead fish that floated down to the sandy bottom, building hunger forced him out to explore; and there he found vast expanses of water and currents, light streaming in from overhead, amber-gold kelp floating before. Fish by the thousands swam overhead, massive shadows driving him back to the hidden places, smaller threats flashing in and out of tunnels. A paradise. One with, unfortunately, many predators. He got to be very good at hiding. But his kind grew slowly, and impatience burned¡ªhe was more intelligent than the other newborns of the floor, and while they concentrated on only survival, he wanted to become what he had seen on that first day, before he''d really understood what he was seeing. Once more he''d managed to find her in the murk, when she''d snapped her fully-healed pincer through an eel''s neck and ripped its head off. He''d swam away very quickly after that. But again, the memory stuck with him. And it came to fruition when one day, as he celebrated his newest molt and subsequent hardening by exploring the farthest reaches of the lake and found a tunnel scaling upwards. His curiosity lasted all of a second before he was floundering his way up, ten legs kicking at the water like it would boost him faster. This world was new, too, though at least some parts were familiar enough he didn''t revert to his hatchling''s senses of curling up in the darkest corner. Not open water but canals, swift and narrow, darting through a collection of stone rooms and pale, frothy air he certainly didn''t trust. But there was something else. While he encountered mostly familiar creatures lurking in those canals, from the bright, flashing fish to the sinewy eels, there was another. One large and towering, just as his mother had been, with the same emerald green and enormous, snapping weapon. But instead of carapace it was a proper shell, and instead of pincers it was wide, gaping jaws. And as he crouched, huddled in the shadow of the strange stone pillar it sat upon, those memories reconnected. He''d taken great pride in his regenerative abilities, from his constant growths and molts, to the idea that even if he were crippled in combat, he would regrow all the stronger. But while he''d admired the lizard and krait and eel, he''d never seen a beast quite so similar to him yet different. Would this beast even need to regenerate? Its scales looked impenetrable. Could even his mother''s claw pierce its hide? ¡­why did he need to be damaged to regenerate? The thought struck him from seemingly nowhere. Of course he had to lose something to regain it; he certainly didn''t emerge from his latest molt with a new claw snapping at his side. But this wasn''t about new limbs. This was just about armour. What if he could grow his own carapace until it was just as strong as them? Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. He stared up at the beast. Beyond it, in the current-filled water, he could see more than them; titans stacked upon their towering thrones. So clearly they weren''t the top predators, if they hadn''t killed each other already. Were there beings with even stronger scales? Enormous scales stacking on top of each other, stretching out until they sat like armoured stones, safe deep within their own protection. He imagined himself with that. Imagined throwing himself in the middle of his siblings in another of their endless fights for food or territory, when normally he hid and avoided the trouble. Would he survive? Would he win? The thought was beyond tempting. He gave one last look to that beast and scuttled back off to the murk of the open water, to the waving kelp full of predators and prey. Full of all the mana he could need to reach a new potential. To return as a new threat to the floor that had ignored him. - It was very aware. It hadn''t always been, though it hadn''t ever been unaware. But there was a distinct difference in the Before and the After. Before, it had hunted off instinct alone, waiting for movement before reaction, feasting on whatever was foolish enough to trust its roots and branches. Absorbing mana, digging deep through soil and water, ever thirsting for more blood. That was all the Before had been. But then there was the After. Something had changed in those halls, something it hadn''t known but was now frightfully aware of; that call of mana, the one snaking through its roots and feeding its leaves, somehow deepened, extended, burst, regrew, exploded¨C And then it could see. The mana snaking through its roots connected with hundreds, thousands of others, and they all shared what they felt; the brush of a toad''s foot against a clump of moss, the gnawing of a rat on a mushroom, the splash of an eel against a mangrove''s roots. All connected as one, all aware¡ªand even impossible notices, where spores drifted through the air and sent back their own information, with no roots nor leaves to send, but yet their feelings were sent. They were all sent. And in the halls it had lived all of its life, it could finally understand. Could see the creatures that crawled so freely over its roots, to the walls and the canals and the light. All the things it had known were there, in the strange way that it had existed in the Before, but now it was aware of them. Knew and remembered they were there, what they did, how they functioned. From stretching its senses, it could tell it was in the first room of a long path, walled off by stone and water alike; but it alone was the one who faced the deep black entrance, where those with blood came through. Those with language. Those with intelligence. Beings tall and slender, armed not with gaudish claws and horns but rather words, communicating with each other freely. They spoke and others listened and understood. They had no need for mana or unknown spirits to grant them wisdom of themselves. They merely had. And it wanted more. The taste of the outside world had only been enough to show it what it didn''t have. The other creatures walked by it, fearing its branches but ignoring it beyond that, treating it like the stone of its surroundings. For all it could talk to its fellow roots, it could do nothing more. It wanted more. Within these walls, there was nothing it could study from. Nothing like this potential. The lizard-things¡ªkobolds, it had felt more than heard, murmured along the strings of mana that made of these halls as it tried to understand the language of the world outside¡ªhad the beginnings of it. They were brutish and foolish and could only hack at branches and pray to escape unscathed, and their communications were minimal at best. Guttural grunting and hissing. One had perhaps more status than the other, with her long staff and authority, but they were lesser beings. Scampering descendants. Not worthy for it to learn from. But whenever those beings came through, they came bearing blood, fresh blood with more mana than it had ever found on creatures within. And it had to feast. So it did. But not now. For there had been one of those beings, though perhaps more shrunken and gangly and not nearly as flawless as those that had come before, that had come through and survived. For the Connector below had decreed it; so while creatures gnawed at the bit for their own taste of blood they stayed, and the being survived. Something to be learned from. But the being had been taken to the back of the stony halls, to be hidden away with all the brutish lizard-folk and the idiotic creatures below them. A place where not only could it not learn from the being and its ease of speaking, but others would learn from it first. Learn faster. Learn better. That was merely a future it could not accept. But it needed to be elsewhere. If it was going to learn to see and listen and talk with more than just the connections that had given it just a taste of the outside world, to truly understand itself, it would need to learn from the being. If not this being, then the next, or the next. It had gotten just a touch of the wonders of talking. It refused to be limited by that. It needed to become more. More like the beings. What did it know about them? It knew that they had names, clothes, skills, genders, thoughts. If it wanted to be stronger, it would have to learn. Not it, then. Something more. She exhaled, twisting her long branches, and shifted the first of her many roots forward. - He sat in his den and pondered. Spears littered the ground, all the cast-off remains from other kobolds who kept upgrading theirs, but he had never found one that fit; bone upon bone he''d tried to sharpen and affix to the tip, branch of wood after branch of wood he''d tried to replace, but none of them were right. All awkward and stiff in his claws. It wasn''t right. He was one of the firstborn, the same clutch as the Chieftess and Rihsu, but here he sat, messing with spears. That wasn''t right, either. He didn''t think he wanted to lead. Being Chieftess had the temptation of power, but it also meant dealing with the decisions he had no interest in, like managing hunting parties or territorial expansions or food storage. That didn''t appeal to him. And Rihsu, well. She had never been a part of the tribe, even when it had only been the three of them; she had run off to fight and train and swear herself to Lord Seros, and came out stronger. He liked that. He liked not having to worry about dealing with other kobolds, to run and be free over the plains, but he did still want companionship. There would be no companionship in the presence of a dragon, not unless he evolved into a dragon as well. Already his den was at the very front of the kobold cave, and he was often the first to leave and the last to return. He spent his days scouring the forest, finding new materials for spears that wouldn''t work and scouring for glances of any new creature that might have been born. But it seemed like this floor was no longer the place of excitement and action; everything was happening further down, in places he wasn''t yet strong enough to explore. That was painful. He wanted to see more creatures, to find these new beings, but not enough to die in the process. And, quite unprompted, his mind flickered back to the first attack he had ever survived. He carefully set down the serpent''s spine he was sharpening, setting the wood against the stone wall; he got off his algae cot and paced in quick, narrow little circles around the resting place, clicking his claws together. It had been ages ago, back when there had only been three of them and new life still arrived in this hall. Invaders, the strange, fleshy beings like the one in the back of their den now, and the Great Voice had told them all to attack. But he had known he couldn''t win in an attack, not against their blades and magic. Not charging them. He had known, however, that if something else charged them, he could take a win. And thus the plan with the rats. It wasn''t a good plan, looking back. It had been born of desperation and the vague idea that he could scare them in the proper way instead of just frightening them back into their caves. But it had worked, and he had scored his first proper kill, pushing the fleshy thing into the water where the hungry things lurked. But creatures. That hadn''t been a companionship there, but there had been working together. But what if he could take it a step further? What if instead of him just choosing to make a creature do his bidding, they could work together, side by side? Creatures had no need of poorly-shaped spears nor the need to find one that could match them; they came with weapons, be it claws or fangs or size. And he had planning, had intelligence he knew they didn''t yet have. In tangent, it would be power combined for a new peak he had never seen reached yet. If he found something small, it could dart between hiding spots he saw and strike from the underside, letting him be the distraction in a mainside charge while it whittled their opponent down from the sides; something of similar size, running in tandem to strike, focusing on finding its weak spots and crippling it for a worryless kill; something larger, a tank to meet it in a front-line charge as he clawed at its back. Either way, a kill would be assured. But what creature? He only knew of those on his floors, though he''d heard rumours of those below. Neither rats nor toads would help him, and the spiders were the same. Too small, too flighty. The serpents, perhaps, but they fled deeper into the floors by the droves, called by some other spirit. He wasn''t aquatic to work with those in the canals, and the turtles were too stationary to help. The ironback toad, maybe? It already guarded others in something like he wanted, but it never attacked, only in defense of those it protected. Not the kind of thing that would bring him to the lower floors. And he wasn''t strong enough himself to ask the bears to join him, and they only stayed on the first floor, besides. And. Well. There was a certain type of creature that he wanted. He brushed his claws over his speckled red scales, over the pocket in his throat where he knew flame had once sat. His ancestry was of the fire-drakes. He knew the Chieftess ignored it, and Rihsu seemed determined to follow the watery path of Lord Seros, in the scant few times he saw her now that she traveled to the lower floors. But he still felt the call of fire deep in his chest, remembered old memories of smoke and heat and ash. He wanted that. No creatures were right for him, not yet. But he would find one. - The silverhead was a small thing, old in terms of general life expectancy for her kind but not yet fattened by mana, too willing to stay safe within the protective bounds of her school. But then one of her siblings had evolved into a silvertooth and swam off to join the far more deadly school, and another had swelled to a massive armourback sturgeon, and she was suddenly full of a determined spirit she had perhaps never felt before, and off she swam to new adventures. Water parted before her and she swam down, darting through a current, tail whipping to push her farther; a nimble little twist and she shifted to hide in the shadow of a passing roughwater shark, too small to attract its attention and suitably frightened enough to not draw attention. And on she went, marveling at the world spreading before her, uncovered by the spiraling bodies of her school. It was a beautiful thing, for she was small enough to see all the details and perfections that larger creatures missed; the silver veins rooted deep in the limestone, the dunes formed in the sand below by currents, the ripple of algae-beds straining at the ends of their roots. But before she''d truly had time to find a chance to prove herself, she faced the kelp forest. It had grown, even just since her hatching; where once it had stood stark in the middle of the floor, amber-gold fronds trailing delicately in kicked-up currents, now it sprawled over the entirety of the cavern. The farthest stem brushed at the farthest wall on each side, and only the diligent efforts of the fish had kept it from swallowing the floor entirely. Even sharks, drifting silently overhead, had to nose their way through the kelp. It consumed all. But she was here to prove herself, to evolve, and she pushed her way into the forest. Gold surrounded her, twisting stems and air bladders and all manner of things she recognized from an outside view but was very much overwhelming in the thick of it, the water stiff and unmoved by currents within. On she darted, drifting up, drifting down; her mind was filled with a world she had never known existed. But something lurked underneath, in the far-off flashes of other colours she could see past the endless wall of gold. She tried to turn and catch it, but it was always gone, though always present. It felt beneath her, crawling through the stems, and above, leaking down the fronds. She swam faster. But now she was well and truly lost, the forest endless before her, and now she could feel something, a thought worming into her head. She hadn''t considered it before but her entering this forest was truly an invasion, wasn''t it? A betrayal, an attack. Hatred trickled through her thoughts, and worry after¡ªwell, she certainly hadn''t meant it to be an invasion. But it was. She swam faster. Something loomed behind. More gold and amber and stems and fronds and gold and leaves and water and dirt and gold¨C And so paranoid was she that she caught the slight movement, the barest twitch of colour, and flung herself out of the path of the jellyfish''s reaching tendrils. Water hissed with paralytic acid where it passed but its hit caught nothing, and its amber-gold disguise rippled in what could have been disgust; it drifted away, back into the endless tangle of fronds and stems, and was gone. The little silverhead righted herself, eyes wide and her quota for adventures suitably filled, and promptly darted away to find the quickest route out of the forest. But she was glad, at least, to have found the source of the malice; perhaps her evolution was psionic, for her having been able to sense the jellyfish being out to catch her before it had even attacked. And so she left behind the bloodline kelp and counted the mystery solved. - Apart, they were weak. But together, connected by the strands of their beautiful web, they were strong. They scuttled over tree and limb, weaving more and more, killing those caught and consuming their corpses. Ever more they expanded, ever more they found new trees to reach and cover, and ever more they lurked, waiting. They had a task to follow. They were merely legs of the Great Spider, following his guide and consuming lesser beings to sustain him. Each of their bodies had no separation, no thoughts beyond those born from the web. They moved and worked for him. There was no need for names or differences. They were identical with their pale white bodies and their thoughts all came from him. Perfect synchronization. And with that came a harmony that other squabbling beasts did not know, too focused on their own petty thoughts and ideals. Did they not know of the Great Spider? Did they not hear his voice? It mattered not. For the webweavers would be rewarded for their service, and they did it gladly. But while the Great Spider knew all and could never be wrong, he was still limited. They watched as he created other beings, shaped them from nothing and let them live free, but while others evolved to join their pale ranks, never had he created one of them from nothing. And thus they would help him in any way they could. They had watched as other species lived and died, but upon occasion, a creature would die and would not be eaten by other lesser beings; instead they would be ripped apart by mana, consumed in pale light, and then the Great Spider could recreate them. And now it was time for them to follow that path. The oldest of them all, stronger and more powerful, had chosen themself to be the one taken. An honour beyond honour; the most purest form of sacrifice to the Great Spider. Their body was merely one of his legs; they were just returning to the source from which they had come. No greater gift could they have been offered. Others hissed and spat at the choice deprived to them but understood. In order for the Great Spider to gain this power, it needed to be the strongest of them all, and they were not strong enough yet. Perhaps later, as an offering, they too could be sacrificed; but not now. There were more legs needed to continue to feed him the lesser beings. There was no time to wait. They moved with all haste. The other bodies gathered round, housed safely at the center of their web; the eldest stretched out and laid flat on a bed of silk, mandibles pressed tight to their body. The others scuttled around, dragging forth the other caught fools of the day; weaker spiders, smaller bugs, and even a whole rat, dragged up from a hidden web near the roots. As one, they were slaughtered. The power burst through them and hopefully it was enough to attract the Great Spider''s attention, so that he might see what they were doing, that he might gain the power of their body. And so eight other webweavers grasped the limbs of the eldest and the strongest and ripped them free, biting deep into their body and flooding them with venom, pulling them apart so that the Great Spider could see every aspect of their body, could know perfectly what made them so. The webweaver died quickly in glorious service to the web. And now they waited, for the Great Spider to create them anew. - She exhaled. Once more it was time to explore. Her den could barely be called that, just a hole in the side of the tunnel where the thornwhip algae hadn''t fully covered the entrance, but even though she was large for a rat, she was still a rat, and could successfully get inside. She would have to abandon it soon, given as the algae was growing closer to the entrance with frightening speed, but it would do for now. After tasting the potential down here, she knew she couldn''t go back to the upper floors. This was where she found her life now. And that life was filled with endless explorations for the jadestone jewels that grew with abandon in these halls, in the thin corners where only moss and not algae grew. She had only been able to bring one of her jewels, the largest jadestone down with her, but now she could rebuild her collection. It had hurt to bring only one down, though. Her entire history was probably gone and stolen by the others. But she had struggled and worked and now she could carry three jewels with her at a time. It had hurt at first but now she could walk safely on her back legs like the lizard-folk of her old floor, and that meant one for her mouth and two for her paws. Plenty of gems to gather before she needed to head back to her den. And she needed to gather more. The others of her kind wanted the jewels because others wanted them. They had no respect for the power she could feel in them, the budding potential racing through her at every touch. They didn''t know. But she did. She was nearing full, she knew; her channels burst with mana more and more, every time she woke up from her slumber directly next to her pile of jewels she felt it was close. So close, so painfully close she didn''t know why she hadn''t evolved yet, but she would keep working for it. This was something she would never be able to ignore. She poked her head out of her den, sniffing the air; still no other creature. Only the serpents and the rats lived in here, alongside the one enormous lizard-folk, but there were so many tunnels they rarely saw each other. She had freedom to run, as long as she could avoid the thornwhips. Which was why she always brought a jadestone with her. She chose a small one today, one replenished after the times she''d used it on adventurers past, and gripped it awkwardly in her left paw; it would be her guiding force to get her past the algae. She knew they were linked and she could use both its magic and her own to force the thornwhips to ignore her, to turn away as she scampered through their midst. It was her only way of venturing deeper. So she grabbed that, gave one last glance back at her pile of jewels, and set out to find a new tunnel in the darkness. Time passed without difference, without notice; onward she crept, paws over moss, ears pricked and tail quivering. Something shifted ahead of her, looming in the dark with only little sparks like stars illuminating its grasping reach; she threw her jadestone forward and let the emerald light overtake her, draining her own channels and tugging out the nature-attuned mana, filling the air with raw power. Her tail lashed. The thornwhip tried to hold against her, stubbornly crawling closer, but her light flared and it begrudgingly slipped back to lay flat against the wall, letting her creep through without attack. She could feel it watching her as she turned the corner and let her power drop. Always nerve wracking, walking these halls. There was always the threat that she wouldn''t be fast enough, that the thorns would reach her and her journey would come to a stumbling pitfall of an end. But the algae was quiet today, and her jewel stayed full of energy as she scampered through tunnel after tunnel, turning all directions to try and find something new, ignoring the safety of random dens and avoiding any scent of other creatures as she ran down, down, down. Until at once, she inched her way down a harshly sloped tunnel and emerged into open air. Her eyes burned from actual light instead of glowing spores and she jerked, turning away, but had to look back the second she adjusted; it was an enormous cavern, walls stretching away forever, massive stone trees growing from the ground and covered in moss like fake leaves. Water trickled over the walls, coalescing in shimmering pools, and at the very far back, she could see the red-black core of the Old One that ruled this land. It felt like returning back to the second floor, where the ceiling and walls were far away and trees filled the air, where there was light and water and freedom, but with the impossibly rich density of mana that she loved. It was paradise. And even more like paradise, while there wasn''t thornwhip algae growing over the walls, there was jadestone moss. She ran to them, scampering over flat river-stones and fake stone roots, finding the nearest section that looked old enough to have those precious gems; and there it was. Larger than the one she had, that deep, beautiful green, with a fellow growing right next to it. That was a new jewel. The gems in the algae-filled tunnels were ripe and full, but protected by the thornwhips she could only just scare away from actively attacking her; she hadn''t managed to yet get them to move away from their base so that she could take the jewels they protected at their cores. These were free and ripe for the taking. But how worthy were they? She reached forward and pressed her paw to the closest one, eyes closing, and tried to tug just a hint of magic. A current welcomed her touch. She squeaked and pulled back, feeling the spark flow through her channels before settling in her chest. And they were full. Her den would be swallowed by the algae, more rats would come and stake their territory in the farther halls, but it didn''t matter. She had this. This would be hers. And that led neatly into her new problem. At her old den, she had her pile of jewels, and she''d made this choice before when dropping down to the fourth floor; in giving up her old collection of gems, she''d lost all the progress she''d made and had to start over anew. That had crippled her. She couldn''t do that this time. But there''d been a reason she hadn''t been able to bring them down; there were too many to carry. She dithered there, circling them with her forked tail twitching¡ªshe hadn''t sensed anyone near her den when she''d left last, but she couldn''t just leave them here. She needed to go back to her old den and bring all of her jewels here, to start her newest empire in this strange stone jungle, but if she left them here, then someone would steal them. That couldn''t be allowed to happen. And even if she had a plan to bring those down from her old den, she couldn''t very well just leave these three new gems behind for someone else to claim. They sat in their little pile, mocking her. Maybe she could hide them up in one of the fake trees? She hoped there weren''t spiders up there like on the second floor. Or bury them in the ground? She could only carry three at a time with her back from her den, and she easily had twelve of the dark green gems. That would be four trips when another rat could steal her power. One jewel for her mouth, one each for her hands, and¡­ She paused. There was another way to carry them, if she could find a way to get them out. What if she just ate them? That was a question she hadn''t asked before. Maybe she was nearer to evolution than she thought, if she was getting this smart. But her stomach could easily hold all twelve. This was genius. She should probably test it first. The open was still too dangerous to try this; she gathered her group of gems and scampered off to a den in one corner of the room, huddling underneath the fake root of a towering stone tree. She set all of her gems down and stared at them, nose twitching; one was her previous one and only partially full of power after the journey down. Not worth the test. Another was large but half drained from her test. Only the last and largest, a deep forest green with cloudy streaks of white, was full. That would be her test. She picked it up, sniffing curiously. It didn''t smell like food, but she did consume mana, so surely it was the same principle. She swallowed it whole. Mana roared through her. Power, the likes of which she''d never felt before; every time she touched her jewels they''d only given her a fraction of this, what little she could siphon. This was the pure experience and it hurt, her channels bursting with power, mind cracking under the pressure; And she felt the light of evolution explode around her. Chapter 51 - Silver Hoard The notification scrawling across my core was very expected and very welcome.
Your creature, a Burrowing Rat, is undergoing evolution! Please select your desired path. Ratking (Uncommon): Commander of the lesser rats, it uses its long and powerful tail to bind them to its will, forcing all those in the vicinity to serve it with reckless abandon whether their lives are kept or lost. Arcane Ratkin (Rare): Harnessing various gems, this creature uses its growing skills to command mana as it pleases, choosing from its collection of jewels for which it wants to use at any given moment. Though it has no specializations, it can use any attuned mana-gem, given they are full. Mage Ratkin (Rare): Unlike its arcane brethren, this creature chooses a specialization in only one branch of mana, and can now generate their own attuned mana to use as they see fit. As they study and train, their power can grow to be reminiscent of a true mage.
Huh. Honestly, it''d been so long since my little tycoon rats had had any need of burrowing or hiding that I''d truly forgotten that was what they were. Nevertheless. It was curious; similar to the kobold''s evolution, where the second options were both ratkin with just different positions within that species. No¡­ spectral rat, or groundbreaker mouse option, for reference. Only slight variations of ratkin. Did that mean she was approaching sapience? In that case then, ratking was entirely out. Ignoring the intelligence, this particular rat had been the one to forsake her family and others of her race, ignoring them to run wild and collect jewels of her own. She didn''t exactly seem the type to sit back and wait for others to finish her jobs for her. Not when she had her own powers to shoot for. And besides, I couldn''t just ignore her newly-formed addiction to magic. That left the battle between arcane or mage. Arcane seemed like it would have the most potential in the long run, granting her the ability to use any magic as long as she kept her dependance of using jewels in order to cast magic. Not a large disadvantage, but one that I could see being a problem moving forward; if she were to keep casting bigger and bigger spells, the gems would limit her. Mage, on the other hand, removed that problem by making her generate her own mana; all creatures consumed mana and used it for either food, evolution, or their abilities, but generating mana meant that while they had to consume more to fuel that, they weren''t constrained in their magic. I knew that the horned serpent could replenish her own mana, and Seros as well; most others in my halls were still underevolved and couldn''t yet reach that peak. As wonderful as an all-rounder arcane rat could utilize my endless array of mana-filled gemstones, I couldn''t pass up the opportunity for specialization. She had already¡­ consumed a jadestone, which was certainly a unique option I hadn''t thought of and didn''t know if it would work for others. She had chosen what power she wanted. So I selected mage ratkin. She curled up, light bleeding over her form, tucked in a den in my stone jungle; I made soft algae bloom beneath her and fresh water spill from above. Not a clue how large she would grow from this evolution, even though she was already enormous compared to a regular rat, but this would serve as a temporary home. Later, she would lay claim to this entire stone jungle and could find her own den. But another evolution. Her other brethren would join her soon, I thought; though they gathered mana slowly, only able to collect fractions of points every time they touched their gems, it was still infinitely faster than their previous methods of nibbling on mushrooms and praying they survived. A small population was already on the fourth floor and quickly nearing evolution, though none had tried the method of just eating a jewel. Maybe I''d suggest it. I had just turned back to my fifth floor, ready to settle up some final touches, when one of my points of awareness pinged to life. As one evolution began, three more finished. Back on the first floor, tucked away in little dens I''d had to fully close off just to make sure that the damn bears hadn''t eaten them, pale light finally died down to a trickle as five bugs opened their new eyes. I couldn''t help but purr. Where once they''d been mere specks below my observation, just bugs scampering for scraps, now they were threats. The mantis rose to a new height of two feet tall, her once grey carapace now a deep emerald green, her claws wickedly sharp and long enough to grab at anything within eyesight. Still spindly and easily crushed, but there was a power in her movements. Her wings, still thin and poorly designed for actual flight, were now an iridescent white, scintillating and brilliant; a lesser flash from the luminous constrictors. Just a distraction so her claws could rather quickly remind her prey why that was a mistake. The platemail bug lumbered to his nearly five foot long life, black eyes looking curiously at his surroundings; with the scales overlapping over his back and his dozens of feet below, he looked like a truly strange commodity in the halls. Scavenger, yes, but similar to the armourback sturgeon; if anything else managed to kill him, they''d get quite a tasty treat of mana. And then the eyeblight butterfly. Still caterpillars, still rather small at only a foot long, but they roiled with potential; what had once been faint eye-like spots on their side were now detailed ovals inlaid with pockets of mana, similar to the electric eel''s lightning-attuned spots, and their antennae, which had once been slightly fuzzy, waving things were now enormous leaf-shaped tendrils, stretching almost higher than the rest of their body, just bursting with psionic mana. Glorious little bastards. They took a moment to adjust to their life, marveling at their new bodies, and then the hunting mantis promptly saw what could count as prey and lunged for the nearest caterpillar. I fell upon her mind with the force of my disapproval. She hissed and spat, odd head twitching, but pulled back. They were Unranked creatures now, dangerous enough to warrant a threat though not truly devastating, but I could feel their potential. Much too flashy for the first floor in any regards. I reached out with a few points of mana and dug into the den behind them, carving stone down and down and down; with a few moments of hesitation and nudging, they followed the darkness below. Mantis first, platemail lumbering after, and the caterpillars trying their damnedest to keep up but very quickly being left behind. Not terribly fast creatures, really. Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site. But before long, they''d made their way to the stone jungle. The mantis peered curiously at her surroundings, stepping forward, and almost made a beeline to the den with the still-evolving rat before I hurriedly stoppered it up with a quick wall of stone; she hissed in my general direction and stalked off to explore elsewhere, her claws held before her like blades. The caterpillars inched towards the wall, to start feeding on the moss there, and the platemail bug apparently decided he didn''t like this room at all and made his way towards the tunnels. Worked for me. I wanted them here, where they could feed off the algae and moss and hone their skills, but not mess up the ecosystems I''d built above. Maybe I would take them to the fifth floor when it came about, but I had big plans for the fourth floor, with its dark and impossible tunnels, filled with glowing spores and endless passages. The thought of that in addition to thousands of buzzing insects, whether as threats or distractions, was far too much to pass up. I''d already refilled the little gladiatorial ring on the first floor for more evolutions. The fourth floor would be a nightmare. And speaking of floors to develop¡­ I darted back up to the Underlake, where the little bastard whose opinion I wanted was currently getting his ass kicked. Seros howled, bubbles exploding from his muzzle and darted back; a hasty wall of hydrokinesis slowed down the sarco crocodile''s charge just enough that his snap didn''t take off Seros'' tail, but it was a close thing. Too close, really. I happily spread my points of awareness around the section of water that in a shocking twist of events, all other creatures had fled, and settled in to watch. It wasn''t a real fight. As much as the sarco and Seros butted heads, being equal shades of prideful and obstinate, neither was in it to kill. Seros'' agility and fast strikes meant nothing to a creature with armour enough to shrug off those attacks, and the sarco''s immense power and bulk meant nothing to a creature he couldn''t hit. Their own perfect counters. I gave it two weeks max until they got over their rivalry and started spending time comparing notes. But for now, as deeply impressive as it was watching Seros duck and weave himself around the sarco with all the grace of a desperate seamstress, I wanted to finish up the fifth floor. I pressed the thought gently into both of their heads. With an annoyed rumble, the sarco pulled back, lashing his powerful tail to take him back to the surface for a breath; Seros faded back into the bloodline kelp, gills fluttering as he sucked in air. Hard fight for them both. Seros still seemed a touch too pleased about a hit he''d landed that made the sarco flinch back once, something that he happily regaled me with exorbitant detail as we trodded down to the fifth floor. I let him. Poor guy needed it after the first fight they''d had when the sarco had chased his sorry tail all the way back to the Drowned Forest. But now we emerged back onto the fifth floor. I''d changed a few things since bringing the sarco back; there was a proper core room at the far back, sloped downward into a perfect circle for my typical pure silver pillar to rise above. The memories of flying on this floor had really gotten to me and I''d tried to make it look as close to a hoard as I could, filling the core room with scattered veins of gold and jewels, great piles of beauty and riches like I''d had in the past. That I''d lost. But other than that, still the same dozen islands with their thin, rickety bridges between, spanning a truly horrible walk over two hundred feet above the ground. Still the area was empty below, given that I didn''t have much of an idea for what threat I''d want to make sure that people died when they fell, but it was still a beautiful drop. All my rust-red iron branches and fake leaves swirling over the cavern, all the algae-light and quartz-light giving everything a hazy glow, all the silver-studded limestone stretching on to seemingly infinity. I took a not insubstantial amount of pride at the awe in Seros'' eyes as he walked into the newly built floor. Even with an absence of flora and fauna, it was a beautiful space. I nudged him forward. Seros padded onto the first expanse of stone, testing the gentle slope curiously with his tail; it wasn''t enough to trip him, but if he had been distracted, there was always the threat of just stumbling off the edge. He inched forward, glancing over the edge, but made his way to the first bridge; one of the longer ones, extending to the right, connecting with a smaller island with a pile of rocks scattered over the sides. Still more lithe in the water, but that certainly didn''t discount his agility on land. He padded over cautiously but without fail. His tail dragged on the stone behind him, the frills twitching; it was a touch too dry for his tastes but I could be persuaded to add water later. Maybe below? He arrived on the second island and poked at it, nosing at rocks I hoped would soon hide greater threats and carefully centering himself to avoid letting the slope carry him off the edge. Going fast through this floor would hopefully prove impossible. I was very pleased with his reaction to my floor. His thoughts were full of wonder. Seros peered curiously over the edge of the island, flicking his tongue out; then he promptly walked over the edge. My scream probably shattered a few eardrums upstairs. But there he was, clinging to the side of the stone; his claws found the porous stone rather easy to latch onto, even with his weight, and he casually meandered his way around the side of the island before popping back up top. His thoughts were smug. Laugh it up, I groused, but did examine my islands more closely. For anything capable of climbing, while the mushroom cap-shaped islands would prevent a bit of a problem for being able to get back on top, they wouldn''t be impossible. Looked like I''d be growing some razorleaf lichen over the sides and putting plenty of dens and dangers down before for those foolish few who fell. And that was why I had brought Seros. - Aloma wasn''t coming back. Lluc sat outside the Al¨®mbra Mountains, staring quietly at the dark entrance leading further inside; it had been three days, and he''d seen neither hair nor hide of the member of the Dread Crew. Neither her nor the brat he''d sent in to die. The first day, maybe they''d just been spending their time exploring; the second day, maybe lost or the dungeon was larger than he''d thought; but the third day, they were dead. The dungeon had killed them. He was Gold ranked. It was an accomplishment he clung to fiercely; it was easy for those Unranked fools to assume that it was a linear pathline, that becoming Bronze took the same level of growth that it did to reach Silver and so on. It couldn''t have been less the case. Each jump up in the rankings took an astronomical amount more power than it did to reach the previous level. There was a reason why so few Electrums existed, and why Mythril heroes were more treasured than the kingdoms that paid their entire treasuries just to keep them on their side. Being a Gold meant something. For a dungeon to take down a Silver, that meant it was strong. Was it strong enough for him? Probably not. He was a High Gold, not as specific as the difference between the different ranks but showing that he wasn''t some wet-behind-the-ears Gold, and very few dungeons had the power to contend with him. Especially not one that had barely existed for a few months. But still the thought lingered in the back of his mind. Most dungeons were born from the world, guided by the gods above and quickly discovered; sentientborn dungeons were killed quickly as they expanded too rapidly and too greedily. He didn''t know of any ley line crossovers in this area and there certainly hadn''t been any fallen stars; it was probably the dragon leading the dungeon. It was sentientborn. That meant it was both dangerous and unknown. So as much as he believed in his own strength, as much as he knew he was Gold and much more powerful than the many peons running around Calarata, he didn''t want to risk it. But he had been given a job, and his first attempt had already failed. Varc¨ªs had only wanted him to investigate the dungeon, to see its level of intelligence and the lethality of its floors. Lluc could pretty safely say it was dangerous. So either he could keep exploring, or he could go back to Varc¨ªs and say that not only had he fed the dungeon someone Silver ranked, but he also specifically had no further knowledge other than that it was dangerous and powerful. He remembered blood splattered over worn leather gloves. Lluc turned on his heel and strode back to Calarata. No. He''d take this damn dungeon down and present its bloody heart to the Dread Pirate himself. Chapter 52 - Whirlpool I. Uh. Hm. The webweavers scuttled away from my presence, their thoughts singing with praise as I rather hesitantly inched my way between them. Their dismembered brethren was very dead, killed by venom at least before he''d lost his limbs, but it was rather clear this had been a planned death. So. That was something. They turned their eight eyes in the vague direction of my point of awareness as I reached out, dissolving the dead arachnid''s body; the webweaver schema flowed through me, bright and rich with information. They knew which of them were egglayers but only used neutral pronouns, seeing themselves as mere limbs of some Great Spider below, not worthy of identity or thoughts or dreams. They only existed to serve me. I did the mental equivalent of an uncomfortable cough. Followers. True followers, the ones that my latent dragon-heart knew I wanted, but. Well. When I''d thought of kobolds worshiping me, it had always been the vague idea of endless pampering and going out into the wide world to bring me more silver for my hoard. It hadn''t exactly included ritualistic sacrifice. But. I''d accept it? I suppose? Their ghostly white bodies skittered after me as I not-quite fled from the scene. I certainly wasn''t fleeing. They were my creations, I was their creator, and I absolutely refused to be unnerved by whatever society they were building within that twisting web. I tested the schema out far away from that particular tree, though. The newest spider of my halls blinked and looked around, a neat eleven mana sitting under its pale carapace; not a terrible cost, but certainly not one I''d be continuing to spend. I''d let them reproduce on their own. I gave it a sharp little prod of the mind, sending it skittering back to the original tree, and promptly left that side of my dungeon. I only got about halfway before something else pinged my attention. A point of awareness, hovering over the Underlake, turned as something shifted at the edge of its vision. The lone silverhead who''d escaped from her school swam closer, curious, and my point of awareness got a front row seat as a chunk of stone shot from the darkness and impaled clean through her scale-protected head. Interesting. A new fish swam through the cove entrance; two feet long, bright yellow interlaced with black and grey stripes, with a narrow mouth and wide, swelling cheeks. It shot forward with whatever the exact opposite of caution was, looking all the world like it owned the place, and its gaze drifted over another poor silverhead just minding its own business near the roof. Its cheeks swelled. Another spike of stone shot out of its mouth and struck it dead. Well, now that was an insult I wouldn''t be leaving unanswered. Certainly not a threat on the level of Seros or the sarco, but I rather gently spread the knowledge there was an intruder through the floor, pushing barely even a suggestion into my creatures'' minds, nowhere near a command. If they were at all interested in fighting some new threat, they were welcome to try. As typical, a small army of creatures perked their heads up and swam to engage. The silver krait arrived on scene first, snaking through the bloodline kelp; but interestingly enough, he only took a moment to eye the size of this new fish before giving up on it, swimming back to his den. A handful of greater crab hatchlings glared in frustration at the invader far above their own miniscule heights. Even the cloudskipper wisp paused in her endless running, two ear-like growths of mist cocking to the side as she stared through the water. But it was a school of silvertooths that made the first move. Already kicking into a blood-frenzy as the two silverhead corpses drifted to the sandy floor, dozens of them swarmed forward with red fins flailing. The fish inhaled again, cheeks bulging strangely past the various stone chunks it''d apparently just stuffed in there, and started firing. Even the silvertooths, with their increased armour and raw power, couldn''t survive a single hit; lifeless some fell as the rest of the school charged. The fish rather quickly figured out that this strategy wasn''t going to work and gave it up, spinning on its tail and darting for the entrance; but the same pressure that had welcomed it so invitingly now fought against it, just enough of a current kicked up that it had to struggle to make it back to the entrance. And silvertooths, while not particularly smart, were rather fast. They fell upon it in a frenzy of teeth, ripping through its scales and fins with a fury. It had perhaps a second to regret its decision before it died. The only one who regretted their decision was me, however, as I had to hurriedly dive into the midst of fangs and try to dissolve the damn thing''s corpse before it was fully consumed. Bloody silvertooths. The school snapped at each other, confusion not really a recognizable emotion past their frenzy, but the mana from the kill was enough to soothe their ruffled fins and soon they swam back off, hunting for a more tangible kill to satiate their hunger. Good riddance. Another second and I might''ve lost the schema. Speaking of.
Triggerfish (Common) Ill-tempered at best, it spits shards of stone, coral, bone, or whatever it can get at its enemies, aiming for soft spots like gills or eyes. In a pinch, it''ll even use its own scales as ammunition.
Well. That description certainly fit the cantankerous little beastie I''d seen. Fitting, really; narcissism aside, it had killed a truly impressive amount of silverheads and tooths without gaining so much as a scratch. As powerful as my monsters were, they were still only learning how to deal with ranged threats; something that this triggerfish would definitely give them a challenge. Its schema was fascinating; much like some of my other creatures who used mana to enhance their abilities, it wasn''t just spitting the projectiles. The inner linings of its gills were stuffed full with water-attuned mana and a second before it fired, it spat a thin stream of mana to clear the way. Then its next shot practically flew in a perfectly aimed path with no obstacles and in fact being sped up by the mana, and promptly embedded itself into some poor thing''s skull. The triggerfish rarely missed. Fascinating. I wondered what it could do with ice-attuned mana; would icicles be more effective? Not saying that stone and coral wasn''t, mind, but I¨C I froze. Coral. My points of awareness darted back through the Underlake, digging hurriedly through its projectiles; but rather heartbreakingly, it was only chunks of stone and silt. Not a single polyp of coral in sight. Bastard. The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. But it would do well on this floor. Coral fish though it was, and its yellow would be a bit flashy when surrounded by the majority silver-grey that filled the Underlake, I had no doubt it would scrape out a living here. A quick glance back at my core confirmed I had thirty points left; enough for a handful. I doubted they were a schooling fish, anyway. A dozen bloomed to existence under my watchful eye, burnished gold instead of yellow because yes I still enjoyed making changes, and promptly swam off to wreck more havoc. I watched a group of them dart through a tunnel, their stripes catching the algae-light; another aggressive breed. They matched with the silvertooths, great crabs, and roughwater sharks; a floor full of swarming monsters, ready to attack at a moment, and underneath lurked other dangers, with the electric eels, silver krait, and mimic jellyfish. And then above, ever casting his enormous shadow beneath, the sarco crocodile loomed. Compared to the previous two floors, it was far more dangerous. Even getting past the murky water and choking presence of the bloodline kelp, or the dragging currents and crushing hole in the center, or the twisting tunnels with no air spots and the wavering lure of the algae-light would be a nigh impossible task for any terrestrial invader. Then my creatures rather beautifully came in to complete the deal. It had come quite a ways from its humble beginnings. I knew that sealing it would mean I would be limited in my changes for the future, kept from constantly upgrading it and strengthening it and keeping it going; and when I moved my core down to the fifth floor it would weaken somewhat, my ambient mana decreased, but I knew it was ready. My focus would be for later floors, greater floors, and this one would hold as it needed to do. So I gathered my Otherworld mana around me and spread it through this floor, infusing into the limestone and water and creatures; I drank deep of the chill, the brackish tinge, the pale light. I let the auras of all the beasts flow through me, brushing each of their minds. Thankfully, I already had a name picked out. The Underlake. The title settled deep into the floor, rooting into the stone like a living thing. Every creature shuddered as their new home became apparent. The Underlake, cruel and unmerciful, sea of predators.
Congratulations! Your floor has attracted the attention of the gods. Some wish to become Patron of the Underlake. Please choose from the boons they present.
I won''t lie, there was a small moment of relief that there were gods willing to sponsor my floor. Considering all the bloody work I''d put into the thing, I certainly would have been devastated if they didn''t find this floor up to their liking. Not that I cared, of course. Once more I reached up to that intangible thing beyond the message, flying free of my core''s restriction and wandering into a vast space, stars too close together and inky purple between; and above, even higher than I could ever reach, floated those same bubbles as before. Gods. I slunk my way upward, summoning the best subservience and general thank-you-lords-and-ladies attitude I could muster. It was rather impossible not to feel lesser; they were waiting in this spot for me, their attention turned on my hall, and it was quite a long journey of scrutiny before I managed to get high enough to reach them. There were more than last time, even though this was an aquatic floor. Seemed like my dungeon was doing well enough to attract more attention. I preened even as I combed through their proffered boons. A god that reeked of sulfur offered to make the waters of that floor acidic, burning all invaders while my creatures swam unhindered; one with the faint presence of starlight rather lazily said he could turn my waters pitch black, impossible to see through; another extended a gift of ever-shifting rock to pin and trap invaders. All glorious. I couldn''t wait until I had enough power to try some of these tactics out myself. Some were repeated gods¡ªI remembered the goddess of fireflies from my last floor, though her boon seemed less suited for an aquatic floor¡ªbut most were new, and I dove through them all. There would be no decision made off only lacking information. And so I reached up and brushed against the outer aura of a god. I got a sense of old, fanged teeth; but not teeth, merely stones sticking up from crashing water, the gurgle and rumble of the ocean beyond. Beneath them all something old lurked, something deep and crashing. Mayalle, Goddess of Whirlpools. She allowed my fumbling presence with an amusement that carried the weight of centuries. An old god, which made sense; the currents of the ocean had existed long before any sentient races started worshiping. But as I rather foolishly stumbled around trying to communicate with her, I could see that she wasn''t a particularly well-loved goddess; from the knowledge I had received from the merrow''s souls, the thirteen gods they all worshiped were gentler beings, caretakers of currents and coral reefs and things that swam. She would have no followers there. But she wasn''t a particularly feared goddess either; for while sailors hated whirlpools, they feared maelstroms far more, and there was a god for that. So it was the one receiving the hesitant sacrifices to keep from destroying ships or ruining towns. Mayalle was left alone. Which made sense that she was coming to me. I might have pouted a touch at the thought. Rhoborh hadn''t been a well-known god either, and while I was certainly thankful that any deity wanted to bless me at all, it was getting rather irritating only ending up with the slim pickings who couldn''t go anywhere else. What kind of floor would I need to create to make the god of the sun pick me? But there were advantages. Once more, her option to me was handcrafted, shaped as though she had been watching me¡ªanother uniquely horrifying thought¡ªflounder through attempting to do this myself. It wasn''t like the goddess of lesser deserts, whose halfhearted offer of a shifting, sand-dune-esque ground seemed quite content to ignore that this was primarily a water-based floor, or the god of sunflowers, who only offered a schema. No, Mayalle had thought about what she offered. Much like I''d tried to make with the cloudskipper wisp, her boon spoke of twisting currents, but sideways. It funneled directly out from the entrance, tugging all beings out of the cove and into my halls, where it would then push them further in and quite prevent them from getting out. Exactly what I''d done to the triggerfish but actually, you know, effective. Something perfect to stop all those who wished to leave. I wished I knew more about the politics of the gods. Why did they care so much about sponsoring dungeon floors? Of course the general meaning that it was a way to spread their mana on Aiqith to attract new priests and worshippers, but why then focus on granting blessings that would make it easier for the dungeon to kill said potential priests and worshippers? Unless I had any desire in selling my soul to a god, it didn''t look like there was a way for me to find out. But hers was the best. Out of the nearly three dozen options, most others only accented the violence of my floor; it was already plenty aggressive. I needed something to keep their prey stuck. So I reached out to her, to that old, fanged aura with the weight of centuries, and rather humbly¡ªin my opinion¡ªaccepted her mana onto my floor. There was a touch of surprise, as if she hadn''t expected me to choose her, then her agreement. A contract burned between us. She would grant me a boon, I would let her push her mana onto my floor and fulfill future requests she would give me. Typical god stuff. I accepted. Then the Underlake exploded in power. Schools were tugged apart as a whirlpool surged to life in their midst, roughwater sharks flailing from their lazy patrols; greater crabs were pushed back, splaying flat against the ground and armourback sturgeons floundering in the depths. The poor cloudskipper wisp barked as the paths she''d once so easily trod now changed, waves stirring on the surface and rupturing all her carefully-shaped clouds. She howled something challenging and started to run again, doggedly starting a one-wisp war against the power of a god. I could respect that. Rather thoughtfully, the whirlpool''s power only extended halfway through my hall; it didn''t push invaders all the way to the entrance to the next floor but only to the thick of the bloodline kelp forest, where they''d encounter all manner of other threats. Just something to keep them from leaving. And so Mayalle''s power surged through the Underlake. I sat back, watching it flow through; my creatures would take some time to adjust, learning this new danger, and would grow stronger because of it. Rotten merrow and other beasts could enter but not leave, and while I was rather positive my presence was already known, now I didn''t have to worry about something escaping to spread secrets of my floors, to tell all other invaders of what to do. No more nightmarketers stealing my creatures to resell, no cowards peeking in and out, no creatures deciding they no longer wanted to fight and meandering out. Now I had a whirlpool. And I knew that there was more; much like with Rhoborh''s symbiosis, I could feel that there were hidden side effects, little changes I couldn''t understand at the beginning but were already spiraling out into massive changes. What would this bring? ¡­would this much movement help Seros'' hydrokinesis? Hm. Something to test. But for now, I basked in the power of my latest completed floor. Chapter 53 - Old Stone I spent perhaps a touch too much basking in the presence of my mighty Underlake. The whirlpool was still settling in, tugging none-so-gently on the bloodline kelp as it strove to pull the entire cove into my halls. My saltwater barrier was still up, thank the gods, but I could already see how I''d soon be collecting more creatures. Not for the Underlake, though. It was complete now, beyond a few minor touches I would save for later. No, I had my sights set on further floors. Which. Before I started that, I really needed to finish up the fifth floor. I cast one last longing look at Seros happily swimming through the whirlpool before begrudgingly trotting down. The fifth floor, with its iron-rust walls and mushroom-cap islands, was quiet, given that I hadn''t actually added any creatures yet. It was rather strange, honestly. I''d gotten so used to the buzz and hum and gurgle of my other floors that my points of awareness actively turned with excitement towards the distant creaks and shifts of the mountain overhead. Not exactly the most exciting of updates. But now to start. Flora first; I darted around and dumped an immediate half dozen points into growing razorleaf lichen up the island stalks, covering them in burnished gold and orange stripes with their bony, brittle edges. Hopefully something to slow down or even dismember anyone who tried climbing up the sides, though if they had scales like Seros I''d just have to hope that the fall killed them. A touch more on the underside of the islands, fed by quartz-light, just in case. I wasn''t looking to take chances here. I splattered some jadestone and billowing moss around the islands, just to break up the silver limestone, and a few mushrooms in whatever shadows I could find. It wouldn''t be a terribly hue-filled floor, it was quickly turning out to be. Oh, I dearly loved the rust-red patterns on the walls, but the islands themselves had to be flat to work and thus couldn''t be stuffed full of mangroves and moss and rolling fields. Fine. Maybe I''d get another plant that fit, but I''d accept this for now with only minimal whining. And now to creatures. Setting a food chain was always the most important step; I dumped sparks of mana into every last crevice I could find and set off a swarm of bugs, every type and shape¡ªwith a notable population of eye-spot butterflies, if they were feeling any sort of urge to evolve so I didn''t have to wait for my others to give me more¡ªand let them loose with all the grace of a hurricane. Immediately, the silence crumbled away as the buzz of passing wings and the scrape of claw against stone filled the air; comforting, in the way that only thousands of crawling insects could be. All of them were Underranked, barely capable of drawing an invader''s attention, but my creatures needed to eat. Bugs, rather unfortunately, tended to draw the short end of the stick when it came to who got to live on top. I was holding out hope for the hunting mantis. She was already setting herself up as a right little menace in the Jungle Labyrinth. But my eye was on finer prizes for right now. Only two flying schemas to my name, with a hopeful third once the caterpillar reached adulthood. But while I certainly hope it wasn''t too cocky, I was rather convinced I had enough time to collect a few more before invaders started merrily traipsing their way to my bottom floors. One day I''d get a massive threat, something to swoop overhead with all the grace and raw fucking destruction of a sky-drake. Something like the sarco, where the pigeons and butterflies only served as distractions for the real beast to come out and play. And speaking of¡ªI flew back to my various bridges and set about the careful process of removing several strengthening veins of iron from within them, weakening them until they trembled. Now that the sarco wouldn''t be making his way down here for a good while, I didn''t see the need in leaving them strong. My creatures were more than welcome to break them to send poor little invaders tumbling for a rather nasty fall below. Though I did leave a path, one twisting and inefficient, strengthened. Seros still liked to curl around my core and I certainly wouldn''t make him have to clamber his way through the valley just to get to me. Enough distractions. I shook a point of awareness to make some sort of declaration and started tugging mana out of my core. The baterwaul was first; it popped into its brand new existence with a horrible, wailing shriek, floundering its leathery wings until it realized it was, in fact, rather safely situated on an island. Large as I''d remembered, spindly and awkward and dumb as a collection of rocks. Its eyes passed sightlessly over its surroundings, still crying out with that terrible, terrible shrill voice. Mayhaps I didn''t need it on my floor. But I was brave and strong and would survive the bloody thing''s insolence, and so I gathered up the roughly four points of mana needed to create another one. It came into the world and promptly started screaming. Gods. I''d need to reduce my points of awareness on this world if I was going to survive the coming weeks. But soon a dozen of them were flapping around the room; they couldn''t take off from the ground and had to drag themselves to the side of the island, merrily sliding off and dropping like a stone for a few feet before their wings kicked in and they were able to take off, grey-brown bodies streaking through the air as they hunt through their new environments. The bug populations had all of a few minutes to live in relative peace and harmony before I''d dumped predators on their doorstep. Sucked for them. But while I still wanted to bang my non-existent head against the wall, I could appreciate how effective the baterwauls would be; any invader trying to focus on not falling off the edges of my island would have a very rough time of things with these monstrosities flying around making a nuisance of themselves. And that was without my second threat. Grabbing nine points, I shaped my first greater pigeon. It was much the same that I remembered from the corpse Nicau had brought; dusty white weathers, scarlet-tipped beak, talons built for grasping. Maybe two, three feet tall, its eyes fierce and hungry. Alongside a head that bobbled as it walked. As much as this was now a predatory creature, it was still a pigeon. But it spread its wings with a shriek and immediately took off, swooping a touch awkwardly as it ducked and bobbed around stalactites, but it soon figured out the space and started circling overhead. With the quartz-light on the ceiling its wings did cast a rather impressive shadow, and the bats were already searching for little dens and nooks to tuck away in. A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. Not that the pigeon looked to be having any intention of that. It shrieked a war-cry that really didn''t deserve to come from a pigeon and charged at the nearest one, wings tucked into a dive. The bat, for its part, shrieked once, paused as it was told it was now in danger, and promptly decided it had somewhere else to be. The pigeon was half a second late from snagging it before it disappeared into one of the iron vein shelters. Pity. It shrieked again and darted back to its circle overhead, already on the hunt for more prey. Looked like I''d have to work to keep their numbers up; I would need time to recharge but I could create one more pigeon, letting it fly loose as it surveyed its new territory. I''d up their population over the coming days until I had a proper dive bombing threat, depending on how much mana my upper floors kept giving me. Sometimes I very much still regretted Naming Nicau. That mana would be so helpful elsewhere. But for I extended my tendrils upward, letting them worm into those higher floors; I sang sweet melodies of power and mana and victory, of evolutions untold and territories untested. Beautiful little things that every creature hungry for pride so desired. I knew they would answer the call. They always did. - Akkyst was having, to put it lightly, a strange day. The jaguar had recovered enough from her paralysis to walk beside him, though her front left paw seized up every few steps. Her feather-tipped tail swished with almost excitement as she stayed close to his side but looked out at this new territory with wide golden eyes. Akkyst knew the bladehawk had been captured relatively recently but she had been with the war horde for far longer, too physically weak to be sent out on patrol missions and killed so stuck in that cage for gods knew how long. Even now, with this slight freedom even though she was still trapped under stone surrounded by goblins, she seemed impossibly free. He''d get her out. Both of them. But now they walked through the mountain, following the Magelord goblins; Bylk kept up a constant stream of chatter, asking all manner of questions; were all cave bears capable of listening? What mana abilities did he have? Had he ever tried to speak before? Akkyst tried to answer them, he really did, but with his only communication being various head shakes and rumbles, it was a touch difficult to get his point across. Bylk seemed to understand it, at least, and settled for just rambling out loud. The other goblins accepted their chieftain''s slightly mad trains of thought with an amused familiarity. It didn''t seem like the first time he''d gone on a tangent with no one willing to be the one to step in and stop him. But now, as the stone shifted overhead and they crawled ever on into the quartz-lit land beyond, they finally arrived at the home of the Magelords. One goblin held up her light and rapped thrice on a seemingly indistinguisable piece of stone; an answer knock came back and, with a pale grey glow, the rock melted away into a perfectly smooth entrance, rippling with excess mana. The goblin made to step forward, paused, looked back. She whispered something. The entrance widened a bit. Akkyst hoped he managed to look suitably thankful; there hadn''t been a chance his shoulders would fit through the original opening. The jaguar waited until the rest of the goblins had filtered in before padding through herself, ears perked forward and tailing swishing; he had genuinely never seen her so interested in anything before. Even her coat, still covered in the gritty grey of dust, seemed a touch more like the green underneath. He muscled his way through. On the other side was a cavern. It sprawled as far as the eye could see, the farthest edges lost to shadows that even the quartz-light couldn''t reach; along all the walls great stone buildings loomed, windows carved and flickering with movement, meat roasting over ruby-fires, great towering stacks of timbershroom wood and many-coloured caps of a glowing variant. Crystals sat in every corner, some pried from stone and others emerging from the walls, all faint with mana. Goblins by the hundreds darted around, their skin marred with stripes blending with each other as they greeted each other and hissed and ran off to some important task. There was no great field full of soldiers hacking heedlessly at the air, no cages filled with starving beasts in the corner. All the goblins he saw moved with purpose but cheer, and there was comfort instead of weapons. But it was far from perfect. The cavern was enormous but it was empty, barely a fifth occupied, the quartz-lights trailing off until the far corners were inky black. Stone houses were cracked and crumbling, melded with fresh stone tugged up by mana but not enough, and more cracks came on top; the meat cooking was a pitiful amount and the mushrooms beside it even less so. Every goblin seemed thin, hungry, even if they used their mana and chatted freely. A society, but not one thriving. Something had gone wrong. The bladehawk swooped overhead, immediately taking off in this new, enormous area to stretch his wings with a pleased shriek; the jaguar purred, ears flicking, and stayed at his side. Not up to explore until she was fully recovered, he guessed. Paralysis had a nasty habit of predating death. Bylk clapped his hands together, grin stretching to those same impossible limits, and gestured broadly at the cavern. A few goblins hissed some sort of illegible greeting but scampered off to do other things. "Welcome, lordies, to the home of the Magelords." Akkyst tried to make his rumble sound as impressed as possible. Bylk''s ears perked up. He waited a second and then went for a confused head tilt, adding a questioning grunt at the end. Gods. He needed to learn how to talk sooner rather than later. "A beaut," Bylk agreed. "But one that needs fixin'', aye?" In a manner of speaking. Akkyst nodded. The normally cheerful goblin''s face turned pained, just for a second, and he looked across his home. At the stone crumbling in the corners, at the far too small population, at the cavern space they could barely maintain, let alone expand in. He jerked a thumb towards a small, open-air hut off to one side, some sort of pelt spread over the ground and a stone pillar behind. "Come," Bylk said, and there was that same touch of sadness from before. "I''ll tell ya a bit more of our story." He coughed wetly into a gnarled old hand, one of the glowing jewels in his ear flickering as if about to go out. "It ain''t a happy one." Akkyst was pretty sure he could have guessed that. Anyone that had the goblin war horde gunning for their backs wasn''t bound to have a pleasant time. He trodded after the Chieftain, the jaguar close in his shadow, and peered into the room; it was a tiny but well-kept thing, dust swept out, the pelt on the ground properly fluffed. On the stone pillar rested a circular stone, about the size of his paw pad, covered in strange writing¡ªexcept it was cracked in half, the edges worn by time. An old, troubled piece of stone. He rumbled. "Started as one tribe, peace, harmony, all that shit. But when the miner sect got greedy and left, the mages tucked away to study mana. Right normal thing, but it made them blind. Couldn''t see what the others were doing." He kicked a stone like it had offended him. "So when that bloody war horde decided to take over the mountain, they didn''t know shit. Couldn''t prepare." "Got attacked and the survivors ran out to the wider caverns, scrappin'' out a living. Got just happy enough they decided to do the same bloody thing. Surely the war horde would leave them alone like they''d done for the miners, huh? Why attack twice?" He spat. "Bah. Idiots. They started working on their mana instead o'' keeping on guard." "But they did have something," he mused. "We ain''t never been able to figure out what, but they had something, and it was almost done. An¡­ engraving, ritual, something like that. Was big. Would''ve changed everything." He grimaced. "But when ya spend all your time doin'' one thing, ya skimp on others. Like defense. So the war horde came, burned it all, ate us whole, and spit the scraps back into the destroyed home." One crooked finger jabbed at the stone. "That''s all we have left of that big ol'' thing they thought would save us. Fat lot of good, now." Bylk did carefully wipe a speck of dust off the stone as he turned to leave. "Ain''t never been a big group, and ain''t no time to expand when we''re fighting off the bloody horde. So I hope you''re here for a reason, lord, because we''ve got need of help." And with that, he left back to help his people. Akkyst rocked back onto his hind legs. His storytelling needed some work, but it painted a very sad picture. On the run, never able to recover, working to defend against an enemy that seemingly hated their existence. That was no way to live at all. But they had to, because the other option was death. He had only just come from the war horde''s caverns, but the sentiment rang too familiar and too true. He had only fought because it had been the only way to survive; he didn''t want to fight. He just wanted to learn. But that hadn''t been an option. Akkyst stared at the engraved stone, at the work of decades never to be completed. Maybe there was one more fight in him. Chapter 54 - Welcoming Committee Half a dozen more pigeons swarmed over the fifth floor. They were still right little monsters, swooping at the bats like they owed them money; the bats, for their turn, had gotten very good at weaponizing their wretched screams to spook the pigeons away. A proper rivalry. Just a slightly annoying one, because both sides had been fighting so much instead of finding mates, and that meant I was still having to replenish their numbers by hand. Which was expensive. But while I had to sweat and work to keep the populations up on the fifth floor, something else was doing it for me. Remember that little thimbleful of mana I''d put on the first floor? The bugs had gone mad for it, willing walking into death just for a chance of it. But that had been the first floor, where my ambient mana was weakest, given the distance from my core. Still certainly higher than the outside world, but not really impressive. Just a taste. On the second floor, where there was another thriving bug population, similar story. Stronger but not strong enough. Then the Underlake¡ªself-explanatory for why there was a lack of bugs there. The fourth floor had its share, yes, but living inside tunnels filled with thousands of always-hungry always-active threats in the form of the thornwhip arms was rather unconductive to living a long and prosperous life. So on the fifth floor, where the mana was fresh and deep, where there were predators but also ample places to hide and sneak, to protect and grow¡­ well. As long as they survived for just a touch, just enough to eat some of the mana-rich jadestone moss or kill another bug, the ambient mana would do the rest. Messages crawled across my core. Admittedly, it wasn''t exactly a clean pipeline¡ªas fast as they were evolving, the baterwauls were eating them several orders of magnitude faster¡ªand I noticed that again, it was mostly the same species that were evolving, being the ones already gifted enough to have a chance at evolution despite the seemingly larger capacity for mana needed before evolving. The mosquitos, despite needing a mere speck of mana to break past the threshold, hadn''t gotten an evolution yet. But the handful of pale white lights blooming over the fifth were still very welcome. I pranced on over to inspect them. The first was another praying mantis, with again only one evolution path available¡ªI tucked him underneath one of the rocks on the floating island he''d ended up on and selected hunting mantis. I''d probably send him back up to the fourth floor once he''d evolve, if just for how more suited to that environment he was; same for the two platemail bugs evolving on a separate island. Four beautiful eye-spot butterflies are curled up as their eyeblight evolution crawled over them. Welcome little bastards. Sounded terrible but I was rather hoping one of them would die just so I could have their schema¡ªbut I''d made a promise. I would never betray one of my creatures that had worked so hard for their evolution. Killing them for my own gain was not how this dungeon worked. Though as much as I was hyping these evolutions up, they were still only Unranked. It wasn''t exactly like they wouldn''t end up dying throughout their lives. Although I was starting to understand just how varied the levels were for the ranks. Both Seros as an underground monitor, a true threat and powerful above his peers, was technically on the same level as a burrowing rat. Right. That made sense. I was inching towards the conclusion that it had much less to do with overall strength, and more to do with future evolutions. I certainly hadn''t known all the fine details before I''d up and gotten killed but I thought that most creatures could only evolve five times until they reached their peak form. So was Unranked just a way to show that they were at their base form? I shoved the thought away. There''d be time to focus on ranks when my creatures actually started evolving past the first one. Because as much as there were familiar faces, two new messages waited patiently for my attention.
Your creature, a Brown Ant, is undergoing evolution! Please select your desired path. Groundbreaker Ant (Common): Boring through stone to build their elaborate homes, there are multiple variants within this species; warriors, enormously powerful to defend the nest; workers, strong-jawed and clever; and queens, rulers over all.
Your creature, a Common Wasp, is undergoing evolution! Please select your desired path. Swarming Wasp (Common): They fiercely defend their territory in massive, droning swarms, flying as one to cover their prey and inject them with nausea-inducing venom.
Oho. Don''t mind if I do. Only one option for both, of course, but both were very intriguing. I had plenty of plain stone on the fifth floor, unlike my others which were often covered in plants and other various things. This was open territory. And another beautiful flier. Most were coming in post floor construction, but I wouldn''t look a gift¡­ wasp in the mouth. Admittedly, I think I''d gotten a touch too used of the specializations that usually came with evolutions past Unranked; while nausea-inducing venom was interesting and useful, I couldn''t help but think of the vast potential in a¡­ paralysis venom, or something that disrupted their mana channels. Ah well. For a later evolution. Half a dozen ants were evolving together, all crowded around the corpse of a poor moth caterpillar they''d neatly sliced to ribbons; I selected groundbreaker ant and let the glow overtake their form, growing a lump of stone around them for a touch of protection. I wasn''t expecting this evolution to take long. They were mainly growing in size, maybe something special for cutting through stone. Should be quick and to the point. Thankfully, I also had three wasps looking to evolve, which was great because I would somewhat doubt their capability as a swarm if it was just one lone bastard out in the world. Three still wasn''t great, but there was plenty of room for eggs. They''d make it work. None of them were in the same area, all scattered over on top of the various other bugs they''d killed, and I siphoned them all off into safer areas as the pale glow of their evolution overtook them. Soon there''d be more predators, more threats filling my great halls. Already I was feeling far more dangerous than I''d last been. The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings. Which only meant more power to expand. - Nicau woke up with a truly throbbing headache. He hissed, blearily slapping a hand over his eyes; the softly glowing algae that made up his bed wasn''t bright but anything hurt now, jabbing like swords into his head. Gods, what had the dungeon and its snake done to him? Everything ached like he''d just pulled up the mainsail by himself¨C And then he felt a very unfamiliar swirl of mana curl around the pain from his headache and soothe it away, and he was suddenly very much awake. Nicau had always had mana¡ªbeing a stowaway without any magic was just asking to be killed by the captain if they ever found you and you didn''t have a use beyond being thrown overboard¡ªbut his ability to follow mana trails was a weak, fluttering thing he had to grapple with just to summon. But now something flowed through him, bright and gushing through his channels. It felt alive. He sat on his bed for a moment longer. It looked like he''d gotten his soul-bond, then. Really, he''d had all of a second to even figure out that he was still alive but captured by the dungeon, talking to a snake, being press-ganged into a deal, and then he was unconscious again. It had been a bad week. But a week that would get worse if he didn''t figure out what was fully going on. He was pretty sure the dungeon wouldn''t kill him, and he hadn''t been given a mission yet to go out and spy, whatever that was supposed to mean, or collect more creatures. So he was probably safe. Ish. But he wouldn''t know that until he left the isolated cramp of this rocky home, so he waited no time to let his anxiety sink in and just poked his head out of the crack in the wall. The same low-roof cavern, covered in algae-beds and stacks of bone and wood, clumps of mushrooms growing in the corners and shed scales piling up near the entrance. Half a dozen kobolds wandered throughout, some scarfing down on food, others sharpening spears. A little society. As one, all their golden eyes snapped in his direction. Nicau valiantly held back a whimper. One of the kobolds stood up, leaving behind its hunk of meat, and padded towards him with its spear held loosely in its claws; her claws. He wasn''t positive but she had the same wildly branching horns, more similar to antlers than the other kobolds; the one who had first met him. All the other kobolds dropped their heads in a vague bow as she passed, and he saw that her spear was carved with shoddy engravings, like it was important. Like she was important. "Awake," she said. Said. It came out like a hiss, the same sound he''d been hearing before, but now something in his brain told him that it meant awake. That she was saying the word awake. "What?" or at least he tried to say; but what came out instead was a vague, warbling hiss he was definitely sure he hadn''t been able to say before that still sounded like what? to his mind. They both stared at each other. Nicau had felt the mana in his chest move as he spoke, something filtering up through his mouth. He fought the urge to hang his head in his hands. Somewhere in the back of his mind when he''d accepted the dungeon''s offer, he''d had brilliant thoughts of firing lightning-attuned mana from his hands, maybe summoning gold and jewels straight from the earth, maybe soaring over the world on spectral wings. Something powerful. Now he was talking to lizards. "Hello?" He tried, and there came that lilting warble. Within seconds, all the other kobolds abandoned their tasks and surrounded him, hissing their own greetings with wide-eyed awe. Nicau yelped, tucking his arms close in; he was taller than them by just a fraction, though admittedly their horns beat him out, and they had absolutely no sense of boundaries. Cold scales brushed against his arms. "Back, back," the lead kobold chided, and the others begrudgingly backed up like scolded children. She narrowed her golden eyes at him, her slitted pupils mere pinpricks in the hazy light. "Speak?" Nicau wasn''t positive whether that was do you speak? or merely speak again. Their language, while he was somehow now fluent, didn''t seem to be complete; words and conjoining phrases missing, all the like. Fantastically fun for him to figure out. "I do?" She poked at his arm, tapping her spear against the ground. "You are of dungeon," she finally said, though even she didn''t sound fully convinced. "Not to kill. Maybe?" Kobold-ese didn''t have a specific sound for stuttering so it just came out as a hiss, low and wavering. He still had absolutely no idea how his boring human vocal cords were producing these noises. "Uh. No kill." She seemed vaguely disappointed. At least that was settled. This was his brand new home and they maybe weren''t supposed to kill him, and Nicau was definitely not on the hysterical part of his journey. He swept all desperately growing desires to run screaming out of the dungeon away and brushed his hands over his pants for something to do. This was his new home. Maybe. Probably. He turned back to the Chieftess. "Do you have a name?" All the kobolds tilted their heads in confusion. "Not Name, no," she warbled, and they had a special word for it, not the one he had used. There was a special sort of reverence in her eyes as she spoke it. "But you are Named." Ah. That was what they meant. There was a difference in how he had woken up; now he was Nicau but also Nicau, old and heavy in a way that he really didn''t think that name had earned yet. It was an uncomfortable thought; feeling his Name sit heavy in his chest, fresh, unattuned mana pouring through that gap in his core and filling him up. He knew he needed to test it, figure out what else he could do with this power beyond understanding the creatures around him, but he was still far too focused on what it felt like to be Named. What if the dungeon hadn''t known his name was Nicau? If it had Named him¡­ Arnao, or Ither. Or even worse; Human. Maybe Boy. Some of his frustration at his current situation faded away. It could have been much worse. "Not like that," he said. "What do you call yourself?" The other kobolds seemed confused, and once more their primitive language came back to bite as they dithered for a way to explain themselves. "Call her Chieftess?" Nicau furrowed his brow. "That could be a name, I guess?" Every single kobold hissed in a manner reminiscent of a gasp. "Not Name," the Chieftess corrected. "We cannot Name. Only Great Voice can." This Great Voice sounded an awful lot like the dungeon, which, fair. It would be the only one giving anybody a Name. But that hadn''t been what he was going for. "Well." Gods, how was he supposed to explain this? "A name is different from a-" he fumbled to mimic how she''d said it "-Name. You can choose a name for yourself. If you want." They looked somehow even more confused. A different angle. "My Name is Nicau," he said, and let a trickle of mana diffuse out; their eyes all widened in awe. "And my name is Nicau." No mana on that one. They all blinked at him. Nicau tried to shrug and extend a hand forward and ended up with a half shoulder shimmy. "So. What is your name?" The lead kobold paused, looking almost hesitantly at her claws. "I am. Chieftess?" She squeezed her eyes shut but there was no flicker of mana, no dungeon descending to cleave her head off for the insolence. Perfectly fine. There was a moment where the kobolds looked at each other, eyes widening frankly further than Nicau would have thought possible, watching the lead kobold¡ªno, Chieftess¡ªnot be killed for daring to name herself. It only took a moment for the idea to take root. "Branch!" One cried, tail almost wagging. "Scratch!" Another shouted, jabbing their claws at the air. The talk went around the half circle, every kobold pondering a name or calling out whatever their favourite object happened to be. As more of them continued to not die, more named themselves, cheering raucously as they all survived. And Nicau couldn''t help but feel a vague sort of pride, watching over them. He had done that. He had helped. Chapter 55 - A Strong Introduction My beautiful mage ratkin opened her brand new eyes. She squeaked and rose up to her hind legs, nose twitching and whiskers perking. No longer was she a mere rodent; she rose to a new height of nearly four feet, though she''d be taller if she stood up fully and lost the hunchback. Rich, earthy fur covered her body, her tail long and lustrous; her eyes, instead of their previous black, were the dark green of the jadestone jewel she''d swallowed. And her channels! Positively bursting with mana; they drank in the surrounding ambient stuff like it was the finest of wines, stuffing her full even after her evolution. I wouldn''t rush her¡ªmaybe¡ªbut I couldn''t wait until she started to cast true magic with her new powers. The thornwhip algae wouldn''t know what hit it. But for now, she just poked her head out of the den I''d curled her up in, sniffing at the stone jungle with a notable curiosity; not the fear of a prey animal, but now abject wonder at her surroundings, ambition for what she could claim. Her little ears perked. Yes. She would do well here. Her brethren would join her soon, I imagined; already there were three more rats on the fourth floor nearing evolution, though none had quite had the same genius intellect to swallow something large and indigestible. They would need time but I had no doubts that soon there would be more magically inclined ratkin racing around through the Jungle Labyrinth, getting their whiskers in all sorts of¨C Something moved overhead. I was lucky, this time; one of my points of awareness was tracking a newborn armourback sturgeon shuffling in the sand underneath the whirlpool, valiantly fighting the current for a chance at some tasty morsel. So I was able to see a finned shadow filter through the cove entrance. A merrow swam to the edge of the gap. He was long, pale green, his frilled brow drawn low over his face; he peered through, one hand curled tight around a trident. The armourback sturgeon scattered, not having gained the tranquil apathy of his fellows nor the desire for violence of the oldest. But invaders. The merrow made a warbling sound that wasn''t a word so much as a general call, and more shadows appeared in the waters behind him; seven merrow in total, all varying shades of sea green and blue, covered in frills and dark expressions. Some were strung with jewels, others clutching weapons of all various types, but their faces stayed the same. I rather got the sense that this wasn''t a casual exploration of the new cave that''d opened up on their home turf. No, they knew what I was, and I imagined they knew who had previously explored my great halls. Fantastic. Though I hadn''t done anything, some of my older creatures, those more attuned to my ambient mana, noticed my attention on the entrance and turned; the invaders loomed before them. They knew what that meant. A lone bullheaded triggerfish saw where they were looking, turned itself, and spat a merry barrage of stone shards for daring to come near its precious territory. The mage at the back raised a webbed hand, the jewels over his tail flashing. "Back!" He shouted to the others, and curled his fingers into a fist. The water between them wavered, tearing away from the whirlpool to fall under his command, and solidified into a massive wall; the stone shards peppered harmlessly over its surface, embedded in a shifting, twisting wave of water. I muttered several unkind words. A water mage; of course. One of the specializations that merrows had, rather unfortunately, monopolized on. Even terrestrial air mages didn''t have the potential that a water mage had in the ocean. What they could control was almost limitless. And judging by how only four of them had any sort of flashy weapons, I had a terrible little suspicion that the other two mages probably inclined themselves more to the water side. Bastards. But past all that, I couldn''t help but feel a twinge of excitement. The attack with Aloma and Nicau had been welcome, sure, after the weeks of no attacks at all; but it hadn''t been a good fight. My first Silver, but she''d only made it to the second floor and fought those that I''d already seen fight. No, this was a true invasion, up against beasts of mine that hadn''t yet tasted blood. I couldn''t wait. The merrows turned back to each other, the one mage still keeping his fist extended; the water wave crawled out to expand over the entire entrance, blocking them from any more projectiles. But even as they tried to talk I could see his expression; he kept pausing, glancing back, expanding the wall more. Because they were moving. Mayalle''s beautiful whirlpool tugged them, gently but firmly, out of the cove. They couldn''t float serenely in the entrance, thinking themselves safe from my creatures'' hesitance to leave my halls; no, they had to swim if they wanted to leave, and to fight against the current meant exposing their backs. And as strong as the water mage seemed to be, did they trust him to keep his concentration throughout the entire retreat? Their white-ringed eyes narrowed. "For the Thirteenth Priestess!" One howled, and the rest joined; they turned back to my caverns with the sort of fierce look in their faces that I could respect. No backing down for this group. The correct choice. My creatures surged forward to match. The merrows darted out of the entrance, the whirlpool now solidly yanking them deeper within; they formed a sort of triangle, the four weapon wielders on guard out front with the three mages behind. I inhaled but I couldn''t find an ethereal aura around any of them, nothing like the last merrow had; no priests or priestesses, then. Maybe it was only the thirteen for the entire merrow city of Arroyo? That would make sense why they were trying to avenge her, then. Who knew. I certainly didn''t know their politics. They''d barely made it an inch into the Underlake before their first competitor arrived; an enormous, hulking roughwater shark, fresh and hungry. It knifed through the bloodline kelp, mouth gaping. The water mage warbled some odd magical word and swept his fist to the side, dragging his protective shield out of the way; the four warriors leapt through the opening. Two had spears, one had a trident, the other had a pair of extended coral knives. The shark ignored all fears of death and darted forward, black-tipped fins sending her shooting through the water, black eyes alight with hunger. Unfortunately for her, these merrow were Bronze-ranked. The one with the trident dropped low, tail whipping out in some sort of enhancement technique as his speed doubled; the two spears swam in opposite directions, spiraling to each side side; the knife wielder stayed where she was, taunting the shark with some kind of shouted curse I didn''t even want to translate. It certainly worked. The shark shot forward in an explosion of bubbles; she lashed out with her tail and narrowly missed one of the merrows with a spear, snapping down on empty water where the knife-wielder had been a second before. Momentum carried her down as she chased the trident, her enormous bulk seemingly disrupting the merrow''s planned attack, but not for long. Another second and she slammed nose-first into that protective water wall, the mage''s face tight with concentration as he made sure to strengthen it against her size; she drifted away, dazed, and was promptly impaled by twin spears. Their first kill. And what an opening act; because even as the shark''s corpse drifted dead to the bottom, it left a trail of hazy scarlet in its wake, ignored as the merrows regrouped to swim forward. A mistake that could be excused, them not knowing of their environment, but one that would be punished. In a tunnel off to their side, nearly a hundred pairs of eyes flashed red. "More!" A merrow with a spear barked, eyeing two more roughwater sharks pushing through the kelp forest, hungry for prey larger than fish; the warriors swept forward, blades held at the ready. They''d had a slight fumble in their initial charge but now they were back and ready to continue. Then my beautiful swarm of silvertooths exploded out of the tunnel. Eyes lost to bloodlust, fangs like jagged glass, fury written onto their very cores; they charged at the pack of merrows like their very lives depended on it. Focused on the sharks, the warriors had no chance to deal, and the water mage was still maintaining the protective barrier; I leaned my points of awareness in. Would it be over so deliciously soon¨C The two other mages, seemingly twins if their identical pale blue skin and lavender frills meant anything, in tandem raised one hand; light bloomed from the jewels strapped across their bodies and the water around them wavered, once more wrenching itself from the whirlpool''s control. The silvertooths charged, slavering jaws opened and starving. As one, the mages closed their fists and twisted. The water surrounding the silvertooths condensed, squeezing each fish together unless their bloody fins raked at their brethren''s backs; they bucked and gnashed at the air, too deep in their blood-frenzy to really understand what was going on. One twin raised a second fist, maintaining the control, and the other twisted further, eyes narrowed to slits. In a burst of raw mana, the water holding the silvertooths abruptly switched positions, swirling around like a gust of wind until it propelled each little monstrosity directly into a roughwater shark''s unprotected back. The silvertooths didn''t give a shit who they were attacking; they tore deep into the shark, ignoring its sharpened skin in favour of ripping it to shreds. In seconds it was gone, and the warriors used the confusion to deal with the other; more blood hazed through the water, the silvertooths hungry for more action. But the twin mages just raised their webbed fists, bunching the fish back together so tightly they couldn''t move, and shoved them back into the tunnel they had come from. Another twisted hand and a water barrier crawled over the entrance, locking them in, though they threw themselves heedlessly at the wall and thrashed. I didn''t want to be, but I was impressed. It would probably take something more on the Silver level to be able to kill all those silvertooths at once, or possible at Bronze but it would exhaust them for the rest of the battle; this was a handy way to get rid of the problem while preserving strength. Something I''d build a defense against later. The merrows shook themselves, watching their surroundings warily; the lead mage, the one still maintaining the water shield, tapped his claws together. "Forward," he said in their strange, warbling language, eyes narrowing. "We don''t know where it has hidden her staff." Her staff? I poured back through my memories of that first merrow attack, though admittedly then I''d been a bit more focused on my potential demise than any specific weapon anyone had been using¡ªbut there it was. A tall, diamond-tipped spear she''d used to command her attacks, lingering with the faint smell of a deep-ocean goddess. Seemed important. Well, it had seemed important up until I''d dissolved it to learn the schema of a diamond and get more mana. Was that all they were invading me for? I had bad news. "Agreed," the one with the trident said, tail flicking as the last of his speed boost faded from his skin. "Move together. Stay close. Keep a keen eye." They moved with a military efficiency back into their triangle formation, still buffeted forward by the whirlpool; again I saw one of them glance back, wondering if they could just swim out and come back when they''d reassessed. And then they saw those hungry eyes lurking in the hidden corners of the room. They would need to clear this floor before they could attempt to leave, and my creatures would not make that easy. Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. As one, they slipped into the bloodline kelp. My points of awareness darted around them, shifting through the fronds and tracking their progress. More creatures awoke at the presence of the invaders and moved in, but they were considerably more prepared than the normal silverhead most beings on my floors hunted. A spear lashed out and popped the bell of a mimic jellyfish, some sort of sight enhancement flaring through the merrow''s eyes; she led the party through the forest, the lead mage still maintaining his protective barrier. Movement only I could see off to the left. The silver krait, slender and twining, shifted through the bloodline kelp. His clever little eyes immediately found the invaders bulldozing through the floor, paddle-like tail propelling him further to investigate more. And unlike with the triggerfish he''d ignored last time, the merrow seemed a threat he found appropriate; he curled around a strand of bloodline kelp, disguising his silver body underneath the amber-gold, his clever eyes fixed on the group ahead. There wasn''t any time for them to notice him, though, as massive shadows cut through the algae-light overhead. Rather helpfully, the sharks had been attacking in sequential order, as three now thundered closer; but this was their territory. They knew how to fight in the kelp, how to fight against the currents made by the crushing hole and kicked up by the cloudskipper wisp overhead. This would be their fight. The merrow warbled something to each other and broke out into position, weapons raised. The twin mages flicked out their webbed fingers and great lances made of water swirled to their command, poised around the group, and the lead mage shouted something as his barrier grew to encircle them all. As one, the sharks dove. Spears stabbed along their back, teeth gnashed at empty water, scratches tore open upon contact with sharpened skin; they whirled around each other in a true carnival of violence, stabbing and slashing and striking. I enjoyed it all immensely. I enjoyed it even moreso when the warrior with the trident, a younger merrow with a cocky grin, impaled one of the sharks with his weapon. He wrenched it out and took a moment of appreciation, raw pride brimming over his face, and took just long enough to throw off their rhythm. One merrow bumped into him, throwing them both off course, the handle of a knife crunching into his face. He stumbled back, tail thrashing. A shark loomed overhead. "Talluo!" The one with the pair of knives cried out, hand reaching; but the shark wasted no time in ripping the stunned merrow''s head off in an explosion of blood. And, lost in the beautiful chaos, the silver krait unwrapped from around the kelp and slunk forward; he slipped underneath the water barrier and twined around to the other side. The warriors fought and the twin mages kept up their great lances of water, pushing around the sharks to keep them from claiming another life; but the lead water mage stayed to the far back, maintaining his barrier, eyes fixed on the battle. He hardly noticed as fangs sunk into the tip of his tail. The krait''s venom was so effectively numbing he barely blinked, not glancing away from the battle. But I knew it would work. I''d seen the damage his bites could do. His work done, he retreated back into the bloodline kelp as the final shark fell, twin knives embedded in its skull. "Gods," the spear wielder panted, bubbles escaping from her gills. "Talluo¨C" "We shouldn''t have brought him," the lead mage said. His expression was cold. "He was too young and wanted the attention of reclaiming the Thirteenth''s spear." The others looked away but didn''t disagree, watching as his corpse sank to the bottom of the forest. But there was no time for mourning, so they gathered their weapons once more and set out, following some spiral of mana I didn''t care enough to move. They''d soon find that their struggles didn''t end once they''d left the kelp. Eventually they did manage to clamber their way through, slaying another number of mimic jellyfish and over-eager silvertooths. Pity. I''d rather hoped they''d get caught in the crushing hole. But now they poked, overcautious, out of the bloodline kelp, their tails finally relaxing now that they''d escaped the shove of the whirlpool; leaving behind the various corpses of the monsters they''d slain. Far too many, really. For all of them being high level Bronzes, they were well coordinated and my creatures hadn''t faced a threat like them before; they cleaved through them with surgical precision, which I didn''t exactly enjoy. Useful to watch, though. All the more strategies for me to learn to better combat them. But now they''d made their way through well over half of the Underlake, only one clear section before them; the tunnel sloped upward, tunnels hazy on each side, algae trailing off surrounding walls and sand kicked up by rummaging currents. A paradise. Though I imagined they wouldn''t call it that. The warriors spread out first, the lead mage keeping his barrier maintained¡ªthough he was perhaps a touch slower, a touch less focused. I seemed to be the only one to notice. Everyone else kept their white-ringed eyes pinned on their surroundings. One of the twin mages raised her head, eyes bright. "There''s a wisp up there," she hissed to her sibling, tapping her claws over a large gem tailed to her neck. "I see it," he said back, eyes tracking the distant movement of the cloudskipper wisp. There was faint awe in his expression, though mostly overshadowed by ambition. "We''ll capture it after we reclaim the spear." She muttered something but nodded, Well. If that wasn''t terribly foreboding. Some part of me had always been confused why invaders kept coming to dungeons when so many died; and while these had the reasoning of collecting whatever spear they were talking about, that didn''t explain the others. And then I remembered that I was a being of pure mana creating impossible creatures and objects worth more than I could understand outside of my halls. So. Fantastic time to be me. They''d culled the roughwater shark population enough that no immediate threats jumped at their throats, so they crept forward with trepidation; but my Underlake was beautiful, and I could see it entranced them. As they bloody well should. If they were going to serve me the dishonour of trying¡ªonly trying, mind you¡ªto destroy me, they should at least pay homage to the wonders I created. One of them, the male with the spear, drifted slightly away from the group; underneath him, the oldest armourback sturgeon glared from his position half-covered in the silt, though his truly monstrous form of nearly sixteen feet was hardly hidden. The merrow cocked his head to the side and jabbed out with his spear; the sharpened tip bounced harmlessly off the sturgeon''s massive armour with a ringing clang. Far away from them, the sound carried¡ªand a creature resting on the very edge of the water raised his enormous head. The merrow narrowed his eyes, confusion plain of his face. Clearly he''d never seen his spear simply fail to hit an enemy before. He swam closer, raising his weapon for another attack; the sturgeon simply glared at him, tail swishing as he mustered up the energy for a charge. But in moving closer, he left the protective boundary of the water barrier. A triggerfish noticed. A stone shard knifed through the water and slammed into one of the merrow''s eyes. He screamed, bubbles exploding out of his gills as he dropped his spear and clutched desperately at his face, murky blood clouding around his head; the other merrow called out and rushed to help him, healing mana jumping to their webbed fingers. But. Well. If the first sound hadn''t woken him, the scream certainly had. With a low, rumbling hiss, the sarco arose from his sunning platform and slipped into the water. His near forty feet of bulk immediately blocked out the light overhead, his tail swishing languishing from side to side as he casually made his way deeper into the Underlake. Still not a terribly fast creature, but he didn''t need to be. There was nowhere his prey could run even if they wanted to. The merrow all flinched back as his shadow became visible in the murky water. "Gods below," one of the twins whispered. Her eyes were pale with shock. "What is that¨C" "No time for that!" The warrior with the pair of knives barked, brandishing her weapons; the male with the spear managed to stop crying out, one palm pressed over the gaping wound in his face. Looked like the little triggerfish had managed to pop an eye. Truly impressive. But one of the twin mages burned through a pale pink jewel and stabilized him enough he could pick back up his spear, raw hate igniting in his remaining eye. The others gathered around, though the lead mage was lagging even more behind, eyes fuzzy and unfocused. We''d see how well they lasted. I took a truly indescribable amount of pleasure out of how much their faces blanched when the sarco finally swam into view. Each one jerked, tails splaying, grips loosening on their weapons. The sarco took his time approaching, gathering his strength, but half the battle was one of mental strength and he had dominated that with one flash of his jagged fangs. The merrow suddenly seemed a lot less confident than they had been before. Had they really thought that the sharks would be my greatest defense? With a bellow that echoed through the waters like an avalanche, the sarco charged. Two out front, spear and knives; they split, enhancements burning over their bodies as they threw themselves out of harm''s way. The one with the missing eye shouted something incomprehensible and darted forward, jabbing his spear at the sarco''s open mouth; fangs snapped through stone and the weapon was torn in half, splinters filling the water. The merrow hardly seemed to notice, consumed in rage, and kept throwing himself forward armed with only half a stone spear. The others struggled to cover; the lead mage expanded his water barrier, diffusing it around whoever was in the front, and the twins kept up their massive lances to try and steer the sarco away from landing hits. The remaining three warriors danced around him as best they could, knives carving away scales and the other merrow''s spear testing the gaps of armour around his limbs. I hovered on the edge, practically buzzing with excitement. This was a tested group of warriors who worked together, splintered as they were; this was nearly gladiatorial. I loved it. I loved it less when the warriors banded together, crafted an opening, and swam back as the twin mages clenched their fists and burned through another jewel from the dozens wrapped around their body. The great lances of water they controlled started to shift and writhe; the female merrow''s turned steaming, bubbling and boiling under her grasp, and the male''s crystallized and froze, opaque with the ice crawling through. As one, they threw their attacks forward. The boiling water reached him first; the sarco bellowed, flinching away from the superheated attack, but his scales protected him for the worst of it. He growled, shaking off the burns, and made to charge forward again¡ªup until the ice hit him. He roared, limbs seizing up, eyes tossing wildly in his head. Scales frosted over and his fangs flashed as he thrashed away from the cold, his mana channels fluctuating like mad as they desperately tried to protect him. Not good. What the hell was that? All of my creatures stayed in a mostly temperate environment, sure, but nothing like this¡ªwhy had he reacted so much worse than my other creatures? Ah. First mangroves, then crocodiles; the land before the mountains, the one he had come from, had been a tropical place. He wasn''t built to deal with the cold. And rather unfortunately, the merrow noticed. The one with the dual knives darted forward, another speed enhancement bubbling over her form. "More ice!" She bellowed, sparing a glance back; only to see the lead mage slumped over, froth bubbling at his lips, spells dying around him. It all very quickly started to fall apart from there. Her shock left an opening and the sarco took full advantage, fangs cleaving through the tip of the eyeless merrow''s tail; he howled, floundering back, but his arms weren''t enough to propel him. He fell, gasping and shouting, and found the hundreds of greater crab hatchlings who weren''t strong enough to swim up to the fight but were very happy to accept a participant into their midst. He disappeared under a swarm of emerald claws. The lead mage''s barrier dropped, leaving the twin mages horribly exposed; a roughwater shark that had been stalking them since the first attack lunged forward, knifing through her upper arm. She shrieked, dropping her spell, and barely had enough time to think of a counterattack before the shark attacked again. The stereotype of caster types rang true; she had nothing for defense. His fangs cut across her throat. Now their attack formation wasn''t so much uncoordinated as completely fractured; the last three floundered back, wits anywhere but present, and the sarco shook off the cold with nothing but raw fury as he surged in for an attack. Ignore the spear glancing across his head, beat his mighty tail against the lance of water holding him back, swipe his claws at the one trying to dart away from the action¡ªthey had dealt him a mortal insult by revealing a weakness he held, and they would not survive to tell the tale. The last two merrow fled as the sarco punched his fangs through the knife-wielder''s head. Not into the bloodline kelp but instead around, skirting the edges as fast as their tails would push them, gasping and panicked; but soon they found themselves back on the other side, the whirlpool shoving at their strength, and found nearly a dozen roughwater sharks waiting with uncharacteristic patience at the other side. Oh, had they forgotten about me? It wasn''t like these were the dumb creatures found out in their little ocean cove. No, these were instructed by me, and they wouldn''t be leaving such an easy escape out. I hoped they could sense my presence, because I was radiating a truly astronomical amount of smugness. The final two barely needed more than a second to look at the situation before accepting their fate, knowing both of the whirlpool preventing their escape and the hungry monsters preventing their victory. But they didn''t retreat, curl up, hide. One tightened her grip on her spear, the other calling water to swirl once more around his fingers. Tenacious bastards. I could respect it. If they couldn''t go out, then the only way was through. The sarco roared, bubbles exploding from his mouth; the bulla on the tip of his nose glowed with an earthy light, tracking down the mana of the invaders who had dared leave his mighty presence. Even with the cold seizing at his limbs, he surged forward with newly found speed, tail whipping at the water even as the whirlpool tried to push him back. His eyes burned. The last merrow met him with battlecries of their own. It was a perfect feint charge; the warrior shot forward first, spear jabbing at the soft innards of his mouth, loud and flashy and plenty to draw attention. But she''d stayed for just a moment too long before activating her speed boost to get away, and perhaps forgotten that he was not just large, but forty feet long. His fangs snagged the tip of her tail. Even as she was torn apart, limbs flying, the mage managed to drain every single jewel left on his body in an enormous explosion of pale blue, bubbles bursting out of his gills as he yelled¨C And the sarco screamed too, as ice crawled over his jaws; he thrashed, releasing the merrow''s body and he scratched and clawed at the invading frost, but it crawled on relentlessly. Over his bulla, over his teeth; until it finally sealed his jaws shut in a glittering, crystalline cage. The mage sagged, drained beyond exhaustion, though pride gleamed in his eyes. But they''d done the sarco a horrible disservice in assuming that his mouth was his only weapon. With a roar muffled by the ice, he let the momentum of the blow spin him around hard enough to slam his tail into the merrow''s head. There was a crack more akin to the shattering of stone and the merrow, quite surprisingly, found himself very dead. Gods, I loved the sarco. Chapter 56 - Secondary The Underlake thrummed happily as mana exploded over its length. Fresh, rippling mana, stored deep in the merrow''s souls; my creatures and I drank deeply of that new power. I felt my core strain as all this potential roared through me, climbing ever-closer to my limit of seventy-five points, and slow just before reaching that. Gods. I''d missed the kind of mana that invaders brought. Although admittedly, only the majority of it was from the merrow; a not inconsiderable amount of it came from the numerous amount of my creatures they''d slain. Nearly a dozen roughwater sharks lay dead and dying across the ground, a handful of greater crabs, schools a plenty of silverheads and silvertooths alike. Though they''d been taken down in the end, they had very clearly proven the might that an all-Bronze invading group had. It was an interesting situation. On one hand, they had clearly been strong and coordinated, their weapon wielders moving in tandem and their mages both defending and supporting. A machine they''d used before. But at the same time, they''d mentioned that Talluo was new to the group and untrained. So maybe this was less of a group-specific attack, and more the general training that they learned in Arroyo? Still impressive that they had worked so well together, but I got the sense it wasn''t a true adventuring group, if that made sense, rather one born of convenience. I poured through the memories I finagled from their souls. There were thirteen priests and priestesses in Arroyo, each serving a different deity, and each with their own "tribe" underneath. The Thirteenth was the newest and least developed, which was only doubly worsened by the fact their brand-new Priestess had seen a potential bid for power in my dungeon and come here, only to get killed and have her staff¡ªher connection to her goddess¡ªstolen. So the thirteenth tribe was rather floundering, to put it lightly, but they didn''t have the resources to fully challenge me. Well, that sucked for them, and worked out great for me. Precisely how I liked it. I finished dissolving their corpses, digging through the various weapons and items they''d brought; once more their blades were made of that crystalline glass structure, sand heated in boiling water and shaped with flecks of mana. I had the schema so I could technically create it, but I couldn''t see where it''d be helpful. Maybe on the fifth floor, as something sharp for the invaders to hit if they fell off the side? That had potential. Always the fun of planning out my floors. I never knew where to put the things I had. But back to the merrow. One of them had a spear with ridges made of a new stone I didn''t have yet¡ªgranite. It was a coarse, multi-coloured stone, mainly dark pink and white with beautiful marbled streaks of black; very pretty. And while not as porous or water-accepting as limestone, it was far sturdier, better built for support. I''d most definitely be using that. Another handful of new jewels, with a pink variation of opal that one of the mages had used to temporarily heal the other''s missing eye. That was curious. Healing mana had a lot of potential in many places to be used, especially since most of my creatures were of the variety where their preferred manner of dealing with attacks was throwing themselves blindly at the invaders. Maybe my rats could use it? If I could convince another near-evolution rat to swallow one of these pink opals, maybe they would grow into a healing mage. Certainly useful for an attack. Focus. I gathered all the mana won from the attack and started to replenish my great armies, recreating another half dozen roughwater sharks and plumping up the schools of silverheads and tooths that had been nearly decimated by the merrow. The few sturgeons killed could replenish themselves and I truly had more mimic jellyfish than I knew what to do with, and the few lost crabs in the face of the hundreds swarming over the ground meant nothing. It was a devastating attack, but nothing I couldn''t fix. But with that, I''d finalized making sure everything would survive. Always wanted to make sure that nothing would implode on me if I took a quick break to focus on something else. Like the message tickling at the back of my core. I dove at it. Only one, unfortunately. This battle had mostly been carried out by those who were now dead¡ªrest well, my sharks¡ªor those who were plenty far off from evolution, like the sarco. I''d held out hope that maybe this would be enough to tip the silver krait or the oldest armourback sturgeon over the edge, but it didn''t look so; they were bright and full with mana but not enough. Maybe one more battle, if I was lucky. Maybe. The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. But this was still an evolution, and I would take it. I dug greedily into the message.
Your creature, a Silvertooth, is undergoing evolution! Please select your desired path. Bloodtooth (Uncommon): No longer does this creature want to take second. It lives in a permanent blood-frenzy, always starving for action, living short but wildly successful lives. Royal Silvertooth (Rare): As blood commands, so too does royalty. Leading a school with tyranny and fear, it terrorizes its territory and lets no other dare intrude on that which they claim as their own. Vampiric Silvertooth (Rare): It thrives on blood, using its needle-shaped teeth to drain victims dry as it swarms over them in a massive school. No hollow is safe from their highly sensitive blood sensors.
Holy shit. My first second-level evolution. ¡­was it wrong that I had hoped it would be Seros first? Or the horned serpent? Or any of my numerous creatures I put more time and care into? It unfortunately made enough sense I couldn''t keep overthinking it. Seros, the horned serpent, Rihsu, even the silver krait and armourback sturgeon were rather complicated beings; they had a lot of intricacies in their skills and grew almost constantly. The silvertooths were straight-forward brutes who didn''t need to grow or develop themselves in any complex forms because whenever there was one, there were dozens. All one had to do was survive long enough to gather enough mana and they would have a perfect straight shot to evolution. Which this one had. I held myself back from glaring at him. He was only now emerging from the tunnel the merrows had trapped him in, mana stuffed full through his channels; larger than those around him but not overly so, still a recognizable silvertooth. Pack hunters, and all that. It had been half luck and half his own aggression that had let him live this long in order to survive. And now evolve. I debated the options as I scanned the rest of his school; while more than a few were well stuffed from their shark kill, none were near the level of evolution yet, leaving him the sole one on the threshold. So that would rule out two options, unfortunately. It wouldn''t be much use to be a bloodtooth or vampiric silvertooth when you didn''t have a school to back up the aggression. And either way, I was more interested in the royal option. My silvertooths were deadly, efficient, but overall uncoordinated. As much as blood was a deeply helpful activation tool, their attack on the shark was proof enough; they needed more intelligence to their aggression. And since I certainly wasn''t going to teach each individual silvertooth that charging in a straight line to bite someone wasn''t the most effective attack, I would let someone else do the job for me. I selected royal silvertooth. Pale light overtook his features, the scarlet of his fins and fangs disappearing under the glow of evolution. I imagined this one would take a while, being the second evolution and all, and so promptly shuffled him off into a den tucked in a tunnel, adjusting the water currents to lift him gently into his temporary residence. He''d be fine there. I only hoped he finished up faster than his predecessors had. But he was evolving. Already, I could feel the difference between a normal and a secondary evolution; he felt far denser to my mana-sight, positively dripping with excess. There was the deep feeling of power emanating from him, stuck to his under two foot long form that he was, and he seemed to act almost like a sinkhole, tugging in the ambient mana around him to help guide his evolution. I wouldn''t know until he finished but it felt almost like a reawakening, similar to the sarco crocodile. Like this would be a new body for this soul to house, rather than just an upgrade. All that did was get me extremely impatient for Seros to evolve. Gods if he didn''t deserve it already¡ªhe deserved it a lot more than this fat lump of a silvertooth who''d just thrown himself at a shark and gotten the kill. I pulled my points of awareness away before I could get even more mad at a literal fish. The Underlake recovered, as it always did, settling back into its normal patterns as the echoes of the attack faded away. Perhaps a touch more full of mana, perhaps a touch more impressive; but it settled nonetheless. It had to wait for the next attack, the one I knew was coming. Though no merrow had escaped to tell their story in full, they had a reason for coming here, a reason that other merrow would remember. There would be more. And I would be ready for them. Because oh, my beautiful Underlake had delivered. Delivered in spades, really; it''d more than outdone itself. And while Aloma and Nicau had certainly explored above, they hadn''t been a full frontal attack; but at least I knew my third floor was up to task. All I needed were more opportunities to prove the rest of my floors were too. Chapter 57 - Gathering Trip I had never regretted a decision in life¡ªor death, I suppose?¡ªas much as I did shaping the baterwaul. With the mana from the merrow attack, I''d finally had enough to fully build populations of all the critters on the fifth floor; dozens of greater pigeons, near a hundred baterwauls, and easily several hundred caterpillars inching their way along the outer wall. I could already spot several cocoons building up on those iron-rust vines, which was superbly exciting. There was still a sort of vague question why their metamorphosis from caterpillar to butterfly didn''t count as an evolution; unless they''d specifically grown to mimic that? That was what their whole being counted towards? Who knew. I had been a dragon, not a bug. But unfortunately, with so much food, the baterwauls came out in their full glory. Shrieking, screaming monsters that seemingly poured from every free corner of my world. Gods. They were beyond irritating. But I would be strong, I would hold out, and I would imagine how miserable every other invader would be when they had to face the little bastards. I would also start planning for my sixth floor sooner rather than later. Something water related, that was already set¡ªI''d held out for the only-humid fourth floor and the truly dry, scratchy sensation of the fifth, but I wasn''t going to start going back to old, boring stone and blank walls. No, my sixth would be a return to my beloved water. Maybe a full open ocean, plenty of room for Seros and the sarco to dominate. No. I shook a point of awareness. I wanted to avoid the same trap I''d fallen into with the fifth floor, where all the schemas that would actually work there were being collected after I''d already built the damn thing. I''d wait this time until I had the creatures to dictate what floor I''d build for them. Open ocean was truly tempting, though. As much as the Underlake sang sweet nothings to my memories of currents, it needed more space. More free expanse. More dark, shifting waters where there was no light to show when something could lunge from the shadows. I bit off that particular trail of thought before I could spiral back into dreaming of being alive. Not now. So instead I flew back around the fifth floor, shoring up stone and adding more boulders to the main islands; something for creatures to hide behind. If I wanted the kobolds to move here, would I have them live open and exposed on the islands, or try to live along the bottom? That had potential for plenty of room, but also deeply inhibited their usefulness; if they had to clamber up the islands just to attack their prey it wouldn''t exactly be beneficial. I''d need a race a little more suited to cavern living to find a paradise here. Although there was always the chance that I could just flood the floor, letting invaders drown if they fell off, and fill it with all manners of nasty beasts to make sure that no one would escape from it. The thought certainly had merit, since I was already pondering trying to add some sort of storm overhead with a cloudskipper wisp, and it could rain down into the faux river. But that would completely devastate the butterfly population, and probably severely hamper the bats and pigeons. Hm. Sometimes planning took a lot out of me. But thankfully for this time around, I was presented with a distraction. Several pale glowing figures slowly lost their light in the far corners of my fifth floor. Just as I''d hoped, it hadn''t taken long for them to evolve. Half a dozen groundbreaker ants lifted their heads, examining the cave I''d tucked them in with brand new eyes. They were, in a word, enormous; the queen was already a foot long, antennae flicking as she took in this new space. Then there were three workers, half her size but with mandibles with points like pickaxes, earthy brown carapaces shining in the light. Then two beautiful warriors. They matched the queen with their size, a foot long, and they were built like actual bricks; enormous wrought armor, jagged spikes over every surface, jaws like shards of glass. They took half a second longer to wake up than the others but they immediately started moving, splitting away from each other to circle around the other groundbreaker ants, keen black eyes glaring out at the surrounding darkness. Warriors through and through. I couldn''t wait to see what trouble they got themselves into. Then, in scattered dens around the fifth floor, three more creatures opened new eyes. The swarming wasps were maybe five inches long, a deep burnished gold overset with streaks of black. Their wings, translucent with little ribboned veins throughout, buzzed to life as each of them spent hardly a second examining this new life before immediately taking off, antennae practically vibrating as they searched for the rest of their swarm. Only three but they found each other almost instantly, circling around with a low, droning buzz before darting off to some far corner of the wall to start constructing their nest. Once again my mana understood and one of them had been evolved into a queen, much larger and slower than the others, but she would lay the eggs necessary for their empire to survive. My mana was touching like that. Very thoughtful. Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original. But that was another beautiful flying thing on my fifth floor. Maybe it''d shut the baterwauls up. I''d certainly welcome it. But as with one newly gained creature, I immediately felt the hungry urge for more. Truly, you could never understand what it feels like to gain new beings in my halls. I got to experience every moment of their life from birth till death, watching them grow and learn and evolve, and I always wanted more. And now I had the ability to gather them. Coming off the last attack, I felt newly excited¡ªthat had been from the merrow city of Arroyo, who I knew from my many stolen memories did not get along with Calarata beyond the few trade deals they struck. Therefore, it was probably likely that only the merrow were the ones striking, and thus the bloody pirates were still biding their time or had forgotten about me entirely. Unlikely, given I was rather hard to forget, but they were idiots. It was possible. But that meant no one was standing outside my door watching my every move. And I did just collect a brand new spy. Not to Calarata for his first trip, I thought¡ªtoo dangerous, especially if the fellow who had sent him in here to die was out and about. But new creatures I would always welcome. Where I was at in my journey was mostly filled with duplicates coming through the river or my entrances, and as much as I appreciated their mana, I was hungry for something a little more new to welcome to my ranks. Things such as those that lived outside these mountain walls. I snaked a point of awareness over the Drowned Forest to the kobold''s den. It was time for Nicau to hunt. - Nicau was halfway through choking down a raw piece of what he hoped was rat when something thrummed deep in his soul. Everyone felt it, the entirety of the cave freezing up; kobolds all around paused in their consumption, scaled heads tilting to the sides as they felt a great power sweep through them. Only half were here to feel it, the others out on a hunting party, venturing into the forested beyond. But those that remained closed their eyes in an almost worshipful glee, even though the presence wasn''t there for them. Nicau felt it draw closer. Something bubbled up inside him, next to where he tucked his Name, deep in his chest. He closed his own eyes and tried to listen. Venture out, the great core murmured into his soul. Bring back creatures. Nicau swallowed. He''d known it would come. Only one, maybe two days since he''d woken up, enough time to meet with the various kobolds and figure out the dichotomy of this new world. He didn''t mind it, not really. Honestly, considering that most pigeoncatchers in Calarata wouldn''t hesitate to knife each other in the back for a single day of food, this was downright pleasant. They were giving him food from their hunts, a room to stay, even companionship. He could remember many cold nights where he''d have given a lot to have this. Although he needed to show them fire. There was only so long he could go eating raw meat before it''d kill him. He scarfed down the last piece, blood beading on his outer lips, and stood; some kobolds matched him, excited to be even a touch closer to the power that shaped them. Chieftess turned to him, her golden eyes narrowed. "I have to go," he said, picking up the thin little spear he''d helped shape. Just a piece of wood from the strange, blood-hungry mangroves that he would swear moved, with a sharpened rib for the tip. Primitive but certainly above what he had before. But every glance at things like this, at the raw meat they consumed, at the beginnings of a society but without the real trappings of a successful one. Could he show them more? Maybe¡­ smelting, though he only knew the basics himself, to mine out iron from the walls and shape impossible weapons. Or farming, if he could find a crop''s seed on his expedition. And not clothing, since their scales weren''t exactly revealing, but belts and straps to hold various items on, like the mana-filled jewels that merrow wrapped around their body. Maybe even proper construction, building homes instead of just dens carved into the stone. If he did all that, maybe the dungeon would see fit to grant him even greater powers. He could feel vaguely what he had gotten already¡ªsomething that let him speak to creatures capable of a language¡ªbut he couldn''t help but feel like there was something more. His soul sparked with mana. Not Bronze yet, because he certainly wouldn''t pass the combat trial required for the Guild to declare you up a level, but he felt his mana would now read as such. One little selling of his soul had already gotten him this. So he stood, gathering his spear and brushing down his already tattered clothing. Chieftess mirrored him, her own spear close to her side. She tilted her head to the side. Coming back? "Yes. I don''t know when, but yes." Half because he was pretty sure the dungeon would be able to kill him from a distance with this soul-bond, but half because he wanted to come back. Living in this dungeon meant potential beyond anything he''d ever seen before. And would he be leaving the dungeon and turning right so very quickly so he barely had to even see Calarata and instead poke his head into the jungle on the other side of the mountain? Absolutely. Lluc was still out there, and Nicau rather fancied his head still attached to his shoulders. But no matter. Because now he was leaving, and he would return victorious. "When I get back," he promised. "Then I''ll show you fire." The second oldest kobold in the back of the cave, the one who mostly spent his time hunting and hadn''t given himself a name yet, perked up. Branch made a low squawk-hiss before standing up as well, brandishing his well-polished spear and bracing his shoulders. His tail lashed behind. A guard until he reached the outside world. "Thank you," Nicau said very earnestly, clutching his rather pitiful spear a bit closer to his chest. He rather hoped the dungeon would be able to give him some slightly more combat-useful powers, because otherwise he would only be able to collect plants instead of creatures. Branch nodded, chittering in that word-less agreement sound, and started to march out of their den. Nicau exhaled, centering himself. It was time. He followed. Chapter 58 - New Territory Perhaps it was partially because I was a dick, but I felt the strongest urge to change absolutely everything the second Nicau left my walls. The ickle brat had gotten a touch too comfortable sitting in the kobolds'' den and eating their food; that wasn''t how my dungeon worked. You had to be strong to earn comfort. Which was another reason I was sending him out on that mission. Hopefully he''d get a backbone and start contributing beyond just a fleshy schema-collector. I wasn''t completely certain on how my Names worked, but I knew they provided a massive boost to the creature if not a complete overhaul; and given how Nicau hadn''t doubled in size like Seros had after being Named, I had hopes that his changes were more internal. Some powers a little more than Communer and all that. There was still a little bit of fear, though. I knew that Naming creatures bound their soul to mine, and although I certainly wasn''t going to test it, I had hopes that even in death, I would keep their souls. Something about binding their soul to my core. But even though I had my suspicions about that, I rather doubted that it would come into play if said Named creature was outside of my dungeon when they died. Not exactly a lot of room for me to grab onto their soul before they fled to whatever afterlife they deserved. So as much as I was planning on grinding Nicau into the stone until he emerged a new jewel, I did rather hope he didn''t die. But I would prepare for his return, and I''d do it with a plan I''d been holding off on for a while now. With both the Drowned Forest and the Underlake completed with boons of their own, the shame of having them and not my first floor was starting to set in. Time to switch that around. The Fungal Gardens needed their own strength, and if we were about to increase our number of invaders, I''d want to be ready. Of course, I''d mainly be focusing on the geography of the first floor. Whatever Nicau brought back from his adventures could be added here, and I didn''t want to lock myself into a full godly patron before I''d even seen what new creatures I could claim. With any luck he''d return shortly and I could finish this thing once and for all. So I shot back up to the first floor, passing through the Underlake and the Drowned Forest¡ªincluding the strangely empty first room, hadn''t there been a mangrove in here originally?¡ªto poke my head back into my starting area. A little nostalgic, in a way. I''d carved out the place already but my impeccable memory could still point out the small hollow that Seros had carried me to, his original den in this lonely mountain back before we''d met. The little entrance where I''d laid down my first whitecap mushrooms and green algae. Back when I''d been so wonderfully excited about claiming my first cave spiders. And now look at it. I preened at the new power I''d claimed, because I rightly deserved it, but now was the time to develop even more. Currently, it was a cavern maybe three hundred feet long, a third wide, with numerous side tunnels and various dens. The twin bears snoozed away, stomachs full and rivalry still burning; handfuls of rats scurried around, collecting gems but not yet brave enough to venture to the lower floors; stone-backed toads died in droves by hungry luminous constrictors. A little haven. Alright. I zipped back to another point of awareness down on the third floor, where Seros currently darted through the Underlake, testing his hydrokinesis. Come up, I requested, overlaying the vague sense of going outside; the seabound monitor perked up, abandoning his languished sprawl in favour of twisting the currents around him, flying with all speed back up floors. Glorious little bastard. He''d come equally as far as me. Well. Not equally. I was still heads and shoulders above dead. Seros yawned as he arrived back to the Fungal Gardens, peering around curiously as my mana diffused stronger where my focus was; all the other creatures got one glance at his enormous form and promptly fled back to their dens. Cowards. They''d have to shake off that fear if they were ever going to make it to the lower levels. Step outside, I said. Make sure I don''t break through. Seros blinked. Which, fair. I hadn''t asked him to leave my dungeon halls hardly ever, and with Nicau gone, that would mean I was out all of my direct avenues of communication. Not far, I amended. Just watch the walls. I was, to be rather frank, far too proud of how far I''d advanced my communication. The failure with Nicau had bit harder than I''d thought. Seros nodded, a touch of hesitance brushing over our connection, and padded towards the cove entrance. One last glance back, his lantern-esque eyes gleaming, and he disappeared into the gloom beyond. Immediately, I felt our connection waver, drawn taut by distance; his thoughts disappeared, the vague awareness I always had of his emotions fading away. Through the algae-light I had on the first floor, I could vaguely see the shadowed world beyond, but Seros immediately turned left and I lost him. A rather uncomfortable feeling, I''m sure you can imagine. I wasn''t a fan. Fan or not, I had work. Carefully nudging away some creatures with a few spectral loops of mana, I reached into the stone surrounding my floor and started to dig. Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation. It was difficult, expanding a floor that my core wasn''t on. Normally, my ambient mana would rush to fill in the new, unclaimed space, granting me more control over it and letting me dig further, but my mana was much thinner up here, untested and not as quickly replenished. Still very far from weak, mind you, I imagined the mana was full enough to make any mage weep; but I was used to stronger. Annoying. But onward I tunneled, shaping the cavern out; I was trying for a sort of wide open space, one large enough to have the edges lost in shadow and the corners obscured. That way I could hide the entrances, keeping those bloody invaders rightfully stuck once they''d made the foolish decision to enter my halls. Served them right. And after that, I¡¯d be¨C A thump answered me. I paused my digging, shuffling a point of awareness towards the entrance; Seros poked his nose back into the light and shook his head. Fair enough. I threw up a layer of granite as some extra protection from whatever fourth entrance I was about to carve into my precious hall and started digging elsewhere. That limitation hit harder than I¡¯d thought, really. It felt like every time I tried to make progress in one direction, Seros would pleasantly tell me that no, I needed to stop digging over there, actually. I considered the usefulness of opening a fourth entrance just to have a more symmetrical floor as I begrudgingly shifted positions again. But in the end, I had at least something worth enjoying. Easily a thousand feet long, maybe eight hundred wide; less than a third the size of the Underlake, but I had much smaller creatures in here. Said creatures were, to put it in short, very confused by the massive changes rippling through their previously quiet home; all of their dens had been ripped out as I changed up their walls, their little garden patches uprooted and shuffled off to other corners, even the silverheads in the rock pond cowering as I carved a new extension for their territory to fill. I¡¯d taken great pains to keep up my cohabitative relationship with the mountain river, tunneling around it with the utmost caution and never weakening its surrounding walls. Already I was siphoning plenty of water from it, filtering through my halls to keep refreshing the water and not overflow, and I was still fed a fair diet of silverheads and electric eels from deeper within the mountain. No, that river and I needed to stay good friends, and I hoped I did my best to maintain that. So that led to a very uneven floor. That was fine. I wasn¡¯t that bothered. Mostly. I shook my points of awareness. Not the time. My creatures started to filter around the new space, though hesitantly; even with stone-backed toads and luminous constrictors directly next to each other, they were a bit too thrown off from the new changes to capitalize on the scenario. I gave the mental equivalent of a sigh but helped guide them to their new dens, growing little trails of mushrooms and algae like a glowing beacon. A fair trade, considering I was tearing up a few patches of mushroom to shape the way for a trickle of water, but with the lunar cave bears, it wasn¡¯t anywhere near evolution. Not a waste in any regard. ¡­there was one lacecap, though. It was easily double the size of its peers, squat and sprawling, with a pinkish cast compared to its pale brethren. I prodded my way closer, inching a point of awareness around the desiccated rat corpse at its base. It had some vague sort of awareness, similar to my vampiric mangroves or the bloodline kelp and its burgeoning hatred. Almost sentient. But not yet. I left that one alone, perched near the middle of the room as it was, and grew a little stalagmite to hide it from immediate view at the entrances. Hopefully that would give it more of a chance to thrive. Perhaps sensing his part was completed, Seros padded back into my halls. I absolutely did not relax as our connection returned to its previous strength, his thoughts and emotions washing over me. Not in the slightest. But now it was time for the details. - She rose, horns gleaming in the dark. Around her, dozens and dozens of fellow serpents slithered, a writhing mess of scales. Though they were lowly, still relying on mere flashes of light to hunt, they served her, and that was enough. This new floor was becoming familiar, its twisting tunnels and living plants no more a threat than the smallest drop of power within her, but still she hungered for territory. Creatures lost in the labyrinth found themselves tugged towards her, following her psionic call without question, but that was simple. Her lowest servants could accomplish much the same, though without any of her elegance and skill. She wanted power. So ever they slithered on, hunting through the endless tunnels in search of greater land. Not particularly fast were they, unfortunately, and prey was scarce enough here they often needed to backtrack just to eat. But she could feel that they were reaching the end, spending enough time they had seen all there was to see of these upper levels. Soon they would reach the end. And, as with everything she desired, she reached her goal. The passage before them dipped low, breaking from the identical forking trail of every other one before. She raised her beautiful head, all of her serpents moving alongside; her horns flared with command and the fastest of them shot forward to investigate this new space. She would hardly risk herself in an unknown confrontation. They waited, tongues flicking, until the constrictor returned. She pressed into his mind, flexing the new skill that the dungeon had shown her with Nicau, and examined his thoughts; he had seen a wide-open room, one with flickering heat signatures and the smell of prey. She hissed. How dare some upstart claim what territory was rightfully hers? Fury coursed through her psionic powers and every serpent making up her great army arose in a rage, slithering forward without care nor self-preservation, pouring into this new room. It was beautiful. Emerald green over every wall like the tunnels outside, but with enough algae- and quartz-light to actually see it. Great stone trees, reminiscent of her previous floor but without the nasty little habit of stabbing anyone who got too close, rolling hills of billowing moss. Glorious. With one lone little inhabitant. One of the rats, but¡­ different. Taller, fur more sleek and rich, eyes an impossible green. The horned serpent flicked her tongue out; there was mana in the air, coming both from the Core and this wretched little thing. Some sort of pretender. Did it really think it had more power than her? That it was deserving of this territory? She thought not. Her serpents followed her fury and flung themselves forward, desperate to kill the thing that had dared to insult their empress. She allowed it with a hiss that promised a reward to whoever brought back the rat¡¯s corpse¡ªsomething she had learned from poking into Nicau¡¯s insipid mind. Followers tended to want gifts for doing what they were told to do. She didn¡¯t believe they always deserved it, as it was clear they needed to follow her and that should be reward enough, but until she had more direct power over them, she needed to buy loyalty. But it was coming soon. She could feel it, the mana welling up inside; soon her evolution would strike. She could only imagine how powerful she¡¯d be then. Chapter 59 - Approaching Litter Now that I''d upgraded from a molehill to a proper cavern, it was time to make it my own. As rightly pissed as I was about the horrible asymmetry, there were benefits; the largest being that my twin little entrances were still close together but tucked in a back section, an outcropping shadowing on their left side. I tugged up a spool of mana and grew the outcropping, sprawling it out into a tunneled half-wall with a mighty fine inner thread of granite just in case any invader got a touch too big for their britches and wanted to break it down. Because I was rather against the idea, thank you. In the end, the two entrances emerged into a dark enclosed space, forcing out on either the far left or right where they would then enter the cavern proper¡ªbut when they went into the larger space and looked back, they wouldn''t see their entrances, just another stretch of stone. And if there were some distractions, say, armies of pissed critters and hungry beasts, they probably wouldn''t have the time to dutifully search every nook and cranny for their way out. Because that was what my first floor was for. Even with its new size and the new dangers I planned to throw into its midst, I didn''t want it to be a threat to invaders first arriving. A couple stone-backed toads, a few luminous constrictors; basic monsters enough to soothe their concerns and make them think I was a foolish little dungeon with no threats. The bears would stay tucked in their dens, any other creatures would stay asleep¡ªuntil invaders tried to come back through on a retreat. Because they would find themselves lost, panicked, and utterly beset by the floor they had written off as easy. Sometimes I was rather proud of my ferocity. Of course, I was hardly done now. I darted about the cavern, shoring up walls and carving hundreds of dens over their base. Not all of them were nice, or even particularly pleasant¡ªI wasn''t a complete hatchling over my creatures. They would have to fight for comfort in my halls. Even if the lowest den was still a vast improvement over the scraps they''d found in the outer mountain. My creatures needed their strength up if they were going to evolve. I meandered my way around the newly widened space, dropping spores like raindrops in my wake; whole new gardens sprouted, unfurling pale caps and algae slithering outward until once more the silver-grey of the limestone was fully hidden under the greens and whites of my Fungal Gardens. Truly, you cannot understand how badly I wanted to try and complete the floor now, watching my creatures get over their hesitancy and start to once more live in the space I''d provided for them, dangerous little beasties. But no. I would wait for Nicau to return and give me all manner of new creatures and plants, just to make sure the space was ready. As perfect as I could get it. And not finishing it immediately would let me hold out just a little longer before starting my sixth floor, because I still didn''t have enough creatures to fill it like I wanted. Gods knew that I was still struggling to fill the Skylands. Truly, any distraction from the desire to start a new floor was very necessary for my fragile self control to win out. And there were a few more things I could do. I bumped the population of the cave spiders and silverheads up to unseen levels, until the walls crawled red with scuttling little things and the still slowly-filling rock pond flashed silver with thrashing bodies. They were still the backbone of this ecosystem, feeding everything that didn''t eat other little bugs, and I''d set up my floors in such a way that there was no worry of overpopulation; when there got to be too many for the mushroom or prey to sustain, they could just go down to a further floor. My dungeon still needed to masquerade as an ecosystem in order to sustain itself, but it wasn''t nearly as fragile when I could step in at any time to help smooth over any rough patches. A regular mountain could be immediately destroyed by one too many luminous constrictors; I could rest easy knowing that the competition would just drive them down. And speaking of competition¡ªthere were two other creatures on this floor I did need to manage a little more closely. The twin cave bears had barely even noticed as I''d changed the floor around them, slumbering in their individual dens with nary a twitch. Lazy brutes. Lazy large brutes, however. I poked back into the original schema, from all the way back when Seros had still been an underground monitor; when I''d first claimed this pattern, it''d been called the juvenile lunar cave bear. Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation. From just a glance, I could tell that these two were juvenile no longer. Certainly not at their full size, especially considering their description said that they didn''t have a known full size, but they were clambering their way into adulthood. Their shoulders were broader, paws even more massive, fangs spilling from their drooling lips. True beasts now, actually dangerous and built for fighting. The male was still practicing his shadow magic, able to fully cloak himself as nothing more than a slight discolouration against the back wall, though he paid for that in the numerous scars crisscrossing over his back from the female honing her more combative skills. She was easily his size over again, absolutely rippling with muscle, with keen eyes and a hunger for blood. Several of the more jewel-interested rats had taken to following the male around, watching every time he cast magic with wide eyes. A little fan club. Truly impressive. I very carefully shifted the stone beneath them, shuffling them back into their new positions as I expanded their dens, accommodating their new size while giving them room to grow; because as much as they tried to destroy each other on a near-daily basis, my mana-sense told me there was a litter on the way. So it looked like my first floor would be getting a touch more of a defense in the coming days. But in order for that defense to work, I needed to make sure those bloody invaders stayed on the floor long enough to get crushed by it. I did have a few ideas for that, though. The first of which I took inspiration from Nicau from¡ªwhen he had pledged himself to me, stuttering and nervous though he was, his desire to live had only been half of it. The other, far more present half had been his greed, for power, for status. And even before then, when he had sent group after group into my fatal depths just for a chance at their position; and then there had been the nightmarketers, who had only invaded me to steal my creatures and sell them, Aloma and the jewels she''d tried to steal, the merrow conspiring to steal my wisp even as they tried to reclaim their lost staff. Dungeons were used for training, for strengthening magic; from the memories I''d scoured from my stolen souls I knew they could also be used to find creatures to bond as companions, gathering rare potion ingredients, even capturing the core and binding it to service. But all of those reasonings were brought by greed, by the lust for power and material goods. Something that I could provide. With the notable exception of letting them bind me to their service. That would not be on the list of proffered temptations, funnily enough. But jewels I could provide aplenty, already using them myself to keep a steady back up of mana for when invaders were rude enough to steal my ambient supply, and it wasn''t like I was about to stop creating unique and powerful creatures. More plants, more floors, more ecosystems; plenty to steal. Just unfortunately for the thieves, they wouldn''t be leaving with any of the shinies they''d try to claim for themselves. I dug deep into my stolen souls and pried loose what attracted them; and all about my Fungal Gardens I hung great strands of jewels, shimmering little treasures¡ªalthough unfortunately not diamonds, given they were too mana-expensive for me to use as set dressing. Veins of pure silver and gold streaked their way around growths of algae-light, glinting in the darkness, and I wrapped patches of granite around them to make them pop even more. Now for the creatures; I carved little dens directly at eyesight, filling them with soft algae and gentle trickles of water from above. Some part of me was inspired; I dug deep into the schema of my luminous constrictor and tugged out just the bones, learning all of their skeletal structure. Taking a page out of the sarco''s book, I cleared a winding section free of algae that started halfway up the wall and trailed overhead, winding between several stalactites and ribboning its way for easily sixty straight feet. Then I expanded the serpent''s skeleton to true massive proportions and inlaid it into the limestone, its jaws expanded as if about to take a bite right at the tip of a stalactite. A welcoming little beast. Perhaps not entirely useful for my weak first floor appearance, but given that it looked like just a fossil, hopefully the Resurrector title wasn''t common enough that people would expect me to have it as a schema. Of course, I immediately tried to use said Resurrector title to bring back this enormous serpent, but even as I snaked my mana throughout the bones, it simply refused to activate. Figured. It would be far too easy for me to just make incredibly powerful creatures by messing with their bones and bringing them back to life, so I could understand why the gods had restricted that particular little ability, but it wasn''t as if I wasn''t annoyed. But now, with my welcoming faux fossil and a floor littered in fungus, I could feel it was approaching done. The rock pond was still filling the rest of the way, meaning the silverheads were a little cramped for the moment, but their numbers would settle as the weak died and luminous constrictors ate the foolhardy. I predicted several hundred more webs to spring up as the newest generation of cave spiders fought for territory, the whitecap mushrooms shriveling as more burrowing rats ate their number down. It would be a few days of upheaval, and that was before Nicau returned and gave me all manner of new beasts to fill my halls. Then the Fungal Gardens would be complete. As soon as Nicau got off his ass, wherever he was, and brought me back some schemas. Chapter 60 - Sunlit Skies The chittering, crawling thing''s blood spilled fresh over her claws. Rihsu howled her victory, banging her curled fists over her chest with a roar; the bug had been a hard battle, not because it fought back, but because its armour stood fast and strong even against her most mighty blows. But now, she had splintered through its back and ripped out its last shreds of life. More mana, bright and fierce, burst through her. She drank deep of that power, the raw potential from the scuttling thing''s death. Not enough, not anywhere near enough. It would be a long and hard journey until she was strong enough to evolve a second time. Even now she could remember the taste of the last human she''d killed, thrashing in the water; even with how many other creatures had stolen their share from her kill, it had been so much power. She craved those kind of kills. But here on the fourth floor, where mana misted against her scales, there were no great threats. Only these bugs, boulder-like things that shuffled around in the dark, and they didn''t fight back. The rats offered no other challenge, and the serpent''s army was too powerful. She couldn''t risk it. But if she went back up to the higher floors, those with more of the shelled beasts she had earned her name with or the enormous furry things, then she missed the mana of this lower floor. And the great Dragon had told her to train down here, to learn to fight in these dark and cramped halls. She could not fail Him. So she tore her claws out of its corpse, ripping free chunks of meat to scarf down. She had slept before this fight and that meant she would have enough energy to go out once more, to venture through the snaking halls and find another challenge. Hopefully she could find something that would present an actual challenge, if another fleshy human just happened to invade right now¨C Something moved at the corner of her vision. Rihsu hissed, claws dripping and raised, and spun to face it. Her eyes went wide. The Dragon approached. Even at her new height, He towered over her, the beginning of horns on His head scraping against the tunnel''s ceiling. The air flexed and wavered like the water within it wanted to go to Him, beading over His blue-green scales and running down His sides. His golden eyes gleamed in the dark, sea-green frills extended and whispering with power, tail swishing behind Him with enough strength to crush her. She dropped to the ground, legs cluttered awkwardly beneath as she tried to kneel. Her Lord. Come, Seros said to her mind, through their connection that raced so fiercely below her scales. Rihsu darted back to her full height and padded after Him, watching with awe as He chose each intersection without a moment''s hesitation. She had started to learn to navigate by feeling the ambient mana of the core, tracking when she moved further or closer by how much there was in the air. But He chose each tunnel correctly, and she felt the mana lessen as they went further and further up. Until at last they emerged from the tunnels, back into the open platform with the water beyond. Where she had fought the merrows and earned her first evolution, though she didn''t, ah, really know how to swim. Which was an insult that couldn''t be allowed to stand. How could she serve underneath the Dragon if she couldn''t join Him in His realm? He looked back at her, golden eyes bright. Come, He said again, and slipped into the water. Rihsu sucked in as massive a breath as she could manage and jumped in after. She hadn''t been on the third floor for a while and she could feel it had changed; a current tugged at her floundering skills, the water more murky and filled with silt. She clawed back up to the ceiling, muzzle breaking through the kicked up waves to suck in another breath of air; Seros swam below her, completely at home in the water. His eyes flashed. The water fled from her mouth, a trail of air spiraling down from the top of the room and wrapping around her muzzle. She blinked but stopped swimming up, drifting down to be on the same level as Him; the air stayed with her. She could breathe. She was so consumed in that thought that she did forget to swim entirely, and had to flounder her way back up. The Dragon flared His frills, vibrating with the mana He was using to keep her alive. He stared around at the water, all the fish darting around and the wavering shadows of the kelp forest beyond. At the land where He dominated. You will swim, He said, flashing His own claws¡ªwhere instead of her own thin, barely-present webs, His were fully extended, built to push through the water. I will teach you. Rihsu imagined she wouldn''t have been happier if the light of evolution overtook her this instant. Once you can. The Dragon twisted, tail swishing to keep Him at the same height in the water, and looked further into the floor. Something dark lurked there, casting a shadow to swallow the forest overhead, drifting over top with an enormous, twisting tail and jaws shaped like whole stalagmites. Then we will fight. Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. Her entire world lit up. Something that large would grant her plenty of mana with its kill, maybe enough to evolve¡ªwould she then join mighty Seros, reaching the waterbound status to swim without need of air or pitiful land? The Dragon looked, although that was clearly impossible, hesitant. Not to kill, He said. Just to fight. Rihsu cocked her head to the side even as she paddled furiously to try and stay upright. Why not to kill? The Dragon commanded these halls, and there were none who could correct Him. So why would He create a creature to be fought, but not killed? What were His reasonings? They were not for her to know. He was too far above her. So instead she nodded, bracing her claws, and prepared to learn. - The room was empty. She bristled, branches shifting in an intangible breeze as she tried to see further into the den of the lizard-things. But through her information she collected through the spores and the mushrooms and the algae and the moss, thousands of feelings and thoughts and details flowing through her, she knew that the other being was already gone. But her chance to meet with one of those strange, outworldly beings was gone. Perhaps she couldn''t have done anything, still unable to speak their tongue nor move fast enough to mimic speak, but the possibility of it enraged her. For however young or awkward this one seemed to be, it was still from that famed outdoors. With society and language and differences. Her thorned roots writhed. If the being would not meet her on this side, after her week-long trek to reach its habitat, then she would have to return to her previous location. Back at the beginning of the floor, where those strange beings would arrive. There was no time for complaining. If she were to learn, to go even further past the After that she now was, she had to learn. - Maybe Nicau was a bit dramatic, but stepping back into the sun after a week of algae-light was blissful. His eyes could barely make out his surroundings, so weakened and stunted from the caverns; he squinted and wiped tears away, hands over his face. Long, long minutes passed before he could even begin to make out his surroundings. But it was beautiful. The mountain''s entrance was directly over the cove, crystal blue water lapping at the pebbled shores, white sand breaking on the edges; towering palm trees rustled overhead, stonecrop tumbling down the mountainside, silver flashes from fish darting through the ocean water. A thousand moving parts, all bound together in the hot, humidity-drenched air that wavered with rainbows in the corners of his eyes and wisping mist escaping off the early morning ground. That perfect heat with cold wind pricking gooseflesh on his exposed arms, the sun lancing over his skin with all the heat it could muster. Colours so much more varied than the grey-blue he''d been stuck around. The world he''d lived in for the majority of his life. He''d never seen it quite like this before. Absence made the heart grow fonder, and all that. And there, tucked in the cradle between two mountains, stood Calarata. Mudstone walls, terracotta roofs, cobbled streets. Even from here he could see the main road, winding its way up the terraced city, leading to the enormous castle-esque house on top that housed the Dread Pirate. Over top, two little wavering bits of sea-green stood; the wings of the sea-drake he had slain. All the scales and skin and fangs had been repurposed to create magical artefacts of great power, but the wings were less useful. So instead they had just become another symbol of his power, a reminder to Calarata. Nicau wondered how he felt that the dragon he''d killed was still alive, in a sense. The Dread Pirate surely knew, if Lluc was out investigating, but he''d noticed that they only called it a dungeon, rather than anything specific about the dragon. And with Aloma dead and Nicau presumed so, that would be another out in which they weren''t collecting more information. So maybe they wouldn''t figure out it was the dragon, at least not for another while. And by the time they did, it would be strong enough with what Nicau was bringing it to defeat them. He pondered that for another moment, squinting out at Calarata. That was his home, even with his new dungeon alliance. He loved it, for all its flaws, even though Calarata didn''t love him back. But now he was working to destroy it, giving the dungeon all the power it needed to crush all the adventurers who wanted to make their living. Nicau paused. ¡­only the adventurers, right? He knew the basics of dungeon delving; adventurers went in search of glory, power, and all the powerful magical objects they could grab. And then that amount of resources they collected came out and had to be sold and transported off, and Calarata was uniquely suited to be very much in the interest of selling unique items without the regulations of the Le¨®ro Kingdom. And the dungeon¡­ presumably only hated the Dread Pirate, right? Nicau wasn''t overfond of him either, but surely the dungeon had to understand that trying to kill the entirety of Calarata wouldn''t be the best plan. And in fact, if it kept those pirates around, they could bring it all manner of unique items and animals and gold, as well as plenty of bodies to feed it. In an almost cohabitative relationship. Right? He stared at it a moment longer. That would be the best case scenario. He could be allowed to return to Calarata, though his soul still belonged to something far below ground, and he could be the one telling the dungeon''s will to the wider world. Facilitating the sale of rare items, animals, mana¡ªbringing in all the power he wanted. And potentially dethroning the Dread Pirate that kept Calarata in such a stranglehold. Nicau let the fanciful dream flit about him for a moment longer. Not now, though. He needed to build power, to help the dungeon grow until it could hold itself as a threat. So he needed to collect these¡­ schemas, to build the dungeon until it grew to new heights he couldn''t comprehend himself. Already he knew there were more floors than the two he had seen, stretching further into the gloom below. So presumably any schema he gathered would be useful somewhere? He squinted at his surroundings. Was the dungeon large enough to support a palm tree? And was he supposed to bring back large things? It wasn''t like he had a cart or something to drag stuff back. Maybe more making a shelter with them and making multiple trips? Nicau glanced back at Calarata one more time. Soon, he''d return with his new powers and status, and he''d live there for his own glory. But not now. He let his newly gifted mana surface through his channels, spiraling through his body with that same, burning feeling. He''d figure it out. And thus he turned to the right, where around the other side of the Al¨®mbra Mountains there stood the great jungle, where creatures and plants anew lurked. Time to gather. Chapter 61 - Bloodrush Nicau peered at the jungle with more than a hint of trepidation. He was less than ten feet from it now, a hard divide maintained by the rubble from the Al¨®mbra Mountains cutting a line out to the sea. He''d have to clamber over fallen stones nearly his height twice over but then he''d be lost in the thick of the jungle bristling on the other side. Which. Um. It''d certainly been easier to build up courage when he was still half a day away, just imagining what things he''d find, not when he was actually looking over the crumbled rocks and seeing the deep emerald green of the jungle beyond. As much as Nicau had grown up around adventurers and pirates and all manners of unscrupulous fellows who were fond of fighting, it was normally humanoids versus other humanoids. And that was the problem; Calarata wasn''t exactly¡­ civilized. You could be reasonably right in assuming wild monsters wouldn''t attack you on the streets¡ªexcepting if any nightmarketers lost control of their latest captures¡ªbut the surrounding areas weren''t culled for protection. So this jungle, despite being within a quarter day''s walk of the bustling port, was the real wild deal, full of dangerous creatures that didn''t have enough of a mage population to threaten them back. Nicau gripped his spear a little tight. He was rather out of his depth. But if he thought about it for any longer, he''d lose all the courage he''d spent his time gathering, so he shifted his spear to one hand and started clambering up the rocks. A near stumble and some lost skin and he was over. Trees towered overhead, great enormous things so different from the skinny palms of the cove, emerald canopies spread out like a clouded sky; dew-covered ferns kissed his ankles, ruby-red and orange-gold flowers dotted throughout. As close as he was to the edge, most everything rare was already harvested by nightmarketers looking to sell, but he could see hints of moonstar sprouts, capable of bringing luck when ingested, and creeper''s vine, visibly shuffling closer to him under the cover of rotting leaves. And, perhaps mostly thankfully, an enormous finleaf frond only ten minutes away from the entrance. Nicau exhaled, swiping at his forehead that was already covered in sweat. Glancing around, just because the jungle moved and shifted and writhed uncomfortably with life, he set his spear down and knelt to access the base of the plant, fingers scrabbling at its massive leaves. He knew finleaves, other pigeoncatchers using them for large hauls; with a little grit and determination, the fronds could be pulled loose and used as a sort of sling to carry loads home. Which he would certainly need. His fingers were useless and he reached for his spear, pushing through the leaf layer that just kept falling. Nicau frowned, twisting to lay flat on his stomach; he jabbed the spear forward, its bone tip shanking through the very base of one leaf. The plant shuddered but didn''t release the leaf. Great. He stabbed it again. Three more punctures and the leaf wilted enough he could rip it out, the veins down the center bending and twisting as it fluttered to the ground. It was easily seven feet long, shaped like a fat sword, emerald green with a pale yellow underbelly. Perfect for what he needed. Cradling his spear under one arm, Nicau sat, pressing his back against a ripplebark tree. Fold the leaf over itself, line the edges up, then carve a slit down its outer edge and pull the fin vein that gave the plant its name loose. Wrap that twice around each end, size appropriately, then stitch the two bottoms together. Adjust, wrap around. He stumbled at first but the familiar motions came back quickly enough, and soon he had a sort of sling, sort of backpack snug against his tunic, the vein crossing over his chest as the leaf stayed on his back. It wouldn''t let him carry the whole jungle back to the dungeon, but this way he could use his hands for something other than clutching various plants. Nicau bit back a yawn¡ªhow was he tired now¡ªand stood, kicking his spear back up into his hands in a move he was really too proud of. Now, where were those moonstar sprouts? He doubted the dungeon had access to any luck-attuned mana at this point and it would surely not go amiss to gather some¨C Nicau turned, only loosely grasping his spear, and came face to face with a beast. Easily up to his chest, muscles taut under its auburn fur, four legs splayed and tipped with truly awful black claws. Its ears flicked forward, cradled by two obsidian black horns, its tail lashing behind. Its eyes burned a deep red. One of the jungle hound tribes, pack hunters with different elemental attunements; this one looked like it followed the path of fire. It also looked hungry. It growled. He whimpered. Nicau raised his spear as the beast stalked closer, feeling truly every part of him shake. It wasn''t with a pack and its rib cage protruded past its coat, but that didn''t mean shit when Nicau would die facing either it or its entire pack. Fantastic. It barked twice, raw heat infusing the air around it; its eyes, like twin embers, narrowed. Nicau swallowed. Some form of desperate insanity took over and he struck first, lashing out wildly with his spear; the hound yelped and backpedaled, dodging the blow to its chest. Nicau cursed. Bracing his legs, he swept forward again, the kind of recklessness born from the knowledge there was no other option flooding through him. The hound bounded around the attack. Nicau screamed something wordless and charged forward, sling bouncing against his back as he jabbed the spear with all the strength his malnourished body could manage; but the hound, even equally starved, was far more nimble. Its tail lashing, the bone-esque tip scouring against his leg. Blood poured down his leg. Nicau yelped, stumbling back; the hound charged. He jerked the spear forward and managed a glancing blow on its shoulder, tearing shreds of deep red fur loose. The hound snarled, whipping around even as that motion ripped the spear''s tip through its body, and sank its fangs into the meat of Nicau''s calf. This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report. He screamed. Some instinct took over and he pounded his fists into the beast''s head, managing to find a soft spot between the base of its twin horns; the hound yelped, muffled, and retreated. Nicau panted. The rational part of his mind that wasn''t focused on how he was about to die noted that though the hound was linked to fire, it wasn''t fully attuned or nearly as powerful as a fire mage would be. Even so, its breath and mouth was hot enough that Nicau''s wound wasn''t bleeding, not fully cauterized but blackened and stoppered nonetheless. So he could die under the hound''s claws instead of blood loss. Fucking fantastic. Unfortunately, that same rational brain was too focused on blood to realize that with his injured leg versus the hound''s four, Nicau wouldn''t be faster, because he turned on his heel and sprinted deeper into the jungle. Ferns whipped at his legs, the trees looming overhead; he half ran, half stumbled further on, jabbing out with his spear to push vines and hanging foliage aside. The beast howled, a raw, hungry sound, and took chase. He could hear it charging through the jungle with much more grace than him, the thump of its paws growing closer and closer¨C Pain laced up his injured leg and he couldn''t move it fast enough out of the way of a root. Nicau''s toes hooked its underside and he plummeted, crashing hard into the rotting leaves; some small creature skittered away from him, scared from the impact, disappearing into the underbrush. Nicau turned and saw the hound charging, eyes burning, jaws slavering. Desperation flooded through him¡ªwould the Blessing of the Communer do anything? He doubted the hound had a language but maybe it did, maybe he didn''t have to die here¨C "Stop!" He bellowed. And something left him. Some of that strange mana tight in his chest, next to the Name he stored alongside his soul; it flowed up through his lungs and burst through his mouth with a reverberating boom alongside his shouted command. The hound, midway through its charge, stumbled. Its hind legs locked up like it wanted to stop but its front legs didn''t know that, eyes confused past its fury, and it tripped. Nicau saw it fall in slow motion. He rose to a crouch, braced the butt of his spear against the root, and prayed to every god that had ever existed. Instead of its previous organized charge, the hound fell forward in a tangle of responsive and unresponsive limbs and impaled its horned head into Nicau''s spear with a sickening crunch. Blood exploded, steaming and bubbling, as the hound collapsed. Its limbs twitching weakly once, twice, then slumped to a standstill. The spear had punctured directly through its brain. Nicau sat there, the hound half laying over its body, its still-open jaws a mere foot from his throat, and just breathed for a second. He''d deserved it. But eventually, the near-scalding blood dripping over his legs got too painful and he managed to shove the corpse off him, stumbling up to his feet. His calf burned with pain, heart beating wildly in his chest, the stored mana he had working overtime to try and heal him up. And Nicau looked down on the body of the creature he had just killed. Not a pigeon, not even a greater pigeon, something potentially dangerous but more often a pest. No. This was a true threat, something that would require adventurers to be dispatched to take out, and could fetch a pretty price from a nightmarketer who would then turn around and make an even prettier price from a different market. This was a monster. And he had killed it. Even past the pain, even past the mana-exhaustion he could feel filtering through his thoughts, Nicau felt himself burst with pride. - It pained me more than I cared to admit, but I only let the luminous constrictors charge at the mage rat for a few feet before I supplexed my way into all of their minds. No killing her, I near-bellowed, feeling their fragile thoughts crumble and crack under the pressure of my direct will¡ªbut I had to be that forward. These little bastards had a near cult-like devotion to the horned serpent, and if she wanted my beautiful mage rat dead, then I would have to work to make sure that no, she would not die. The horned serpent, who also got a blast of my message, hissed. Her crystalline antlers shone with an inner light, some sort of command wavering on the edge of her thoughts. I pressed a touch harder. With another hiss, she dropped the mana and begrudgingly slithered away from the mage rat. Her constrictors followed immediately, turning away from the mage rat like they couldn''t even see her, too focused on their little tyrant. I let my points of awareness sag. Goodness. The problem was, I would be happy letting them fight to the death if only they weren''t two of my more favourite creatures at the moment. The mage rat had just evolved and was working her way towards being the first fully attuned creature in my halls, and the horned serpent had been one of my very first threats and was now building her own empire. So having one kill the other would be only harming myself, no matter how nice their individual schemas would be to have. Fantastic. Perhaps even more begrudgingly than the horned serpent, I slunk off to help them divide up the territory. The horned serpent wanted to live in this stone jungle, commanding her reptilian army to go out and hunt while she stayed here, which was fine. Her powers would work best in the choking tunnels but already she was taking on a different role, and I had little doubt that a few of her underlings would evolve into horned serpents of their own as they followed her rule. My original plan would still work. In contrast, the mage rat was only here temporarily as she worked up her strength; while the stone jungle had plants, in the form of the billowing moss carpeting the floor and the green algae I''d strung all over my stone trunks in a facsimile of actual leaves, the twisting tunnels beyond had much more material for her to control with her jadestone attunement. She was just building up her strength and skills before heading back to the tunnels. So a temporary truce was all. I''m sure they could survive that. Maybe. I scattered a few more points of awareness around before flying back to my fifth floor. It was coming beautifully along, dozens upon dozens of flying creatures darting above as the islands wavered and creaked. A few eyeblight caterpillars were already tucked away in cocoons, ready to reach their secondary form, and then my number of threats would increase even moreso. I''d already claimed the schema of the swarming wasp after a baterwaul had gotten an early meal and now I had near hundreds of them all around the place, roving clouds of danger. Interestingly enough, they were actually fighting with their fellow evolution, the groundbreaker ants. While the ants used their metallic mandibles to carve into the earth and build their nests, the wasps would then swarm and kill the ants there, both giving me the schema but also claiming the nest for themselves. Since their stingers were more for killing fleshy things, they couldn''t bore into the stone that made up my halls to make a proper den. But the ants could. A little parasitic relationship. I found myself curious how the ants would respond. But that was a question for a later day, given that it would be a while until they evolved. Although I was always fond of holding out hope that they would evolve soon, giving me all the bright shinies in the world when it came to creatures who¨C Something moved outside my first floor. Chapter 62 - Threes a Company Every single point of awareness that wasn''t busy flew up to the first floor, my mana thundering in their wake; my lazy cave bears raised their enormous heads, stirred by whatever had made that noise, and peered outside their individual dens long enough to lock eyes and growl. Even heavily pregnant, they were ready to beat the shit out of each other. Something I very much respected. But what I didn''t respect was someone clambering their way in the halls outside of my floor. The light outside my Fungal Gardens was thin and weak, only reflections from the algae-light within, and no matter how many points of awareness I threw at the problem, they couldn''t see anything more than the vague outlines of further stones. What they could do, however, was hear the conversation neatly bouncing off the surrounding rocks and echoing straight back into my floor. "Stop that," one hissed, a masculine voice speaking in that brutish human tongue. "''e said it''s supposed to hear us." "I bloody know," another shot back, though his voice was pitched lower. "Just¡­ are you sure?" "Either this or the brig. That''s answer enough for me." A thump, like someone clicking their clawless fingers, but muffled; my intangible ears pricked as something faded away, dispersing with the hum of ambient mana, and suddenly I could hear them once more. The rasp of leather boots on stone, the hiss of escaping breath, the splutter of a torch. The sounds had all been there, but quieted, hidden by some magic. They''d tried to sneak up on me. But then dropped it, right at the entrance? Clearly they knew what I was, if they were using this amount of caution, but then they went against their previous intelligence and came at me with all the quiet of a sea lion. Interesting. The noises grew louder as they approached, and with my near hundred points of awareness swarming around the cove entrance, it didn''t take long before they swam into a vague sort of view. Two men, both humans, with the sort of scrappy, hungry-starved appearance I was beginning to associate with Calarata. Basic leather garb, no particular armour or defense, and, more interestingly, no particular weapons. Hm. "Where''s that entrance?" The one on the left mumbled, poking his head through said entrance; but for him, all he saw was the stone wall I''d brought up directly across from the entrance, forcing him to walk to either side to actually enter my halls and very neatly disguising this entrance platform as just another part of the outside caves. So he merrily kept walking forward, despite his obvious trepidation about entering my floor proper. Glorious. "''e said it should be here?" "Should be," the other agreed, flexing his crooked fingers. They stepped forward into my little alcove without fear, eyeing the entrance to my dungeon directly to their left. The limestone wall hooked in slightly, giving them something to crouch behind, which they immediately did so. "Stay behind the wall," one advised with all the self assuredness of someone who truly believed he was correct. "Shouldn''t be able to get us from ''ere." Ah, I loved idiots. As one, they peered around my limestone outcropping, algae-light catching their faces. My creatures hadn''t been alerted to their positions yet, still mostly unevolved little beasties who didn''t have the honed perceptions of those on my lower floors, but I could see a few waking up¡ªtwo luminous constrictors, one with his bulk wrapped around a stalactite directly by the other entrance and neatly hidden from their eyes, a couple of cave spiders with their webs spun directly over top of the entrances, even the enormous lacecap shifting slightly in their direction. Unfortunately, given as they didn''t have weapons but were still coming for me, I had to guess they were more magically inclined; and as I didn''t have a method to hide my actions yet, I presumed that if I started to command my creatures to attack them, they would not only feel that, they would also figure out that they were within my dungeon instead of slightly outside, and neither of those were things I was interested in. So I''d leave that up to my creatures. The two invaders exhaled, looking at my floor with the awe I so appreciated. The serpent''s skeleton in particular made them very curious, although I wondered whether that was pure curiosity or some type of greed. Rare bones would surely fetch a great price. Until, of course, they were revealed to only be a strangely large luminous constrictor. Not my problem. What was my problem, however, was when one of the invaders stretched out his hand, ruby-red light crawling over his fingers, and launched a goddamn fireball into my floor. Every creature living their own lives was suddenly very aware of the invaders, springing back as three stone-backed toads huddled under a outcropping that had the unfortunate honour of being named first target instantly died, frying to a crisp as their faux rocky armour did absolutely nothing to protect them. In some kind of pissing contest, the other invader swept his own hand forward, fingernails gleaming; instead of a specific element, a ripple of crushing force bursting from his hand and pounded at my halls. Not strong enough to bring down stone but it ripped algae and spiders free, pinning weaker rats to the ground, throwing larger specimens back. Yeah. Fantastic. I loved mages. My creatures flew into a frenzy, blitzing away from the attacks; luminous constrictors curled up, hiding under their diamond-patterned grey-black scales, stone-backed toads croaking as they tried to hop away fast enough, spiders drying to a crisp as their carapaces couldn''t handle the rising ambient temperature. But some moved to combat; those two luminous constrictors slunk forward, undersides gleaming. This was the first time I hadn''t commanded them outright to stay their hand, as with every other invader where I''d wanted them to only attack on the return trip, and for those with desire to grow but the knowledge they were too weak to survive on the lower floors, they were grasping the opportunity. If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. Another fireball, an entire lost section of algae¡ªsmoke start choking the air, the other mage''s force not efficient at pushing it away; more and more spiders died, fire being their perfect counter, but the other creatures crept closer and closer¨C "Huh," the fireballing one said, pausing as his hands slowly started to recharge their scarlet glow. "There''s another entrance over here." The first one just grunted, beads of sweat building over his forehead as he fired out blast upon blast of crushing force. "Go look at ''t then." The fire mage narrowed his eyes but did wander over, still so assured he was safely outside of my dungeon. Maybe he''d never considered looking up, or maybe cave spiders were even more common than I''d thought, because there were easily dozens stretched on the ceiling above him. But no, apparently this area was cleared. Gods, I loved idiots. He peered through, ever so careful to keep his feet past this imaginary line, and had only a second to notice before the luminous constrictor wrapped around the stalactite reared up and released the full force of his bioluminescence. "Fuck!" The invader howled, stumbling back¡ªhis arms flew wide, swinging in surprise, and brushed against several of the webs hidden high on the wall. And my spiders, ready and hungry for food, took their broken homes in literal stride and scrambled down his exposed arm. His screams rose several octaves in pitch. Perhaps he was arachnophobic. "Get them off!" He bellowed, scratching at his arms, still blind and floundering. The other mage flinched, glancing over, and got the front row seat to his companion screaming, falling flat on the ground, dozens of spiders swarming over his body. Weak as they were, the man wasn''t wearing armour, and little fangs with the strongest venom I''d been able to give them before their bodies rejected my mana nipped through his skin. Two luminous constrictors slithered forward, fangs bared; the one who hadn''t attacked before used her flash now, erupting in a miasma of white as the other mage stumbled back. Both serpents, seemingly ignoring or perhaps teaming up with the other, sank their fangs into his fallen body for a grip and began to wrap around him, one over the torso, one around the head. And still the spiders swarmed, driven to madness by the destruction of their web and their own lack of critical thinking. The other mage stumbled, punch drunk, rubbing furiously at his eyes. By the time his pupils finished dilating back to visible levels, he saw his companion thrashing on the ground in a coil of scales and spiders. He made the choice that many would. Without so much as a backward glance, he sprinted from my cave. Exactly what I wanted this floor to avoid, but I could hardly focus on that¡ªI waited with greedy anticipation as the mage on the floor writhed weakly, face turning blue and froth spitting from his lips, until at once he collapsed. Mana exploded through the Fungal Gardens. Oho. I ate his soul like a starving beast, ripping apart all the knowledge written in his core¡ªhe was a fire-attuned mage, not particularly strong but with a very stable connection. I''d encountered fire before, in the boiling water of the merrow Priestess, but she had only utilized that off of her various rubies stored on her person. No, this one was a real attunement, with his soul keeping all the memories of how he''d accomplished and used that. Which meant that I could use that. Not successfully right off the bat, I imagined. My heart''s mana was still very much stained with wind and water, and I didn''t have that fiery breath weapon so many of my primitive brethren did. So I would be clambering over unknown paths here. I would figure it out, though. That was known. Having something bright and burning for my future floors would be truly wonderful. I nearly jumped directly into the memories before remembering that no, perhaps I should finish this up first. Facts were always irritating. But even though the other one had run away, I had a sneaking little suspicion that I could send out a luminous constrictor or some other ilk to go find the invader in the halls. There would be no better time to test that than now, when I knew there was only one and there was¨C The Drowned Forest awoke. I barely even recognized it at first, too busy about to read the notifications crawling over my core, but then the situation hit me. Rhoborh''s alarm was going off, and in a way that I was getting notified. The alarm system went off thousands of times a day, as burrowing rats and kobolds and cave spiders bumped various bits of flora throughout the many rooms, but that was safely regaled to a small, inconsequential part of my day. Sure, for the plants it was exciting¡ªevery time the alarm went off because some foolish stone-backed toad wandered onto a section of green algae hiding a vampiric mangrove''s thorns beneath, that meant a meal and mana¡ªbut that was very little to me. I''d safely shuffled the management of that alarm off to a mere fraction of my power as I dealt with other things. But apparently, something got through that. I gathered a few points of awareness, now that I didn''t need my hundreds watching the door, and sent them spiraling down to the second floor. It probably wasn''t pressingly important, maybe an unfamiliar creature coming through the river onto the second floor, but you didn''t survive as long as I did without a lot of care. I reached out to my core, ready to read those two messages. Those points of awareness told me to wait just a second longer. The plant that had sent out the alarm was a section of billowing moss, old enough its fronds delicately drifted in an intangible breeze, positioned right at the exit of the first room, in a relatively straight path from the entrance. But there was nothing around it. No creature, no fallen branch nor stone, not even an errant gust of actual wind. Just nothing. The billowing moss shifted again as something else brushed it, a frond bending from an intangible pressure. My points of awareness swarmed; and with my mana sense in full activation, I could feel¡­ something. The air didn''t waver properly, the pair of cloudskipper wisps kicking up wind that never quite blustered this one part, a hazy outline of something I couldn''t properly catch. Something was inside my halls I couldn''t see. No time for subtlety; I called upon everything single creature I had on the Drowned Forest, pulling them all to this first room. The entire kobold tribe awoke, stirring with their claws reaching for spears. Luminous constrictors and ironback toads jerked upright, reaching out; even Seros rose his mighty head, frills extending. The figure¡ªtall, vaguely humanoid, probably another bloody invader¡ªstopped moving. The billowing moss by its feet shifted again, that same intangible force pushing against it. My points of awareness spread out and I could see the serpents slithering into the first room, hear the distant crash of kobolds amassing¡ªno doubt the figure heard them as well. The moss moved again. Go! I bellowed. An entire faux tree of webweavers sprung to action, flinging themselves through the space the figure had inhabited; they fell harmlessly to the bed of moss. Kobolds appeared, jabbing spears through empty air, flicking their tongues out and furrowing their scaled brows. The Chieftess banged her ornate spear against the ground, warbling in that confusing tongue of hers. There had been a human here, but now it was gone. My points of awareness flew out; on the Fungal Gardens, even amidst the chaos, I found a whitecap mushroom squashed, a boot''s imprint over its surface, a burrowing rat spooked from being bumped by something it couldn''t see. So. Um. If it hadn''t been for Rhoborh''s blessing, something invisible could have gone all the way through my halls and captured my core before I was even aware. And something had tried that, failed, and still managed to get away before I could stop them. Okay. That was bad. Chapter 63 - A Sapient Mind Lluc canceled his invisibility only once he was outside of the mountain proper. The mana diffused around him with a hiss, settling back from the active incantation he''d mapped out with such care; he''d been proud of it. Canceling sight, smell, sound; he''d been a true shadow, simply not present to anything that wanted to find him, and it had been going so well. Up until it wasn''t. The first floor he had passed through, quiet and uncontested, and it had looked about what he''d expected. Large, open, filled with mostly scuttling beasts and a few serpents. Not a particular challenge, though underranked fools would struggle. He''d called up an air-based platform to walk over the rocky pond and padded down to the second floor. Now that one had been unique; trees somehow grew underground, great towering trees like nothing he''d ever seen before. Deep, wine-red bark and pale leaves, seemingly ignoring most standard laws of plants. How had the dungeon gotten a hold of trees? They had the basic form of mangroves, with their roots exposed and tangled in the surrounding canals, but certainly not the species found around here. Was it an old dungeon? One of the ones born and formed eons ago but then sealed up, stagnant, unable to grow or expand but not dying either, lying dormant beneath the stone until something broke through their exit once more? He''d heard of those before, pockets of ancient worlds kept and stored with creatures never heard of before. But then why would they only be hearing of it now? He rather doubted an ancient dungeon wouldn''t have exploded onto the scene, trying to claim Calarata outright. Instead, it''d only eaten what wandered into it and mostly kept to itself. Almost polite for a dungeon. But that didn''t explain how it got those trees. He''d been so focused on that he''d stayed in the first sort of "room" of the second floor, the canals rumbling alongside him and the twitter and hiss of creatures in the further halls. There had even been a thought of indulging in his invisibility, harvesting a portion of a mangrove to examine in further detail, when the mana around him had changed. No longer ambient, no longer passive; instead it moved, fluttering around the first room like a confused child, but active. Shifting. And, to his great horror, it was looking. Not just reacting to stimuli, not just hungry for mana; it was searching with the sort of deliberation that only came from aware beings, hunting for signs of something. It knew he was there. So he turned and ran, and now he glared at the sun as the last of his mana fluttered away. That hadn''t gone as hoped. Lluc exhaled, rubbing at his eyes; his soul ached. He was a wizard, not a mage¡ªhe didn''t have one of those fancy little attunements that made it so much easier to cast magic of a certain type, but his internal mana also wasn''t stuck to only using said type. So while it was harder for him to use invisibility for as long as he had, mages with a different attunement wouldn''t be able to do that at all. It was a cold encouragement from the mana-exhaustion he could feel at the corners of his thoughts. Barely a glance at the second floor before he''d decided to cut his losses and run out. All of that from the week of planning, the hunt for two inmates idiot enough to agree to this foolhardy scheme, the time spent dodging Varc¨ªs who wanted a report. Well. He''d certainly learned some things, at least. The two idiots¡ªor the one who had actually listened to Lluc''s fucking instructions¡ªwould be let free, no need to drag him back to the brig. Lluc wouldn''t bother with him. They had only been shoved into the dungeon as a distraction, something to keep it from awakening on the further floors. Lluc wasn''t a novice when it came to dungeons; they were mostly filled with an animalistic awareness, reacting to stimuli and filling all of their creatures with the raid sickness, a furious hunger for blood that only ended when said stimuli went away. He knew this. He''d tested it time and time again on other dungeons, even those controlled by High Lords, like Thiago''s back in the Le¨®ro Kingdom. It was a tried and true strategy. So to have the dungeon work up a strategy to deal with those blabbermouth fools while immediately seeing past his invisibility spelled something very bad indeed. Lluc knew himself. He''d only worked up the grit to enter the unknown dungeon himself because of the strategy he knew worked, content in its previous successes. That had failed. It was no longer up to just him to discover what was hidden in Al¨®mbra''s shadowed halls. He would be going to Varc¨ªs and admitting his defeat, because if Calarata was going to survive, they needed this fucking thing controlled now. - I absentmindedly ate the man''s corpse as I pondered what had happened. Two invaders, told to stay outside of my halls and distract the creatures on the first floor, while someone turned invisible and tried to creep further in. From the memories I''d salvaged from his soul, he and his companion were foot soldiers, told no more than their instructions. Useless on that front. But the man in their memories, tall and tanned with a tricorn hat lined in wolf fur, seemed familiar. Pressingly so. I tore through my other memories and kept coming up with flashes of him, little bits seen from across Calarata or ducking away from his presence; not on the same level as the Dread Pirate, but worryingly close. Who was he? That was, admittedly, the problem with consuming people''s souls. While I got plenty of memories, the only ones I collected fully were those closest to the time of death, with everything past that growing hazy and disjointed. This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. So while those I''d eaten had memories of seeing this important man, they didn''t remember him with the same importance they gave to the Dread Pirate, nor did they do the helpful little job of remembering his name. Brilliant. I''d make sure to berate the next invader before I killed them. But he had gotten out and exposed a weakness in my dungeon. I was pretty sure I could safely rely on Rhoborh''s blessing to keep other invisible beasties from strolling through my floors down to my core, but that made me consider other types of spells. What about teleportation? Flight? Charming my creatures? If only I''d paid slightly more attention to humanoids when I was a dragon to know what kind of magic they had access to. Once Nicau got back, I''d sit him down and grill him on what those in Calarata knew. If I needed to try and get a god with some sort of disbanding blessing for my first floor, something to ward off pre-cast protection spells, I''d like to know that now. But that was a question for when Nicau returned. I could wait. Maybe. Waiting that would certainly be made easier to bear with the messages crawling over my core. Only a handful, but an exciting handful nonetheless; two beautiful new strands of evolution.
Your creature, a Luminous Constrictor, is undergoing evolution! Please select your desired path. Colossal Boa (Uncommon): Growing to titanic lengths, this constrictor lurks in the shadows and strikes at passing victims. With its immense strength and size, there is little that can successfully fight off its fatal hold. Smoldering Serpent (Uncommon): Taking inspiration from its latest kill, this creature burns with an internal flame, superheating its scales until they scorch its surroundings. Though water spells its doom, its ambient heat means its territory is never challenged. Crowned Cobra (Uncommon): Where once it waited, now it strikes. Armed with venom-launching fangs and a flared hood, it stalks through the undergrowth in search of richer prey.
Well. That was certainly welcome. Only one was familiar, the colossal boa; once again, it called to me. While my creatures were slowly crawling towards larger sizes, only the sarco was truly big, with both Seros and the horned serpent being too slender to count even if they were long. And already the sarco''s size had been helpful beyond belief in fights, able to swallow hits and dish them back with no need for adjunct precision. The colossal boa promised much of the same there, and I rather liked the turn of phrase titanic lengths. Very pleasing. But on the other hand, here came an elemental attunement. The smoldering serpent. Something like the underwater geysers from my sea-drake days, producing no flames but only raw heat, scorching everything around them until they begged for mercy they wouldn''t receive. The water weakness was something I was a touch concerned about, given how many of my floors were water-based, but my fifth was relatively open, and there were also the ideas I''d been building up for my sixth. Who knew? And once I''d unlocked one attunement¡ªalthough I wasn''t positive on whether this was a full mana-attunement, and not just the creature having some innate collection of fire-attuned mana¡ªthere would only be more to come. And the crowned cobra. As much as I loved my various creatures, one of our greatest limitations that came to a nasty point whenever we fought mages was we were limited by range. All of our attacks tended to rely on fist and claw, which needed to be close in order to function. That was half the reason I''d been so excited to collect the triggerfish''s schema¡ªbeyond its general orneriness that fit well in the Underlake¡ªbecause it was my first true ranged creature. I had the baterwaul for general discombobulating attacks, the horned serpent for her psionic call, even Seros and his hydrokinesis, but that wouldn''t be enough to even the odds if more invaders with the ability to just lob fireballs came into my halls. Something like the crowned cobra would be more than helpful. Hm. So I wanted all of them. That wasn''t helpful. I glared at the message. Well. It seemed like I''d be debating for longer than I wanted. I shifted it to a less active part of my mind and read the other.
Your creature, a Cave Spider, is undergoing evolution! Please select your desired path. Shardrunner Spider (Rare): Learning from the stone-backed toads and burrowing rats, this creature harvests surrounding stone and minerals to spin into silk, creating tangled webs strong and sharp enough to cut larger creatures to ribbons. Jeweled Jumper (Common): Foregoing webs entirely, it spends its life constantly on the hunt, jumping between trees and stalagmites alike in their hunt for prey. As active predators, they ignore smaller insects and use their potent venom to take down larger prey, draining their insides and leaving the husks as a warning. Clawed Spider (Uncommon): Its fangs are no longer enough. It grows spurs on the tips of each of its claws, ones built to inject venom into whatever creature it attaches to, massively increasing the output of its most dangerous weapon.
Oho. The behavior of these spiders were equally mixed, really. They''d only attacked because their web was destroyed, their prized possession that would only be accented by becoming shardunner spiders, and they''d attacked by launching themselves onto their enemy in the way of the jeweled jumper or this clawed spider. They''d fit into all of these evolutions easily. I couldn''t say I wasn''t interested in more jeweled jumpers; while I was happy my current one had gone below to the fourth floor in search of greater prey and more mana, he was truly unparalleled in the Drowned Forest, with so many trees to jump off of and plenty of shallow rooms he could jump through. So more would never go amiss. But I also couldn''t ignore how powerful webs were; my webweavers were already convincing me of that, with how many bugs and larger prey got caught in their fake trees. As well as their certain activities I didn''t talk about. Adding actual strength and structure behind their silk would only be a boon; and considering they were harvesting materials instead of naturally producing them, that meant I could control it, putting specific types of stone or metal ores around them to influence their webs. And then the clawed spider. Every arachnaphobe''s worst nightmare; because while the jeweled jumpers would leap onto their prey in order to bite them, they often leapt off just as quickly, protecting their fragile bodies. But I was getting the sense that this clawed spider leapt onto, stabbed all of its limbs and probably its fangs as well just for good measure, and hung on until their prey died. Many would die in each attempt, considering the addition of venom-claws didn''t really add to a spider''s pitiful defense, but it would be an immediate reward. Even the jewel jumper''s potent venom worked over time, slowly shutting down its prey''s abilities until they expired. Not so for the clawed spider. Well. The gods up there really knew how to give me a difficult choice. I finished eating the man''s corpse, letting the mana diffuse around the various creatures of my first floor; already they were starting to recover from the fireball and force barrage, spores taking root where algae had burned away and even the more skittish beasts poking their heads from their dens. I had enough time to really think it over. Now to decide what to pick. Chapter 64 - Stone Beast In the end, I had to make a decision. It wasn''t like I could politely let my creatures go back to their daily lives while heavily burdened and glowing with the light of their evolution. For my two luminous constrictors, I had the lovely little detail that they were already a mated pair. It made sense, considering they were both hunting in the same area of directly by the entrance without murdering each other for encroaching on stolen territory, even though they were both rather young for my dungeon; all the better for a shared evolution. I wanted a new generation to expand instead of staying locked at any number of population. And these were both cantankerous bastards, quick to violence and opportunists enough to jump at the first invaders they''d ever seen in their lives. Not exactly the type that would lean heavily on the side of ambush attackers like the colossal boa. Unfortunate, because I dearly wanted more enormous monsters, but there was a reason my creatures tended to like me after their evolutions. I picked ones that matched. Same issue for the smoldering serpent, then. Not the type that wanted something ambient to make the final kill. One day, my pretty. Probably a day closer to whenever I made a fire-themed floor instead of my rather pure water focus. Ah well. I selected crowned cobra for the both. The spiders were easier to figure out. While the clawed spider matched their previous attack strategy, they had done said attack as a direct response to the attack on their web. Therefore, it made sense to give them an even more impressive web to defend; another reason to choose that over the jeweled jumper. Far more of a prize laid within the shardrunner spiders. Of the dozens that had made the attack, only a fraction had survived; maybe nine or ten, with a number of those injured, but the invader''s mana was plenty even when split across so many. I selected shardrunner for each, guiding them to a little outcropping to evolve underneath. Their talents would be better used on my lower floors, but it''d take too long to get them underneath, and every moment that they were ready to evolve but not actively doing so was a threat. Their mana-stuffed bodies were a summoning cry to every other creature on their own path to evolution. So I''d keep them¡ªand the constrictors¡ªhere until they finished. Safer for everyone. I still grew a stone wall around their glowing bodies to keep the bears out. I darted back to my other floors, cleaning up the various messes that always seemed to pop up whenever I turned away; more roughwater sharks to repopulate after the sarco decimated their number, more seeding spores to replenish the backs of several lichenridge turtles, prodding an electric eel in the right direction as it tried to swim back out the river entrance. Something lower called my attention. I swooped down with all the fury of my previous form and slammed another refusal into the thick skulled constrictor who''d apparently joined the horned serpent''s army recently enough to have missed my last command. No. It rather hesitantly turned and slithered away from the mage ratkin it''d been going for. She, for her part, had already been aware of its presence; her jadestone-green eyes lost their glow as she lowered her little paw. Even with her hunchback and terrible posture, she towered over those she was bringing into the stone jungle, their own little ears lost beneath the billowing moss. Because she was bringing home other rats. On my fourth floor, it was still very sparse, mostly the thornwhip algae and the horned serpent''s army. But rats a-plenty came from the first and second floor, in search of more mana-filled jewels to call their own. And it seemed like my beloved little mage ratkin had found them and brought them to where they could find more tasty gems. Five fellow rats, all nearly two feet long and practically ancient by my dungeon''s standards, shuffling nervously as she traipsed forward with all the confidence that magic had. While the tunnels outside were full of danger, this stone jungle was for her. Excepting all the serpents that wanted nothing more than her death, of course. But now she led those five rats back to her den, to where she would show them her own magic and teach them how to claim it for themselves. Something I was entirely interested in. She ducked through the entrance that was just a touch too short for her, padding over the soft moss bed and the trickle of fresh water down one of the walls; the other rats swarmed in, safely huddled from the outside world, and listening intently. As they should. I would reward their dedication. More jadestone moss, pumping them with extra mana so they would be closer to producing the dead growths that gave way to jewels. Then quartz for pure mana, if they could find any use for them, ruby for fire, aquamarine for water, citrine for lightning, jet for shadow, and even that pale pink opal for healing. All full feast of options for whenever they decided to, ah, expand their diet. I spread out these jewels, dropping them not immediately inside her den, because that''d be too easy, but close enough that her job would be made much easier. Her mana-sense, though weak and untrained as it was, activated; I saw her stiffen, glancing outside her den. She could feel me creating the jewels. I got to practically watch her make the connection. I liked that she was teaching these new rats. Her creator approved of her actions. I was rewarding her for her choices. She redoubled the enthusiasm of her teaching. This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. Oh, I couldn''t wait to see how this developed. - Akkyst rumbled, swinging his great head around to face the jaguar. She churred. Old arch, he conveyed, using what little of her language he''d picked up over time; she nodded, golden eyes flashing towards the arch in the corner. Over the weeks they''d been here, she was now confident enough to hunt once more, dragging the larger corpses back to the goblins; though she stayed only on the far side of the Magelords'' territory. There would be no risk of being recaptured by the War Horde. But she was helping the Magelords. Not to the point of Akkyst, going on patrols and aiding in the defense, but she helped with food gathering. Already he was seeing her start to open up, from silent and untrusting to occasionally purring and merely mistrustful. Still stuck in this stony prison, she was improving with leaps and bounds. Her gritty grey coat was starting to regain its green tint, her golden eyes sharper than ever before. So he would go on patrols and find tunnels safe enough for her to hunt in, full of prey small enough for her still-recovering muscles but large enough to challenge her, and totally empty of any goblins. Today he was suggesting a tunnel beyond an old arch in a more ruined section of the city, where he had seen hints of a magma-salamander. Maybe she was up to challenge one of them. As for his other companion, the bladehawk was still a solitary being, gruff and unwishing of other''s company, but he had made one fatal mistake; instead of choosing the high ceiling as a nest, he had chosen the roof of a building slightly more in the active space of the goblins. That had been fine for the first week, when he and the jaguar were too nervous around other goblins and the goblins were still too used to the War Horde''s beasts to get close to each other, but it wasn''t fine now. The problem was that he preened himself, and his long, metallic feathers fell to the ground, where they would promptly get picked up by goblin youth who were utterly fascinated by said feathers. So now, instead of living his life quietly flying circles as he worked to regain the muscles lost in captivity, he now found himself hounded by blue-green-skinned little children who wanted nothing more than to examine his feathers in greater detail. The first few days of that had Akkyst running himself ragged trying to keep them apart; for as much as he trusted the bladehawk''s loyalty and power, he maybe didn''t trust that the avian wouldn''t snap eventually and chase the children off his own rather sharp-winged way. But Akkyst was wrong. The days went by and though the bladehawk certainly wasn''t fond of company, he grew to tolerate the children. Occasionally he landed and let them admire him from a distance, spreading his wings and preening old feathers to drop directly at their feet. The access to their new idol didn''t reduce their interest in the slightest; they loved him with a vigor that Akkyst honestly hadn''t thought possible. Having something capable of flight in a mountain home was an exotic wonder. The jaguar had actually seemed rather jealous of the attention the bladehawk got. Akkyst didn''t have an answer for that. He shook himself, turning back to the jaguar; she churred again, ears pricking forward. What would he do, while she was out on the hunt? Akkyst rumbled, staring around the room. Bylk was out on a patrol, the threat of the War Horde great enough he, as their greatest magic user, needed to be out defending the rapidly shrinking edges of their territory. The other goblins he worked with, mainly those who focused on defense, were busy with their own jobs. Maybe he would indulge in a minor pastime of his; studying the old stone Bylk had shown him on his first day in their home. That ancient moss-encrusted circle held secrets, he just knew it. One day he wanted to know what they were. He was hungry for knowledge, ever since he first knew what knowledge was, and having that ancient stone right in front of him was a temptation from the gods themselves. Akkyst rolled his massive shoulders. Not the time. Maybe he could help the jaguar with hunting, bring back more for the goblins¨C The floor trembled. Every goblin stiffened, their wide ears perking up as they peered at their surroundings, even the children quieting down to mere whispers. Akkyst rumbled low in his throat, crouching as he instinctively threw his mana over the jaguar; her feather-tipped tail lashed as she disappeared into the shadows, a mere pair of golden eyes. The sound rose, moaning and creaking with the movement of the mountain. It was coming closer. Goblins huddled together, mages raising grey-flecked hands in some last defense in case of the worst. They all stared at the wall the sound echoed from behind. A moment longer than eternity passed. But then the sound continued, moving deeper into the mountain, prodded along by some deep, bellowing call that raced through the surrounding rock. Another few minutes and it was gone. Akkyst clawed at the ground. It was getting closer with each passing patrol, and as powerful as magic was, it wasn''t an answer to every problem¡ªand it certainly wasn''t an answer for this beast. A stone-wurm. The War Horde had found one somewhere, maybe deep in hibernation lower in the mountain, but they''d managed to wake it up and beat it into submission. Now they brought it out on their near-daily hunts, ever-burrowing through the stone to find the home of the Magelords. He''d seen evidence of it once, out on patrol with Bylk maybe a week ago; great stone furrows carved through the mountain, tunnels rammed furiously until they became wide enough, small creatures flattened to paste against the walls if they couldn''t move out of its way in time. A predator the likes of which they''d never seen before. Stone-wurms were fantastically rare for good reason. One of the lesser strains of dragon, Bylk had explained. Most mythical creature species had those; instead of the "pure" veins, which included their direct descendants as well as themselves. But everything had their offshoots; wurms were those with draconic blood, but trading the magic and intelligence for raw strength. Not to be confused with wyrms, Bylk had added who were often underevolved draconic beings, and promptly delved off onto a side topic that had made Akkyst''s head hurt. But even the comfort of learning new things couldn''t stand the harrowing thought that it was getting closer. Not on a direct path, because that would be cause for immediate evacuation, but however big the mountain was, there were only certain sections safe enough for goblins to live, and that vastly reduced the amount of territory the War Horde had to search. And they were getting close. As hard as the Magelords had worked to hide their ancient and crumbling home, it was soon to be discovered anew, and Akkyst had a rather terrible suspicion that the enemy goblins would not leave it standing a third time. He raised his massive head, staring around as the goblins quietly got back to their lives, though more muted than before. His shadow-attuned mana fell off the stalking jaguar and she stood, tail flicking until the feather tip was almost dusting the ground. She certainly didn''t like the situation any more than he did. The stone-wurm hunted, spurred on by whatever whips and pain the War Horde used, and it would soon find them. Chapter 65 - Mother Tongue I darted back up to my first floor, prodding curiously at the still-evolving beasts huddled safely in their stone outcroppings. Perhaps my memories were playing tricks on me, but I seemed to remember the original horned serpent and jeweled jumper evolving much quicker than my later evolutions. Would these crowned cobras and shardrunner spiders evolve sooner? I had hopes. Half of it was my desire for strengthening my floors, and half of it was my inability to wait for anything. I was not a particularly patient creature. Even with Nicau out in the world, gathering what I certainly hoped would be a worthy return on investment for his Name, I wanted more. And considering I had to also wait for Nicau to return before I could figure out what abilities other than invisibility I had to prepare defenses for, I needed something else. So it was time to test a theory I''d been working on. I flew to the back half of the Fungal Gardens, spreading my points of awareness wide as I hunted; no dungeonborn creature would do for my selection. And considering that very few larger beings tended to survive long in my halls in this endless hunt for mana, that meant the insects would have to do. I chose one thin, spindly bug as my current target, walking slowly with primitive wings on its back. A grasshopper, I thought; some cave variant with a grey carapace and long, feathery antennae. Not anywhere near powerful enough for me to care about. It was meandering near the back half of the first floor, its multifaceted eyes peering towards the insectoid gladiatorial ring as if it wanted to join but wasn''t confident enough. Coward. I wrapped my mana around it, distilling a whole five points into a miasma; it froze, insipid little mind unable to comprehend what was happening. I dragged up all my Otherworld knowledge, swirling around in a mimicry of Mayalle''s whirlpool. I''d thought about this for a while now, ever since I''d really considered what had happened with Nicau and before with Seros. He had been a creature born separate from me, a regular animal who had just happened to have the lucky fortune of meeting me. But before, while I had been able to heal and talk with him, I hadn''t been able to influence his evolution or bind him to my mana. Only after I had Named him. But I certainly didn''t want to Name every interesting character I came across. Sheer inefficiency aside, I had mana set aside for other Names; even if some interesting creature wandered into my halls that I wanted to keep but didn''t necessarily want to kill, I couldn''t afford to just Name them all. If I were purely focused on revenge, I would have killed Seros, and I would kill all others who came into my halls just for their schema¡ªall the better to kill the Dread Pirate with. Some part of me wanted that, the part of me that was born from deep stone and a crack in the universe where the Otherworld mana came through. It wanted nothing more than raw, empty tunnels with monsters lurking around every corner, birthing new mana into the world and creating new creatures to unleash. But I wasn''t some leyline-born dungeon core. I was a dragon, and I desired things beyond efficiency. There was a reason I strung jewels and silver around my core, why I propped it up on a carved pillar; I wanted beauty. Wanted a home for my creatures. Wanted companions. So here I was, crouched over a grasshopper like a moray eel ready to strike. The little bug twitched, unable to flee with my presence wrapped around it. It was full of its own mana, barely a spark though it was, and all dungeonborn creatures were born of my own mana. So, in theory, if I removed the grasshopper''s mana and replaced it with my own, it would become what amounted to a dungeonborn creature. Probably. There was a reason I was trying it on a grasshopper first instead of any other creature. I reached out, prying half a sliver of mana into the grasshopper''s carapace; it jerked from my touch but I held with an iron grip, narrowing my points of awareness in. Not the time for silly things like flight or fight responses. I entered its primitive mana channels. When I made creatures from schemas, I was able to influence them slightly, up until I tried too much and their mana rejected me. So far, the most of what I could do was change their colourations, like brightening the cave spiders from ruddy red to a deep, ruby hue, or influencing how green algae released their spores or could be prompted to glow. Little things like that. Reaching into this grasshopper felt much the same way. I slid a few tendrils of what could barely even be called mana and they entered its channels easily enough, pieces flaking off and entering the grasshopper''s channels in what had to be the greatest power boost it had ever felt. But when I tried to tug at its mana, removing less than a fraction''s fraction of a point, it felt like running into an iron wall. No matter how cleverly and slyly I tugged at its mana, replacing it equally or even double what I took, I simply could not take it all. The grasshopper, despite being small enough a single pebble could kill it, somehow had a will strong enough to resist my entire core. Rude. I redoubled my efforts, pushing in even more mana, and apparently crossed some line in the sand. The grasshopper exploded. Hm. There came the power of the gods, what was treated as a gift but was only an annoyance to me. Same with how they prevented me from immediately stealing a sapiant''s schema, having to build up to it on my own, it seemed they also kept me from just forcing a creature into my halls. But if that were a complete law, I shouldn''t have been able to Name Seros or Nicau. As powerful as a Name was, I rather doubted it was more powerful than the gods up above. So what was the difference? They had agreed. Seros had already been on my side when I''d Named him, defending me from an invader, and I''d struck a deal with Nicau first. Their mana had accepted me, their wills working alongside me instead of against. I certainly hadn''t demeaned myself to reach into this grasshopper''s mind¡ªor what had once been a grasshopper and was now a smear of blood and guts against the stone floor¡ªand thus it had fought against me. But what if the creature wanted to join me? If it could quell its unconscious will to not combat me draining its mana? Hm. This required more testing. - Nicau peered through his cover of leaves. The scorpion, blissfully unaware, continued nibbling at the exposed leg of the hound. It was large, easily three feet in diameter, covered in a brown carapace dappled like a blanket of rotting leaves. Enormous claws gripped at the semi-fresh corpse, heavily armoured like a knight''s platemail, with a bladed tail twitching overhead. A single drop of inky black venom dripped out of the dagger-esque tip. All in all, another one of the beastly predators that were much too common in the jungle, Nicau was finding. It had come when he was only halfway through trying to decapitate the hound to bring back with him, likely smelling the smoldering blood leaking over the soil; Nicau had just enough time to grab his spear and disappear into the closest bush before it had strode into the little clearing, tail lashing and claws raised like it owned the place. Thankfully, it seemed to be mostly a scavenger type, without the highly honed senses that came with active predators or prey. It didn''t notice him just awkwardly standing off to one side, hidden underneath a flower-studded bush, too busy ripping away at its found meal. If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. It also hadn''t noticed Nicau sneaking away and finding the largest rock he could carry. Nicau narrowed his eyes, bracing the stone against his ribs; large enough to heft, though the throw would be difficult. It was the same strategy he used against scorpions back in Calarata, though those had, admittedly, been a few inches wide at most. His spear was too weak and his leg, while bound in the thickest leaves he had found, wasn''t strong enough to maintain trying to circle around the scorpion to dodge its attacks. So. Rock. Before he could lose his nerve, he braced his injured leg against the trunk behind him and heaved the stone forward. Mana burst through his channels, the few flecks remaining after his command and patching up his leg, and the rock tumbled through the air before slamming into the scorpion''s back with a crunch. It screamed, legs splaying flat and body disappearing under the stone; one exposed claw twitched, grasping aimlessly at the air, legs skittering. Its death throes continued with the horrible chittering sound of chitin against stone, trying to rip itself free. It failed. Black venom and blue blood spilled out from underneath the stone. Nicau exhaled seemingly all the air in the world, slumping back against the tree trunk; another kill. One a little less impressive than the hound''s, but he''d bloody take it. Already he could feel fresh mana returning to his channels, soothing his strained muscles and taking away the bite of his healing injury; but he was exhausted. Only a day he''d lasted in the jungle, far too scared to sleep and very much unwilling to try eating anything for fear it was toxic, and it was getting to him. His limit was quickly being reached. But now, with two beasts and as many plants as he could stuff into his sling, surely this would be enough. And even if it wasn''t, his fear of the dungeon killing him for failure was losing to his desire for sleep. So he picked up the spear he''d set down to handle the rock, padding cautiously back into the clearing; a few other creatures had come over the past day after smelling the hound''s corpse, mostly small, monkey-like beings with multiple tails, but they were far too skittish and he hadn''t managed to kill any of them. And with his mana going towards trying to heal his leg, all his attempts harnessing any Communer shout had come out as a pitiful squeak. He needed more training to figure out what that was, and he needed mana for that training. Nicau crouched by the hound''s corpse, holding his breath against the sickly-sweet stench filling the air¡ªthe raw humidity of the jungle made everything decay at an uncomfortably quick rate. Using the sharp edge of his spear, he returned to sawing at the beast''s neck, coming at the opposite angle so he didn''t have to stand in the puddle spreading out from under the scorpion''s body. He didn''t trust that black venom at all. Another hour measured by the growls of his stomach and he had the canine''s head fully off its body, hanging limply by its horns. It easily weighed ten pounds on its own, but he''d much prefer shoving the thing into his sling than trying to drag the whole thing back. The dungeon had only specified he needed multiple bits of a creature. Which he had. He shoved the dripping, stinking thing into his sling, plopping on top of the moonstar sprouts, palm fronds, and vaguely smoking red-black flowers he''d already gathered. Then, using a few sticks he''d grabbed, he managed to shove the stone off the scorpion''s body with a squelch. Nicau shuddered. Horrifying. Only half of it was covered in the black venom, the tail''s gland exploded underneath the rock; he used more sticks to drag the upper section of its body closer, prying off a few limbs. Grabbing another section of finleaf to avoid getting the blue blood over his hands, he dropped them into the sling. Almost immediately, he could feel the liquid press against the sides of the leaf, trying desperately to worm its way through. He needed to get back to the dungeon as soon as possible¡ªthere were plenty of scavengers in the jungle who would smell the blood and come looking for a meal. Nicau knelt, picked his spear back up, turned to face the wider jungle, and paused. Ah. Which way was it? He''d only come an hour or two into the dungeon proper before being attacked, but that didn''t help when all the emerald canopy and bristling underbrush looked exactly the same. Nicau had tried leaving marks, right up until the hound had attacked and he''d turned tail. The mistake could be forgiven¡ªhe''d been a touch more worried about his life when he''d ran away from the beast''s initial charge¡ªbut that didn''t mean this was good. There were plenty of horror stories he''d heard from Calarta''s taverns running through his head. The jungle wasn''t tamed or civilized, getting lost didn''t just mean a rough place to sleep overnight until you could wake up tomorrow and keep going. It meant wandering forever, trapped in by the dense undergrowth until eventually you ran out of luck. His kills no longer seemed that impressive. In all his rush to do the big, important thing, he''d forgotten the far more pressing basics. Nicau spent long enough wallowing in his fate that something flew overhead. He flinched, jerking his spear up¡ªbright red and fluttering, eyes and beak black, wings wide and outstretched¡ªand promptly yelped when it landed on his shoulder. His fists flew wildly. The parrot took off. It landed on an exposed root, feathers poofed, and gave a disproving squawk. Sure. Yeah. Right. Nicau panted, trying to recontrol his frantic heart. He was in the wrong for reacting like that in a jungle full of things that wanted to kill him. "What''s your deal?" He gasped, hand splaying over his chest like that would help. The parrot¡ªa rather pretty thing, really, two feet tall with brilliant red feathers edged in gold that pirates back in Calarata would kill to put on their hat¡ªcocked its head to the side. "Deal?" Nicau barely bit back a curse. Not this bloody thing again¡ªhe thought his Communer blessing only worked on sapient creatures, which this bird certainly didn''t look like. At least his words were coming out normally instead of squawking back. "I mean, why did you land on me?" It shuffled its jagged talons. "Land on me?" "Oh." He let his spear fall back into a more neutral pose; he should have remembered this with the other parrots he''d heard around Calarata. "You''re just repeating me, aren''t you?" The parrot squawked wordlessly. "Alright." Nicau glanced around, but no other creatures seemed nearby; or at least nothing attacking them. And some part of him liked hearing Viejabran again, his mother tongue. When he spoke to the kobolds, all his words came out like theirs; this was a welcomed return to normalcy. "You''re the first friendly face I''ve seen. Why did you land on my shoulder?" "Friendly face I''ve seen," it agreed, flaring its wings until the golden edges gleamed. Something in the back of his mind told him that the dungeon would appreciate its beauty; he shook it off. Not a chance he''d be fast enough to get it with his spear, and he rather doubted that something he could kill would so willingly land on him. It had some secret it wasn''t revealing. He wouldn''t challenge it. "I''m trying to get back," he said. "But unless I''m willing to just pick a direction, I don''t know how I''ll get there. And I don''t know if I''ll survive more attacks at this point." He exhaled into a grimace. "The mana from the scorpion will keep me up for another day if I need to, but I don''t think there''s anything past that. Funny, isn''t it? Got this far just to get lost in the jungle." Nicau sighed, rubbing at his chin. "Isn''t like one of those adventure stories, either. Where I traveled to the center and fought some¡­ forest-drake, or something. Just got lost an hour or two in. Fitting." It mimicked his self-pity, lowering its crest and pulling its wings in. "An hour or two." "If only my Name had given me wings like yours," Nicau said, feeling a snort building up. His small, bedraggled body beneath two magnificent feathered masses. A right treat he''d look like. "Then I''d be out without a problem." "Wings like yours," it agreed. "Then I''d be out." It hopped higher on the exposed root, eyes bright, and bobbed its head in a seemingly random direction. A flick of its tail at the shoulder it''d originally tried to land on, wings spreading in some mockery of flight. "Without a problem?" That was¡­ oddly cohesive. Nicau narrowed his eyes. "How intelligent are you?" The parrot bobbed its head, clacking its white-black beak with an earsplitting squawk. Definitely some secret there. But was it offering to help him out of the jungle? If it had wanted to kill him, he imagined it could have, unless he was too large and it was leading him to a trap to pick at his bones later? Alright. Nicau hesitated, then shifted his sling so his shoulder was fully protected and offered it back to those jagged claws. He''d trusted a living rock that had used to be a dragon¡ªwhat was a bird in comparison? "You wouldn''t happen to know the way to the mountain, would you?" The parrot cocked its head. He squatted, grabbing the first rock he saw and holding it up; the parrot''s black eyes stared keenly at it, red-gold crest perking up. "This, but big." Nicau spread his arms out, really thankful that no one else was around to see him trying to talk with this bird. Maybe one day he could upgrade his Communer ability to speak to regular animals, too. But the parrot squawked again, spreading its wings; it took off and, with a quick circle overhead, landed on his shoulder. Heavy, but less than he''d expected. The leaf sling barely did anything to protect him from its talons. A bird on his shoulder, monster parts in a makeshift sling, injured and hungry and tired. Gods. What a day. Nicau flicked his spear up, using the butt to push the foliage away from his path. "Alright. Lead the way." The parrot squawked. Chapter 66 - Returns Nicau wasn''t ashamed to admit he wept when the jungle thinned and revealed the mountains again. Dramatic? Yes. He''d only been in the jungle for two days. Hardly enough to forget about civilization and how it looked. But gods, he missed the safety of the kobolds'' den. "Ah, thank you," he offered, extending his arm; the parrot, halfway through preening a feather, blinked at him. "I couldn''t have made it without you." Its squawk was rather smug. More than a few hours it''d been, trying to decode the parrot''s instructions and fighting against exhaustion, but out he''d made it. A few more plants under his belt, a couple harrowing glances at enormous beasts while crouching in the underbrush¡ªthere''d been one particular encounter with an enormous grey beast, easily three times his height with massive hooves and horns studded on the front of its face¡ªbut he was out. Alive. Mostly. Now he stood on the outer lip of the mountain pass, the rubble extending before him; after that, just another half day''s travel and he''d be back at the dungeon''s entrance. And to be frank, after the jungle, he''d feel more than safe catching a quick sleep somewhere at mighty Al¨®mbra''s base. But he was curious about his companion. "I''m going underground," he said, pointing with his unoccupied hand towards the distant mountains. "To a dungeon." That might kill you on arrival. "Do you want to stay with me?" The parrot abruptly stopped preening, spread its wings, and took off from his shoulder with an earsplitting squawk. In an instant it was dozens of feet in the air, circling overhead; it shrieked once more and flew back to the jungle, red-gold feathers disappearing beneath the emerald canopy. Nicau blinked, feeling rather foolish. It didn''t want to go underground, he knew that. But he also knew that wild creatures didn''t particularly feel the urge to guide lost humans out of their jungle. So what had it all meant? He didn''t have any sort of answer. So he pulled his sling higher up on his shoulders, gripped his spear, and started back to the dungeon. - My next grasshoppers had also found unfortunate demises of an exploding variety. If I were feeling particularly charitable, I''d probably say that me doing the equivalent of setting my claws on their throat and demanding they agree to join me probably wasn''t the best way to get their mana to relax, but my sympathy was pretty well fleeting at this point. Why wouldn''t they want to join? They were already feeding on my mana. But I was running out of non-dungeonborn insects, and my frustration was building to the point my tests weren''t effective. I''d return to this later. So off I went, handling all my boring chores; keep the mushroom population up in the Fungal Gardens to feed the bears, add more insects to the fourth floor to sustain the thornwhip algae, drop a few more rat families into the Drowned Forest. Another replenishment of the roughwater sharks, still too bullheaded for their own good¡ªalthough only most of them were killed by the sarco and Seros. One, a smaller but battle-honed bruiser, floating weakly by the surface; I shifted a point of awareness closer and found puncture holes spread over its dorsal fin, ones with venom still leaking out. The silver krait. After the merrow''s second invasion, I''d kept a close eye on the amount of mana he had¡ªit was building near a fever pitch¡ªbut now he was going after sharks instead of his more typical prey. I pondered that even as I shaped another dozen sharks, spreading them throughout the enormous room. Was there something specific he wanted from their death? Interesting. I''d try to keep a closer eye on him in the future. But I went around my other daily tasks on the Underlake, trimming back the bloodline kelp from completely swallowing the floor and dissolving more silt for the armourback sturgeons to dig through, making the fully wolf cloudskipper wisp was full up on mana and still doggedly fighting against Mayalle''s influence. All normal. Then one point of awareness happened to glance towards a tunnel near the entrance, where a light had been shining for the past week. A light that was now very dim. Oho. Finally. With the last, wisping glow of a light that had lasted far too long, my first second evolution opened his new eyes. The royal silvertooth. Five feet long, quintuple his previous length, with his brutish appearance trimmed back; no longer fangs like broken glass sticking wildly out of his jaws, dorsal fins no longer edged in jagged spikes. Instead he was sleek, silver scales so small they were nearly invisible, fins pale and translucent. His eyes were the same scarlet but now deeper, more meaningful, the teeth below a uniform dagger''s point. Where once he''d been a bruiser, now he screamed power in a very different way. There was an elegance to his movement, shaking off the glow of evolution and swimming out of the tunnel I''d hidden him in. A nearby school of silvertooths, freshly out of a blood-frenzy from a crab they''d consumed, turned to face him. He opened his fanged maw and swam forward, moving in slow, powerful strokes; there was almost an eel-like quality to his strength, where his entire body seemed to be muscle. The other silvertooths realized he was stronger than them with the scant few braincells they possessed and drifted back, leaving half the crab''s corpse behind. Acquiescing their kill. Except for a few. Those few beautiful idiots charged forward, kicking up the last sparks of their blood-frenzy, starving and furious¨C When the royal silvertooth reached out, his eyes glowing, and canceled their blood-frenzy. The few silvertooths drifted to a stop, confused and furious but without the mindless rage to back it up. I balked and moved closer¡ªsome subtle mana drifted away from what he''d used, tinged deep red. Not any respectable amount, compared to what, say, my mage ratkin would use, but mana nonetheless. And a type I hadn''t seen before, too. Holy shit. I remembered back to its description¡ªas blood commands, so too does royalty. Was that blood-attuned mana? Gods, even if the evolution had taken forever, this was worth it. I couldn''t wait to see what happened. ¡­to be fair, it hadn''t been that long. There''d just been a lot happening in the past week. Just to cement his point, the royal silvertooth swam forward and cleaved his mighty fangs through the disobeyers'' heads, killing them instantly; but even as the blood spread throughout the rest of the school, he kept pouring out blood-attuned mana, keeping them from entering their frenzy. The other silvertooths saw what he was doing and suddenly all agreed that yes, they were very interested in joining his school and serving him. Ah, tyranny. A seemingly favoured pastime of those in my halls. I spent enough time admiring his fearsome progression that I nearly missed something walking through my entrance. A stray point of awareness caught a glance of someone¡ªa human, thin and malnourished, but with a gleam about his eyes and a familiar mana deep in his soul. Nicau had returned. I held myself back from completely welcoming him; I bounced between the heads of the creatures on the first floor, holding them back from attacking, but I didn''t reach out to him yet. I wanted to see his reaction. Because, well, I''d worked hard on this new Fungal Gardens. I wanted to see what he thought. Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. He poked his head cautiously into my new entrance room, frowning at the walls; he held a sliver of quartz in one hand, pumping just a hair of mana in to make a quartz-light. The most basic spell that anyone could use, even those untrained, but already a good showing that he''d unlocked something about his mana while out in the world. Nicau crept forward, eyeing the spiders overhead, and finally stepped into my newly improved room. His eyes went wide. I basked in the awe. It was very deserved. He stepped forward through this paradise, past the jewels and gold I''d strung over pillars and stalactites, the rivers of green algae next to fields of whitecaps, all the glorious limestone I''d polished to a silver shine. As intended, he lingered on the massive serpentine skeleton, carefully not stepping on the section that snaked under his feet. Luminous constrictors prodded at my suggestion, flicking their tongues out at what probably looked like a gift-wrapped pile of mana to them, but I held firm. I knew he looked like something I would have eaten as a morning snack when I was peckish. That didn''t mean I would allow him to be consumed now. With the new expanded rock pond, there was no chance of jumping across without an enhancement spell; and judging by the leaf bandages wrapped around his leg, probably not even with. So Nicau just raised his spear above the water and plunged in, nervous but trusting me to keep him safe. If I hadn''t already Named him, I would have been tempted to let the silverheads make their attempts. I held strong, though. He was too useful now. The Drowned Forest went by quicker¡ªhe knew his way around these halls, and though there were still a few canals too wide to jump across, the kobolds had taught him how to slither across the dead branches they''d set up without snapping the wood. He made it across like it was born here. But finally, he stood before the kobolds'' den. Exhaustion was heavy on his spirits and his thoughts, which I poked lightly into as I finally revealed my awareness over him. There was a momentary jerk as I tapped against his mind, that instinctual reaction to any stimuli, but he relaxed after. He didn''t know how to control his mana well enough to even think of defending his thoughts from me so he just let it happen, tiredly making to enter the kobolds'' den. From inside, the Chieftess rose her head, golden eyes lighting up when she saw him; she churred something in their primitive tongue that was developing enough I was almost able to understand it, standing up to go greet him. He warbled something back. Not to interrupt their little reunion, but I didn''t want him going into the den quite yet. I pushed my command to him alongside an image of a destination, calling up Seros at the same time. Go here. Only to the previous core room, unfortunately. I would have loved to bring him down to the fifth floor to see me, witness that which he had sworn himself to, but I didn''t have a good way of bringing him past the Underlake yet. The little tunnels I''d opened for rats and serpents wouldn''t exactly fit a human. Nicau blinked but pulled back from the entrance, calculating where the room in the mental picture I''d shown him was¡ªthe Chieftess exited the den, sniffing curiously at the air. When Nicau made for the room''s exit, she followed. Interesting. The kobolds'' den was close to the old core room anyway, and it wasn''t long before they were both there, peering hesitantly into the darkness of the tunnel wending its way down. The humidity was thicker there, and though kobolds didn''t have the best senses, I imagined the Chieftess still knew that the sarco was below. She gripped her staff a bit tighter. Nicau, for his part, looked too exhausted to feel anything resembling self preservation. A minute later, Seros emerged from the tunnel, lantern-esque eyes gleaming through the dark. He wasn''t strictly necessary, but I wanted him present¡ªthis was about the outside world. This was as important as it got. "Hello?" Nicau said, back in the brutish human tongue now that he wasn''t talking directly to the Chieftess. Seros tilted his head to the side, playing up every angle of elegance that came with being the first Named of a dungeon, coincidentally not being the overexcited hatchling he was whenever he shared his reports to me. Fair enough. I, for my part, was cramming in the last details of the human language I''d been studying. I refused to have my conversation with Nicau go as poorly as the last one. With a careful touch, I reached into his mind. What have brought me? Fuck. Still better than before. Nicau glanced around once more, but with Seros and my full attention present, nothing would sneak up on them. He seemed to pick up on my amusement over his paranoia, fixing his gaze back on Seros, and tugged the sling off his back. All my points of awareness swarmed in. Though the leaf making up the bag was sturdy, it had been asked to carry much over a long distance, and fell apart at the first glance of freedom. Blood poured out, a mixture of bright red and blue, hunks of meats with straggling plants between. With a little smile, Nicau stepped away from the mess before it could soak his threadbare boots. And what a mess it was. Some mammal''s head, crowned with horns and auburn fur. A handful of clawed legs covered in mottled brown chitin. Small white-silver flower sprouts, petals barely peeking out. A massive frond of something I vaguely remembered as palm. Shredded flowers with smoking red-black petals. A section of a vine slowly slithering its way out of the blood. Oho. Already my Name was paying its dividends back. The Chieftess'' eyes went wide, staring at the bounty before her. She glanced at Nicau as though she couldn''t quite believe he had managed this. I understood. He was still a ratty, malnourished thing, clothes only scraps and no weapons beyond a bone-tipped spear. But he''d managed this. She reached for the canine''s head, warbling a question, her staff. Seros growled. She retreated with a hissed apology. Hopefully that was just a general worship of Seros as a Named figure, and not another kobold converting away from me like Rihsu. Either way, thanks to Seros for protecting these glorious treasures; I couldn''t wait to collect their schemas. But I would consume them later¡ªI needed to focus on Nicau while his memories were fresh and ripe for the taking. I pulled my awareness back to him. Where did you go? A flawless sentence. Perfect. Nicau swallowed, his mind fluttering. It seemed like he still wasn''t used to hearing my voice in his head. If I''d wanted, I could reach in and pull everything I needed to know out, but there wasn''t a point. This way I got someone to bounce thoughts off of, while still having no fear he would lie to me. "To the jungle," he said. "I didn''t want to risk going to Calarata." The correct decision. While it wasn''t front and forward, I had a lurking fear that anyone with soul perception would be able to see the Name I''d given Nicau, outing him and potentially losing me my spy. Which was why I needed him to tell me what abilities his people had. After. What jungle? His brow furrowed. "The¡­ jungle? It''s right beside the Al¨®mbra Mountains." How terribly helpful. I had been a sea-drake who had traveled the currents to see more of Aiqith than he could comprehend. The name. Nicau looked truly flustered then. "I. I don''t know? It probably has a name but I''ve never heard it." Huh. If the natives didn''t know the name, it couldn''t be that widespread; maybe a name given by those scholarly types who drew maps about places they''d never visited? Even so, it seemed wrong to have a place filled with such wonders unnamed. My dungeon instincts said it was incomplete. I will name it, I decided. That seemed fitting; it was more on my territory than Calarata''s, anyway. If they didn''t treasure it like I would, they didn''t deserve it. Nicau blinked. "What, then?" All of my creative ability fled. I will name it later, I amended. His brow furrowed further but he nodded. "I went there, walked for a short while, and was attacked by this hound." He gestured towards the canine''s head, then again at his leg wrapped in greenery. "We fought but I won." Ah shit, I''d meant to do this earlier¡ªI reached out with a curl of mana, looping it over his leg. It burrowed under the leafy bandages, sinking into the punctured skin. Already, his poor care had led to the heat of infection, his umber skin starting to redden. Not a concern for me. Just as I had with Seros all that time ago, my mana spiraled through him in a healing wave, rushing through his channels in a reinvigorating touch. Nothing instantaneous, unfortunately¡ªas loath as I was to admit it, I wasn''t that powerful¡ªbut as long as I didn''t have invaders stealing my attention or mana, I could heal those within my halls. The infection shriveled under my touch, his skin starting to regrow, though it would be another day before it was back at its previous strength. Nicau blinked, stretching out the limb with a look of bemusement. "Oh. Thank you?" He shifted his leg, putting weight onto it with a wince loaded but never needed it. "Thank you!" I preened. Continue. "Ah¨C I stayed by the corpse, since it was attracting more creatures, and killed the scorpion. Then I thought having that many bodies by me was too dangerous and started back. But I was lost." He paused now, his mind furiously racing for a way to phrase it. "And then a parrot saved me?" Seros and I shared a look, which is even more impressive when you consider I was an invisible collection of mana. A parrot? "It helped guide me out," he said helplessly, shrugging. "And when I asked it to come with me, it flew away." Okay. So alongside the mystery pirate with the wolfskin hat, there was also a parrot out in the world I had to contend with. I peered into Nicau''s memories but he hadn''t noticed anything blatantly magical about the avian, not that he had any soul-sense and he''d been too empty from healing to use his mana-sense. Fantastic. But that was his first adventure. I wanted to grill him on Calarata''s abilities and information, but already he was slipping; the bags under his eyes and the slump of his shoulders told me that his brilliant oratory abilities would continue to degrade. I was hoping it was more his exhaustion and not that he was naturally this unimaginative of a storyteller, because gods these future gathering trips would be boring. So I''d let him sleep tonight as I consumed these schemas. You have done well, I said, pushing another bout of healing mana over his leg. Rest. Will talk tomorrow. Nicau nodded, looking to the Chieftess¡ªshe dragged her gaze away from the pile of delicious mana but came to his side, guiding them both back to her den. They''d be fine. As for me, I turned to the mess of blood and parts with a distinctly sharp touch to my mana. Seros felt it, leaning in with his eyes bright. It was time for me to feast. Chapter 67 - Brand New Prizes I dove into the schemas like I had starved for a millennia. Seros took careful guard at the entrance of the room, because I certainly wouldn''t be focusing on anything else for a good while; I tore through skin and fur and root and leaf, devouring all the juicy knowledge. Gods. These schemas. I savored every one.
Scorch Hound (Rare) One of a large family of elemental hounds, it hunts in massive packs, chasing prey many times their size without fear. They target their burning bites at their prey''s weak points, slowing them down for an easy kill.
The first and most beautiful, my mind already spinning with thoughts of swarming packs of canines ready to feast. Nowhere on my current floors to put them, although they could do well on the fifth''s dry environment; it seemed like I''d be moving my plans for a storm-choked environment even further back.
Mottled Scorpion (Uncommon) Hiding under rubble or leaf, it waits with an all-encompassing patience for victims to fall prey to its barbed tail. In times of hunger, it leaves its disguise and hunts as a scavenger, feasting on the dead.
What my spiders dreamed they could be; this thing''s size was already beautiful, and I very much liked the sound of its venom. Although an all-encompassing patience for prey and a willingness to go and scavenge seemed like contradictions. Maybe there were two subspecies?
Cloudsire Palm (Uncommon) Its roots pull in many times more water than it needs; the excess is released through its bark as mist, preventing the sun from reaching other trees that would wish to encroach on its space.
Oh! This might have been a fool''s hope, but they sounded different from the towering palms that so often dotted the shore; if this plant had to have a strategy to stop other trees from blocking its sunlight, maybe it wouldn''t be the absolutely massive height that would be a hard stopper on my ability to put them in my dungeon?
Fire-Tongue Flower (Uncommon) From birth, each flower catches on fire to dissuade hungry creatures; as they burn, the smoke carries away their seeds.
Another beautiful fire schema; my desire for a volcano themed sixth floor grew with every passing second. And I could hope that while the flowers burned slowly, they might be hot enough to do some real damage to those that wanted to collect their fragile petals.
Creeping Vine (Uncommon) This mobile plant crawls to wherever there is water, planting itself until the water dries up, wherein it seeks new territory.
Now that was interesting¡ªI''d thought, when I''d first seen it slithering over the floor when dumped from Nicau''s bag, that this wouldn''t be unique when compared to my beautiful thornwhip algae. But it seemed that these were two different styles of mobility; one that moved for attacking, and one that could move, but didn''t necessarily have to. Hm.
Moonstar Flower (Exotic) Pale and delicate, it is said they carry the wishes of a god. Those that ingest them find their future paths smoothed with good fortune.
Oh. Oh. Now that was a true find. Already an exotic plant, which I presumed didn''t mean it was a revitalized fossil like my other two exotic schemas, and a description that actively mentioned the gods. Always a good start. And luck-attuned mana! Or some bastardization of it; would there be anything stopping me from just force feeding all my creatures with it? Truly magnificent. I settled back on intangible haunches, just absorbing all the information I''d consumed. That was more schemas than I''d ever taken in before, and all were wildly different and carrying their own brand of power. I was nearly drunk on the potential. My thoughts kept racing far ahead of my mind. Where could I put the cloudsire palm? Nothing other than my Skylands were tall enough, even if they were the shorter variant of palms; and how would they play with cloudskipper wisps? Collabtive? Combative? What if I could grow the palms in some form of toxin, making the mist they exuded poisonous? And the mottled scorpion; something perfect to hide in plain sight, keeping their eyes fixed up while something scuttled beneath. But with their size, even if they were discovered, it wouldn''t be an immediate death like it was for so many of my other ambush predators. If the jeweled jumper was found before he could get away, he was dead. I had a sneaking hope the scorpion wouldn''t be the same way. The creeping vine, too; how did it compare to the thornwhip algae, even if their mobility was different? Would it be something where it would be worth having both on the same floor, or did they fulfill entirely separate purposes that clashed with each other? What about its desire for water; could I control that? Give it water when I wanted it to stay still, then remove it when I wanted it to move? And flowers! Gods, the sea-drake in me was desperate for coral, the brilliant colours and textures and patterns; flowers would have to do for now. Any splash of colour in these halls were more than welcome, even if it looked like my schemas favoured the garish red over any more subtle blues and greens. I''d have to experiment with how the smoke-seeds worked; if I gathered enough of them, would there be enough to choke out invaders? Maybe force them to retreat? Scorch hounds sounded like the perfect opposite to my kobolds¡ªworking in a pack, but strong and powerful where kobolds were weak and diminutive. But if I could get them to maybe work together, using the kobold''s intelligence¡ªif it could be called that¡ªalongside the scorch hound''s strength, they could dominate any number of invaders. Probably threaten my larger creatures as well. A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation. A truly exciting thought. All of this was exciting. I couldn''t wait to see just how these new schemas worked with my current ones, flowering and improving and strengthening my halls¨C Seros crooned a touch worriedly in my direction. I shook myself, swiveling a point of awareness back in his direction. He stood guard in the room, though I''d consumed all there was to guard, and bobbed his head when he''d noticed he''d gotten my attention. At my mana which was currently coursing through the room like a hatchling caught in a current. Ah. I should probably reign myself in a touch. Thank you, I impressed on him, and promptly darted down to my core room for some experimentation. Because as much as all the other schemas called to me, there was one even louder than the rest. The moonstar flower. The schema''s description tried to play coy, with it was said they carry the wishes of a deity, but I was pretty sure that was as much of a waving flag that the gods could do without stepping on another god''s toes. The great pissing contest of the sky and all that. Even without the good fortune, there was something special about these flowers, and I was rather determined to figure out what. I was also rather determined to keep them long enough to study, so I would be growing the first batch directly in my core room. I darted around, avoiding the little hoard of silver and jewels I''d been building up, and churned a patch of limestone into soil, dumping detritus on top. A few quartz-lights on the wall and it seemed like we were all set, according to the information I''d gotten from the schema. It was a picky plant, yes, but more for the amount of ambient mana that had to be present for it to grow; something I could provide in spades. I glanced back at my core.
Dragonheart Core
Mana: 72.6 / 75 Mana Regeneration: +0.6 per hour
Patrons: Rhoborh, God of Symbiosis; Mayalle, Goddess of Whirlpools
Titles: Resurrector
Just under full mana, with what I''d used to heal Nicau. Plenty to experiment. That was seventy-two beautiful points just begging to become new creatures. So I reached out, tugged a few points from my core, and set about creating the newest of my new collection. Half a dozen flew immediately into shaping the bare outline without breaking a sweat. Hm. The mana continued to pour from my soul. I was getting slightly uncomfortable with the amount I was losing. Then, finally, it finished coalescing into a small, delicate bloom, warm white with five petals and a silver center. Pollen, soft and infinitesimally small, started to gather, pale green leaves unfurled from a thin stem. The ideal of a plant easy to crush under one''s heel. With the notable exception of the fact it took forty-fucking-two points of mana to create. That was more than it had taken to resurrect the sarco. Gods. Yeah, this was an evolved schema. Probably twice evolved, if not more¡ªeven with something influencing luck, there was no reason it should have taken this much to create. Well, I''d found the reason I couldn''t just forcefeed it to all of my creatures. Thankfully, my core room was as close to safe as you could get in my dungeon; Seros spent all of his resting time here and a good deal else, and there weren''t many creatures intelligent enough to want these flowers on the floor. Maybe the greater pigeon, as an evolved beast? It was still a pigeon. I wouldn''t hedge my bets. But I would be leaving it to grow here, undisturbed by the outer world; once I had enough of a population, I might transplant it to other locations, but I would be avoiding having to recreate it if at all possible. That was far too much of a mana cost to validate making it. Gods. Forty-two. I''d carved out the entirety of the original Fungal Gardens for that much. I gave one last glare to the little bloom like that would make it easier to make before darting back outside my core room. The best way to soothe my concerns over the moonstar would be to spend more mana. The fifth floor would be my first focus; I could see three schemas working well here, maybe four. The Skylands were sparse at best, with everything but a few insects being flying critters. It made sense, because my islands weren''t exactly brimming with space to fill, but it did lend to a very empty feeling. I wanted more. And that was the problem; I had two options. I could either push forward with my original plan for the Skylands, filling them with cloudskipper wisps and lightning and now the cloudsire palms, pumping it full of humidity and filling in the area beneath with some sort of dangerous water feature. That was still my end goal, I knew; it paired too beautiful with the open air and the towering islands. Or I could use the other schemas. The scorch hounds and fire-tongue flowers were lovely and appealed deeply to my love of the elements, even if the rather brutish and primitive fire. I wanted that danger. It would be my sixth floor, I knew. So I would just have to wait a little longer until I felt comfortable digging down; my first floor wasn''t complete yet, the fourth and fifth were so barely populated, and I''d made the mistake before of making too many floors without a stable plan for them all. Alright. I''d keep the fifth floor dry for the moment, using it as a¡­ storage place for all my more fire-inclined schemas, and wait until the first and fourth were done to an acceptable level before tunneling down for my sixth. Fine. That was a decent enough plan. It still killed me to stuff the cloudsire palm schema away for later use. I covered that frustration by immediately creating three scorch hounds. They flowed quickly from my core, a little under nine points apiece¡ªstill expensive, definitely another evolved monster, though it felt near free after the torment of the moonstar flower. I drained myself near empty as three figures swam into glorious view, situated on the center, largest island. Maybe four feet tall, covered in deep auburn fur with black patches around their paws and muzzles, as well as a streak down their back. Twisting obsidian horns curled around their perked ears, tail thin and lashing, claws wonderfully sharp and digging into the stone. Already I could see the heat escaping from between their fangs, the twin embers that made up their eyes¡ªnot an elemental, but a beautiful attuned creature. I loved them already. They blinked as they came into existence, sniffing curiously at the air and each other; some pack instinct took over and they immediately accepted they were bonded and a pack, moving as one as they bounded forward. They crossed one island with ease, padding over the thin bridge, exploring around their new home. Already I caught them watching the prey above, flitting around without a care; although I''d need to bring more rat and toad populations down here to feed them. Tricky thing about a temporary floor. I really should have just waited to create them, but there wasn''t a chance I was going to sit on every schema I''d just collected until the time was right. I was far too impatient for that. My impatience did strike again as I had to wait a few hours just watching them before moving onto the next schema. The fire-tongue flowers. Their schema said this habitat was already fine for them, although admittedly with dirt instead of stone, and I bounced around softening up the limestone and added general topsoil things around; one appreciated upside of being a dungeon. If something wasn''t right, I could simply make it right. Very easy. I let them bloom. They came out as low-growing shrubs covered in charcoal-green leaves; or, not low-growing, but merely attaching to whatever I grew them on. With only a little coaxing, it rooted into some loosened stone up the side of the enormous cavern, winding around the rust-red iron veins I''d pulled from the wall. Huh. Again, I reminded myself, not permanent. Keep it basic. I promptly created more spreading up the wall, plumping them up with mana so their flowers would sprout fast; they did so, great fire-black blooms with the air wavering in front of their blooms. Almost immediately, their centers start to burn, creeping ever outward as smoke trickled to the sky above. Peering closer, I could see that there was pollen at the center of the flower, and the smoke seemingly¡­ solidified them into seeds? Or was the other binding element alongside pollen? Fascinating. Unfortunately, by that time I was truly out of mana, enough I could feel a few of my older points of awareness popping into nonexistence on the higher floors. I wanted to continue¡ªI knew the mottled scorpions would also do well on this floor, in both the current dry state and the eventual stormy peaks, and I wanted them to have time to settle in¡ªbut I needed to wait. Previous invasions had shown me how bad it was to be empty when invaders came knocking. And besides. I had one more floor to work on. With these schemas and a last few tweaks, it was finally time to complete the Fungal Gardens. Chapter 68 - Added Clause I faced my first floor. It had grown past its initial roots, no longer small and stunted but grown. A thousand feet long, eight hundred wide, full of pillars and dens and stalactites and stalagmites and all manners of glorious little things I''d worked hard to perfect. And now it was time to finish it, once and for all. There wasn''t much to change, though. I''d polished almost everything, improving and honing it to a knife''s edge. A few changes in the future, sure; when the shardrunner spiders finished evolving and I figured out if they had a spot on the first floor, or whether the bears would stay here or eventually move down. But those were minor things. I was done waiting. First was the new schemas Nicau had been so generous to bring me¡ªwhile most wouldn''t work on this floor, too large or out of theme, there were a few that would. First was the moonstar flowers; while I still had plenty of time to wait to let them propagate, they would match beautifully well with the greed I wanted to foster on invaders, pulling them deeper into my depths to feed my creatures. I certainly wouldn''t fill the floor, but even planting just the sprouts, trimming it every time it got flowers so they wouldn''t ever be able to harvest the luck-granting plant, just as a way to imply deeper treasures to those who could recognize the leaves. Little things like that, similar to the gem-filled dens of rats. While there were plenty of¡ªI presumed¡ªvery expensive things on this floor, the invaders would have to wonder. Was there more on later floors? And by the time they''d had that thought, it was already too late. The only other would be the creeping vine. I''d had time to think it over while my mana slowly recollected itself after I''d tested out the schemas, and the vine was the only one I felt enhanced the theme of the floor. Everything else was too large or flashy for what was supposed to be an entrancing first floor. So. Vine it was. And I had a beautiful little plan for it. It crept towards water and stayed; so what if I could move and adjust the water? In the past with invaders, I''d struggled with changing things because those with any mana capacity could tell when my ambient mana shifted, able to know I was reacting or even able to track what I was doing if they were skilled enough. Uniquely infuriating. But if, say, those invaders were on my second or third floor, would they notice me fiddling with something on the first? A rather high chance no. So I reached out, clearing away the algae and cave spider webs from directly above the twin doorways, poking out on either side of the little outcropping I''d made. I carved a little hollow from the main attachments to sit, dragging a tunnel through the limestone from the mountain river overhead, and let it splash into the divot filling it slowly but not overly full as to drown it. I chucked several pounds of creeping vine over the doorways. It wasn''t only one vine per plant, interestingly enough; each was a bundled collection of emerald green or earthy brown vines, all wrapped around each other with a ridged, knobbly skin that looked already more defensive than most plants. It twitched as I created it, reaching out with thin, microscopic hairs moving in unison over its length to shift it forward, and immediately found the water I''d placed for it. All of its various vines turned back to the source, drinking as fast as the river replenished it. Perfect. So instead of moving, they stayed as twin clumps above the entrances, shifting and rustling like a ball of snakes. Maybe a little noticeable, but I had all my stalactites glimmering with jewels and precious metals. Hopefully they''d pay attention to those instead. Then, by the feet of the entrances, I created another shallow divot, carving a hole through the surrounding limestone to constantly fill with water; overflow would trickle down through the soft incline I''d made on the first floor, whatever wasn''t drank by the rows of green algae and whitecaps ending up in the rock pond. But that was a close source of water. I reached back up, digging into the stone; I raised a thin barrier to the river water and closed it off. There was still enough in the little puddle there wasn''t an immediate reaction from the creeping vine, still drinking. I waited. The water ran out eventually. The plant twitched, its jumble of vines that somehow functioned as a brain unable to comprehend not having water. What to do? It shuddered, trying desperately to cram a single thought together. Then its smaller vines extended, their microscopic hairs feeling around as they searched for water; as it traveled, I cleared out any water deposits on the surrounding walls, forcing the plant to search farther and farther, vines unfurling as it hunted. Not particularly fast, of course, but still moving. Until at last they found the puddle at the bottom. Every vine extended, reaching out with whatever the thirst equivalent of starving was; and right as they did so, I unblocked the original tunnel connecting to the river overhead, refilling the puddle. I watched whatever neurons the plant had immediately fry, trapped between two options. Half the vines stayed at the original puddle, another half reaching down, and they accomplished exactly what I''d hoped for. Instead of an opening, a faux wall of vines hid the way out. It wasn''t perfect¡ªthey weren''t the same colour as the surrounding limestone, the vines not a solid barrier, a little too mobile to really be stone¡ªbut it was damn better than anything before. I''d already tried this with other entrances, but I couldn''t just raise a barrier of stone every time I wanted to keep an invader inside. That would stop up one of my entrances, forcing me to have to reopen it and spend all that mana while also weakening my hold on my ambient powers; not worth it. Maybe as a last ditch effort, if someone truly too powerful tried to get out, but I didn''t want that to be my only option. I wanted more. Thus, I watched the creeping vine pretend to be a wall. And with the outcropping that kept the entrances out of sight from the center of the room anyway, I doubted the imperfections would be too visible. Those poor lost invaders would find themselves rather hopelessly lost. At least I hoped. But for now I let the puddle on the floor empty, forcing the plants to crawl back up to their hidden den above the entrances; there they waited until the next raid. Perfect. As for the creatures, I couldn''t think of anything to change; when I''d increased the size of the room, I''d also increased the population of nearly everything, and while I would have to tinker around with the exact numbers, I was happy with what I currently had. Several large rat colonies hunkering down with their gems, stone-backed toads barely surviving for long enough to reproduce before getting eaten by the armies of luminous constrictors, cave spiders caught in generational struggles to maintain territories to build webs. All the beauties I''d ever wanted. As well as three new little treasures. The three bear cubs were only just born, still fumbling and awkward in their mother''s den, barely the size of her paw; but they would grow. I couldn''t wait to see their full potential. But there I sat, watching all the creatures move and bustle around, the mushrooms and algae shifting, water trickling down walls and pooling in the rock pond. The serpentine skeleton seemed to move in the flickering algae-light, its fanged maw distending; enormous bears slumbered in hidden dens, always hungry; the tunnel to the next floor sat in inky darkness. Everything I''d wanted. I closed my points of awareness, reaching deep into my soul, and pulled out the title I had already given it. The Fungal Gardens. This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there. The entire floor shivered as the name sunk into its being, all creatures learning their true home; the Fungal Gardens, land of greed and gloom, bringer of deception.
Congratulations! Your floor has attracted the attention of the gods. Some wish to become Patron of the Fungal Gardens. Please choose from the boons they present.
Ah. Perfection. As with my other floors, I couldn''t help but preen that I''d once again attracted the attention of the very beings that governed Aiqith; this was a beautiful confirmation that I was doing not just the correct thing, but a very well done correct thing. All of my work was beautiful and deserving of godly attention. I let their power simmer over me, feeling them arrive overhead with their power burning like distant stars, and¡­ Huh. That was¡­ a lot more than normal. Instead of the dozen from my first completed floor, maybe triple that for my second, this was over a hundred, maybe a hundred and a half; I''d never seen so many. And while I''d been expecting the number to keep increasing as I improved my skills and collected more schemas, but not at this rate. I hesitated before going up to them, glancing around my Fungal Gardens. Was there something special about it? Maybe the gods liked the open space and opportunities for their special mana? Or maybe the floor itself, being¨C Ah. Being the first floor. Most gods granted me boons because being the patron of a dungeon floor meant they could spread their mana, allowing them to potentially collect new priests or followers. And there would be no better place for that than the first floor, where this was the newest mana would be initially felt. Admittedly, it was the first floor¡ªso there was always the possibility that those feeling the mana would be those weak and unable to head down onto further floors, but that would still be more people. So everyone was pulling out the stops. I let go of my earthly bounds and drifted up, my consciousness reaching out to brush against the vast bubbles in the stars that made up the mere fraction of awareness each god was extending to me; I felt their amusement at my presence like the smell of distant fires and the crackle of mountaintop lightning. Powerful beyond my reckoning. I was, of course, very polite as I asked what boon they offered. Someone brimming with oceanic might offered air currents that functioned as water, pushing and tugging on invaders until they could barely keep their balance; another offered metallic pillars, reflecting and burnished until the barest fleck of light turned the entire cavern into a copy of the sun; one promised to fuel my amateur''s efforts with the jewels, funneling her power into creating true mana sponges that would absorb all ambient mana to feed whatever creatures collected them. Unfortunately, I couldn''t find anyone with the proffered boon of removing all spells cast on invaders when they entered; although I''d half expected it. That would be powerful, tricky magic and I couldn''t think of any god who worked in that field beyond the God of Magic himself, and I rather doubted my floor would be up to his standards. A goal for another day. I searched, drifting from god to god in this intangible, frozen time-space area I couldn''t begin to comprehend. The goddess of fireflies back for a third time, someone filled with the smell of clay, the rasp of glass against stone¨C And I stumbled across someone far behind the rest. Her presence was inky black, the space between the stars, raw with ancient power; the back of my core seemed to buzz just from being close. Nuvja, Goddess of Shadows. Something I''d learned from my time interacting with these beings was that their title often carried a story. She was the goddess of specifically shadows; not darkness, not night, not the colour black or any of the other, larger concepts. And while this sometimes meant that the concept had only come into existence when sapient beings started to worship said thing and thus a god came into existence for it, I rather doubted that was the case with something as universally existing as shadows. And judging from the harsh power that echoed through her presence, I imagined it was the other scenario; where perhaps she had been the goddess of all those things, but another god had come into existence and stolen them from her. Some faint memory tickled the back of my awareness. For the Underlake, there had been another god offering a similar boon, though lazily and without effort, of an ever-present night to swallow all my creatures and keep invaders from seeing them. I hadn''t accepted it in the past, not interested in hiding my floor over keeping people from escaping, but I remembered thinking about it. Nuvja''s presence sharpened to a knife''s point. Yes, she knew who I was thinking of. I coughed. Not really my place to get into those godly politics. But I couldn''t look away from the boon she offered. Hers was a powerful addition to my floor, awakening the shadows that lived and lurked there; while intangible and unable to attack, I could guide them to hide things, covering all manners of creatures and their attacks while retreating away from things I wanted to be seen, like all the gems and jewels I''d hidden to tempt invaders further in. And not just creatures; my entrances as well. With shadows, the imperfections of the creeping vines would be hidden; even close up, they would just look like another section of wall. And with the exit tunnel hidden as well, invaders couldn''t try to remember the correct location by tracking where that landmark was. They would be lost, fumbling and confused, up until my creatures tore their throats out. Nuvja''s presence, cold and hard as it was, seemed to nod in approval. She liked my thoughts. I also got the little niggling thought that perhaps she wasn''t so much using this floor as a way to gather more followers, but more purely to work against whatever god had stolen some of her concepts. So an increase in the lethality of her boon was to be expected. And I could hardly say no to that. I extended myself to her, signing my name on the proffered contract some higher power had inscribed. She would grant me her boon, and I would keep any followers she sent to me for safe keeping. No god had sent one yet and I was getting the vague idea it was more of a general rule than anything anyone followed, which I was fine with. I signed. Nuvja leaned, her incomprehensible presence shifting as she made to imprint her aura on the contract. She paused. I felt her look at me, the space between stars looming before me, and she reached out to the contract. Another clause was included. Even as I reached forward to read, I felt the higher power stir, focusing its attention on us. Nuvja shifted from its awareness, uncomfortable with the scrutiny, but held strong; the contract flared as raw magic moved through it, examining the new clause, before eventually retreating; but the presence stayed. It watched. I got the message. This was not normal. I read it anyway. The boon would still stand, the housing would still stand; but if I were to assist her in other endeavors, to declare an ally in issues she would bring to me, then her boon would improve. Expand beyond the boundaries that godly floor boons reached, perhaps strengthening in power, perhaps strengthening in scope. Nuvja sat back and watched me. I hovered rather hesitantly. There was a worrying lack of specifics in this new clause she had added. Be an ally in what? Her fight with another god? Basic territorial disputes? And what about improving her boon; adding¡­ more shadows to my floor? Maybe extending to other floors? I didn''t like risks. I was entirely opposed to them, really; and this was a risk beyond others. Whoever the higher power was that controlled this magic, it was not used to gods changing the contract; and though it had allowed this change, it had focused on it. Been aware of it. Was that something I was willing to risk? But it was more power. If I were to be Nuvja''s ally in this¡­ something, surely she would be giving me lots more power. Maybe the lack of specifics were for my benefit; if she had listed them out would the higher power not have accepted it? Was I grasping at straws for any potential chance at more power? I was. And I wanted that power. I didn''t let myself think about it for another second; I reached out and accepted, imprinting my dungeon''s True Name onto the contract. Nuvja answered in kind. I felt her presence¡­ smile, for lack of a better word, the shadows wrapped around her form softening. Then I was unceremoniously banished back down to my core as her mana swarmed around my Fungal Gardens. The walls shivered as the shadows crept off them, reaching out with faint, trembling energy; they wrapped spectral darkness around my creatures, leaving them mere inky splotches shifting through the cavernous room as they hunted. The far corners of my halls disappeared, lost to the blackness, leaving only mere gaps of opening where gems gleamed. I could feel the shadows moving, guided by half my power and half Nuvja''s lingering presence, ready to obey whatever command I had; And something more, flickering beyond that. Waiting to be unlocked. Waiting to hunt. Chapter 69 - Failure Nicau had returned. Chieftess stood, brandishing her spear¡ªthe other kobolds crowded, churring and chittering their excitement at the return of the Named among them, but she chased them back. Her understanding of the strange fleshy creature of Nicau was limited, but she thought he was tired, needing a short hibernation. After even watching him commune with the Great Voice, she felt like she needed one, too. So she helped guide him through the den, shoving back at the other curious kobolds scampering for even the smallest connection to their creator. "Thank you," he warbled in that strange, too-accurate voice that only came out of his mouth half of the time, not so much entering his den as stumbling. Within seconds, he had fallen flat on his mossy protection and didn''t move again. "Sleep," she offered, though it seemed like he was already diligently listening to her. Chieftess watched him, then, sitting down next to his mossy bed and the sweetwater dripping from the rocks overhead. He was covered in unfamiliar blood, some in the scarlet she saw from rats and toads, and some the colour of water, splashed over his second feet made of skin. Green wrapped around his leg, green like moss but different, shaped like the white of the trees but longer. More smooth. Even his spear had changed, worn and damaged, covered in more blood with slivers missing and the bone tip barely sharp anymore. He would need a new one. But he had seen the outside. Chieftess sat, pondering, now that she knew the word and that action existed. She had only seen these forested halls, even though she knew of others; she remembered Rihsu before she had been Rihsu diving into the water below, watched smaller creatures crawl down from higher above. But she had only ever been here. Was there more? Had he gathered all these creatures and magical things on just the floor above? Was her own floor so weak in comparison that the Great Voice had to send Nicau elsewhere for strength? She pondered that, running her claws over her own spear. It had been some time since she had fought, too busy organizing all the hunts of her fellow scale-kin. Was she losing out on the favour of the Great Voice, not hunting or going to other floors? The thought was uncomfortable. She didn''t like it. But if she didn''t do that, who would? They needed the organization, someone to know which kobolds were out on hunts and which were back in their den. The corpses wouldn''t skin and clean themselves. And that was before Nicau taught her what he''d promised, this "fire" that could make food last for longer, make warmth, and sharpen wood. Then that would need more organization, and more thought. Everything she had been doing. But if she wasn''t collecting mana, was it worth it? She stared at her own spear, the one she hadn''t used since she''d helped to capture Nicau. It was still pristine, covered in the markings she''d clawed into it. Some sort of mimickry of the other fleshy things she''d watched come through, the markings they had on their own weapons and clothing. She didn''t know if they meant anything, but she liked them. It made her feel unique. But was that enough? Did the Great Voice know what she did? Maybe she didn''t stand out enough. When it had only been the three of them, it had been easy to stand out. Her tools, stealing wood from the living trees and adding bones; that had been her. Her brother had focused on the animal, Rihsu on strength; but she had used tools. That had been her. But now, with dozens and dozens of scale-kin, no longer was she unique. She didn''t like that thought, either. Would it be worth it to go back? Leave the kobolds to organize themselves, go back to her tools and her hunting, try to gather power and get the Great Voice''s attention that way? She had seen how it worked for Nicau, even as the fleshy thing that he was. Same for Rihsu, sworn to Seros and evolving. Chieftess tightened her grip on her spear. That wasn''t her. She didn''t want that. Evolution was beautiful and a Name even moreso, but not at the cost of her leadership. The kobolds listened to her and she liked that, maybe even liked it more than creating tools. Commanding hunts, commanding food; all the parts of being a leader. A lesser Great Voice, in a way. But if she still wanted its attention, then she needed more work. Something more to differentiate herself from the others. Maybe create new tools? Come up with better hunting styles? Her eyes slid to Nicau, slumbering away on his algae bed. Maybe she needed to be more like him. More like these fleshy things who could communicate with each other, make proper weapons that didn''t break, use magic. Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. Maybe she needed to learn from the humans. - Another shark fell dead to the sandy bottom. The silver krait curled around himself, shaking off the jitters of battle. Once more he''d won, killing another shark. Using his venom, using his fangs, even trying to wrap around a smaller shark''s head once. It had all worked. And he''d grown from it, grown longer and longer until he was more impressive than he''d ever been. A coiling, writhing mess of silver scales, invisible in the murky water, spiraling through the darkness. But he was no longer happy with his results. He thought the sharks were the answer. Surely they were¡ªso large, so unkillable for little things like him. It should have been what he needed to evolve once more, to escape the call of the horned serpent on floors below. Shark corpses littered the sand below. No, that was wrong. They were on the same scale as him, maybe even weaker; not what he needed to survive. The sarco killed the sharks only to eat, not to train; it fought Seros for strength. The silver krait had to fight the same way. He needed something larger. - Lluc sat, fiddling with his hat. It was too nice of a hat to be ruined by this. He continued twisting it. He''d failed once more. It wasn''t an easy kind of failure, either; where it had been his men or the Dread Crew or their enemy who had done enough of the failing that it reflected back on him. No. This had been him and two idiots, and considering half of them were dead and the other half were running free to the wildlands, there was only him left to take the blame. In truth, it was the failure he''d joined the Dread Crew to escape, clawing his way up the shattered ranks of mistrust and greed until he''d arrive at the position of First Mate because there, surely, he would only be on top. There would be no more of the vitriol and fury Calarata was so determined to shove onto whoever was at the bottom. It would be him being the boot instead of the one flattened beneath. But no matter how high you climbed in Calarata, there would be always be one above you, and Lluc was smart enough to know that Varc¨ªs Bilaro would never relinquish his position. So he had failed. He continued twisting the scarlet wolf''s pelt around the brim of his tricorn hat. But if he was interested in staying alive and mostly whole, he had to convince the Dread Pirate that it wasn''t a complete failure, and as he waited in the carpeted floor and quartz-light lined room before Varc¨ªs'' office, he was running through every possible option he had for information. The easiest was just how much he knew of what the dungeon had. At least two floors, probably more considering the mana density on the second hadn''t been particularly well-developed or strong, and already a wide and varied selection of creatures. Including the strange ones he didn''t know from where¡ªwhile mangroves were theoretically in the nearby jungle, the dungeon wasn''t in the jungle. It was in the mountain, rather deep underground. So that didn''t make sense. It had also gotten a boon from a deity. He had felt it, even as he ran from the second floor; not a god he recognized, but the familiar star-burn sensation from feeling a god''s presence. Also a particularly bad sign. Gods didn''t like sentientborn dungeons. They weren''t created by them, made in order to fulfill some kind of purpose; fill a gap in a collapsing ecosystem, revitalize an area devoid of mana, that sort of thing. Gods created dungeons in order to patch the world, so when some upstart creature simply refused to die and shaped themselves into dungeons, the gods tended to get finnicky. For them to be supporting it, well. He knew it was sentientborn, though. There was no other explanation¡ªthe gods wouldn''t create a dungeon to bring new creatures or mana into Calarata with the jungle on their doorstep, full of wild, dangerous creatures and all various shades of unique mana, and their ecosystem was plenty fine. He knew of no ley lines or powerful eclipses that had happened in recent memory; the only event had been the dragon''s death. So that did not speak well of what the dungeon was. But Varc¨ªs had told him explicitly that it was not a sentientborn dungeon. Had told him to investigate it to find out how powerful it was without believing it was sentientborn. Lluc winced. Unless that had been another deliberate effort on his part. It hadn''t been the first time that Varc¨ªs had pretended not to know something in order to test his crew''s loyalty. Would they tell him what they had found out and risk opposing him, or let the lie stand for fear of retribution? It was never a fun choice. But why would Varc¨ªs not fight back against the dungeon? Surely he had to understand that it was eating away at Calaratan citizens, pushing out more and more dangerous levels. There couldn''t be a reason to keep it alive. Varc¨ªs had to investigate it himself, squashing its burgeoning might under his own incredible powers. Then he would see that it was too dangerous to keep alive, that they had to stop it before it could threaten them. Just because Varc¨ªs was Gold¡ªor more, Lluc didn''t know, it wasn''t like he shared any material that could let anyone even contemplate the idea of threatening him¡ªdidn''t mean the rest of them were. These threats could kill everyone else. The dungeon had to be stopped. That was the only thing that made sense. The familiar calm voice echoed from under the borwood door. "Enter." Lluc swallowed, jammed his hat back on his head, and stood. It was time to make his case. Sink or swim. He hoped Varc¨ªs was in a kind mood. Chapter 70 - Abyssal Beast A mottled scorpion scuttled its way over the fifth floor. They were large but compact, nearly three, four feet in diameter, but squat and heavily armoured. Its carapace was dappled in browns and greens, enormous claws clicking as it hunted over the Skylands, searching for whatever scraps of meat could be found. Not a lot, unfortunately. The three others I''d shaped had already eaten the downed corpses. I watched them with a flitting curiosity, letting them meander over the open space. Their camouflage was wasted here, too many earthy tones for the plain greys of limestone and the marbled pink-white-black of granite. They needed a floor full of trees, wide and sprawling trees that dropped leaves by the pound but still grew enough to let the light splatter between them. Something for their dappled chitin to actually hide amongst. But I needed other floors first. Fire, or maybe water, something larger and more themed for beasts like the sarco and Seros. And a jungle on top of that mess, of course, where the kobolds could move and thrive. Terrible. I wanted to complete more floors before moving on, but I was running out of options. The schemas I had were being wasted on the floors I was putting them in. Although if I could build twin floors, maybe construct two at a time to get those initial schemas flowing down before filling in their predecessors. Merit to that thought, especially since I had so many plans for the Skylands¨C Mayalle''s connection thrummed deep, fang-like mana stabbing through my awareness. Something was wrong. I flew to the Underlake, points of awareness snapping to attention¡ªbut there were less than I remembered. Still plenty of ambient mana around, no reason for them to be disappearing; but I had to pull more from the surrounding floors just to see. The whirlpool was failing. Not quickly, not with any instant collapse; but its great sweeping arms were spluttering, falling in on themselves as the pressure couldn''t keep up with the current. Mayalle''s mana pushed, tugged through my Otherworld connection as her subconscious fed her boon to me; but something was eating at the mana. Consuming it faster than she could refill it. A shadow swept forward through the tunnel. More of my mana withered away, ambient power tugged through what should have been an impenetrable barrier stretched over the entrance¡ªthis was wrong. My dungeon barriers prevented mana from escaping, prevented outside mana from coming in. But then why was Mayalle''s whirlpool falling apart? I stabbed points of awareness towards the tunnel. Something was out there. I got my answer. A shark swam into view. It wasn''t so much large as painfully enormous, longer than Seros, longer than the sarco; fifty feet long, streamlined, fins like sailcloths. A roughwater shark could have swam into its open mouth unhindered. Except something was wrong with its mouth, set too high on its head; a second slit opened beneath. I shrunk back despite myself. Twin mouths, enormous and gaping, lined with teeth like a knife''s edge. A thin strip separated to two, yawning forward like a cavern''s opening, impossibly large and frankly impractical. It didn''t have a dorsal fin so much as dorsal spines, lining its back like a mimicry of its own fangs, useless for steering. Its tail swept languishly as it moved forward, finally breaching the entrance of my dungeon. More of my mana disappeared. And it was pitch black. I didn''t have a spine, but a chill crept down it nonetheless. Creatures looked like they did for a reason. Camouflage, hunting strategy, but just as frequently for warding off predators, defending themselves, mating, mana collection; any number of things. And I had been the farthest stretches of Aiqith, had stretched my mighty wingspan across all numerous places where many-hued and many-limbed creatures lived. But this creature didn''t make sense. None of its features worked with each other. Everything was wrong. I had never seen something that looked like this. But I had heard of them. There was Aiqith, yes. The world where all the poor schmucks cursed with mortality lived. Then there was the Otherworld, birthplace of mana; the nameless land above, where gods and deities dwelled; and one more. One beneath, one some of the older veterans might remember, when beasts had spilled out from beneath the world and clawed their way to the surface. Underlings from the Underdark. This shark was one of them. Why it was here, why it wasn''t banished, why it hadn''t already swallowed Calarata¡ªnot questions I had the time to answer, because my mana was flying off my floors and my creatures needed to move. Go! I roared, echoing through all my floors; Seros jerked awake down on the Skylands, the sarco raising his head from his sleeping perch, kobolds and serpents and spiders and eels all arising as one. The shark paused, seeming to notice as the mana it had been so rudely absorbing tried to leave its presence. It swam the rest of the way forward, moving slow. With its pitch skin it was impossible to tell where one part started and another ended, all lost like the space between stars, only the jagged spikes of its dorsal spines and the white of its fangs visible. I felt very small. Some of that particular feeling was helped by the fact that any point of awareness I moved too close got popped, the mana making it up dissolving into a flow directly to the thing''s heart like a goddamn funnel. What was this power? Why couldn''t I stop it? Greater crabs, not yet fully grown but very close, swarmed from underneath, fluttering at the water as they surged upward, hungry for anything to satiate their hunger; roughwater sharks, uncaring at their vastly inferior size, piled in for the challenge; armourback sturgeons, led by the eldest and the largest, charged from the sandy depths. The shark watched them all approach. Its aura flared and every creature flinched, raw mana tugged from their channels and spiraling towards their enemy. It wasn''t strengthened by the power, barely reacting, but my creatures were weakened. Were confused. It swam forward, moving slowly seemingly not from a desire but from an inability to fully stretch, as massive as it was. Its tail had barely left the outer tunnel and already its first maw poked through the bloodline kelp, moving further through my floor. Its skin shredded the kelp, ripping it to useless little chunks seemingly without effort. It was practically clearcutting one of the more resilient parts of my dungeon. A roughwater shark reached it first. Ignoring the mana drain, she darted forward with powerful swipes of her tail, jaws cranked open wide. She swam in from the side, the only intelligent thought she could muster, and dove. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it. The shark hissed, a bloody impossible sound that sharks should not make, and spun to face her. She had a moment to regret her decision before twin maws took off her head and another took off her side. It swallowed her nearly whole, but its throat and gills didn''t expand in the way I was familiar with sharks, needing that movement to push things down to their stomach. Like it didn''t have a stomach, or didn''t need one; like everything that entered it was dissolved all the same. Revulsion crawled over me. This thing was wrong. My mana wasn''t so much being absorbed as fleeing from me, more and more points of awareness popping like inconsequential bubbles; I tore at my control, urging more and more creatures forward as the shark swam further in. Its eyes, the same pitch black as its body but somehow distinct, swiveled to stare at my halls. An alien intelligence lurked there. I had no idea what it was thinking. One of the few electric eels in the Underlake swam forward, her school of electric silverheads swarming around her; only a moment to charge up her mana and she spat a bolt of lightning, bouncing off her surrounding school, and fired it to the shark. Raw electricity crackled forward, stunning those even around its path, knifing through the water¨C And sunk harmlessly into the shark''s inky skin. There wasn''t even a reaction. Looked like mana wouldn''t do shit to this monster. I needed fighters. And finally, finally, both Seros and the sarco had made their way to the center of the Underlake. The sarco arrived first, having only needed to get his slow ass through half a floor; he pushed his way through the bloodline kelp, eyes bright and hungry. I darted into his mind, using double my usual mana just to communicate; I couldn''t risk him charging forward when the kelp reduced so much visibility. My points of awareness spiraled around us, keeping track of the beast as it moved¡ªnow. The sarco darted back just as the shark pushed through the last stretch, shredding the kelp in its wake, and emerged into a small clearing. The two behemoths faced each other. In face of this beast, the sarco almost looked small. He also looked deeply uncomfortable with that fact. I could relate. He bellowed, bubbles exploding from his jaws; the shark hissed. It had been sizing up my dungeon, passive except when threatened, but it didn''t seem to like the sarco, and certainly not the danger he posed. It shifted, both maws open. And that was when Seros, his iridescent blue-green scales keeping him from being immediately spotted, swam underneath. Even with the shark ripping at his mana he pulled on his blessing, on his Name, and his hydrokinesis surged to life. With the groan of moving water, the shark''s forward momentum stopped; water wrapped around it, grasping at its fins and tail, pinning it in place. If this were a regular shark, it would have start choking, needing the constant flow of water over its gills to deliver oxygen to its lungs; but of course this wasn''t a regular fucking shark. Seros hissed, claws glinting as he reached for more power. The water that held the shark was only moved by mana, not made of it, so while it weakened and needed constant attention, it was holding even against the drain. But Seros had limited stores and I was running dry enough that I couldn''t help him maintain it. The sarco needed to move now. He bellowed and charged. Even with his jaws cranked open he couldn''t match the double maws of the shark; he figured that out with my helpful addition of screaming in his head and swam down, narrowingly avoiding the shark''s lunge for his back. Seros hissed, eyes glowing a blinding blue as he tried to keep his hydrokinesis active, already the shark managing to shift though not outright move. The sarco raked his claws on the shark''s underbelly, ripping out void instead of blood, hazing through the water like a squid''s ink. The beast hissed, lashing against the hydrokinesis; its tail sliced through the sarco''s back like a blade, biting deep through scales like they weren''t even present. More creatures swarmed in, hungry for any chance to refill the mana fleeing their system, too stupid to see that this was clearly not a normal monster; they flew around the sarco, schools of silvertooths and silverheads. One cloud spiraled in, led by the royal silvertooth, and they were the only ones who actually attacked from the sides, gnawing desperately at the beast''s seemingly impenetrable skin. It hissed, thrashing, still consumed with trying to rip the sarco to shreds. Its aura tugged on the mana surrounding it; weaker silverheads died, ripped open and empty, others shuddering and unable to attack. But Seros and the sarco held strong, keeping the shark''s attention, ripping more and more void from its inky skin. And the silver krait, though twitching and writhing from the mana being ripped from his channels, slithered down from overtop and bit through one of the shark''s dorsal spines. Unlike others, the shark noticed the attack immediately; it stiffened, sheer will breaking through Seros'' command as it spun, double maws tearing at the water for whatever had dared attack it. Seros hissed, eyes glowing, but his mana was down to scraps, barely enough to keep him from being killed by the shark''s drain, let alone keep up his hydrokinesis. The sarco punched his fangs through the shark''s side but it spun around to face him, only barely slowed by Seros'' efforts¨C And the thought struck me. I''d prepared for this. I''d known of invaders draining my ambient mana. I spread out my awareness through the rest of my floors, to pockets and dens and veins I''d carved through the walls and placed gems in. Gems that had grown plump and fat off my ambient mana, gems ready and ripe for the taking. I tore out their mana with a hunger I hadn''t felt in years. Mana roared through me, fresh and full¡ªI flew back to the Underlake and shoved it at Seros, pouring it through our connection even as the shark took more and more from me. Seros flinched, unused to the power, but redoubled his efforts. The shark''s second maw froze an instant before carving through the sarco''s tail. He bellowed, twisting his tail up even as he completed his spin; armoured scales slammed into the shark''s underbelly but Seros kept it from being blown back, stuck thrashing. The royal silvertooth took what remaining soldiers he had and threw them at the shark''s back, gnawing through its dorsal spines; the eldest armourback sturgeon charged upward, slamming his scaled head on the bottom of its second jaw. More and more drained into its heart, creatures spiraling around it and spilling void into the open waters of the Underlake. Seros screamed, blood pouring from under his scales as he used the last scraps of mana I could give him, holding the monster in place for just a second longer, silvertooths and sturgeons and crabs all ripping at its side. Until the sarco managed to swim underneath, latch his jaws right around the shark''s head, and spin. Seros held it in place and the sarco, though beaten and bloody, was strong. With a last shrieking roar, he ripped the beast''s head off. Void exploded through the Underlake, murking the water until even I couldn''t see anything, its body sinking to the bottom¡ªboth Seros and the sarco sagged, exhausted, their mana channels running well past dry. It was dead. There was no moment to celebrate; even its corpse kept absorbing mana, ripping away at my control, not needing to be alive to continue to drag what fucked up land it came from here. I tore into it, shredding it into impossibly black pieces, forcing more and more mana into the action until it finally collapsed, disappearing into murky swirls of light. Dead. Gone. Mana exploded outward, rippling through the air in an explosion that shook at the very foundations of my dungeon; creatures and I alike howled, thrown back. Those that had participated in the kill glowed brighter than they ever had before, mana flooding their channels, power churning through their thoughts; but it wasn''t the beast''s mana. I could feel that, gingerly reaching out my awareness once the blast was gone, just what it had absorbed from my dungeon. Not even all of it by a longshot. Just what the beast hadn''t managed to digest before we''d killed it. The Underlake shuddered in its absence. I could feel a message begin to cross my core before stopping, hesitating. Whatever god controlled my powers didn''t want me to have this schema. Well, I was pretty damn certain I wouldn''t be making any of these bastards; not near enough ambient mana to maintain their starvation and no particular desire in having something that could so easily destroy my home. But I wanted to know what the fucking thing was. I needed to know. I pushed against the hesitance, sending thoughts of confusion and need through what slim connection I had to that nameless god above; the message trembled, caught between obeying the laws of power and the will of the god. I pushed harder. It caved.
Pitch-Shark (???) A beast from the abyss. Absence carved into a shark''s form, ripped from the Underdark. It is not of Aiqith and does not belong here.
Somewhere in the pits of my core, I felt the schema snap into place, ready to be used. More¡­ aware than my others, reaching out even without attention. Like it wanted to be made. Gods. What was that thing? Chapter 71 - Deep Blue I had no time to ponder the schema that now nestled far too close to my core. The blast of mana from the bloody thing''s death had revitalized my floors, refilling the ambient mana not to where it had been but a more comfortable level, points of awareness once more able to reform and fill in the gaps of my vision. I still wasn''t comfortable with the lack of mana present, but it would have to do for the moment. This wasn''t exactly something I could risk not being aware of. My second thought was immediately to my creatures. Seros and the sarco both sagged in the water, exhausted beyond all my reckoning; Seros from his mana channels scraped until emptier than empty, the sarco with injuries laced over his body. The pitch-shark hadn''t even managed to land a single hit to him, pinned as it was in the small room and by Seros'' hydrokinesis. Those injuries had all been gained just by touching its void-like skin. I didn''t like that. I didn''t like any of this, not about this creature nor why it had attacked me. Underthings were supposed to stay in the Underdark. They''d been banished there, long before the breaking of Aiqith. As a sea-drake, I had been privy to more of the world than little humans could comprehend, and even I didn''t know much about the Underdark, nor the beings that dwelt there. What I did know was that they were supposed to stay there. I shoved the thought out of my head. No time to concentrate on that. I flew around to my various creatures, pressing soothing mana into their wounds and refilling their painfully dry channels as best I could¡ªthose that had survived the monster''s raw presence were mostly evolved, having enough mana to survive being nearly emptied. It was another harrowing thought for me to confront. My creatures weren''t like others. They were born purely of mana, of power; if they were ever fully emptied, they just died. There was no biological matter to fall back on. Only Seros had a chance of surviving it, being natural born instead of mine, but I didn''t know if he could. Mana-exhaustion tended to come into effect when magic users had depleted on fractions of their core, still leaving enough for their body to run, and I had been giving Seros the mana he needed to work. If I hadn''t been able to, what would have happened? I didn''t like that thought. So I ignored it. I was getting uncomfortably good at that. The sarco hissed, dragging himself off the bottom of the Underlake as my mana wrapped around his injuries, regrowing skin and scales as I poured blood back into his veins. On his tail, where he''d swept it up against the pitch-shark''s side, something sharp had torn several spines out; I couldn''t regrow those, not with their entire base ripped out. I smoothed over the scales as best I could, regrowing from the divot carved through his flesh; but it looked wrong. A battle scar, then. The sarco would probably appreciate it. For now, he just swam slowly back to the end of the Underlake, claws sheathing deep into the stone as he pulled himself out of the water and into the flat entrance to the tunnel that led down a floor, stretching out beneath the quartz-light I''d hung for him. Exhaustion pulled deep at his thoughts as he drifted away. Seros was much the same, though his injuries were mana-based instead of physical. I pushed more and more mana into him, sending calming thoughts through our connection¡ªnot that he was expressively panicked, more because I was a dumbass and concerned about him¡ªas I helped him rise up from the sandy bottom of the Underlake, guiding him to the same exit up a floor. He needed rest, and as much as he was a seabound monitor, it was easier to sleep on land. So I shoved him with as much gentleness as I could muster, clearing any opportunist roughwater sharks who were too stupid to read the room and just wanted to attack their wounded rival out of the way. Seros bobbed to the surface, blue-green scales flashing in the algae-light as his gills pressed tight to his side. I dragged up a pillar of water and dumped him in a wet, bedraggled heap next to the sarco. It was a testament to how much they''d put into this fight that they barely glanced at each other and just went to sleep. My core tightened. That hadn''t been a normal attack. The pitch-shark had been too wrong for me to get a read on it, to understand why it was doing what it was, but it hadn''t been here for anything good. Slicing through my bloodline kelp, ignoring all those that didn''t attack it, squeezing itself into a space that barely fit its enormous size. Everything was wrong. Worst of all, the fight hadn''t even strengthened me; all the mana I''d gotten from its kill was what it had absorbed from me, even less with what it had managed to¡­ digest before we''d killed it. But there were some good signs. Most of the mana it had absorbed had been from my ambient store and Mayalle''s contributions. It had drained my creatures, yes, but not for the majority; too flighty, not as convenient as the stuff swimming around it. The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. So when it had died, that mana had been released in a blast, but not all of it had gone back to my ambient clouds. Quite a lot had gone into the creatures who had won the fight. And messages crawled across my core. Including one I''d been rather excited about for quite some time.
Your creature, a Silver Krait, is undergoing evolution! Please select your desired path. Sun-Banded Krait (Uncommon): Returning to its roots, it releases blast of light to distract and confuse its prey, darting in to inject its incredibly potent venom. In watery deeps where light does not reach, it reigns. Fanged Sea Snake (Uncommon): Forgoing land entirely, it darts through the water with renewed speed and purpose. Lined in fangs repurposed as spines, it warns all creatures around it of a toxin that gives no mercy. Fledgling Sea Serpent (Rare): Held aloft by dreams of larger seas, it terrorizes those around it with its superior mass and strength. All but the largest flee before it, and only those with knowledge of the past remember how enormous it will grow.
Oho. Thankfully, the choice was made for me. As I''d declared, I''d paid more attention to the silver krait''s actions, wondering why he was attacking specifically sharks many times his size. The answer laid in the sarco¡ªhe''d seen what strength did. As incredibly useful as his venom was¡ªtoo useful, really, I needed to shove a few more luminous constrictors into the Underlake in hopes they''d evolve to fill the pocket he left¡ªhe wanted more. And this evolution would certainly give it to him. The fanged sea snake was tempting and the sun-banded krait would be very welcome on the Underlake, but they weren''t what he had been shooting for. Even if he lost his venom from this evolution, it was what he wanted. It seemed similar to the lunar cave bears, in an odd way¡ªspecifying fledgling. Those on my first floor were juveniles no longer, but their schema still declared it; was there a limit in how old I could spawn creatures? Hm. It would make sense¡ªfor those with piddly lifespans like my cave spiders, it didn''t matter if I had access to their entire age range. Those I spawned would be similar enough in mana cost it was negligible at best. Even for those like the constrictors, or mangrove trees; theoretically, I could create them older, but I tended to prefer younger versions to save on mana and allow them to mature within my halls. But the difference between creating a hatchling and a full grown sea serpent would not just cripple me but the mountain itself. I couldn''t wait to see what he became. Without any hesitation, I selected fledgling sea serpent. Immediately he was overtaken with a glow, seeming to shiver in excitement; he knew what this meant. I guided the last slivers of his consciousness to pull himself on land, still having those pesky lungs, and all but shoved him into a den to finish evolving. I wasn''t hedging my bets that this one would be short. But there was another message present, one with new information I''d never seen before.
Your creature, an Armourback Sturgeon, is undergoing evolution! Your Title of Resurrector bestows a path. Armoured Jawfish (Exotic): A beast from elden waters. Its bony armour extends as fangs, protecting and enforcing the maw that can open fast enough to pull creatures within. There are few who dare to challenge it, and fewer still who survive.
Hm. I mused over the words. That was interesting. I could remember back to when I''d first received the Title, declaring it as a gift for me fulfilling my purpose in bringing and returning mana to Aiqith; it had specified that I could revive dead things, but that I could also awaken dead bloodlines. Was that what this was? I stared at the sturgeon in question, the oldest and boldest of my dungeon by far. He had been around since the second floor, back when I''d had to individually guide a school of silverheads into growing the backbones necessary to take on an invading electric eel. Infantile. But he was dungeonborn. So how did he have a bloodline? I wasn''t positive on the intricacies of the system, but I knew I shaped them from mana and carved a soul from Otherworld mana in particular to breathe life into them. Not exactly the process that would let me slip some fossilized blood into the mix in hopes that it would awaken later. Unless it was more of a legacy, rather than a bloodline? Hm. This armourback sturgeon in particular had gone against his nature, ignoring the protection that his armour gave him and fighting back instead. All the way back from the original merrow attack, when he had nearly died from their saltwater; he had learned to fight after, despite having a body made for defense. A rejection of his making, in a way. So perhaps some god of the armoured jawfish had descended to grant him a bloodline? Or it simply worked that rejecting your heritage could allow you to gain another? Very interesting. This required further testing. And it looked like this was only good for me¡ªI had never encountered an armoured jawfish, but I''d heard of them. Monsters in the depths, growing to enormous lengths and ripping into anything they could get their bony fangs into. Certainly the kind of beast I wanted within my halls. And it wasn''t exactly like I got a choice in this matter. I selected armoured jawfish and watched light overtake the sturgeon, drifting quietly to the bottom of the Underlake as he prepared. I dragged great stone walls around him, protecting him while still allowing water to filter through; not a chance I would risk his death before I got to see my first Resurector evolution. The potential this had for future creatures was already delicious. But I turned away from that for now. With things cleaned up, I needed answers; and there was only one place to get them. That pitch-shark hadn''t come from nowhere. Chapter 72 - Cold as Rust Nicau had been waiting for the call. He''d jerked awake in the middle of his algae-bed, panting wildly as something hungry tore at his soul, forcing him up, curling his fingers into claws despite their uselessness; then his Name had tugged back. Let him relax. Let him sit down. The raw fury still lurked, starving, in his chest. Nicau found himself alone as the other kobolds poured out of the den, hooting and warbling, spears clenched and claws extended. Something called them further into the dungeon, hungering for fresher prey; only Chieftess hesitated, glancing at him as some spark of greater intelligence fought the instruction, but a second later and she disappeared after the threat. Nicau sat on his algae-bed and controlled his breathing. It was comforting to reach for the mana thrumming through his channels, the little hum of his blessing deep in his chest; anything to ignore the call. He''d always wondered how the creatures of the dungeon knew how to attack when an invader came. That question had just been very answered. But the urge faded before too long, breaking down to a mere simmer beneath his skin; as if in the echoes of his own head he could hear war drums, summons to a battle well beyond him, but the clarion trumpet wasn''t directly beside his ears. Far more comfortable. Not that Nicau relaxed, of course. For him to have been summoned at all meant there had been a battle, and even with his new Communer powers, he wasn''t feeling up to anything willing to challenge a dungeon. Maybe once he''d strengthened his spear, reinforced it with fire-burning he was still working on successfully showing to the kobolds¨C The kobolds who were currently stomping their way back into the den, hissing and jabbing spears at the air, their hunger for battle not satiated. He poked his head out, more than a little cautious but just a fraction more curious. Chieftess met his eyes, her own golden pair narrowed in frustration. Fight was in water, she seethed. Could not join. Could not even command. "Ah," he said, more for a lack of anything else to say. "Maybe next¨C" Something thrummed in his soul. He stiffened, and Chieftess alongside him; both of them felt the dungeon''s pressure increase, its awareness sharpening to pinpricks around the Name in the depths of his chest. A summoning call. Gods, Nicau hoped it wasn''t for fighting whatever it was on the lower floors. You couldn''t grow up in Calarata without learning to swim, but that didn''t mean he was good at it. But he wasn''t one to ignore a summons, so he inched his way out of the kobolds'' den, waving away Chieftess'' concerns, and padded towards where the call came from. It was in the same place as last time, at the entrance to the lower floors; he could feel the humidity of water against his skin, see faint shapes arching into the tunnel. But no horned serpent came to greet him, no Seros to serve as conduit. Were they injured? Was he supposed to fight? The dungeon, in lieu of an answer, merely pushed into his head. It sounded¡­ tired, for lack of a better word. Something of its normal timbre and rumble had faded, gaining a rasp instead. Not dead¡ªnot anywhere near that, he shoved the thought as far out of the front of his brain as he could¡ªbut not at the level it had been before. What do you know about Underthings? Nicau frowned. The word was familiar; he''d heard it before at one of the taverns, something dark that sucked the mood from the room no matter how many drinks had been previously consumed. Only old veterans had spoken of it, those precious few who had survived the Dread Pirate''s cull back when Calarata was new and not yet beginning to blossom. Underthings, not of Aiqith. "Not much," he admitted, though it took plenty of effort to ever admit failure in the presence of the one who held his soul. "I''ve, ah, heard the term before." There was a very pressing silence between them. Nicau winced. "''O great dungeon." A pleased rumble. "But what kind of Underthing?" Another silence, but Nicau could sense that it wasn''t directly at him, more at the question; the dungeon''s mana twisted in the air. Old. Dangerous. It should not exist. Nicau''s wince deepened. "That, ah, does explain every single Underthing, but if you can give me a, ah, detail or two¨C" The dungeon cut him off with the vague imprint of frustration, annoyance at not being able to express itself correctly. Nicau, still rather huddled in fear from an archaic dragon trapped as a stone within a mountain, could relate. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road. Its mana reached forward, twisting at the stone beneath his feet; Nicau scampered back a few feet as a lump raised from the ground, spiraling upward in a twist of marbled granite. Mana coalesced like mist before a storm, making the stone writhe. A shape emerged. It came slowly, elongating into a long, bulky figure, almost like a fish; a row of spines jabbed out from the top, impossibly sharp, fins jutting out from each side. Then its head forward; sharp, broad, dangerous. Twin maws opened like a glimpse into the void. Nicau''s stomach dropped to his knees. "Pitch-shark," he breathed, feeling nerves rumble through his chest. His old street rhyme came back to him, children chanting in unison as they watched the wavering cove while the moon rose. Black as night, black as death; black as old man''s final breath. Cold as blade, cold as rust; two mouths for the both of us. A child''s rhyme, really. It still sent shivers up his spine. "They''re said to live in the cove," he said. "Or¨C somewhere. People only see them when the Dread Pirate comes." Oh gods, had one come in? How much damage had it done? Even one of the smaller ones could shred ships, slaughter adventurers¨C The dungeon angled a brush of mana against him. One did. I won. Nicau blinked. It had won against a pitch-shark. He exhaled, smoothing over the front of his clothes. Some dark element of his soul quieted, certainly not gone but lessened for the moment. A touch of doubt slipped underneath a laugh that sounded suspiciously like Romei''s. Maybe he had thrown his lot with the winning team. - I pondered the truly uncomfortable message I''d been left with as my latest creatures shook off their evolution and opened new eyes. The crowned cobras were nearly twelve feet long, coiling around themselves in spiraling patterns of grey-blue diamonds. Ribs around their heads seemed to writhe, flexing out in facsimiles of a raised crest¡ªor crown, I supposed, if the name was accurate¡ªas they watched their surroundings with careful black eyes. Still a mated pair, if the way they ignored each other upon evolving was accurate. Though it may be surprising, snakes were not the over-affectionate hatchlings that mammals tended to be in their courtships. Their truce often lasted only until they had laid their eggs. I would, however, be heavily implying that it would be great if they could not kill each other immediately. Ranged combatants were beyond rare in my halls, and having more would only be fantastic. At least until they either laid enough eggs; then they could go off and kill each other to their heart''s content. Being evolved creatures meant it was too expensive to just wait for their schema instead of trying to let them repopulate on their own. It was difficult work, managing a dungeon. I sent them both below, winding through the secret tunnels as they headed to the fourth floor; I''d start them there, where they had room enough to grow and a not-insignificant serpentine army to grow. My horned serpent needed some range to her bite; hopefully she''d approve of my offering. She was so close to evolution. Truly, I couldn''t wait to see what she''d become. It was going to be beyond reckoning. In the same vein, nine new shardrunner spiders opened their eyes. They were slow, cantankerous things right from the start, easily tripled in size with massive, swollen legs and a bulbous body; maybe the "runner" in their name was hyperbole. They were a deep, glittering black, trace lines of grey and red throughout, mere remnants of their previous form. All of them were armed with twin mandibles; one smaller set, tucked near the back, and one enormous pair extending forward like a greater crab''s claws, poised to chisel earthen materials from their surroundings to spin into silk. Very interesting. Those I sent right down to the fourth floor, skittering through a freshly-carved tunnel. Already they were lumbering, moving stiffly as their limbs cluttered together in the narrow space; but they answered the summoning call of mana on lower layers. I flew down faster and sprinkled some more iron veins around the place, especially in the stone jungle at the center. Eventually I would need more materials for them to work with; what about the seaglass that the merrow used? Where they took sand and heated it with both boiling water and special mana, leading to a rustproof but shatterable material? That certainly had merit. Although did it take a special type of sand? So far I had just been shredding limestone down to its barest pieces, making more silt than sand. I could send Nicau out for it. That would be fine. For now, I let the shardrunner spiders filter their way into that final room, skittering around as they investigated their new land I had so graciously given them. Though they were large, I had hopes they wouldn''t be wanting to challenge the mage ratkin and her underlings, nor the horned serpent. I dropped a few more families of burrowing rats throughout just in case. But then they were situated, exploring this new land; the crowned cobras finally made it to the bottom, flicking pale tongues out as they examined this land. Already in their thoughts I could hear the horned serpent''s call, the urge to join her army. Already I could see how they would fit into my fourth floor. Maybe not permanently; I wanted those crowned cobras in a large area, where their range actually meant something while still giving them cover to hide behind. Maybe on the future Skylands, if I gave them some boulders or such to hide behind for a true surprise attack. Interesting. Something to consider later. But for now I flew back, letting my points of awareness truly examine my halls in turn. Their danger lurked not so much beneath the surface but present and active, ready to hunt, ready to truly destroy whoever dared invade. And that was just the floor, not even those within it. My creatures were strong. I knew that. It wasn''t so much a fact as a law of the universe; I had cradled these monsters since their birth and they were strong. Their claws jagged, their magic developed, their minds sharp. Mostly. Those that had invaded me had seen enough glances that they had to understand that they were strong. That there was power in my halls. And that was without knowing that it housed the soul of a dragon. I bristled, letting my mana sharpen as it spread through my floors; creatures paused and looked up, eyes bright, claws hungry. The three patrons I kept close to my heart thrummed with power, Rhoborh''s redwood strength, Mayalle''s fang-like depths, Nuvja''s cloying darkness. Two Names, glaring and powerful, their holders ready for whatever dangers would come. Because danger was coming. But as I looked at my five floors, I couldn''t help but feel prepared. Chapter 73 - Started Ember I followed Nicau as he went back to his den. We had picked our conversation back up, discussing the various powers of Calarata¡ªnot in quite the detail I would have wanted, unfortunately. It turned out that being a¡­ pigeoncatcher meant little more than having some ammo to bribe a dungeon. He had not been even remotely well-connected. Ah well. But you didn''t have to be royalty to understand magic. Most those in Calarata were vagabonds and drifters, desperados in search of a lawless place to hawk wares or do the jobs no one else wanted to do. Fitting, really, that I''d landed here. These were the types that would have stolen my hoard; the vicious little bastards who didn''t care if there was a sea-drake sitting on top of the silver as long as it was silver. The Dread Pirate had simply been the boldest. I''d been challenged before, of course. There was always some young princeling looking to start a kingdom, or a commoner determined to win the heart of some royalty, or a wizard hunting for ingredients to some spell. They had all perished. I shoved the thoughts down before they could go anywhere more¡­ unpleasant. But my previous assumptions were mostly correct. Two types of magic users, enhancers and casters. Mages swore themselves to one element, wizards to none, priests to a specific deity. All standard wear. Calarata, in particular, was for adventurers. Mages were more common, because there was less need for a general purpose alright-with-everything when you were building adventuring parties. They needed precision and a small window of things done right. Thus, mages. Nicau did mention plenty of people with shadow specific powers and damage prevention enhancers. Lovely. But he wasn''t a trained magic user, no matter the power now awake in his chest. So he could only offer me tidbits and make me think of greater threats. So I watched him, hovering intangibly above his shoulders as he padded back into the kobolds'' den. The chieftess greeted him with a warble but didn''t stand up, staring with furrowed scales at the pile of mangrove sticks in front of her. Ah. I''d interrupted him trying to show them fire for our talk. Well, that was a little incorrect; they''d already seen fire a handful of times before, whenever he''d managed to spin and twist it into existence, but it wasn''t a precise thing, and even less so now that he was trying to teach them how to do it. Already kobolds gnawed into charred corpses or used charcoal-covered spears to draw meaningless symbols of the wall, one fresh-hatched kobold stared with wide amber eyes into the fire burning at the back of the cave. They hadn''t let it run out yet, too nervous, and the mangroves were getting picked dry of any branch they dropped. Soon they would have to start cutting them down. I couldn''t wait to see what happened there. The chieftess hissed, claws wrapping around two sticks as she scraped them against each other, trying to whip up the little ember she''d seen Nicau make. He warbled back, the language still primitive enough I couldn''t immediately understand it, and sat next to her; half a dozen other kobolds, the oldest and strongest, shifted closer. This would be a lesson for them all. But they were learning. Back when I had first selected the schema, it had mentioned how they made up for their diminutive size with their intellect and traps. And now that I understood how powerful it was to have a schema start intelligent, I could see how well they were progressing. I would shove my own hand into the mix soon, because as nice as fire-sharpened spears were, I wanted them to use my iron veins to make weapons, but they were moving along. Moving pleasantly along. Before long, I knew that they would be true threats. Which was exactly the sort of thing I''d been hoping for, thank you kindly. For now, I watched Nicau sit and teach the kobolds, whipping his own pair of sticks at each other until smoke curled against the air in pale tongues. Only fire-drake descendants were around him, the few forest-drake and rock-drakes I''d managed to shape busy elsewhere. Maybe this would help them unlock their latent fire abilities. Not that I particularly wanted fire-drakes over sea-drakes, but I''d take what I could get at this point. Already some were close to evolution, pushing through the handicap of being on a higher floor with less ambient mana. I found myself very intrigued as to what they could become. Rihsu was a fluke, I knew that. Her deep maroon-purple scales didn''t match any dragon patterning that I knew, and I guessed it was because it was a mixture of her previous scarlet combined with Seros'' blue-green. It was less her own species and more an indicator of her unwavering loyalty. But the others wouldn''t be like that; they were more classic kobolds, worshiping the dragons but not close enough to swear to one. Would more swear to Seros, if he interacted with them? Hm. Probably. I didn''t particularly want that. Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. He wasn''t even a dragon. I still considered it terribly rude that I hadn''t had any kobolds. My bitching and moaning lasted as I left the kobolds'' den, flying out to my other floors; on the fifth, the greater pigeons and baterwauls had been in merry battle with the swarming wasps, each side losing just about as many numbers as I could maintain. The eye-blight butterflies had finally finished their metamorphosis, turning into delicate, gossamer-winged things absolutely covered in eyes. An exorbitant amount of eyes, really. Over a dozen stood on their wings, every different shape and hue; anything to make them look similar to a creature. And their fuzzy antennae burned with psychic power, ready to make any fools who dared look in their direction pay. I''d had the lovely opportunity to watch one of them snag the attention of a burrowing rat, hypnotizing it to walk merrily off the edge of an island and plummet to its death. Glorious. And speaking of rats, actually¡ªone of the points of awareness I''d kept on watch on the fourth floor finally reacted, tugging at my attention until I darted off in its direction. About damn time. I had waited long and hard for this stubborn little change in dietary requirements. Five burrowing rats had finally gotten over whatever stagefright I had to assume they had, finally listening to the elder mage ratkin. Because she was right. It had taken far too long for the little pissants beneath her to realize that. But now they all stood, hunched awkwardly in one of the little dens of the stone jungle. The horned serpent still lurked outside, slithering around with her ever-growing armada of reptiles; the twin crowned cobras had been precious additions. Though their full potential was limited by the cramped tunnels of the Jungle Labyrinth, they could kill at a far greater range than others, and that meant more meals with less loss of life. Precisely what the horned serpent was interested in. And it was a testament to her that even though they were technically on her level, being once-evolved luminous constrictors, they didn''t dare challenge her. The horned serpent was in charge. This was known. Just one more evolution for me, and I''d be granting her a Name. She''d well deserved it. But for now, I focused on the five burrowing rats who had all lined up, noses twitching and eyes cautious. Before them, the mage ratkin had taken time from her busy schedule to gather precious gems from their surroundings, cluttering them together in a mana-filled pile. Most were jadestones, rippling with floral mana, but I could see the others I''d learned to shape; sapphires, rubies, rose quartz, citrine. No diamonds. As generous as she was being, my lovely little mage ratkin was not going to give up a collector of raw mana. No, that was for her and her alone. I appreciated that. Helped me keep track of how smart she was. She rose on her back paws, towering over her lesser brethren even with her hunched back; with a squeak, she waved a paw at the pile of gems, whiskers twitching. They needed to pick if they were going to evolve. I slid my points of awareness forward like a hatchling ready to pounce. One of them, the largest and most confident, padded right up to the cluster and started nosing his way through, sniffing curiously at the mana filling the air. He reached out with his little ratty paws and picked up a piece of jadestone, also the largest and brimming with mana. His eyes flicked to the mage. Little suck up. What was he hoping for here? Bolstered, the others moved forward, pawing at the gems. A female with a half-missing tail picked up the single chunk of rose quartz, hugging it tight to her chest, the scar over her tail white and scaly. A quiet male with darker fur than the rest selected a sliver of jet, sniffing at it with thoughts full of subterfuge. Two siblings, their familial bond somehow surviving even on the lower floors full of danger, grabbed an opposing pair of sapphires and rubies, eyeing each other. The mage ratkin churred her approval, nudging them all into a line. She glanced up, locking gazes with one of my points of awareness. I stared back. Oh, I appreciated any of my creatures that had a decent mana sense. She looked back to her followers, and mimicked bringing the stone to her mouth. The others, with only a touch of hesitation that she''d been beating out of them over the past week, swallowed their gemstones whole. Light bloomed.
Your creature, a Burrowing Rat, is undergoing evolution! Please select your desired path. Ratking (Uncommon): Commander of the lesser rats, it uses its long and powerful tail to bind them to its will, forcing all those in the vicinity to serve it with reckless abandon whether their lives are kept or lost. Arcane Ratkin (Rare): Harnessing various gems, this creature uses its growing skills to command mana as it pleases, choosing from its collection of jewels for which it wants to use at any given moment. Though it has no specializations, it can use any attuned mana-gem, given they are full. Mage Ratkin (Rare): Unlike its arcane brethren, this creature chooses a specialization in only one branch of mana, and can now generate their own attuned mana to use as they see fit. As they study and train, their power can grow to be reminiscent of a true mage.
Ah. Glorious options. As happy as I was with the armoured jawfish, I did dearly love getting to choose. Not that there was much of a choice, this time. Ratking was still something I was decidedly uninterested in, given that my rats were already competitive enough to whip themselves into strength without needing a king overhead. No need to install more interfighting than was already there. They had enough of a problem fending off predators. And so it came back to the same debate as last time¡ªarcane or mage? Both were deeply appealing; but it came down to the jewels. I only had so many, and as shown with the pitch-shark, they were extremely useful as a backup plan in case all my ambient mana was sucked away. Letting the rats use them all would deplete that valuable resource. And, well. I loved my current mage ratkin. I wouldn''t mind for her to gain an army behind her. So I reached into the minds of her five underlings, pressing soothing mana as their stomachs tried rather desperately to reject the inedible lump currently powering their mana channels. It wasn''t an easy thing¡ªthey were biological creatures and gemstones were decidedly not¡ªbut I was a dungeon, and I was much more stubborn than they were. The jewels took root, and the mage ratkin evolution began. Chapter 74 - Rumbling Arrival With careful, creeping steps, a shardrunner spider tugged out a sliver of iron from the wall, its clawed feet skittering over its web for balance as the metal finally gave in and fell away. Without a moment of hesitation, the spider bit deep into the ore and gnawed through it, mandibles flashing as they shredded it to tiny pieces. I watched with an equal amount of hunger and curiosity. How did iron taste, I wondered? For me now, dissolving iron didn''t bring a lot of flavour, in terms of what fleshy mortals constituted taste as. Just the vague sense of strength and the brittle feeling of rust. Nothing that I really imagined that the shardrunner spiders could taste particularly well. Or were they even tasting? I peered into the intricacies of their schema; maybe not. Spiders already didn''t have great taste receptors and shardrunner spiders even less so, and they were only shredding the metal with their mouths rather than swallowing it. Made sense. I wouldn''t want to have to choke down iron every time I wanted to build a better web. I had old memories of it, whenever I ate the adventurers foolish enough to challenge me with their armour included in the deal, but nothing new. I shook my points of awareness. Back on topic. The shardrunner spiders were spread out over the fourth floor, moving slowly and labourishly. They were not particularly agile creatures, made even slower by the pockets of inorganic materials they stored under their abdomen. Mostly iron, given as I hadn''t come up with an easy way to lay the seaglass around, but already I could see the improvement. Their webs were enormous, slithering things, half white and half deep rust-red, barely visible in the dense foliage. The thornwhip algae did their damnedest to attack but the shardrunner spiders were made of tougher stuff than their unevolved brethren and they weathered the attacks easily enough, just hunkering down until the arms got bored and moved on. Then they stood back up, shambling off into the undergrowth in search of more metal deposits. Already their traps were catching rats. Only the webweavers had ever been so prolific. I watched them with a strange sense of paternal pride, though they were as far from draconic as possible. No scales, no wings, nothing even resembling elegance or grace. But they were efficient little monsters, weaving strands of pure iron over the halls, both spread over the ground and up in the air. Sometimes a hungry greater pigeon or baterwaul would fly up a floor in search of the easier bugs present here, and they had never made it back down. The shardrunners were hungry. Not challenging the serpents yet, but I could see the horned serpent already catching attention of their presence. Their webs, while not as dangerous for slower-moving creatures, were at the height that if she ran into them without noticing, they could remove features she perhaps would want still attached to her. I was rather excited about what she''d do in return. So far, her journey had been relatively unchallenged; and now I was shoveling powerful bugs and mage ratkins and spiders all throughout her floor. Something would have to give eventually. And if I''d learned anything from my time as a dungeon so far, there was no better thing to incite evolution than competition. - Eyes closed, he breathed. All around him, Seros could feel the flutter and shift of mana, rippling against the walls like sunlight through water; it was alive and active, thinking, moving, twisting like age-old currents through the mountain halls. Something looked at him, as it always did, one section of the Core''s attention locked onto him. Seros basked in the focus. But for now, he stayed silent, nary a frill shifting, as he tried to pull at the connection in his chest. Not his Name, not his blessing; but something deeper. An old spot of power, one he''d consumed long ago before he''d seen the Core as anything but a nuisance; there was something within him. Strong. Ancient. He just didn''t know what. Already his journey had been far different than he''d thought, though he knew he hadn''t always been so aware as to be able to think about the future with any real intelligence. Instead of sheltering within the mountainous stone, he was pulled to water now, called by the Core''s own love for the sea. He wanted to be¡­ like the Core, if he could. Underground monitors were solitary beasts. He had not known his mother, nor his siblings, since he hatched from his egg in the depths of the caverns. So at first he had rejected the Core, unable to think about this companionship that it offered, even as his brain began to expand and he could recognize more thoughts and emotions than ever before. And then it had saved his life. After being the one to nearly end it, admittedly, which was a thought he did have to battle with, but it had given him a part of its own soul, a tap into this well of raw mana from a land beyond. As turbulent as their introductions to each other had been, Seros couldn''t ignore such a gift. Such an offering. So a seabound monitor he became, and he knew he was powerful here, breathing both water and air as easily as breathing had ever been, water listening to his beck and call and swirling to action at a thought. This was not the simple life he had lived before but it was better, more present, more aware. Dangerous, yes. Seros remembered the black beast of before, too many teeth, too many spines. He did not like the cursed thing. A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. But in its defeat, he had grown strong. Strong enough to sense this¡­ thing in his chest. He exhaled, sinking lower into the stone, wrapped around the pillar that housed the Core. Soon he would discover its secrets, whatever they were, and with it, he would become even stronger. - The home of the Magelords rumbled quietly, as ever, with motion. Their numbers had been reduced after another patrol attack, too many of the War Horde to fend off and leading to a retreat; the first retreat Akkyst had ever seen, which only doomed them more. They relied on their healing, on letting themselves get hit so that they could be aggressive in attacking, knowing that their healers could get them back up later. But without being able to go back for the injured and dying, that was another knife to the heart of their defense. Akkyst bowed his head. They were weak, now. He helped on as many patrols as he could, his form towering over the goblins to ward off other predators and scare off smaller War Horde patrols. He was much larger than he had ever been before, fed by this fight for survival, stuck in an endless wave of fighting and healing. The others helped when they could; the jaguar went hunting as much as her body could handle it, strength returning so that she was now a proper threat of the mountain halls, dragging back fang-rats and magma-salamanders with a pleased purr in her throat. The bladehawk helped with the children, keeping them entertained so that their parents could work, even if the gruff old bastard would never willingly admit that was what he was doing. But it wasn''t enough. Ever churning in the distance Akkyst could feel the rumble of stone-wurm, could see the patrols returning injured more and more frequently. The War Horde was closing in on their location. It wouldn''t be long. He sat now, curled outside a healer''s tent given he was much too large to fit inside, listening to Bylk mutter as he worked his magic. The gems that hung in his pointed ears were almost always without light now, any mana they had time to gather being immediately used for healing. Bylk, with his white tufts of hair and stone-shaped cloak, wore the weariness of being the leader of the Magelords with dignity. It was more than Akkyst could say, moping as he was. Bylk tutted out an apology, laying a gnarled hand atop a shivering goblin; with a dim flash of light, her arm righted itself, crunching back into place with a snap. Both she and Akkyst winced. "Keep focus on your side," Bylk chided, helping her back to her feet. She''d been injured on a hunt, though she''d gotten the mossling and dragged it back even with her broken arm. "Steady eye on the prize and yourself, get me?" She hissed, prodding at the discolored splotch on her arm, but nodded in agreement. One of the silent ones, then; lost the ability to speak or didn''t want to. Akkyst was rather the opposite, which was why when she left, he rose to his feet and nosed his way into the healing tent as best as his head could fit. "Good?" It still didn''t sound right, too growl-y and rumbling to be perfectly understandable, but Bylk had enough time and practice to get the gist of it. "Could be better," he said, waving a gnarled old hand. A cough rose to the back of his throat, phlegm caught in the crook of his elbow, but he waved that off too. "I''ll be fine. Don''t worry your pretty little head over me." Akkyst chuffed in a way he knew sounded like laughter, pulling out of the tent; Bylk padded out to join him, squinting up at the quartz-lights lining the distant ceiling. He was comfortable here, though, in a way Akkyst had never really managed. Again, he wondered whether it was because of the place, or because of the goblins there. Would he be as happy in another cavern, without the War Horde knowing of their location and with more food and mana, plentiful even if guarded by fiercer prey? Was it worth it to even think of bringing the goblins back to his home, wherever it was? He shook his head. Bylk would never listen to him, not now at least. For while the stone-wurm lurked, ever hungry and hunting, all goblins knew it was only a matter of time until it rebelled against its captors, slaying them in spectacular gory fashion. It had been under their control for weeks now, grinding away at the cavern walls in reckless abandon, but whatever whips and spears the War Horde used wouldn''t control it forever. It would break free soon. It was odd, really. Akkyst had only enough time to finish that thought before a low, thrumming boom echoed from the cavern. Every goblin froze. Past the sound he could hear another: the low, screeching cry of goblins, racketing up to an audible pitch despite the stone between them; stone that was getting thinner. Was getting eaten. Bylk snapped to attention, eyes narrowed despite their panic, snapping fingers and hurling orders. "Get ready! Arms up, children back, barriers raised! No time!" Goblins scattered as his commands, light springing to their fingertips in glowing horror; for what they had prepared for had come. The stalking jaguar and the bladehawk snarled to attention, lashing her feathered tail against the ground and flaring his sharpened wings. They would fight. Though Akkyst knew they still longed for the outside world, this had become a home of theirs, and they would defend it. As for him. Akkyst roared, booming and powerful, and felt the air flee before the sound; the goblins on the other side of the stone stopped for just a second, even as their stone-wurm continued to grind horribly away at the wall, the raucous cheering dimming in the presence of another predator. A second and they were screaming again, even as the far wall cracked and revealed spiraling teeth, a scaled maw, bloodshot amber eyes as large as his paw¨C With a boom, the stone-wurm broke through the back wall. Right at its sides was the War Horde, clad in stone armour and brandishing spears, their bodies painted with streaks of mud and decorated with bones; with a howling, earsplitting cry, they charged alongside their beast. Akkyst rose to his back paws, feeling mana thrum in his chest. The last time invaders had challenged his home, he had fled. No longer. Chapter 75 - A Wurms Fury Akkyst had thought he was large. And he was, objectively. He towered above other goblins, his paw blocking out their heads, his fangs like their fingers. Even the stalking jaguar and bladehawk were miniature before him, children''s toys compared to his behemoth of a body. It had taken him a long while to grow this large but he felt comfortable in it, in knowing that he was strong and could defend himself, could defend others. He no longer felt large, staring at the stone-wurm. It raged against the air, bloodshot eyes furious with no easy target¡ªsome sort of anger had been instilled into it, whether by natural methods or magical; its roar trembled the very foundations of the mountain, even the whisper of its draconic presence slamming over his back. Its teeth, twisting and serrated, gnashed at the air. And beyond it, goblins shrieked and jeered, brandishing spears and knives and fists wrapped in sharpened bone. The army they had been preparing; the patrols had only been to trick them. They had figured out where the Magelords were and prepared. This was the attack. This time, Akkyst guessed, they wouldn''t be letting the Magelords escape a third time. He felt every muscle tense under his pelt, back claws cleaving through stone as he reared, chest quivering with a held-back roar; that was fine. He wasn''t planning on letting them escape, either. As one, the Magelords moved forward; their hands glowed every colour of the rainbow, bright and fueled by fury; this was their home. They had defended it twice before and they would give their lives here once more, if need be. The War Horde jeered, outnumbering them three to one. Akkyst lumbered forward, towering overhead, eyes locked onto the stone-wurm. It hissed, heading rising off the ground as its spines rattled against each other. More and more of its bulk crammed through the hole it''d shattered in the back wall, spiraling out in pale grey scales and bone white spines, pockmarked with dust and scraps from busting through the mountain. It was enormous, larger than he could conceivably comprehend, and he was only seeing its front; some part of him enjoyed that. Enjoyed expanding his knowledge of how big things could be, locking it away for future consideration. The larger, slightly more aware part of his brain raised his claws and sent a roar bursting from his lips; the stone-wurm''s attention snapped to him. Good. Let the goblins fight the goblins. Akkyst growled and charged. Alongside him, the Magelords cast their spells, bright zaps of light firing into the weaponous masses of their enemies; from the corner of his eyes, he saw the stalking jaguar disappear into the surrounding shadows, her golden eyes hunting for a distracted target. Over, the bladehawk shrieked, voice rebounding through the stone cavern like a thousand of him swarmed overhead; the War Horde flinched, unfamiliar, and left themselves wide open to jagged feathers loosed from above, finding delicate purchase in their throats and stomachs. Spells exploded through the dusty air, just as spears and knives lunged for skin; Akkyst ignored it all with the boneheaded determination he''d worked so hard to build. He needed to keep the beast''s focus on him. With a bellow, he raced for its exposed underbelly, shadows bleeding from his fur. He swiped and his claws glanced off its scales, but the impact rippled up to its throat; its gaze snapped away from the charging Magelords and burned into him, bloodshot and furious. He bared his own fangs in response. It hissed and dove, muzzle crashing into the stone with a boom. Akkyst threw himself to the side as a crater opened where he''d been standing, rubble filling the air; a cough and suddenly Bylk was beside him, eyes squinted against the dust, fingers raised. "No taking all the glory, eh?" He wheezed, and fire erupted from his fingers. The quartz-light of before was a spark compared to the inferno; the stone-wurm wailed, sensitive eyes bulging as it thrashed away from the light. Akkyst charged and rammed his shoulder into its side, throwing it back even as his bones groaned from the effort. Bylk''s fingers changed colour, one of the jewels in his ear losing its glow, and stone exploded beneath the beast like an earthquake. He was corralling it, Akkyst realized¡ªtrying to force it back outside the cavern. He could get behind that. Rearing, he fumbled his claws into the grooves beneath its scales and heaved, shoving back as it thrashed overhead; the War Horde shrieked and howled, jabbing at its back, trying to get it to fight. Bylk''s fingers moved faster than he could see and more stone burst from the mountain, shoving it back even as it threw itself against the walls, awareness returning to its sunscorched eyes. Not yet; Akkyst bellowed, digging into the ground. He could feel muscle taut beneath his paws, the raw power of the thing even when blinded and confused. His bulk shoved it a foot back, another¨C Its sight recovered and it twisted, looking down at the irritating pest pushing on its chest. Akkyst overbalanced, but his claws were still curled around its scales and he tore them loose, revealing pale flesh and oozing scarlet. Its bloodshot eyes widened. It seemed to pause in its battle, tense and quivering. Akkyst retreated back a few steps, heaving in ragged breaths. Its massive neck craned around, revealing tattered spines and missing scales down its spine, but all it had eyes were for the bleeding slashes around its side. The injury. The first injury it had received in quite a while, if Akkyst''s horrible prediction was true. There was silence, for a moment, every other goblin pausing in their war to glance up at the towering beast in their midst. One from the War Horde was pushed forward by her brethren, all too cowardly to do it; she stepped forward and gently, hesitantly, prodded the thing''s side. They wanted it to keep fighting. Oh, it would. Akkyst could see the signs and flattened his ears a second before it screamed. Bylk had warned him about this, a distant part of his brain recognized. Wurms had traded their intelligence for draconic strength, and with that strength came the raw superiority that believed oneself invulnerable. And when that belief was broken, well. The stone-wurm, still shrieking, erupted into a frenzy. Its head crashed through an abandoned house, snapping at anything that dared threaten it, serrated fangs sawing through stone like flesh. Its tail lashed, cleaving through the wall; stone crumbled and crashed around it, lost to its frenzy as it was. The War Horde fled from its side, eyes wide; they hadn''t seen this side of the beast they''d so claimed to control. They didn''t understand what they had brought. As weak as it was, Akkyst could taste the draconic blood in the air. He understood. Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site. Bylk shouted a wordless cry, fingers glowing every shade of grey and brown; the stones tumbling through the air came to a grinding halt, groaning against their own weight as mana held them, trembling, and tossed them back at the War Horde. They scattered, their raucous cheering gone now, trying to flee back the tunnel they''d carved. But still the stone-wurm thrashed. Magelords, stabbed and beaten and bloody, raised their hands to try and ward off the beast; more fire poured through the air, more stones bursting from beneath, but the stone-wurm was past intimidation. It shrieked, plowing its head into the ground and carving a fissure with a single blow. Dozens of goblins disappeared beneath its bulk. Light, jagged and unfamiliar, rose around it in screaming succession; Bylk strode forward, eyes wide but determined. His fingers and then the marks on his skin glowed, burning, and¨C A thunderclap boomed through the cavern. The stone-wurm wailed, writhing back as something punched through its throat, a perfect circle already pouring blood. Akkyst stumbled back as it thrashed, wailing, snapping at the air without a semblance of thought. Before it, Bylk lowered his hands, swaying. The light disappeared from his fingers and he collapsed. "Bylk!" He bellowed, the word forcing itself, strangled and growling, from his throat. The goblin twitched, trying to raise his head, the jewels around his ears losing the last of their glow. He slumped back over the rocks. The stone-wurm snapped in his direction. Its eyes were wild with raw fury and he was the largest thing here, only a little larger than its head but infinitely bigger than the goblins at his feet. It snarled, coiling up like a snake, and lunged. He tried to dodge, throwing himself to the side, shadows lapping at his fur; but as strong as he was, the stone-wurm was enormous, and the cavern was small. Akkyst saw its fangs approaching. At the last second he twisted, desperation burning in his chest. If he could get away, if he could run just a little farther¨C The fangs dug into his face, into his eye, into his ear, and Akkyst fell. Time fled from his grasp and he shuddered back to consciousness, slumped against something¡­ hard. Without give. Stone? Raw pain lanced through his veins as he tried to raise his head, everything echoing hollowly. There should have been sound, some part of him realized; should have been noises of battle, of the beast. But he couldn''t hear anything, nothing more than the thrum of blood inside his own head. He tried to open his eyes. One was clotted shut, something tacky keeping it pinned closed, and the other¨C The other was an empty socket of pain. Akkyst staggered to his paws, whatever remaining scraps of mana flying desperately through his veins as they tried to heal the damage. With a twitch he could still feel one ear, filled with what he could only guess was blood, and the other. Well. He knew the answer already. Still he stood, wavering and unstable, because the air was moving around and something approached, brushing against the mana leaking through his fur, barely enough of a warning for him to rear once more¨C Something slammed into his side and fangs gnashed over his head, mana dripping hot and hungry around him. Without thinking his claws went up and bit deep, punching through scales, arms shaking with the effort of pushing. He''d struck it. Akkyst roared, blind and deaf but he could feel, could feel the shudder of the beast against his claws, could feel the mountain stable beneath his paws and the twist of air overhead. It was howling, he could feel; the vibrations raced up his arms, strong and vibrant, like he was right near the source. And suddenly he knew where his claws were. Everything hurt, everything ached, and the last time he had felt this he had run. Had abandoned his home to find shelter in the dark tunnels, had tore through the mountain unaware of where he was going, had been scared. He was no longer scared. Akkyst shouldered forward, forcing his claws in deeper; something hot rushed over his fur and the thing shrieked, making it past the blood caked in his remaining ear. It writhed against him and he could hear its jaws snapping at the air, desperate to bite him; but he was underneath it, claws embedded in its throat. It couldn''t reach. Something gave and he found the hole Bylk had carved through its underbelly, claws tearing through flesh as he dug, clawing furiously at anything he could reach, only able to feel its vibrations as it screamed anew. It thrashed around him and Akkyst felt himself lift off the ground, kept pinned to its side, and his weight dragged his claws further into its body. Even past the blood he could hear it, shrieking, echoing like the voice of the mountain itself. He reached deeper and found something, something trembling and shaking and warm, and ripped it to shreds. There was a groan, air hitting his fur, and then he was moving¡ªhe slammed back first into the ground, bones cracking. Another second and the beast landed beside him, dislodging his claws, its immense weight missing him by a hair as the thud shook him to his core. And then it was still. Akkyst laid there for a moment. Everything hurt in such a way that made him realize he''d never really felt pain before, not like this. It was more interesting than mindbreaking, his brain certainly aware he was in pain but simply refusing to finish the connections. But more than that, he felt relief. He had done it. He hadn''t run away. Something touched his ear. He flinched and the presence retreated, waited a second, before returning. "Shh," someone rasped, and he could feel knobbly fingers combing through his fur, tugging out clumps of blood from his ear until he could hear again, hear the distant groan and crash of falling stone. The cavern was falling. Was destroyed, probably. He couldn''t open his eye to check. "Don''t move." Bylk, some part of him recognized. The goblin continued making soothing noises, something tight in his voice, and Akkyst could feel the faintest prickle of mana race through him. It wasn''t enough. He knew how much mana it took to heal creatures born from mana like him, and Bylk had more than emptied himself in the fight. There wouldn''t be enough. But that wasn''t right, either. Because there was mana in his chest, something burning and swelling, stronger than anything he''d ever felt. It almost hurt and it kept growing, spiraling in from something he couldn''t see, filling his channels until he could feel the excess bleed off as shadows, tumbling through the air. Something brushed against his side and he knew it was the stalking jaguar, her feathery tail settling on his twisted claws. A shriek as the bladehawk circled overhead, watching without trying to force his way close. Goblins all around tended to their wounded, pulled the screaming out from beneath rubble and stone, or paid their respects to the cave bear who had lived with them. The one who was dying. The thought struck Akkyst quite out of the blue. He didn''t want to die. Most mortal creatures didn''t, he knew, but there was something very certain about the fact that he wasn''t done yet. He needed to help his fellow creatures, help these goblins, discover more about the world¡ªand he couldn''t do that while dead. The mana built, rising higher and higher until his channels ached. He could feel Bylk still stroking his face but it was distant, not important in the moment. Something growled within him and for a second he could taste whitecap mushrooms, feel water rushing through moss, hear the distant chitter of spiders and serpents. He remembered home. Akkyst didn''t want to die. A question thrummed, deep in his chest, spiraling around the mana still building within him. Power. Shadow. Knowledge. An offering, one of the three. He didn''t understand but he didn''t have to, in the end. For all his life, there had only been one thing he had hunted for, learning the goblin''s tongue and training their ways and searching for answers in the broken mountain. Something that set him apart from his underthings, what had made him strong¡ªnot his strength, but his desire. His want to learn. He chose knowledge. Light exploded within him. Chapter 76 - Hoard Room I sat in the silence of the Underlake, glaring at the entrance the beast had come through. A few days it had been since its attack and I was still on edge, waiting to feel the gurgling roar of Mayalle''s whirlpool crumbling under its own weight and the hiss of escaping mana. Nothing had dared slip through my halls since but I didn''t trust the silence any more than I''d trusted the fight. But in the absence of a fight, I could prepare for another. My previous strategy, ramshackle and stitched together out of desperation, had worked. Seros and the sarco were my most powerful creatures and in tandem, they worked better than I could have imagined¡ªand that was without the fledgling sea serpent still cooking away in a side den and the horned serpent just barely brushing the edge of her own evolution. Soon there would be real power behind me, and not just limited to the water. Which was good, because right now if they made it past the Underlake, I could be in a bit of a spot of trouble. So. Planning. Seros and the sarco just needed more training until they could fight together well enough, and if Seros'' attempts to get Rihsu expanding her lung capacity were going anywhere, she would probably join in as well. All my other creatures could try the well and true method of throwing bodies at the problem until it went away, at least until more beasts like the royal silvertooth could rear their beautiful little heads. As for my side, the gems had worked. Had worked surprisingly well, really; while my battle with the pitch-shark had still been a net negative, I had survived. But not fully won, considering all the mana it had. Well. Digested. I didn''t like to think about it. That wasn''t how creatures worked; in all my years, I had encountered beings that absorbed mana, from plants with wide, pitcher-shaped leaves, ambient mana pooling deep in their guts to multi-coloured eels with needle-sharp teeth that drained their prey dry of both blood and power. They were far from common, but they existed. Some for sustenance, some for stolen strength. There had been a reason for their thievery, for their unspoken law of stealing what was not meant to be stolen. I hated them, but I could understand. I did not understand the pitch-shark. From its mere presence it had swallowed my power, ripping away at what the gods had given me; and it had stolen Mayalle''s power. If a god couldn''t defend themselves from this¡­ this beast, what was it doing here? Why had it been allowed to exist at all? For all that I bowed and scraped and begged pardons from the gods whenever they granted me a boon, I couldn''t shake the feeling that there was something more about this. They should have been able to stop this thing, but they hadn''t. I could say I had, but I knew that wasn''t the full truth, either. It had been weak, I knew. From the bare glimpses at its schema I''d allowed myself, it had been young, its true power restrained by the cramped¡ªfor it¡ªsize of my Underlake. That lined with what I had seen; it had moved in a straight line, attacking only what was in front of it, sticking to no shadows or places with cover. A child''s idea of an assault, and it was only my expert planning and immobilizing it that had taken the parasite down. But if there was one in Calarata''s waters, I couldn''t let myself hope that it was a solitary hunter. So I needed to prepare. As lovely as the piles of hidden gems were, I was still encountering a problem; a problem I had created, really. In my beautiful Fungal Gardens, I had whipped together great hidden dens and patches to entrance invaders within, singing the siren''s song of silver veins and glittering diamonds, and with my creeping vine now I could slip the net shut behind. Simple, really. I was rather fond of the elegance. But those jewels were now being stolen and used and traded a plenty, rather than actually hoarding the mana I needed to keep. Which. Unfortunate. Don''t get me wrong, I was happy that the burrowing rats were taking their slice of the mana they needed to evolve, but it was still a touch irritating to see a rat steal some of my precious mana only to get eaten by a luminous constrictor the next minute. And that was without invaders, who would happily scoop them up by the handful and cart them away. Also terribly rude, and something I was a touch more likely to reward with death equally by the handful. No, I needed a safe collection of jewels, and I needed it away from prying, thieving little beasts. This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. Right now, there was no safer floor than my fifth, and so I flew down to the lowest point of my dungeon. Birds and bats and bugs swarmed overhead, fighting their constant battle for survival and territory, but Seros had grown well used to the cacophony and slept soundly in my core room, wrapped around my pillar. Still recovering from the battle with the pitch-shark, some worried part of me noticed. He had not taken to having his mana drained well. I could relate. I pushed a touch more into his channels as I examined the room. It was a basic thing, as far as my pride would allow me to admit. I''d tucked up my silver-flecked limestone pillar to settle my core on like usual, and this time I''d thrown a few raised mounds of raw silver to catch the glowing quartz-light overhead; and there, off to the side, grew a single delicate patch of moonstar flowers. A new bud had opened, pale and growing, and I couldn''t have been more excited. But it was plain. I felt a momentary burst of frustration. Had I really neglected my living quarters so much? While only Seros was ever the one in here frequently enough to see it, I certainly needed to remind him that I was a dungeon core, lest he go off and bumble his way into convincing more kobolds to swear to him. No, this wouldn''t do. He''d already awoken by the healing mana I''d pressed through our connection, raising his head off the stone with a sleepy yawn; he looked around curiously as I darted back and forth, measuring the current size of the room with various points of awareness. Not too large, considering that most of my core rooms were carved out to become the entrance to whatever tunnel I made leading to the next floor. I winced at the thought. Gods, I was getting predictable. That was so boring. There wasn''t a lot of room to expand, not with the massive Skylands right next door and my half-cooked plans for the next floor, but I did start chiseling away at the wall, opening a second hollow that connected to the fifth floor proper. This would be the tunnel downward, whenever I needed it; I carved a basic circular hole and left it before I''d gone more than ten feet sloping downward. For a later day. Then I returned to the previous room. It was maybe thirty, forty feet in diameter, high, stalactite-studded roof arching overhead and silver mounds below. Only one entrance, maybe ten feet high and a few feet long, connecting to the Skylands. It was shaped in such a way that invaders would have a moment to adjust to the shrunk dimensions of the entrance tunnel before the room could open back up to the splendor of my core; at least my previous self had had some interesting ideas. Just not enough. Well. It would all have to be redone. First thing first; I threw up a layer of granite, curled around the moonstar flower patch. It would survive a few hours without quartz-light and there wasn''t a chance on this green Aiqith that I was letting some spare piece of stone tumble over and squish my most expensive creation. Seros fully stood as I started working, churring a question as he unwrapped himself from around my pillar. I shoved a vague impression of hoard room at him, points of awareness spiraling around as I smoothed the floor out. To my surprise, he actually perked up, flicking his tail out of the way as I dissolved a chunk of silver down to mote of light. Something through our connection lit up; he was curious about hoards, particularly those that dragons kept. I puffed up. Little bastard wanted to know more about me, hm? Well. Who would I be to ignore such a willing student? I spat all of my hatchling lessons at him as I worked, smoothing out the walls and polishing them with a thin film of silver so that they gleamed, pulling up the act of an entire room made of silver without having to quite bankrupt my mana stores to make it. Everything I remembered about the mana-gathering powers of metals and jewels, how dragons often got so large they needed to use mana to move, and it was rather exhausting to always hunt down mana using mana. So by creating hoards, they could go off and hunt for meals, feed themselves, and then sleep for a few months on their mana-collecting hoard until their stores were nice and full again. Of course, they weren''t immobile without mana to the point it was actual weakness¡ªin my eyes, dragons had no weaknesses¡ªbut it was certainly easier to drag a several ton body into the air with some mana rather than twin flimsy stretches of skin. Wings were more useful as channels for said mana, anyway. And of course the power that came with a hoard. Nearly every draconic territorial dispute was over hoards, the theft and building and maintaining of them; a right of passage was to try and steal someone else''s. I myself had claimed plenty from my lowly cousins, the fire-drakes; their breath weapon meant little to my watery self. Fantastic sport, that was. I missed it. Seros listened with rapt attention as I flew around my little hoard room, making silver bloom from the walls and jewels unfurl from granite rosettes. I had no ancient weapons or relics to place and it would be rather tacky to try and fake them, so I just went for a quantity over quality approach; silver and gold and gems, piled carefully high in every corner, quartz-light gleaming from hidden pockets until everything glowed. I even dissolved my original pillar, getting rid of the limestone entirely in favour of the purest silver I could muster, carving away enough of my mana I had to wait a day to finish it in its entirety. But there it sat, marbled scarlet-black on top of the most beautiful silver, etched in old draconic charms. And for a final touch, I carved a small pocket for the moonstar flowers, leaving them plenty of room to grow but surrounding them in a little ring of gold, just to contrast their pale petals. Tasteful, really. Then I sat back on metaphorical haunches and basked in the beauty of my hoard room. This certainly wouldn''t be something I would repeat on every floor; sheer cost alone, most invaders would be happy to leave after gathering the prizes within this room, even if I tried to tempt them deeper where they could perish. But I could also feel rather annoyed if I kept digging down and left such a beautiful place for my core so out of reach. I liked things that lined up, some part of me realized. Maybe on my tenth floor, I would shape another hoard room and fill it with glittering treasures a plenty. Ah well. A question for another day. For now, I sat back and watched Seros explore this new location, eyes alight with awe. Chapter 77 - Fourfold I polished my new silver walls with a fervor that the gods themselves had to respect. It was only gilded over the limestone, thin and limited, and thus my carvings had to indent barely more than a feather''s touch. Cloyingly gentle, really, like a mother and her hatchling; I inscribed all manners of draconic protections over and around my core, gentle stirrings of old fate and the rumble of my old voice echoing as I worked. They weren''t real, I knew, not in the way they had been before. The markings called upon my old god, the god of dragons, creator and savior of my race; but he would not respond. There was no reason. I was a sea-drake no longer. But still, I took comfort in the protections. Old things, trembling and ancient, from well before my egg had first been laid on the sand. Maybe he would smile down and extend his great wings once more, if a threat came to my core. I shook my head. There truly wasn''t time to get lost in those memories. I had both a job and a rather important task to complete first; because as I finished carving the last of a prayer into my hoard room, a last little spark of mana flicked out from two floors above. Not the fourth, where the mage ratkins were taking their sweet time to digest those jewels, but from one even higher. The floor where I had two rather lovely little evolutions cooking away. I waited the bare second it took to instruct Seros to follow before I flung my active attention up to the Underlake. Immediately, I could feel the shift; the sarco, though still a little sluggish from his battle with the pitch-shark as his mana levels recovered, was tense, eyes attentive and flicking. He knew there was¡­ not a threat, but certainly a presence brimming in his territory. I sent a little soothing pulse of mana as I peered into the tunnel I''d sectioned off for the first evolution, the one just now losing its beautiful glow. Losing a beautiful glow to reveal a far more beautiful creature beneath. Now. I don''t wish to say anything bad about dragons, because to do so would surely shred my soul to pieces far worse than any invader could dare. Dungeon as I was, I was a sea-drake first, and my loyalty would always belong to them. Wing to water, scale to sea, claw to current; even as I moved around my halls I flexed metaphorical aspects of my old body, carved at the stone as if with claws, exhaled mana as if in my previous life. I was a dragon. But gods did I love sea serpents. Vicious bastards, cankterous and proud and immense, both in size and just raw presence; they embodied the word regal. I''d seen only a handful in my time; they tended to split as they aged, those younger staying to shallow waters to prey on ships and whales, the aged slipping to the deep seas to hunt other monstrous prey. My territory had been rather perfectly in the middle. We simply hadn''t crossed paths enough. But oh, we''d had lovely fights. There had been one brute, several hundred years ago, who had circled me for weeks; I''d seen her eel-esque form in the corners of my eyes as she searched, hunting for any sign of weakness to take me down. I''d provided no such thing and had merely charged the moment she''d lingered too long. We''d ripped out the coastline of a small archipelago and I''d slept off the injuries for nearly a decade. Gods. What glorious battle that had been. I had won, of course, but that didn''t mean that I couldn''t train this new sea serpent to be better than his peers. I devoured his new appearance like the most delicious of meat. As a silver krait, he had been some fifteen feet long, thin as a whip and built for speed. Perfect for how a krait worked, slender in the shadows and made for ambush attacks. Nothing like the sarco he had so plainly admired. His new form fit him much better. Already nearing twenty-five feet, he rippled with muscle, every scale flexing as he wriggled to life; jagged frills raced down his back, the burnished silver of his previous form, but now his scales were a glowing sea green, paler on his underbelly. There was no need for the dappling effect that so many lesser creatures required for camouflage. If others dared to acknowledge they could see him, that was a mistake that would rest solely on their backs. Frills framed his face, similar to Seros'' in their spread, tendrils floating off the edges; his sensory organs, then. His eyes were large but angled forward, as all predators should, but fighting in the water meant it was necessary to know more of your surroundings. Those frills would give him all the information he needed. The deep amber-gold of his eyes was very pleasing. Already I could see that as a beacon in darker waters, scouring those that dared make contact. Oho. From just the bare glimpse of his fangs that I got, I could see his venom was gone, though. Pity. He''d made more than good use of it, on regular prey and pitch-sharks alike. I''d be tossing more luminous constrictors into the Underlake to bring above a new strain of the useful little devils before long. He''d lost the thin, hooked-back teeth that were so adept at puncturing unwilling flesh; now he had a proper maw filled with sharpened points, aimed for one lovely task. Maybe as he aged, he would gain the two extended fangs I knew sea serpents used to hold onto their prey; or would he be of the ripping variety, keeping his teeth the same length so he could tear out chunks of his next meal? So many delicious options. I carefully carved away at the walls of the tunnel I''d sequestered him in, freeing him back to the wider halls of his home; he blinked, still adjusting to his new form, but swam out at my gentle push. His gills fluttered and I could feel his thoughts, already more complex and curious with his second evolution; he knew he no longer needed to breathe air. He could live beneath the surface forever, if he so wished. Judging from what I could hear, he did. He very much so did. Seros burst into the Underlake just as I guided the fledgling sea serpent out to freer waters, taking in his surroundings with his new sensory frills and tendrils; their gazes both snapped to each other. The budding claim Seros was starting to feel over his territory¡ªeven though his more rational mind knew it was my territory, thank you kindly¡ªcrackled to life. The sea serpent, still so young and only just reawoken, hadn''t had any time to really consider what he wanted as his territory. All he had time to think about was that he didn''t particularly want Seros in it. With a rumbling hiss, he vocalized his claim to the Underlake. Seros snarled back his own declaration. This was made suitably worse as the sarco emerged from the still-recovering bloodline kelp forest and growled. Not to be outdone, a second trickle of light shut off beneath them all, in the protection of sand and limestone I''d trapped him within. I did a very quick breathing exercise as the sand erupted. A beast of legend burst upward, eyes red with hunger and maw opened wide; I shoved a mountain''s worth of mana in his path a second before the armoured jawfish did his damnedest to rip off the sarco''s head. He slammed into the barrier hard enough the water exploded outward in a shockwave. Hm. Yeah. Interesting. I tore my way into his brain, not so much instructing as shoveling raw commands into every section of his cerebral cortex that I could get my grubby mitts on; he shuddered, trembling, but his archaic mind had been shaped by me. Had been born from me. He was going to fucking obey or I would have Seros hold his ass with hydrokinesis and have the sarco and sea serpent rip into him so bloody fast his scales wouldn''t even have time to hit the sand¨C With a low, rumbling growl, he pulled back. I couldn''t quite smother the relief in my core. In terms of size, he was technically the smallest one there; from jaw to tail, he was only twenty feet long, similar enough to his armourback sturgeon size. Built like a brick shithouse, of course, torso wider than the sarco''s even before all the bone plating covering what should have been scales. It looked like true armour, not just the hardened substitute so many of my creatures called ''armoured'' had¡ªreal weight behind the plates, proper gaps and ridges for movement, smooth and streamlined for the water. And that was without the jagged points enveloping his mouth, poised to rip and tear with a force I doubted any of my other creatures really had. His eyes, still burning and red, looked prepared to test that theory. No, the real problem was how dense he was. Though I''d dissolved the barrier, he had to keep swimming, a gentle movement forward just so he wouldn''t fall to the bottom of the Underlake; there were always reasons creatures went extinct and I would wager a guess¡ªmaybe even multiple¡ªthat this was the reason I hadn''t seen any of his kind before. They needed to live in currented waters to support their enormous weight, to keep up the armoured plating that kept them alive as living mountains. Yeah, it looked like he''d been staying on this Mayalle and cloudskipper wisp-powered floor for the foreseeable future. Which, great! His smaller size¡ªwhen had twenty feet become small to me¡ªwould fit in better. Gods, I wanted to see him in action. Those bony fangs looked like they could cleave through diamond, and that was without the apparent vacuum ability he could use to pin his prey. But I was rather particular insofar that I wanted to see him in action against someone else. While I did believe that Seros would win the fight, he would also lose far too much of his vital parts for me to really be comfortable with. It would only take one bite for the battle to be a loss on both sides. Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author. So. The perfect defense for this lovely floor. I circled around as they sized each other up, my instructions still bleeding through our connections in a constant soothing wave¡ªthe pitch-shark had shorn so much of my bloodline kelp that the center was relatively free, allowing them to look at each other without the amber-gold fronds taking up the way or forcing them to get too close. My points of awareness spiraled back as I tried to take them all in at once. Ah. Hm. I recalled how I knew that the pitch-shark had been too cramped to use its full potential in my Underlake, pinned down by the strong currents and sloping walls. Just looking at the two new beasts, I was starting to think I was going to have a similar problem. And that wasn''t only it. With my mana extended as it was, soothing back the four bastards so willing to rip each other to shreds, I could feel something tinge on the edge of my field of awareness; Mayalle. Not in the way that meant another fucking pitch-shark was shredding at her mana, but more that she had noticed the changes and was looking in. Now, if I took the time to explain it, I imagined she would only be pleased. There was really nothing that made an entrance quite like four overpowered monsters sitting pretty on the floor you''d become patron of, and her goals of collecting more¡­ if not followers, then at least people who feared her, would be successful. That wasn''t the problem. The problem was that she had noticed. There were too many changes. She''d already laid claim to the Underlake, I had titled it, and it was supposed to remain the same. For the Drowned Forest, I had been able to add the lichenridge snapping turtles and cloudskipper wisp even after I''d already titled it, but that had been toeing the line before Rhoborh would step in; it seemed I had just found the line and fully stumbled over it. Mayalle could appreciate the new monsters on her floor, but that hadn''t been what she had made her contract on. She had already said what she liked. Gods weren''t particularly fond of upstart mortals changing the terms of their contracts. If she was paying attention, that meant I needed to get these new beasts out. And considering my rather dry other floors, there was only one other option. It was probably a good thing that I had a legitimate reason now, rather than simply running out of excuses. Made me feel better, considering my fourth and fifth floors weren''t really up to snuff yet. But apparently I''d delayed long enough; an attack would be coming soon, if that invisible invader would eventually get their head out of their ass and retaliate, so I wouldn''t fully deplete my mana as I worked. But it was time. The problem had been presented and I would answer. It was time to start on my sixth floor. I pushed more instructions into everyone''s head, leaving the very, very firm knowledge that Seros was in charge and they were not to be fighting each other. The sarco rumbled, fangs flashing; the sea serpent paused in his coiling, frilled tail lashing at the water. Mayalle''s interest picked up once more and I did my best to shove my intentions at her, giving a general overview of my sixth floor¡ªwhich would be watery, as it turned out. Looked like my original fire theme would be waiting for the seventh. Fantastic. All those lovely fire schemas would just wait in my core as per normal. Gods, I just wished things worked as planned for once. Her attention slithered away with the feeling of fang-shaped mana. I did not breathe a sigh of relief. Well. Time to make new plans, I supposed. I wouldn''t rush into it, though. The time I''d spent cleaning up my first three floors after I''d built hasty designs was enough to convince me of avoiding that particular course of action. No, I''d be taking this a bit slower. Not much slower, admittedly. As much as the sarco, sea serpent, and armoured jawfish would listen to me, that didn''t mean they would be particularly fond of listening, and who knew what would come when I was distracted. Which might be pretty soon, depending on the moronic invisible idiot who''d invaded me. But a little planning would never go awry. In the back of the Skylands, on a relatively empty section of island that I shuffled a mottled scorpion off of, I brought dozens of points of awareness to my call and dragged up a spiral of plain limestone in a rough square. I dissolved a thin, spidery circle near the top where the entrance tunnel would be, metaphorical tail swishing as I stared at the open canvas. It was time to plan. - Calarata burned hot and heavy in the rising spring. Lluc strode from the peak of the coven city, morning sun casting twin shadows to rise above his shoulders; the sea-drake''s wings, perfectly preserved, crowned his descent. His movements felt stiff, untested, shambling like an early morning drunk; he hadn''t had time to change but the crow-wing coat hid the scarlet blooming over his sides and back. Any finery he had would still be leagues above those he was meeting today. They would still be impressed. He held that thought close to his chest as he moved through the city. There was no official summons but Calarata stood strong with a central plaza, open and sprawling, a memento of Le¨®ro architecture. No matter how many came to his call, there would be others who would spread the word, taverns buzzing with information, with ideals. He would only have to do this once. Tonight, he would rest. Curl up with a tall, tall glass of arrack or toke, let his mana build until it burst and crackled at his fingers, bind his wounds and chill his bruises until he looked the piece of perfection once again. Lluc Cardena Ferr¨¦ was perfection. There was simply no denying it. But today, he would settle for slightly less¡ªjust a fraction, barely a hair¡ªbecause he had been given a job, and he had already been shown the cost of failure. Lluc bared his teeth against the unforgiving sun. The walk felt cold despite it. Calaratan natives glanced up as he strode past, only to duck and turn away; they fled from his shadow, as they damned well should. The First Mate of the Dread Captain was a loathsome power indeed, and he did not tolerate those that dared count themselves equal. Lluc was more. He needed to be. He passed through the entrance to the market plaza. Those hawking wares and deals and offers quieted as he passed, voices drying in their throats through no mana of his own. His steps sharpened, back straightening. They still knew he had power. They understood. None interrupted his march to the center platform. The borwood tree stood proud, a relic of the old world, its bark carved with unknown languages; either protection or curse, he didn''t know. It was a foolish man who risked felling a borwood, no matter what the old world had carved into it. Hells, it could have been a direct summon to the Dead War and he would still leave the blasted thing alone. He clambered onto its surrounding platform with nary a thought for the jagged bolt of pain across his knee. This was more important. He had been given a task, and by the gods, he would do better with this one. Varc¨ªs had told him he needed to, and Lluc considered himself intelligent enough to understand the meaning behind that. There was no reason to argue against whose fault the previous task was; the task had been given to Lluc, and instead of a proper report, he had gotten a glimpse of the first floor and a single room of the second. That was not success. If it was not success, ergo it was failure, and since the task had been given to him, he had failed. The thought process was easy. The punishment was not. Lluc exhaled. The motion tugged rudely at his cracked ribs. He hid any pain under a sharp-toothed grin. "Calaratans," he said, and a curl of mana made his voice tremble through the plaza, tugging at the ears of all those who dared now give him their attention. They turned as one, faces indistinguishable amongst the crowd. The horde. He guessed there were several hundred, maybe more, all with the street cat wariness that so plagued this city. "I bring ill news." Jaws set. Facial scars tightened. Brows furrowed. They stayed silent. "A threat has come to Calarata." Eyes widened. Fists clenched. Shoulders stiffened. They stayed silent. "It festers even now," he whispered, mana carrying his voice to each hungry soul. "A wretched, rotten thing, living beneath us; feeding on our lives, on our mana. It kills without mercy, without thought or conscience; it comes from a broken world to fill our streets with monsters. You''ve heard of it." They had. Even if they hadn''t, they had. He commanded it. They stayed silent. "The dungeon." Lluc let the spell break and murmurs exploded; brothers not by blood but by Calarata turned to their neighbors, confused, scared, angry. His mana slithered between them all, not heavy, not pressing. It whispered just as they did, inciting lonely little thoughts that added up, pushed them to action. "It kills us!" He said, and the whispers grew shrill. "Kills the innocent who came here searching for a better life, kills those escaping the grasping hand of Le¨®ro, kills those who wish to make something of themselves!" With a spark, everyone knew that it was them at risk, that it was their reasons that the dungeon killed, that it was them next on the chopping block. Voices rose to a roar. He roared back. "The Diving Darling, her crew reduced to splinters, her captain crippled! Nightmarketers, disappearing from the underground, shipments let rampant! Adventurers, teams broken, magic shattered! All stolen from us!" They shouted and his mana dug in to a knife''s edge, stabbing at their thoughts, ripping away those unsuited. They were mad. They were furious. They were raving. "The Dread Crew always calls for fresh blood, new blood, loyal blood; and the dungeon is full of riches, of the bones of our fallen brethren, of creatures and magic beyond understanding! That which it stole from us, from Calarata, and we can take back!" The horde erupted. Lluc stepped forward, the borwood towering overhead, branches angling over his shoulders like wings. This was how he succeeded. He knew what to do. "Reclaim your power! Fight back!" Varc¨ªs Bilaro was supposed to be the one fighting. That was what the taxes were for. He shredded any reminder and made the crowd scream their agreement. Lluc watched them. He was Gold now, they knew. Mana thrummed under his veins, bright and eager, snapping to his wizard''s call. The gap between him and those lesser Silvers was astronomical. He was stronger than anyone in this crowd. Could crush any of them beneath his heel. But that wasn''t the point. He wasn''t here to be the singular attacker; he needed numbers. Because as strong as he was, he doubted he could take on this entire horde. So the dungeon, the bloody fucking dungeon that had landed him in this scenario on a knife''s edge with a sword to his throat, shouldn''t be able to survive it either. Lluc couldn''t afford anything else. So he swallowed the ache of bruises and cracks and jerked a fist in the air, a wordless roar erupting from his throat. The crowd echoed him, mana burning at their fingers and blades aimed to the sky. Hungry for blood, hungry for power, hungry for gold; everything that a dungeon could provide. Calarata was for the starving, those malnourished and gaunt from a life under Le¨®ro''s rules. But they were aimless, tearing at the coattails of society for scraps that were never enough, wanting direction but having no drive to claim it. That was why they were here, listening to him. Nightmarketers, swords-for-hire, desperados. Fodder beneath Lluc''s heel. They would obey. He ignored how his ribs creaked and bellowed a rallying cry, swiveling to stab a finger toward the distant cove and the Al¨®mbra Mountains beyond; the horde tracked his gaze, eyes red, teeth bared. "Together!" He roared, mana erupting from his throat as his words bounced through the open square. "Together, we end this rotten dungeon! For us! For Calarata!" The crowd howled. Chapter 78 - Proffered Deal Unfortunately, just because I''d put Seros in charge didn''t mean that the rest of my tasks went unanswered. I''d only just begun to plan out my sixth floor, carving away at the hunk of stone that served as a facsimile of the mountain, when several alarms went off at once. Minor things, really; rebuilding the cave spider population after a web tumbled to the ground and destroyed the huddled eggs, shuffling an ironback toad away from the empty den she''d been guarding with her insipid little mind, adding more iron to a bridge in the Skylands that creaked worryingly as a scorch hound ran over it. The many tribulations of my existence, really. Sometimes I sat and thought fondly back to the early days, when I had a single section of whitecap mushrooms and green algae and perhaps a handful of cave spiders to manage. There had been time for thinking and scheming and delightful experimentation. Now I felt more like a much begrudged father with a dozen screaming hatchlings. Multiple dozens. More. ¡­I had several thousand creatures in my halls, including bugs. Hm. I hadn''t really considered that, with how few of them managed to keep my attention, but that was a fair number. Lives under my protection. Enough to make up multiple ecosystems. Almost comforting, in a way. My death, as bullshit and awful and idiotic as it was, hadn''t come with nothing. I was still something, here in this existence after death, and I was strong. Not as strong as I had been before, lordling over the sea, but strong. And getting stronger. I preened as I flew around to my tasks. My consciousness diffused like a mist as I split up my main focus, handling tasks that required barely a thought by the dozen; easy enough to do, but something I had to get done first before being able to turn my full attention to planning out the next floor. Hopefully, I would be able to split my attention more evenly moving forward; I would need it if I continued to dig ever down. Seros couldn''t hold things down forever. The thought was uncomfortable. I hated relying on anyone, even if Seros was at least an acceptable creature to do so with, and the weakness was one I knew others could exploit. That was why I needed to keep digging, to keep shoving up defenses one after another to keep people from reaching my core. So. More floors. As soon as all these distractions went away. I had still made progress on the sixth floor, you must understand. It was going to be a glorious thing; I''d learned from my Fungal Gardens and Jungle Labyrinth, and this one would be a long, twisting room, sprawling like a serpent as it snaked through the mountain. I wanted this room to be massive, built to contain my lovely watery beasties as they grew, though perhaps not their permanent home. They all needed different environments; open sea for the fledgling sea serpent and Seros, crushing depths for the armoured jawfish, swampier stretches for the sarco crocodile. There was no way to unify those across one floor. No, I wanted a different theme. And that would be coastal. My previous water floors had all been built around very specific water conditions; the Drowned Forest was made of mangrove canals, slightly brackish rivers threaded with roots and dens. The Underlake was just that, a lake; brackish but still mostly freshwater, filled with choking seaweed and billowing clouds of sand. Both glorious, but I had not been a sea-drake to keep to such simplistic floors. No, I wanted a coral reef. Was this an impossibly high ask? Yes. Coral reefs were protected by every sapient being with more than a crumb of awareness in their mind; they took centuries to fully grow and settle, each piece of coral growing a fraction of a fraction of an inch at a time and fully prepared to off themselves come the slightest inconvenience. Hatchling sea-drakes were banned from ever going near one, lest they lose control of their power and destroy a fragile ecosystem, and most adults stayed away as their size grew past restrainable limitations. Destroying a reef meant bringing the weight of some very powerful creatures that had previously been neutral down on your head. I should know. I had dominated the waters that made up my territory, had killed thousands upon thousands of beings, and even the thought of watching someone destroy a reef made my mana boil in my core. So. Yeah. Not exactly a simple thing to construct. But I was nothing if not stubborn, and I was sick of boring grey-pink-white walls. I wanted colour. I wanted life. And there was no better place to find it than in a coral reef. They were horribly fragile but also beautifully alive, in the bright, shining way that terrestrial life just couldn''t manage. There were no pesky limitations on moving up or down; everything was free to swarm as their fins commanded, ducking behind massive spirals of brain coral or flame-tongues. Predators and prey swam in tandem, each content to wait until their stomachs rumbled, eels darting between and sharks casting looming shadows above. There wasn''t a colour untested, no texture unused; experiences woven and dipped and wrapped around each other in a dizzying, thriving mess of beauty. Gods, I missed it. It had been too long since I''d seen one of the great reefs for myself. That, of course, came to my current few problems. Schemas I had by the armful; triggerfish, roughwater sharks, mimic jellyfish, and greater crabs were already saltwater based, and I had little doubt I could adapt the silverhead line to live in saltwater. The sea serpent and Seros would no doubt love the new land. But I, ah, didn''t have any coral. I''m sure you can see why that would make constructing a coral reef difficult. But my testing hadn''t been for naught, even as I worked to rebuild after the pitch-shark. Seros could safely leave my halls through the entrance on the third floor, winding his way into the cove and heading off; I''d never sent him out for more than a few minutes, too scared of a retaliation, but it had been enough for him to bring word of our surroundings. Not a coral reef unfortunately, but coral was still present; and if my expedition with Nicau had taught me anything, it was that I dearly loved when my Named creatures went out and gathered me things. So. I''d build the outline of the floor, slap together all the walls and dens and general outline, and only then would I send Seros out. He''d gather all the finicky little coral bits I''d need to really begin shaping a masterpiece. Some part of me fluttered warmly at the thought. As much as Seros was a seabound monitor, he had stuck to the mountain he''d been born in; what would he think of the sea? And more pressingly, would he like the coral reef I would construct? For too long had he been burdened by merely brackish waters; I wanted him to swim through salt, to feel the buoying levity and the rushing pull of the currents. I wanted him to know the sea. Soon, I knew. Soon I would give it to him. - Chieftess considered herself smart. It was an interesting thought, one rather recent; but she knew she had thoughts now, and thus could think about them, and eventually she had thoughts about thoughts, which was a funny little circle that kept spiraling the more she focused on it. Her fellow scale-kin had thoughts and she talked to them about it, but they had less thoughts than her, and they were simple. Food, hunger, danger, sleep. Still thoughts, but they weren''t Big. Rihsu had Big Thoughts, she remembered. She had continued having Big Thoughts until she had a big enough one that led her to strength and Seros, and now she had Big Thoughts all the time. Chieftess assumed, at least. It had been a long time since Rihsu had come to the den. But if Chieftess was starting to have Big Thoughts, surely that meant something? She pondered this and stared at the only other being she knew well to have Big Thoughts. Nicau. The Named. The¡­ not-scale-kin-fleshy-thing. He wasn''t kobold, what the Great Voice called her, missing protection and horns and claws. He looked so weak. But he had Big Thoughts, and he was sharing them openly. Fire, something that awoke some ancient memory she had never seen before but felt through each of her scarlet scales, used for food and weapons and warmth. Construction, piling up sticks and stones until they formed not-cave walls, protection and disguise. Weapons, both spears and little blades and sharp rocks to throw. And now traps. Nicau was hesitant as he worked, like he was trying to trap his Big Thoughts inside, but he still shared them. They were mostly little things, carving out hollows where the moss would cover the hole and lining the bottom with sharp spikes, or finding dead trees and rigging stones to fall if they were pushed. Little things, just breaking on the edge of nuisance. But they were a start. Chieftess watched it all. She sent out hunting raids and gathering parties and kept their food up and their den guarded, but she watched. Traps were good, she realized quickly; she liked them. A way to keep their forest safe against those that dared attack. Another way for her to keep her tribe safe, even though she knew that it was just keeping the mana further and further away from her. This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it. If an invader died to a falling stone or hole, the mana wouldn''t go to her. But she wanted it. Chieftess bit back a hiss, scraping at the haunch in her claws with more force. No, she had made her decision. She was Chieftess, commander of the scale-kin. Nicau and Scratch and all the other scale-kin would go out and gather mana, but she would stay to her path. Because it would work. She knew it. Nicau would set traps, as she had told him to. Because she was the leader, she was Chieftess, and she would command. But if she wanted power, if she wanted to rise above those that the Great Voice ignored, she would need to command more than scale-kin. So Chieftess tore off the last charbroiled rat leg, chomping down the meat, and rose to her claws. Her spear¡ªnot spear, now staff¡ªcame with her as she marched outside, to where the mana whispered and ducked around her like it was aware, like it was listening. She heard it once again, the faint murmur on the wind kicked up by the mist-spirit. Kobold. Like something was keeping track of her. It hadn''t always happened. She''d only noticed it recently, both from her own growing awareness and also the knowledge that this didn''t always happen; the last time she had seen Rihsu had just confirmed it. There was something alive in the forest, noting every movement of creature and being until there were no surprises. But the scale-kin and the trees did not fight. Chieftess sent her followers to gather fallen sticks and logs, careful to avoid the thorns that were growing sharp enough to dig past their scales, and they were too large for the trees to properly kill. Not a truce, nothing as kind¡ªjust an inability to properly kill each other. But they could be more. As many Big Thoughts as Nicau had, Chieftess knew she could have more. And what use were traps if they went unsprung? She marched to the closest mangrove, its bone-white leaves rustling in a misty breeze. The echoing cry went up again for every step she took, crushing moss beneath her claws; kobold, kobold, kobold. Chieftess stopped and stared at the tree. She was close enough to poke its trunk with her staff, though far enough away it couldn''t catch her in its branches if it moved. Its roots writhed against the water. "Hello," she warbled, and forced every ounce of mana behind her words. "I have a deal." Silence. Then, slowly, slowly, the whisper rose again. Not just mana, but nearing a voice, faint and dripping like resin. Deal? - A skittering little thing poked its head through my entrance. Frankly, it''d been so long since a new creature had entered that I ignored it at first, content to be busy around my other floors and think long and hard on my coral reef. Maybe I could start with a narrower passage, split up the invaders and give my creatures some room to hassle them before leading into a larger cavern with a full coral spread, plenty for the sea serpent to stretch and grow? He needed plenty of room to really use his full potential. The pitch-shark had been limited in its strength by my Underlake; I wouldn''t have that happen to my own creatures. I''d give him all the room he needed, though I''d be keeping things relatively shallow to supply the coral with the light it needed to grow. Maybe a raised section with a¨C A poor stone-backed toad died a squeaking death. My points of awareness flared to attention. It had already skittered halfway through the floor, grey-black eyes roving for threats; not enough to actually stop it, though. Every time it noticed another creature, it would pause for a quick little second, tail flicking, before its hunger for mana took over and it continued charging. Though not without launching one of the many spines over its back. Anything it hit was very neatly pinned to dying a slow, twitching death to the stone beneath. Brutally effective. I could respect it. It was scaly and reptilian, maybe three feet long and a deep gold-brown, a band of black around its neck. Hooked claws for clambering up stone, forked blue tongue, and a set of interlaced black-white spines that a porcupine would flirt with nestled over its back. I perked up despite myself. A lizard. Very welcome, even with the circumstance of its arrival. I''d been deprived of them for far too long¡ªmake no mistake, I loved my serpents and crocodiles, but I wanted those a touch close to my old form. This lizard, at a brisk three feet in length, wasn''t quite there, but the familiarity was pleasing. The spines down its back could even look like wings, maybe. If I really squinted and flexed my imagination. And maybe had a stroke. I''d take what I can get. It crawled onward, answering the siren''s call of my mana with its own hunger; I watched it for a second, pondering the beast. Another ranged combatant, though not large enough to pose a real threat without the element of surprise; similar to the triggerfish, but terrestrial. And considering how many eyes the triggerfish had popped with a well-aimed chunk of stone, I had little doubt that this lizard would be an equally useful schema to gather. But as much as I wanted it, my curiosity beat it out. It wasn''t the only thing I wanted to test now. My creatures relaxed as I pressed soothing mana over their backs, tugging at all the anger management I had learned when my fury could summon hurricanes. Luminous constrictors flicked pale tongues but stayed curled in their dens, watching with lidless eyes as the lizard scuttled past; toads and rats alike stayed frozen as the intruder raced by, hardly daring to breathe for fear they''d be noticed. They probably wouldn''t. I wanted to wake something else up. My attention flicked to the back of the cavern, slipping into one of the twin dens poised right on either side of the entrance. In one, the female slept, her massive, bristling form stacked high with more muscles than should really be feasible, three cubs curled within her legs. They were growing like weeds already, fed by the steady supply of whitecap mushrooms I had to manually replace in order to keep them on this floor instead of seeking the more mana-rich food on lower floors, and soon I''d had to carve them their own dens or let them venture down. A question for a later day. But while the female was more focused on brute force, the male leaned into his shadow-attuned mana, and that was what I wanted. I pushed into his brain. Nuvja''s boon was a flickering, hazy thing in the edges of my awareness, tasting like star-iron in the back of my core. The effect hadn''t been immediate, not like my other floors; no whirlpool or symbiotic alarm system, but instead more¡­ movement, for lack of a better word. The walls crawled oddly, the algae-light no longer keeping a steady hold on light and darkness. Shadows twisted and writhed around my various predators, hiding the glint of their fangs or the rustle of their tail until they had already struck the killing blow. My gems gleamed brighter, hidden pockets of greed and temptation, but the surrounding dens filled with nasty little venomous creatures were dull and drab in comparison. Anyone marching up to claim a pile of rubies would be in for a rather rude awakening, preferably of the fatal variety. The shadows didn''t have an awareness, not like Rhoborh''s system, but they listened to what I requested them to do. My core prickled a tad uncomfortably as I remembered Nuvja''s added clause. If I fulfilled whatever she requested of me, would my shadows gain sentience? Even sapience? Was that possible for something originating from just a god''s boon? A question for another day, truly unfortunately. I can''t even begin to express how badly I wanted to answer it. But how would those same shadows react when actively harnessed by one of my creatures? The lunar cave bear rumbled to consciousness, raising his massive head up and lumbering up to his paws. He was enormous, undoubtedly so, but it was clear that he had stayed more to the mana side than his mate. She was easily a size and a half larger than him. His eyes blinked slowly at his surroundings, still waking up, but the foreign mana skittered over his awareness before too long. Which, good, because the lizard had nearly made its way to the rock pond by the time my laziest creature rose off his ass and moved to confront it. He tracked its movement, ears perked forward and lips drawn back; but just as the lizard''s eyes roved over its surroundings, a shadow dropped from the ceiling and draped itself over his form. In an instant, his earthen brown fur was a splotched grey-black, indistinguishable from the darkness of the den he''d emerged from. Even the ivory of his fangs was barely visible as more than a slight discolouration. I leaned forward. Well done. Hiding from sight wasn''t the end-all in any form of the word, but my Fungal Gardens creaked and groaned and shifted enough that the soft rustle of the bear''s claws moving through algae went unnoticed. Of course, that was doubtless helped by how most reptiles had the auditory abilities of a corpse. A corpse of someone who had previously been deaf, to be precise. Not dragons, of course, but lizards most definitely. The bear loomed closer, ears flicking; more and more shadows rose from his surroundings to wrap, almost comfortingly, around his bulk as he slid forward. The lizard finished its little adventurer''s journey and now paused uncertainly at the edge of the rock pond, its spines rustling almost nervously on its back. Not an aquatic beast for certain. With only the whisper of fur against fur, the bear''s claw rose. The lizard got a second for a truly pitiful squeak before its head was unceremoniously removed from its body. A touch overkill, in hindsight. The bear''s paw probably weighed twice the lizard''s entire body, but ah well. I''d wanted to test something. And test something I most certainly had. The issue with the lunar cave bears in the past¡ªincluding the one who got away, which I still felt a twinge of pained guilt for. I had been too weak, unable to protect him, still so young and unknowing of the world¡ªwas that while they could use mana, the cost wasn''t normally worth it. Their bulk was around muscle, not mana storage, and summoning or controlling shadows took plenty to properly manage. Tugging up a quick distraction while being pursued by a larger predator or hiding the entrance of a den while huddled inside, sure. But actively using it while hunting? Much less common. The mana cost was merely too great. So when the shadows themselves were cooperating¡­ well. I flashed sharpened mana throughout the Fungal Gardens. Well, that would be an entirely separate story, wouldn''t it? Pressing appreciative mana into the bear''s head, I released him from his summoned service to lumber back to his cave, curling up to digest the meal. He''d barely glanced at the lizard after killing it¡ªtoo small for his tastes¡ªbut I did bloom a little patch of whitecaps inside his den as a thank you. He chewed them without ambition as he sprawled over the stone. Lazy bastard. Then I turned to the other prize. Its body dissolved into motes of white light, brilliant and flickering, and a few sparks of mana divided between both me and the bear. Its schema settled pleasantly alongside my others.
Spined Lizard (Common) Curiosity rarely a long-lived creatures makes, but being armed with launchable spines and the aim of a champion gives this creature a fighting chance. They scuttle through forests and caverns alike, feasting on whatever they find.
About what I''d expected, then. Aim of a champion was certainly a lovely turn of phrase I was very willing to use, and I''d always take more ranged combatants. Probably both the fourth and fifth floor, depending on how fast the little guy could go when I put some real mana through its channels; and more food for the thornwhip algae if nothing else, which was also appreciated. It was nice to get a new schema from just a regular invader, in a way. It''d been so long I''d almost forgotten the sensation. No time to delve on that, though. I had floors to plan. Chapter 79 - To Be Ready I slammed my metaphorical weight back into the Underlake. The armoured jawfish narrowed his crimson eyes but snapped his bony fangs over merely water instead of the sea serpent''s tail, the suction pull releasing the twisting creature as he shot back in the bloodline kelp. The serpent hissed, a dark, violent sound full of promise, and I spat back with all the fury that several hundred years of being alive as one of the most spiteful creatures in Aiqith brought me. The sea serpent slithered back. Damn right. This was getting tiring. Seros went back to the fifth floor and the sarco was sunning himself on the ledge, but the armoured jawfish and fledgling sea serpent took no breaks in their somewhat irritating desire to beat the shit out of each other. As much as I loved and encouraged growth from my creatures, I also had a vested interest in keeping the strongest of them alive long enough to actually complete said growth. Something that these two were missing. No time to start on the sixth floor, though I''d come up with the general outline; long and twisting, shallower than my other floors but with plenty of room for the sea serpent to stretch out to his full size, which I hoped he''d enjoy. He''d better, with all the grey scales he was going to give me. I flung an unaimed burst of mana in his general direction that carried all the weight of my frustration and stalked up a floor. He flicked his tongue and swam deeper into the Underlake. Twin irritants aside, I did have a task relating to one of them¡ªor, at least, relating to the lack of one of them. Mayalle''s interest still lurked in the back of my core, uncomfortable with the changes still taking place on her claimed floor, but she''d liked the silver krait when he''d been around, and I was hopeful she wouldn''t mind a few more. And if she did, I''d just take her frustration for however long it took to get the sixth floor up and moving. Which, considering I''d been trying to start that thing for three days and I''d barely finished making a plan, could be a while. Again, I was just tickled pink by all the interferences I was dealing with. It was times like this that made me truly regret losing my old form. There was nothing quite as good at working through frustration than beating the shit out of something else. But now I surged overhead in the Drowned Forest, extending gentle little feelers to all things serpentine on the floor¡ªtechnically, the horned serpent''s army on the fourth floor was another resource to tap, but I imagined she''d be displeased with me trying to remove some of her soldiers, and they were too loyal to her to even think of attempting an aquatic life. I wanted kraits that would actually want to be kraits. Specifically kraits that would stay krait-esque, using their venom and focusing on speed instead of size, because as much as I loved the sea serpent and all his regal beauty, my dungeon was simply not large enough to survive more than one. For later days, unfortunately. I let myself have a second of imagining a thrashing mess of scales and frills and fangs as large as the mountain itself. Glorious. But for now, I poked points of awareness into the various dens filling the floor, nudging luminous constrictors out of their slumber with entrancing little thoughts based around food and other such worldly pleasures. They stirred, flicking grey tongues as they stared at their surroundings¡ªbut this wasn''t the raid-frenzy, no howling call to engage invaders. Just a friendly little chat. Somewhat. By the dozens, they slithered out of their dens, following a trail I carved through the floor to the exit, guiding them over river and root as I spooked other predators away from their path. Not forever, mind you, but at least long enough to get my message through. A few kobolds out on a hunting party watched their progression with hungry eyes. Before long, I had a writhing pile of snakes all situated around the beautiful water leading to the Underlake, though their thoughts were a touch more focused on the sarco snoozing peacefully less than ten feet away. I was keeping him asleep, though. No need for them to be all worried. Honestly, he was barely four times their size. What a bunch of overreactors. I sunk my mana into their head and pulled their gazes away, letting their eyes drift over the new world beyond; the fully wolf-shaped cloudskipper wisp danced over waves she kicked up, dancing in the flashing algae-light, the water hissing and whispering below. Already I knew the serpents could feel the increase in ambient mana from being even one floor lower, thrumming through their channels until their eyes gleamed. One interest already locked, I pushed their attention back to the water, settling a current of mana within to clear away the bubbles, making it crystal clear just for them. A special little treat that also let them see the silverhead school I''d convinced to swim this way, hundreds of sleek bodies darting around each other less than ten feet away. Look at the fish, I cooed. All those beautiful fat fish. Tasty. Full of mana. I could see that they wanted that prey, could practically taste it¡ªas appetizing as rats and toads were, they never existed in groups this large. The silverhead school swam away as I let my control over them slip, watching every constrictor track the movement with slitted eyes. Then, from beneath where the school had been, the gold-black stripes of a triggerfish darted through a tunnel opening, cheeks fat with stored shards of rock. Cantankerous like the rest of its species, ornery at the best of times, and certainly not the type to take mercy on a terrestrial creature doing its damnedest to try an aquatic hunt. Maybe not that fish, I acquiesced. I shoved their attention away from the creature that would kill them and back to the retreating school, shoveling information into their heads with as much grace as I could bring myself to muster¡ªhow to swim, how to drag their prey out of the water, how to know when they needed to surface to breathe. All basic things that they could probably figure out for themselves, but I was nothing if not efficient. The serpents twitched as I dumped a lifetime''s worth of experiences into their head, eyes and thoughts dulling, but they revitalized quick enough. Not like they had many brain cells to lose with my maneuver there. Then they stared at the water. I waited impatiently overhead. One of the larger females, nearly twelve feet, flicked her tongue out. Her tail twitched. With an almost hesitant breath, she slithered forward and breached the surface of the water, almost immediately fumbling the landing and slipping fully underneath. She''d figured it out. Three more joined her but the rest stayed hesitantly at the edge, not retreating back up to the Drowned Forest but not jumping in either, which was disappointing. I was hopeful for more. They had time. I could wait. Maybe. Waiting didn''t mean I couldn''t be busy, though, so I left a few points of awareness and popped back to my other tasks, more of my consciousness spreading out almost without my permission. A few darted all the way to the Skylands, watching over the pigeon-bat-bug war that had only grown more and more incensed as each of their populations increased, with the only real winners being the scorch hounds and mottled scorpions who got to feast on all the fallen corpses. A glance around showed that the fire-tongue flowers were filling the air with an almost choking level of smoke, which would work very nicely if I could ever get around to converting this place to a storm-focused floor. Seros stayed on guard in my hoard room, curled over a lump of silver with a strangely pleased expression stretched between his horns. Brat. More points of awareness spiraled upward, poking in on the mage ratkin population and the little¡­ I hesitated to call it anything other than training sessions, but it was more of the lead ratkin finding a small enough section of thornwhip algae and bullying it into obeying her, then using that to grab bugs aplenty to feast on. She was a glorious thing¡ªeven if she was fleshy and furry, there was nothing else to call her determination than draconic. Her appreciation for the more jewelescent things in life did nothing but help. Movement, movement, movement¡ªI flew upward, guiding the various greater crabs towards fallen corpses and rebuilding the roughwater shark population now that there were four threats to decimate them. The cloudskipper wisp barked at my presence, a wavering, wind-through-rushes sound, and darted away before I could even try to touch her. She was growing stronger, right on the edge of what counted as a wisp; not anywhere near elemental, but nearing evolution. Which, good, because I still had no idea on how elemental lines worked. Above that, I soothed and pushed around the lichenridge turtles until their shells were better disguised as stepping stones, guiding the ironback toads to the full dens. Webweavers shivered as my awareness flew over them and I shivered in return, still a little too uncomfortable with how they treated me. Electric eels crisped up a juvenile armourback sturgeon with a strong burst of pride. I ran into the kobold chieftess talking quite seriously with a mangrove, which, sure. Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work! In the Fungal Gardens, I inspected all the creeping vines to make sure they were in the right place, polished up a few exposed gemstones, regrew whitecap mushrooms. Cave spiders by the dozens were weaving a complex knot by the entrance, but without the pheromone communication of the webweavers, half their progress kept being halted by one spider eating the other. Terrible project management. I poked my head into the female lunar cave bear''s den, finding her asleep with three cubs lazily eating what mushrooms she''d hauled back for them. They were half of my schema size, still threats but not enough to really hurt invaders, but with how fast they were growing I doubted it would be long before the Fungal Gardens were too cramped and I''d have to send some of them down. Probably the parents, since while I loved having them as an initial defense, I knew their potential was being squandered on such a low-mana floor. Honestly, it wouldn''t be a bad idea to send them down now, let the cubs grow into themselves and¨C Something like phantom pain lanced across my core. No. I reeled back. Okay. What? I poked and prodded at the thought, examining it with perhaps a touch of worry¡ªwhy was I so opposed to moving the bears to a lower floor? I''d be keeping some of them in the Fungal Gardens, because that floor still needed a powerhouse of sorts, but surely there wouldn''t be any problem with sending them down to the stone jungle, or even just the Drowned Forest? What was the problem? No, the floor wasn''t the issue¡ªI agreed with myself that any of those floors would be better for the bears, and that didn''t prompt the pain. Problems only came when I thought about moving them now. For just an instant, I felt the heave of a scaled chest and the weight of enormous wings. I hadn''t been a dragon for almost three months now and I''d almost forgotten what it felt like, lost to the memories and instincts of a dungeon, but my soul still remembered the tug and pull of deep sea currents, the shaft of light through twisting waves. It also remembered why dragons were long-lived creatures¡ªthey were paranoid as all hells. I had flown to every floor in my dungeon, inspected all my strongest creatures, made sure they were in peak form and ready to fight. At the barest thought of weakening one of them, it had been a physical reaction. Some part of me, unconsciousness and barely functioning, knew there was danger approaching, and it would be here soon. Not strong enough to count as true prescience, since I could recognize that these habits had been happening for roughly the past week and it was only now that I was noticing them, but my paranoia had kept me alive as a sea-drake, and I would be damned if I ignored it now. So I exhaled a whorling spiral of mana, setting up points of awareness around every entrance, a few more hovering over the heads of my strongest creatures. Mana, bright and powerful, sung through my halls as it prepared for something, anything. My sixth floor plans drifted to the background as I focused on the present, on the now. I was ready. The invaders awaited. - Lluc strode forward. Behind him, nearly fifty adventurers crowded, swearing heartily as they slipped and skidded their way down the pebbled beach. The most he''d been able to wrangle, given that his mana had only been able to convince those that had even the slightest chance of wanting to fight themselves; as powerful as his words were, they couldn''t force a pacifist to take up a sword or an old man to regain the strength in his legs. At the end, even in blasted Calarata so full of idiots and ravaging dreamers, only a sixth of the original crowd had followed him. But that was still fifty, and they weren''t all useless. The vast majority were, but he''d spotted gleams in the shit, a touch few that stood taller than the rest. Some with old, combat-born scars and bodies that had seen more fights than their fellows had even dreamed about, others with archaic tools and symbols strapped over their bodies, others still with merely an awareness in their eyes Lluc recognized from the mirror. True adventurers, although drowned out by the screamers who had never so much as felt the hilt of a sword in their hand. A shadow-robed man with shrouded, narrow features stuck to the back of the group, inspecting fingertips as black as if they''d been dipped in ink. A tall, almost frail seeming woman with curtains of blonde hair that nearly hid the mask bolted to her face, bone-white and melding with her skin. A lithe, silver-streaked man with a bow strung over his shoulder and the eyes of someone who was well familiar with struggling to survive. A duo casting wary glances at the rest of their team, she studded with scars that arced and crackled over her skin and he with a thin black cloth wrapped over his eyes. A man with a feather-filled hat, fingering a thin rapier, surrounded by a party with more gold than real adventure in their eyes. Not exactly the same bites of potential Lluc looked for when hunting down new blood for the Dread Crew, but enough. He wasn''t expecting many of them to survive. Which was why he already had invisibility coiling at his fingers. Lluc wouldn''t consider himself a coward, but he was realistic, and Varc¨ªs had not instructed him to take the dungeon. He was rather positive that the man would be a touch displeased if Lluc dared try to claim a core that could threaten his power, actually, and Lluc was overly fond of his head being situated on his shoulders instead of elsewhere. The previous First Mate had taught him that lesson. So he would shove this group of idiotic dreamers into the cave, watch them tramp through from a safe distance, and wait for them to break through to the core. Then he would stop any who attempted to claim it, forgoing on the promises he''d made just to whip them into action, and he would wait as patiently as he was able until Varc¨ªs showed up to claim the core for himself. He''d thought about it, just a hair¡ªcould he challenge the Dread Pirate with a dungeon core of his own? This dungeon, while young, had strength behind its bite; maybe he could whip it enough until it produced monsters fitting to fight Varc¨ªs. And then he remembered beasts from the Dead War and shadows and darkness and the horrible, uncomfortable fact that no one knew how strong Varc¨ªs was, and he found himself content to merely listen to his commands this time. So on he strode, evening sun knifing through the clouds to scour against Calarata and the ramshackle group he led towards the crack in the Al¨®mbra Mountains. He kept his head high, ignored the faint sting of ribs that hadn''t yet finished their riveting complaints, and marched on with all the poise and grace Calarata had come to know him for. The Gold wizard, the second-in-command, the leader. Movement, from the corner of his eyes. Lluc didn''t stiffen, because he was too strong to show such pitiful weakness when surrounded by fodder, but he did allow his gaze to flick to the side. The sun curled to the horizon, high-mountain mist that had survived the morning burn off trickling down the sides, cloudsire palms trembling in a racing wind. And a parrot landed neatly on an exposed frond. It tilted its head at him, squawking twice¡ªit was a sightly enough fellow, large and broad, with red-gold feathers lesser pirates would be willing to shoot the thing down just to stick in their hat. Not one of the more dangerous flamesoul parrots, nor even a greater variant; just one of the common birds that so pestered Calarata. For all reasons, a typical menace from the jungle. But it wasn''t in the jungle, and it was watching him. Its black eyes stayed fixed on him as he strode further alongside the cove, wrapping its talons around the palm frond as it adjusted its position to keep him in its sights. Decidedly not normal bird behavior, even ignoring the fact it was out of its home territory. There was something strangely intelligent in its eyes, a lingering awareness as if it was analyzing what it was seeing. But Lluc Cardena Ferr¨¦ certainly didn''t spook at birds, so he kept marching. Another shock of movement as it leapt from its current palm to land on one ahead of him, the younger tree swaying under its weight. It didn''t look like a ploy to get him to stop, not making any aggressive moments or swooping at his face, but it was watching. His back prickled uncomfortably underneath his crow-wing coat. He chanced a look around¡ªno one was watching him, too busy chattering to their team or preparing weapons¡ªand activated his mana sight. A stolen, bastardized version, considering he didn''t need the crushing headache that came with activating true mana sight so near the Dread Pirate''s cove and the monsters he hid within it, but plenty to investigate. His eyes flicked to the bird. It was lit up in spirals of red and grey, typical enough attunements for something living in the jungle, but there was something¡­ off. Too much mana, even with it being fully grown, centered in whorls around its eyes and beak. Its feathers gleamed strangely, talons spiraling in on themselves, wings great expanses of flickering energy. It looked like it was made of mana. Lluc almost missed a step. Shit. He knew how dungeons worked and how their creatures were born; he''d known that the dungeon would recognize his invisible investigation as just that, an investigation, but he hadn''t considered the possibility of it posting up guards to watch for new invaders. Fucking hell. He switched off his mana sight and chanced another look at the thing, still perched unwaveringly overhead. Had it already reported back about their arrival, able to do it from a distance, or did it need to fly back to the dungeon? His hand twitched for a coil of mana. With a piercing shriek, the parrot spread its wings and leapt off the palm, spiraling away in a blur of red and gold¡ªheading toward the jungle, instead of the dungeon. Lluc frowned. When he emerged from the dungeon, he''d take the time to kill the blasted thing, just out of principle. The dungeon that was now uncomfortably close. He watched as the crack emerged, narrow and surrounded by sand, torn from the mountain''s side after the beast had fallen. Old air whispered through, kicked up by some unknown threat within, and Lluc got the honour of watching the posturing of the adventurers die to a trickle. Though it was nothing but a cave''s opening, they understood, at least a fraction, of what they faced. There was no Adventurer''s Guild to maintain the safety of the dungeon, to patrol and figure out the dangers of each floor, to whip together escape teleportation or offer high-ranked guides. This was just raw adventuring, true as the days of old. What they had fled Le¨®ro''s endless list of rules to find. Lluc watched the void as if it watched him back. "No mercy," he intoned, staring into the depths of the mountain. The jagged maw yawned invitingly. "For it will show us none." The crowd shuffled, murmurs breaking under their bravado. But those star-shined few he''d noticed perked up, eyes bright, and gathered their weapons and wits about them. Lluc calmed his own breathing, tugged up the mantle of the First Mate of the Dread Crew until it sat comfortably around his shoulders, broad and stretching, ready to perform. He was ready. The dungeon awaited. Chapter 80 - First Dawn I tasted, more than felt, the approach. Burrowing rats crowded by the Calaratan entrance, picking through a new haul of plain quartz they''d pried from a vein I''d grown in the wall for the express purpose of creating quartz-light, but I wouldn''t begrudge their actions, irritating as they were. I wanted them to get a taste of magic. Still frustrating. But watching them gave me a front row seat as they all froze, their forked-tip tails twitching like a tree caught in a hurricane, black eyes wide. As one, they scattered, darting through rolling hills of algae and disappearing into dens like they''d never existed. The Fungal Gardens echoed hollowly in their absence. That same paranoia that''d kept me from moving the lunar cave bears settled heavily over my core. Ah. It was time. I flung more points of awareness around the first floor, digging sharpened mana into the surrounding limestone like I was prepared to bring the walls down¡ªI wasn''t, I want to be very clear, my last little temper tantrum had shown me how very bad an idea that was¡ªand I snaked my influence through the rest of my floors, waking my creatures from their slumber. Not into the raid-frenzy yet, still a lingering sense of calm, but they were alert. In preparation. The last attack had been two simpletons and one invisible threat I hadn''t gotten to test before they''d disappeared. I couldn''t allow myself to fall into the complacency of assuming that this would be a similarly-sized attack. So I gathered my strength and glared at the cove-side entrance. It wouldn''t be long now, I knew; my burrowing rats were paranoid little bastards, but even their senses only extended so far away. For them to sense something, it would be close. And close it was. Hardly five minutes passed before my points of awareness were able to peer past the dark shrouding the entrance and see something. A human appeared. My mana sharpened to a knife''s edge. She was a tall, willowy thing, presence heavy with the power of a Bronze, her eyes squinted and hair pulled tight to the back of her skull. No visible weapon but mist cooled around her fingers, vapor dripping from her nails. Behind her, another human appeared, shorter with something like bandages wrapped around his arms, teeth bared despite the nerves in his eyes. They stayed close to each other, watching their partner''s back. Probably a team. Probably a full team, judging by the three more invaders creeping in after them. I shifted a touch uncomfortably above; while none of them were stronger than Bronze and I''d well proven myself capable of handling their power, this was still a coordinated attack. I couldn''t afford to be complacent. The last invasion had shown an invisibility-shaped hole in my defenses, even if I''d managed to chase them off, and I couldn''t be positive that these wretched little beings didn''t have any tricks up their sleeves. No time for second guessing, though. I couldn''t reach out to my creatures without risking the invaders noticing my interference but I didn''t have to; they were already alert and stirring, luminous constrictors uncoiling from their rest to peer with black eyes down at those who dared disturb their slumber. The Fungal Gardens was my quietest floor, the ambient mana weakest, but it would still be plenty for five pitiful invaders. Not even a Silver among them. Did Calarata truly consider me so weak? I''d wait until they''d fully entered the space before sending the creeping vine over the entrance, but after that, there wasn''t a chance they''d escape. Cave spiders clicked their mandibles overhead, stone-backed toads torn between their coward''s intuition and the promise of potential mana, silverheads darting around each other in the pond. The five humans crept forward, eyes shifting between every aspect of the floor, ready for anything. Well. I could guarantee they weren''t ready for me. The group slunk forward, wary as all hells but already I could see the brilliance of the Fungal Gardens unfold around them. Nuvja''s boon hid the shine of the luminous constrictors'' scales as they crept forward, kept the cave bears hidden in their dens, hid all sense of danger and retreated from all the glorious little shinies I''d tucked around the room. Already greed lit up in their faces. Beautiful. I loved greed. No easier thing to twist to my advantage. "What''s there?" Someone shouted, but it wasn''t from the group; it came from outside my entrance. My mana shifted uncomfortably. Another member of the group? The willowy woman stiffened, glancing around once more before shooing at her group members, jabbing fingers at the little pockets of rubies and sapphires I''d put just outside of their reach. "Nothing much," she called back, even as her group all but sprinted to the jewels, Nuvja so delicately hiding any threats from their awareness. "Let us continue to scope it out, though!" Hm. Trying to steal while not letting anyone else get the chance. Something I could respect, but just not when it was done to me. And unfortunately for them, not what the rats who had worked so hard to collect said jewels would accept against them. The man with the bandages reached out to a den, shadows pulled away so the topaz was clearly visible, and only had a second to inhale before a burrowing rat flung itself through the air and latched onto his nose. He shrieked, backpedaling; the bandages whipped to life with a spiral of mana and tried to lash at his opponent, but the rat had done a lovely job of attaching itself to his face and he couldn''t attack it without beating himself. Wonderful plan. The rest of his group reacted in a similar level of panic, just as burrowing rats of their own leapt for the invaders who dared try to steal their jewels, the poor Bronzes flailing against the unexpected attack. Ah. Perfection. Maybe they wouldn''t even need to face the cave bears. I had enough time to fantasize about all I could do with their mana when another invader appeared at the entrance. She was tall and thin, almost painfully so, with curtains of pale hair and some sort of bone mask over her face; she strode forward and my mana immediately stiffened, feeling the weight that echoed with her movement. A Silver, and a powerful one at that. Maybe the leader of the group? And she''d sent them in before her to scope out the place, either trusting their strength or not caring about their deaths? Either way, I couldn''t help but squint at her; I had been certain the voice had been masculine. Maybe that was her power? Another invader appeared. My mana did its best attempt at hyperventilating. Okay. Fantastic. Great. Both new invaders ignored the group and charged directly for the rats, engaging them in far more coordinated combat; in seconds, whole colonies collapsed to the ground, some with limbs twisting out of alignment and others done in with blunt force trauma. They cut their way through the rats, eyes fixed on the tunnel at the back of the room, fierce and willing and capable. Another invader appeared in the entrance. Okay. I''d misjudged this. Not another group, not another solo adventitious fool looking for a hidden prize; this was an attack. Full of the numbers they thought was necessary to take me down, and I wouldn''t know how many I was facing until they were all in my halls. The paranoia shivered in the back of my core. I gathered all my mana, looming overhead as points of awareness bloomed around every invader, watching them, tracking them, keeping painful focus on their actions. Mana snaked through my lower floors, out of their mana-sight, waking my creatures with much more determination than before; we had to be ready. I was being invaded. - Sounds of combat ahead, which was always a terribly good sign. Alami exhaled, warm air puffing against the pressing chill of the mountain. He didn''t particularly want to be here, now that his head had cooled from the screamed announcement, but he couldn''t deny the flicker of excitement in his chest. He''d been Bronze for far too long, even as a priest, and he could practically taste the potential within the dark stone. Though he''d since abandoned the outside world for this distasteful mountain, he could feel night settling, Akohr''s power brimming stronger within him. He clenched ink-black fingers. Through her, he would rend this dungeon, grow fat and gluttoned off its power. He''d claim the core if it presented itself, but Alami didn''t count himself a fool; surrounded in darkness he could see through easier than daylight, he could see Silvers and Bronzes in equal numbers, each as battle-ready as him. Nearly fifty in total, and that was without the Gold First Mate directing the charge. No, Alami wouldn''t be fighting for the core. He''d come for a lesser prize. Akohr was not the type of god that desired souls or blood from her chosen priests; as the Goddess of Night, she was worshiped far and wide already, from thankful prayers for the quiet she provided to childish requests to keep the monsters at bay. No, her priests served as her eyes on the ground, investigating anything that caught her attention. And something certainly had. Fight as you wish, she''d murmured as he followed Lluc with violence in his heart. But confirm. Confirm her suspicions, whatever those were. That same bright little spark of pride set Alami grinning against the pressing walls of the cavern, ignoring all the other adventurers. Though he knew there were other followers of Akohr in Calarata, she had chosen him to investigate. And being chosen tended to come with fantastic new granted powers. So he marched behind the others, tucked somewhere in the middle of the pack; while there was room enough even for those with obvious ancestries, the walls narrowed them down to walk nearly in a single line. Lluc''s presence kept them from devolving into active combat but Calarata did not trusters make; everyone walked on a knife''s edge, hair raised and fingers tight around weapons. Alami''s hands did not leave his daggers, ink crawling up his fingertips in preparation. But he blended in here, just a hapless Bronze enhancer looking for a quick buck. Nothing to look twice at, certainly not anyone to threaten. He shrouded himself in the glorious sensation of anonymity. Further they moved into the mountains, growing closer and closer until Alami could feel mana buzzing against his skin, the vague burn in the back of his throat that spoke to pure mana, so rare and so blessedly powerful. The others could sense it too, sharpening grins and fingering weapons as their time came. As much as Lluc had told them about the dungeon, it was another thing entirely to feel it for yourself. The sounds of combat increased. Five minutes passed before Alami had shuffled his way through the twisting caverns and arrived at the entrance. It was a narrow little thing, a hallway branching off in twin identical tunnels, made of silver-flecked limestone bright with power. The darkness hid nothing from his ink-black eyes and he could see the subtle lines of spiderweb overhead, the pulse of moss rippling in an invisible water stream, dust kicked up by skittering feet. He brushed his hands over his armour, the iron-studded leather he''d won off the corpse of the man who''d told him that Akohr had an interest in his following. Nothing like the plate of the man in front of him, nor the barkskin protection of the woman charging into the dungeon. Still Bronze, though mana thrashed hungrily in his chest; he couldn''t afford to be hasty sprinting in like he had the physical body of a Gold. Chosen of Akohr or not, he was still human. So, ever the rogue he''d fashioned himself into, Alami ducked into the nearest shadow and waited for whoever was behind him to enter. The first was a wiry man with a bow and silver-streaked hair; not exactly an iron wall of defense. A woman with some serpentine ancestry, more scales than skin with a patterned hood flared high in place of hair; promising, but he didn''t like his chances sneaking behind with the four other members of her party snapping at her heels. Another human, nerves drawing his shoulders high to his ears and his grip on his double-headed spear shaking; a fantastic choice if he wanted to die. The next person''s eyes locked directly on him. Alami took a moment to really realize what''d happened; he was crouching in the shadows, his black-stained armour paired with the ink dripping from his fingers, cloaking him in one of his latent abilities serving Akohr had given him. While it was certainly possible to see him, the surrounding darkness combined with the focus on the dungeon should have meant he''d fade neatly to the background. Though, judging by the man''s rather blatant ancestry and the glow behind his golden eyes, Alami rather doubted his disguise was doing much. They appraised each other. Then, as if he wasn''t giving up his entrance, the man stepped to the side, letting a woman with smoke curling through her hair walk past. He stood next to Alami, dark skin and darker hair blending into the surrounding limestone, one eyebrow raised. "I''d hope this wasn''t an attempted ambush." His voice was calm and collected, only slightly betrayed by the inhuman rumble that curled around his words, but his eyes were sharp. Fantastic. Alami loved having people pay attention to him. Really one of his favourite things. He straightened from his crouch, letting Akohr''s night fall off his shoulders. The ink fell from where it''d been spreading up to his wrist, settling back on his fingertips. "You''re welcome to think I''d need an ambush to take you." Bronze though he was to the man''s Silver, Alami was a chosen priest of Akohr. He wouldn''t eat crow for any bastard who thought to challenge him. The man blinked, some of that trader''s calm falling from his face¡ªhe laughed, a deep, rumbling sound, and crossed his arms, still hunched over in a rather awkward manner. He was annoyingly tall. "The little spider bites back," he said, lips tugging back in a terrible artist''s rendering of a smile. Alami bared his own teeth. "I''m no spider." "In spirit," the man said, infuriatingly. He''d lost the suspicion and was now looking him over appraisingly, something like interest behind the coin-gold of his eyes. "What brings you to the dungeon?" "I could ask you the same." The man blinked once, canines still on full display. "I''m going to guess you don''t know who I am," he rumbled, though he sounded even more amused. "I am Gon?al." Alami let the name wash over him. Calaratan streetrat though he''d been, he''d kept an ear to the ground of anyone who''d clawed their way up much like he''d dreamed of, and Gon?al was an unfortunately recognizable name. He didn''t let himself stiffen. Priests of Akohr feared no man. "You''re with the Silent Market." And the youngest nightmarketer who''d ever joined that particular gang, though he kept that little tidbit to himself. Gon?al was somewhere in his late twenties, maybe thirties, but the Silent Market was the kind of picky that meant most of their chosen were greying at the temples. You had to be special to get in with them. And Gon?al had. Very little else was known about him, because that was how Calarata worked; information begeted information, and Gon?al was rather particular about keeping his own life under wraps. Something about his ancestry, something about a mysterious tutor who had taught him assessment; half truths and whispers. If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. Alami also had the habit of not giving a shit, because nightmarketers made themselves. They weren''t chosen by gods. So he kept his eyebrows raised, tapping over his daggers'' hilts. "And I am Alami." Gon?al waited a second, perhaps for Alami to drop to his knees and beg forgiveness. Alami hoped he choked. It wasn''t like his name had the same weight as Varc¨ªs Bilaro or Lluc Cardena Ferr¨¦, or even other members of the Silent Market. Gon?al was more of a commodity. Alami certainly wasn''t the type to bend. He did let his eyes slide over the man''s exposed claws and canines, the gleam of scales around his neck and the cat''s glint of his eyes. Indulging in a curiosity had the added benefit of keeping up his impunity. "Those natural?" Gon?al''s grin spread, though stayed polite. "Natural as yours." Alami spread his black-tipped fingers and gave an answering grin. "I like you," Gon?al finally said, which would have probably been nice if it hadn''t come between sharpened fangs and an oddly shaped tongue. Alami narrowed his eyes. "And I don''t." Gon?al laughed, a meaty, resonating sound, spooking a fair few of the adventurers entering the dungeon. Something bright surfaced past the placid calm. "I believe it," he said, the scales over his cheekbones glinting as mana swirled to life through his eyes, turning back to the tunnel. His towering bulk meant he was able to slot himself back in the line with only a few muffled curses from those behind¡ªAlami wasted a half a second before darting in behind him, Akohr''s darkness crawling up his fingers once more. He''d wanted a distraction for his entrance. The man would have to serve. "Try not to die," Gon?al said, rolling his shoulders, something finally breaking past the trader''s blankness he kept on his face. A wild grin, that gaunted streetrat love of violence, even as he searched for an opening to charge through. Alami recognized that look. He''d seen it on his own face for every miserable moment of his life from the before, when he''d been nothing more than a Calaratan bastard searching for any adrenaline to soothe the weariness of hunger and exhaustion. He was older now, freed from that life, blessed by a god and chosen to wield her strength. But he could see a kindred spirit in the man. "Likewise," he said, and darted into the dungeon. - When he was feeling particularly indulgent, he considered himself a scholar. Lord Ealdhere Darlington¡ªor, Baron Ealdhere Darlington, since the Le¨®ro Kingdom had so many finicky little rules about who could technically be called a lord, which was utterly fascinating considering that the rule had only come into standing after the death of the last High King. That had been less than a hundred years ago, not near enough time for a rule to spread so quickly across such a large territory, but still the law banning any foreigners from calling themselves lords was ironclad. Did it matter here, he wondered? Calarata was a rather lawless place, not so much unconcerned with Le¨®ro but actively dismantling their rules, but he''d still seen no others refer to themselves as lords or ladies. Fascinating, really. This was why he had decided to travel, to leave behind the gentle shores of his island home and find the mysteries of the wider world. The language here, Viejabran, had been tricky to get a proper handle on, but Ealdhere rather thought he''d done well. Done well enough to hire a band of adventurers to protect him, in fact. He''d never put a thought to training. He was fine being unranked; let the other dreamers chase being Mythril. His heart belonged to more tangible prizes. Such as this utterly fascinating dungeon he found himself in. His band had been initially hesitant, having been hired specifically for protection as he ventured into the unnamed jungle around Calarata in search of fascinating flora and fauna rather than anything related to dungeons, but he''d merely had to slide over a touch more gold than before and they had been more than prepared to go. And it wasn''t like dungeon delving didn''t carry its own share of rewards; Ealdhere had done his best to make it absolutely clear that they were free to take any gold or treasures they came across. He merely wanted the more living things. They''d accepted that, but warily. A shrewd sort of paranoia seemed to live alongside their every decision. It sounded like an exhausting way to live. He was well aware he stuck out here, both with his red hair and pale skin and his general optimism in life; he''d fitted his bowler cap with the feathers of a greennecked dove in an attempt to fit in, a child''s attempt at looking¡­ pirate-y, but he couldn''t help but enjoy it. One of life''s many indulgences. Ealdhere smiled at his band. They didn''t so much as look at him. They were in the first room of the dungeon, which was almost disappointingly full of common creatures he''d already investigated around Calarata; green algae, verdaj algoj, growing in odd, flowing patterns like the banks of a river. Perhaps a little too well-watered, judging by their leggy growth as they searched for more light to balance their hydration, but still healthy. Whitecap mushrooms, blankkapaj fungoj, blooming between them all in a delicate little balance, tucked in the crevices of stalagmites to hide from the quartz-light, looking like they didn''t have long to grow before something ate them. Maybe the burrowing rats darting hither and thither? Or something larger, not yet engaged by the near dozen people already filling the first room? "Old man," Jorge snapped, tightening his grip on his flail. "Keep up. We can only protect you if you stay with us." Ah. Always a fair reminder. Ealdhere tended to fall into his own head. "My apologies!" He said, adjusting the spectacles on the brim of his nose. He and the three members of his group¡ªJorge, a broad, gruff man with a flail and the scars over his legs to show he''d practiced with it; Steshe, a narrow, wiry man with a specialization in a mutated mana-sight, eyes lighting up like bonfires to direct attacks or blind his enemies; and Neus, a towering woman with dryadic ancestry, hair like moss and bark crawling over her skin when she wanted it. All fine folks. Ealdhere trotted forward to walk between them, stepping into the dungeon alongside the near fifty other adventurers who''d come for a bite at the proverbial apple; already, combat raged ahead, several burrowing rats¡ªtruantaj ratoj¡ªleaping forward with uncharacteristic aggression to whoever dared near their territory. Well. That was the fun of a dungeon! There was truly no way to know what to expect. Ealdhere had only ever strolled through the tamed dungeons of his homeland, with cores already bound and guides hired off the basis of his last name alone; this was a far more fiery encounter. Mysteries and dangers lurked around every corner. Ever so exciting. "They seem to have things handled," he said cheerily, gesturing vaguely at a pair of adventurers tangoing with the largest horde of rats. Beyond them, some thousand feet away, a pond lurked before the entrance in faux complacency. Ealdhere would bet some of his not insubstantial fortune that there were threats in the water; perhaps silverheads¡ªar?entkapuloj¡ªjudging by what he knew of Calarata''s more common creatures. It was always a delight trying to predict what he would encounter. "Shall we head to the next floor?" Jorge spun on his heel, flail arching over his head and slamming into the wall hard enough the stone trembled¡ªa luminous constrictor, helaj konstriktantoj, exploded into a gory wave of scarlet. Sniped right before it had been able to use its ability to blind them¡ªhe knew he''d hired the correct choice of a band. Ealdhere held down his desire to clap, but just barely. "Excellent work, my good fellow!" Jorge shook his flail, scales and bone splattering off the iron points. "This room is going to get packed," he muttered, glancing back to see even more adventurers pour in after them, eyes hungry for treasure and power. "If you want a chance to collect creatures, we need to move quickly." If we want a chance to collect treasure, we need to go now went unsaid, but everyone heard it. "Ah," he said, drumming his fingers over the monogrammed rapier at his side. A touch disappointing, considering there were mysteries on this first floor he already knew he hadn''t uncovered, but there would always be time on the return journey. "Onward, fair friends! Adventure waits for no man!" Steshe and Neus exchanged a look. - Things were not going particularly well. Jim¨ª swallowed a terrified yelp, scrambling back against the limestone as a rat¡ªit was a rat, why was it so large, why did it look so hungry¡ªscampered at his feet, forked-tip tail lashing at the ground. He kicked off the back wall and leapt over its head, sprinting back to Val''s side, and promptly had to duck a chain as she swung at the approaching figure before recognizing it as the only other member of her party. Jim¨ª''s nerves were so frayed he couldn''t muster the energy to react to his near decapitation with more than a grunt. Gods. Why had he thought it was a good idea to attack the dungeon? It''d felt so right when he''d been in the crowd, swinging his fists against whatever dared threaten Calarata, but that had been before he''d actually gone and done the damn thing. He was no martyr, no hero; hells, why wasn''t the Dread Pirate fighting it? Wasn''t that what the taxes were for? But he had no time to think about that, because he was in the fucking dungeon. He darted forward and slapped a hand over her ribcage, the little gap between the amalgamated collection of armour that didn''t have a matching piece across her whole body. Typical of pit fighters, no real money to get the good shit, though her weapon¡ªa handle with a blade on one end and a weighted chain on the other¡ªwas quality enough to hurt where it needed to. Mana surged at his fingertips and Val straightened, losing the strength enhancement he''d given her previously and gaining speed instead; her eyes brightened to twin embers as she spun, chain unfurling like wings, and whipped a constrictor off the wall from where it had flared its pale underbelly. Jim¨ª kind of wished he''d just collapsed instead. She cleaved through three more rats, backing up to the center of the room; the snakes mainly struck from the stone, the rats emerging from hidden dens, and only by being completely exposed could they see their enemies approaching. He really wasn''t a fan of that. But they''d been here for a long while, and already the other adventurers were filtering down, letting the two Bronzes distract the horde as they made their escape to further floors. Jim¨ª couldn''t bring himself to feel slighted; his heart was still crowing joyously that he was alive. Val was saying something, he realized; he twisted his head to pick it up, considering he had to work around a missing ear. "We can go deeper," she snarled, eyes impossibly bright even in the dark of the dungeon, chain slithering around her ankles. The scar that''d torn off his left ear and very nearly tore off his head flared up, still so freshly healed; he''d barely survived his last party''s wipe, so recently he''d only had time to team with Val before the next adventure called. No, Jim¨ª was decidedly uninterested in pushing his luck too far. He''d heard and felt those songs before. "Not now," he tried, shuffling back as her fingers twitched over her weapon. "Look¨C" he cast around, jabbing a finger at the tunnel extending further down. "It''s already full of people and we''re not strong enough. Let''s just raid this floor while everyone else is distracted and get out!" He''d insinuated that she wasn''t strong. That, as it turned out, was the wrong move. Val''s eyes narrowed to slits. "Are you saying we''re not enough to keep going?" Her blade glittered coldly as she raised its hooked tip. "Even though you said you''d be able to boost my abilities until I was on par with a Silver?" Jim¨ª swallowed. Ah. He had said that, hadn''t he? It was terribly difficult to join parties when you had the reputation of being the last surviving member, let alone twice. He might have. Um. Emphasized his Bronze-level abilities a touch more than he really should have. "Look," he tried again, because Calarata hadn''t raised no quitter. "You''re plenty strong, it''s me I''m worried about. I''m just support-focused¡ªit''d be like you were alone down there!" Val grinned in a way that felt more like baring her teeth. "And?" A growl split the room. Dimly, Jim¨ª realized that the other adventurers had left, leaving only a handful on the first floor; less than ten, most already working on crossing the rocky pond. Earlier, there had been nearly the full fifty in the room, much too many for any creature to attack without a stable plan. But now that number was much reduced, and he was not the only one to notice. From a pocket of pitch black off to the left side, something stirred; Val noticed the blood draining from his face and whirled, weapon raised and falling into a two-point stance. The other adventurers either cut their losses and sprinted down the tunnel or froze, wavering on the edge of the pond, debating going for it and risking being caught distracted. Jim¨ª rather thought he would have just thrown himself into the pond rather than face the monster that emerged. It was taller than he was on all fours, massive and bristling, paws larger than his head with claws with knives and eyes black as coal. It rumbled, shaggy fur quivering at the motion, so powerful Jim¨ª could feel the sound in the marrow of his bones. He quietly considered pissing his trousers. The cave bear¡ªbecause of course it was a fucking cave bear¡ªtook a second to build up speed, but it rammed into the closest adventurer with all the force of an avalanche. She went down in a horrible, piping scream, holding intestines that steamed against the air. The bear snarled, swiping at her partner, who threw a frantic shield of water over his chest; its claws met the defense with an earth-shaking boom. Blood spurted from the man¡ªno, the boy''s¡ªnose as he held onto his mana with trembling fingers, unable to move backward while maintaining the shield but his animal brain not willing to drop it. It doomed him. The bear hit the shield again and the hardened water couldn''t hold up, splattering to the ground alongside most of the boy''s left arm. He screamed and fell. Jim¨ª must have made a sound, some pathetic little whimper, because the bear snapped to his direction. It growled, low and crashing. Scarlet splattered over its fur. When it charged at him, Jim¨ª had never sprinted to the side faster in his life. But the room was relatively thin and straight and there wouldn''t be a dodge, not when the bear lumbered for him like a collapsing mountain¡ªhe was the moving target and Val went ignored, able to duck to the side as the bear moved, paws ripping up stone and algae alike, maw gaping. Val popped up from her roll, arms raised. His speed enhancement paired with her own gift of telekinetic aim as she hurled the chained side of her weapon, a second away from lashing around its back leg but she was too far and the bear was too close and he was going to die¨C Movement. A man swirled before him, face hidden behind a mask shaped like a bird''s outstretched wings; Jim¨ª heard something faintly in the back of his mind, the lumbering press of gravity settling heavy on his shoulders, and the bear ground to a halt. Something was pinning it in place, fur mussed as dozens of invisible presences shoved against its shoulders. Its muscles bunched and it heaved, eyes furious, and tore itself free¡ªjust a second too late. The man impaled through its back with a narrow, flashing blade. Jim¨ª stared at what he''d been pretty sure would have been his certain death. "Clever distraction, young boy!" The man called, ripping out his falchion and spinning on his heel in one motion. The bear roared, a broken, pained sound, and lashed out blindly; the man¡ªthe Silver¡ªdanced around its frenzied claws like it was a coordinated dance. Behind his mask, his eyes gleamed. At his side, a woman stepped forward; one of the southern dryads, skin green and hair like a curtain of moss, though flecked in odd splotches of pale red. Her face was placid as a forest pool as she raised twin daggers, ducking under a wild claw, and sunk both blades through the bear''s skull. It trembled, mouth opening and closing, and collapsed. "Oho!" The man said, pleased. He sounded like he''d correctly guessed an ingredient in his dinner, not like he''d just helped kill one of the most terrifying things Jim¨ª had ever seen in his entire life. "Tougher than I thought it would be¡ªperhaps this dungeon will be an adventure after all!" The dryad just blinked at him, tugging her knives free. She ignored the dripping scarlet and held them loosely at her side, the barest hint of a smile on her face as she looked at the eccentrically dressed man. His bird-shaped mask was matched with a flowing cloak, the edges lined in feathers, tall boots reaching nearly his knees and a leather armour set dyed pale blue underneath. His soul burned with the power of a Silver. "And you, young boy!" He didn''t seem capable of speaking any quieter than a shout. "You need to work on your reactions. Why, if I hadn''t been there, you''d certainly be dead!" He laughed, a light little sound. "If you survive, count your life debt to Valentulus of the Wandering Empire!" Jim¨ª stared at him. Valentulus seemed to realize that he wouldn''t be falling to his knees and swearing his lifelong allegiance, a furrow drawing his brows lower before he shrugged, flicking the worst of the blood off his falchion before striding towards the back of the room. The dryad followed him. His gaze flicked down to the cave bear''s corpse. I think it''s time to retire. Val padded over, knuckles white around her weapon. For as strong as she was, she was still Bronze, and this was a harsh reminder that yes, there were powers above them, and then powers above them. Valentulus and the dryad all but merrily skipped through the rock pond, ignoring whatever lived in the water, and went on their cheery way further into the dungeon. They barely spared a glance for the two cooling corpses at the water''s edge. In an instant, it was only Val and Jim¨ª left on the first floor. Until, once more, something shifted right on the edges of his vision. It was moving, though he couldn''t focus right on it, eyes unable to lock on the proper form. Maybe mana, or maybe the raw shock that was flooding through his awareness like a monsoon. Then the figure paused over the corpse of the cave bear and let out a low, keening wail, the darkness bleeding away from its form to reveal¡­ an unfortunately familiar form. Oh, he thought faintly. It''s got a mate. The bear snarled, shadows wreathing its form like a miasma of pure midnight, hazing around the edges until he couldn''t tell where the monster ended and the cavern began, black eyes pained and furious. Smaller than the previous one but with shadows peeling all over its body, hiding anything specific until it was just a pair of eyes ringed with streaks of black. Val either hid her shock better or didn''t feel it, stepping forward with her weapon raised and teeth bared. Maybe she was attacking it in an attempt to kill it, or maybe a distraction so she could run away, trusting on the speed enhancement still lurking under her skin; Jim¨ª could barely focus on the whole situation. His body knew what to do. Well. He''d survived his last two party wipes by doing something similar; it''d worked, so clearly the gods were telling him it was the right decision. Val charged towards the bear and Jim¨ª promptly fled in the opposite direction. The rats had been culled by the other adventurers, corpses scattered and their courage broken, and even then Jim¨ª still dodged frantic charges and blinding flashes of light from serpents lurking on the walls; a thousand feet was a long way to run and he focused only on his steps, ignoring any and all sounds from behind, when Val''s roars faded to screams to whimpers to silence. He just had to get out. He reached the other end of the floor and found¨C Nothing. There wasn''t an exit, no opening in the stone where he''d come through originally, just swirling shadows and grey limestone. A luminous constrictor raised its head and he flinched away, staring desperately at the wall, waiting for it to pass like a bad joke and reveal the way out¨C A growl, from behind. Jim¨ª turned very slowly. The bear, newly crowned in a chain-shaped gash and with scarlet fangs, padded towards him. Slowly. Casually. No need for a rush. Jim¨ª thought, inexplicably, back to how he''d dreamed of being a bard. A lovely quiet life, traveling the world and earning his keep with songs and stories. Only a poor man''s instrument to his name but nothing more needed. The bear snarled, blood dripping from its fangs. There was no exit. Chapter 81 - Second Plight Coseth wished he had something a little more eloquent to bring to the table, something to make all the girls at the tavern swoon as he drawled through a story of his exploits, but his first and most pressing thought was this thing is horribly ugly. Because, gods above, it really was. Sprawling and squat, it crouched before an open den on the second floor, nearly as tall as his chest. He could see hints of its toad-esque appearance, bits of gray-green skin, but everything else was covered in plated metal like an armoured knight from legends of lore. Coseth just couldn''t remember any knight he''d read about having a face only a mother could love. Squashed like a rotten pomegranate, covered in flat sheets of metal like a battering ram, ugly little eyes and a broad, toothless mouth. The merchant''s son in him told him other things as well, noting the high quality iron the toad was armoured in and the glint of earthen mana behind its glossy eyes, but Coseth really couldn''t get past how terrible the thing looked. He peered around his sheltering rock wall, arrow already pulled tight to his cheek; his mana circulated through his eyes and presented the easiest weak points; gaps for mobility around the joints of its limbs, between the pebbled iron around its eyes, the thin line of its open mouth. Ever a gambler at heart, he took the hardest shot. The toad shrieked as an arrow popped through its maw, spearing right through its ugly mouth and ignoring all its fancy armour; looked like it didn''t appreciate iron on both the outside and inside. A right shame. Coseth barely had a moment to appreciate his rather flawless kill before the action continued. "To me!" Kentra roared, slamming her bare feet against a relatively clear section of ground; lightning crackled up her legs and exploded her jump forward, not so much kicking the stone-backed toad trying its damndest to flee so much as introducing her heel to its intestines. It popped in a shower of scarlet. Her magic was an odd one; she could enhance her basic abilities with lightning, vastly improving her reflexes and strength beyond a regular enhancer, but at the cost of also unleashing said lightning across her body. If she wore armour, hells even too thick of clothing, the lightning remained trapped against her skin. She was already covered in the twisting remains of scars to show she''d learned that particular lesson. So, even in a full untamed dungeon, she wore a loose, billowing tunic and short trousers. No gloves, no boots, not a scrap of armour. And she was still killing things faster than him. Blasted kids. Birrin stood behind, blindfold securely over his eyes as he threw out great loops of mana, seizing indiscriminately at the minds of their opponents and throwing them off course. Kentra whirled to follow his step, lashing out as constrictors and toads shuddered under his mental assault, only to be properly physically assaulted as her lightning-enhanced feet kindly knocked them out of their stupor and into death. Beyond them, back to back as normal, Sarissa and Kriya kept to the far wall; Sarissa in front, her serpentine hood spread wide to flash the eye-like markings underneath and her fists raised, covered in cragged limestone. Kriya behind, her dappled scales flashing rhythmically as she called up a healing spell, fingers gleaming a pale red. Coseth dug his arrow out of the toad''s corpse and nocked it, mana swirling as it guided his hands into a better position; the fletching almost grazed Kentra''s shoulder before exploding through the rat about to leap off the wall at her. She barely reacted. Four years they''d been a team, scraping through various cities in search of anything that paid¡ªCalarata was the latest in a long line of fallen opportunities, thankfully one that didn''t pay as much attention to what other, more prim-and-proper adventurers demanded. Coseth was greying at the temples, they didn''t have an even blend of ranged and physical brawlers, for all their age and experience only half of them had made the jump to Silver. Why would Calarata give a shit? Warm bodies were warm bodies, and this team had warm bodies that were at least competent. Coseth''s age or Sarissa and Kriya''s ancestry didn''t get more than a single glance before they were free to scour the tavern boards for opportunities. So now they whirled their way through a dungeon and hunted for a greater prize. "Fuck off," Kentra barked, lashing out with a second kick to decapitate another armoured toad¡ªCoseth took a quick, preening moment to notice that his had been much larger than hers¡ªand shaking off the iron pebbles digging into her skin. "Fuck, I hate these things. The second I get my hands on the core, I''m forbidding it from ever making them again." "Have to say I agree," Birrin muttered, snapping his fingers twice; two charging rats abruptly fumbled to a stop, eyes clouded, and Coseth took them out with a single arrow. "The raid-frenzy is particularly annoying with them." Sarissa hissed, hood spreading wider, and slammed her rock-encrusted hands together; a spire of limestone burst from below her feet and stopped the slow, lumbering charge of a half-grown emerald green crab, spearing through its carapace with a distinctive crunch. Kriya peered around her, amber eyes wide. The room echoed hollowly in the absence of any active threats, canal gurgling with lazy rapids and bone white leaves rustling overhead. The sisters padded over, Sarissa idly letting her stone gauntlets fall off with a roll of her shoulders. "I say we push on," she said, voice lisping and catching on the softer sounds¡ªher and Kriya''s naga ancestry was still very fresh in their bloodline, impossible to ignore. If they''d waited a few more generations to be born they might''ve only had a few scattered scales, the slitted pupils, maybe the fangs; instead, nearly half their bodies were covered in dappled red-gold scales, hair replaced by a cobra''s hood, mouths twisting awkwardly around what should have been their native language. Coseth couldn''t help but be somewhat jealous, at times. If his face was covered in scales, gods only know how many more fools he could have swindled into parting with their dear coins in gambling dens. A merchant son''s charisma only went so far. Kentra grinned, sharp and bright. "Hells if we don''t. We''ll have to cut a clean exit to avoid the Dread Pirate but with a dungeon core under our belt, there''s no fucking rules that''ll keep us pinned here." Her grin was matched by them all. It''d been a spur of the moment choice, rallied by First Mate Lluc''s speech under the borwood tree, but oh, the thought was a lovely, wonderful thing. Take a dungeon core and you were promised power above power, strength above strength; whether they took it to Le¨®ro and claimed the title of High Lord and the royal position that came with it, whether they graduated from adventuring party to legends, whether they took claim over the dungeon and welcomed adventurers from all over Aiqith to pay them tribute for the chance to test their mettle. Coseth found he rather enjoyed those fanciful thoughts. Sometimes, he thought that losing his fortune in seedy alleys and being forced to pick up adventuring just to keep his head belonging to him instead of debtors was one of the better things to happen to him. "We''ve made it through four rooms so far," Birrin said, ever the studious planner. His blindfold crinkled as he absentmindedly rubbed at his temples. "Judging by the lack of other parties we''ve encountered, I''d say this is a branching floor, presumably joining back together at the entrance further down; if this dungeon is as young as the First Mate said, it might only have three floors. We''ll have to move if we want to stay ahead." "Now you''re speaking my language," Kentra barked, lightning crackling around the edges of her eyes. Wonderful intimidation tactic. "If it keeps being just toads and rats, no matter their evolutions, we''ll breeze through this shit." She made to take a step forward, coming closer to the group. Coseth''s eyes burned. His Bronze enhancement was built around aiming, guiding his hands and eyes to the perfect position to loose his arrows, but his natural vision was still leaps and bounds above others; he watched the moss just beneath her foot shift, splaying down like the ground had melted away, and he''d barely registered the thought before he slammed both hands over her chest. Kentra choked out whatever air he''d shoved out of her, stumbling back; his bow had still been in his hand and the end clattered against her skull, string tangling in her hair before she ripped it out. "The fuck, Coseth¨C" Using the tip of an arrow, he crouched and jabbed at the moss. It passed through without impact. Well then. Coseth slung his bow over his back to free up his hands and stuck another arrow into the moss, prying it apart; its billowing strands parted begrudgingly, tangled around each other in intricate knots, but certainly not strong enough to hold any manner of weight. Because beneath the moss that clung to the edges of the floor, a hole some seven feet deep loomed. Coseth bit back a hiss. Neatly situated at the bottom, over a dozen wooden spears jabbed outward with charcoal-sharpened tips. Lovely. Kentra''s retort died. Birrin stepped forward, making sure no one was in his direct path of sight before lifting up the edge of his blindfold, peeking at the hole. "That''s not a dungeon-made trap," he said, lips drawing back in a frown. "Too crude, but effective." Coseth rather thought that an excessive number of jagged spears didn''t necessarily count as crude, but he''d trust the Silver here. Kentra scowled. Her inability to wear boots without causing even more damage to herself had that annoying little habit of being even worse in unsafe terrain¡ªand with whatever monster was whipping these things up, that most definitely sounded unsafe. "Fuckers," she scoffed, glaring at the hole like it''d slept with her mother. Which, fair. It was only sheer dumb luck that they''d avoided stepping on that in their wild race to clear the room of active threats; only Sarissa and Kriya, with their scales, might have come out of the situation relatively unscathed. Fleshy humans with equally fleshy feet would not have the same chance, and they weren''t exactly well-paid enough to afford armoured boots. Something the dungeon core would solve, if they got there. "We''ll have to be vigilant," Birrin said, tugging his blindfold back down. His lips were thin. "They''re small holes, but we can''t rely on them staying that shallow. Kentra, if need be, you could leap out before hitting the bottom, and Sarissa can build the rock out if we encounter one; unless we want to leave them for adventurers coming after us. Coseth, do you think you can spot more?" Sometimes, Coseth wondered why he let a kid over fifteen years his junior lead him, and sometimes he was plenty happy having someone else make the plan. "Probably," he said, because there wasn''t a need to bedazzle his abilities in a team he trusted. "It''ll depend on how hectic the scene is." Birrin nodded. "We''ll have to hope that''s enough. Stay close. Sarissa, do a pulse of the ground before we enter to see if you can find any. Kriya, do you think you can heal a fall into one without exhausting yourself?" No response. Sarissa''s slitted pupils flashed. "Kriya?" As one, they all spun¡ªthe first fucking rule of being an adventuring party was to protect the healer¡ªbut Kriya was just standing there, her dappled scales glinting in the reflected algae-light. Her eyes were closed, arms tight to her side, her hood unflared and pressing against her neck. Healing mana hazed around her hands, still ready whenever they needed it. But she was just standing there. Sarissa stepped forward, waving a hand. "Sister," she tried again, but Kriya didn''t react; Sarissa glanced back at Birrin, the only one of them with any mental prowess, but he just shrugged. Coseth felt his brows draw low over his face. Untamed dungeons were dangerous for more reasons than just death; strange and unfamiliar creatures lurked in their depths, ones with powers unknown and untested. If there was something that was trying to take their healer, they were in serious trouble¡ªand maybe it was targeting her since she was still Bronze, easier to combat, which would mean that Coseth was next and he was rather uncomfortable with that whole thought. Sarissa reached out, rocks crawling up her arms, and lightly nudged Kriya''s shoulder. She jolted, eyes flying open; something pale flashed over her gaze, twining around her slitted pupils, but it fled the next second. Kriya made a soft sound, hugging her arms closer to her sides. "Sorry," she whispered. "It''s fine," Sarissa said, ever the protective sister. "What was that?" Kriya tapped her fingers together, frowning at the ground. Mana sparked at every touch. "I don''t know," she finally settled on, words lisping more than normal. "Just a¡­ feeling, I guess. Like someone was calling my name." Birrin visibly perked up. "Do you think there''s a source of healing mana here, then?" Coseth couldn''t help his own blink. That made a very appreciated amount of sense¡ªmana of similar types tended to¡­ react to each other, rebounding off and echoing through the spiritual plane. It was dampened here by the dungeon''s pure mana, but if a dungeon would have anything suitably powerful enough to reach out, healing mana made perfect sense. Sarissa flashed her fangs in a facsimile of a human smile. "If there is, it might be enough to get you to Silver." And oh, that would be very welcome. Having a Silver healer in their group would open many, many doors. Coseth was always fond of having open doors. It tended to help. He''d reach Silver, one day. Pushing forty that he was, it was a miracle he''d even reached Bronze with how late he''d started his journey, but he was nothing if not determined to push even further beyond. There were mountains yet to climb and gold yet to claim. This dungeon would help skip a lot of those tedious steps. Which meant they were wasting time. Sarissa spent another moment whispering something to Kriya, probably an encouragement, and the youngest member of their group nodded back and let her hood flare, twin eyes glaring at their surroundings. Coseth unslung his bow, abandoning two splintered arrows and dropping the rest into his quiver. He hadn''t had to use his dagger yet and he was rather hoping things stayed that way. "Forward," Birrin said, tugging his blindfold more securely over his eyes¡ªno reason to summon illusions if he didn''t have to. "Diamond stance." Kentra immediately strode to the front, rocking back on her heels even as she inspected the ground before with a more wary eye¡ªCoseth to the left, Birrin to the right, and Sarissa as the tank in the back. Kriya tucked herself in the middle, close enough to touch any of them should the need arise. Her eyes were distant, though. Cloudy. Coseth shook out the thought. They had other things to focus on. - The dungeon''s presence was far from comforting. Nicau uncurled from his algae-bed, movements only half his own; some ancient hunger awoke in his chest, thrashing and starving, fingers curling into claws and mana rising like oil up his throat¡ªand then he remembered the sensation and grappled for his Name, letting the cool presence of Nicau smooth over the edges of his fury, relax the iron building over his shoulders. And then the call increased. Nicau swallowed a hiss, teeth biting through his lips; the last time he''d been aware of this, the dungeon had reached out with one invigorating call, inciting the raid-frenzy, but that''d been it. There was something more alive for this one, more desperate¡ªthe dungeon kept calling him to hunt, to hurt, to defend. Its voice echoed through his bones. But he was Nicau, was Nicau, and his mind was his own. He wrenched his control back with trembling fingers. Outside, other kobolds had no such defense; they charged, shrieking and warbling, to pour out of the den. Nicau stood on only slightly unsteady feet and peered outside his little room, watching meat and materials drop uselessly to the ground as kobolds snatched at weapons, golden eyes burning with passion. Another invasion, it seemed. One bigger than before. Nicau was not terribly pleased with that information. He grabbed his spear just for the familiar comfort and exited his room, pressing tight to the wall so dozens of kobolds who hadn''t already been on hunting parties could swarm out the den. They had traps now, and fire-sharpened spears, and Nicau was still working on trying to build their armoury to include actual weapons built for real damage¡ªslow going, to put it lightly, considering he''d been a pigeoncatcher and not a blacksmith¡ªbut there was still something tight in his chest as he watched them rush out. He didn''t want them to die. In the back, staff clutched tight in her claws and strings of bones and jewels hanging off her horns, Chieftess barked commands. Only older kobolds had the mental fortitude to fight against the dungeon''s call in order to listen, the younglings rushing out with no sense nor strategy, but several dozen stayed at her side as she laid out her plan of attack. She''d truly earned the title chieftess¡ªhells, Nicau was the human here, and she was leading them with more grace than he''d ever had. Her golden eyes flashed toward him. Nicau darted over, the dungeon''s call raising every anxiety he hadn''t even known he''d had; the kobolds parted before him, all jittering in place with blood in their eyes. They wanted to hunt. Chieftess churred at him, a wordless greeting. He warbled back the proper response. Fight? She asked, spinning her staff through her claws. The scarlet wood gleamed with hints of wrangled mana. And. Hm. That was the question, wasn''t it? Nicau was dungeonborn¡ªsort of, it was a weird grey area and though the dungeon claimed him, he had still been born in Calarata and apparently that mattered? Again, he wasn''t a scholar, he was a pigeoncatcher¡ªand the dungeon had called him to fight. According to the Name nestled in his soul and the blessing lurking in his throat, he should fight. But the equally strong part of him that was Nicau instead of Nicau clutched his spear tighter to his chest and reminded him what was likely outside these stone walls. Invaders. Humans. Fighting a hound was very different to fighting humans. Nicau tried for a winning smile and felt it fall flat, not that the kobold would understand the gesture in the first place. "No," he said, pulling his spear closer to his chest. "I''ll stay here. Defend." Chieftess stared at him. Nicau valiantly fought the urge to crumple under her knowing gaze and failed miserably. But then she nodded, turning back to her squad of kobolds. Maybe she thought the dungeon was protecting him as a Named, maybe she thought someone needed to defend the base, maybe she thought he wasn''t ready for a proper fight. Either way, Nicau would be taking it. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. He took up a stance around halfway into the main room, kicking other spears away to have somewhere flat to stand. Chieftess warbled the last of her commands into a rallying cry and the kobolds howled an echo, claws scratching at the air. She spared a last glance back at him, golden eyes bright, and led the charge out of the den. Nicau just kind of sat there. He didn''t feel any level of heroic, even though ostentatiously he knew that it was a good idea to have someone guard the den. They had jewels and meat and weapons in here that they''d worked hard to gather, and there was no reason to lose them all. Of course, losing them all wouldn''t matter if every other kobold got massacred and there was no one to eat the food or use the spears. Nicau really didn''t like that thought, so he shoved it plenty far to the side and raised his spear, glaring at the entrance to the den like it was the source of his argument. Distant sounds of combat filtered through the stone, rats squeaking and water splashing, the crack of wood against metal against stone against flesh. Something closer. An invader peered into the den. Nicau felt every muscle he had tense. She was thin, nearing willowy, with hair shorn almost to her scalp and wide, flashing eyes he couldn''t quite see the colour of. Loose leather armour clung to her form, splattered with blood over one side. When she saw him, she relaxed. "Thank fuck," she muttered, letting her hand drop to her side, a wide flat blade he couldn''t recognize the style of drooping until its tip nearly scrapped at the stone. "Thought there''d be more kobolds in here." Nicau''s eyes fell to the blood on her armour. Had she killed kobolds? Had she been attacking them outside? With a hesitant brush of his mana he could feel that she was on the higher end of Bronze, plenty strong enough to fight them. Would Chieftess have enough of a plan against her? She peered curiously around the den, stepping fully inside presumably to protect her exposed back; Nicau could have snapped himself in half like a dead twig. Why was she getting closer? Did she want to kill him? "Is there anything good in here?" She asked, swinging her sword idly by her side. She was only half looking at him. Ah. Right. She thought he was a fellow invader. Dimly, he recognized that he''d ceased thinking of them as adventurers. "Nothing in here," he managed. It was only a curl of mana that kept his voice from shaking like an old leaf. Her brows lowered, eyes flicking back to him. "You''ve got one of their staffs," she pointed out, body still loose and unthreatened. Maybe she had reached out to test his mana, found him being unranked. There was nothing she had to fear from him. "Are they enhanced?" She kept asking, eyes raking over the staff in his hand; scarlet wood, charcoal-sharpened tip, a few meaningless runes of protection he''d scratched over its length. "Or the wood''s rare?" Alright. Nicau examined the situation. She thought he was a fellow invader. She was also on the hunt for something valuable to take, which Nicau was going to make the mother of all guesses that some burnt meat and poorly carved spears weren''t exactly the prizes she was searching for. But she also wasn''t threatened by him, and seemed willing to continue asking him questions. Also willing to kill, if the blood on her leather meant anything. So. Not a great situation by any stretch of the definition, but not unsalvageable. Nicau untensed his shoulders with the force of will to move mountains and shrugged, though he never looked away. "I just picked one up. There''s nothing special about it." She raised a dark eyebrow, which. Fair. Technically, it was the truth, but Nicau was still clutching the spear like a long-lost child and hadn''t loosened his grip for their entire conversation, so he wasn''t doing himself any favours here. He shrugged again, like that would help. "And why are you in here?" Another fair question. Nicau would really appreciate if she would stop asking those. "Keeping out of danger. I''m not strong enough to go deeper." Her lips thinned. "Strong enough to make it past the first floor." Ah. Logic. He hated it. She stepped forward, and oh, that was a little more of a prowl than a step. Her eyes were fixed on him, blade picking up until the tip was no longer in danger of blunting itself against the stone and more in danger of blunting itself against his ribs. Which. Nicau tried for another smile. "You know, I don''t think I remember seeing you before," she said, practically purring. Her eyes were coldly sharp. "And while you''re plain, you''re not plain enough to slip by me." Nicau took a brief moment to be offended. "Now, what are you?" She hummed, drumming her fingers over the hilt of her blade. "Shapeshifter? Mimic?" Nicau fought the urge to take a step back. The situation was crawling pretty rapidly from bad to very bad, and he wasn''t much in the mood to see if it could get worse. "Neither," he said, nose wrinkling. "Just a human." His grip tightened on his spear. Her eyes snapped to the movement and suddenly her own blade was raised, crossed in front of her body, and the scarlet over her side was a whole lot more glaring than Nicau''d thought it was previously. In a blink he was back in the still-unnamed jungle, the hound slavering before him, danger pressing down on him and an equal force pushing out from within. Because for all that he was still weak, he wasn''t defenseless. Nicau inhaled and felt the mana in his soul coil at the motion, tugging it up in tacky, loose strands until it filled his throat, bristling at the edges of his teeth. Something flashed over her skin, an enhancement technique he really didn''t have the time to analyze, and she raced forward. Speed blurred under her feet, sword barely a whisper as it cut through air. Nicau stood his ground. "Stop!" The mana exploded from his mouth in the raw scorch of fire¡ªher left leg seized even as her right continued, charge thrown wildly off course. He threw himself to the side as she clattered past him, speed enhancement used against her as she skidded against the ground. Not a full stop, only half¡ªbut half was enough. Nicau stumbled back upright, knuckles white around his spear. Some thirty feet away, she staggered onto her feet, leather ripped from the nearly impressive slide she''d done against the stone¡ªher left leg twitched, still shaking the last of his control, and her eyes were furious slits. "You little shit," she hissed, wrenching her blade back up. "That''s the last thing you''ll ever do." Some wild laugh built in his throat. Nicau welcomed any chance to keep her talking so he could rebuild his mana and let it out, a wheezing little thing that sent her hackles stabbing into the ceiling. "Funny," he said, and meant it. She snarled and charged. No speed enhancement this time, eyes locked on his; so Nicau inhaled, opened his mouth like he was about to shout, and waited. Her movements stiffened, preparing to catch herself from another loss of control even as her sword swept for his throat¨C Well. He''d taught Chieftess things. Time to use what she''d taught him. Nicau ducked, spun, and slammed the side of his spear against her knees. She howled as the wood cracked, both of their momentums combined for as devastating a hit as it could be; her feet flew back as her chest fell forward, barely missing him as she tumbled once again to the ground. But this time Nicau staggered upright first, spinning around, mana already thick in his throat¨C "Stop!" Halfway through flipping herself over, she froze again. Maybe it was only one leg again, it didn''t matter¡ªbecause Nicau sprang forward and kicked her sword out of her hand, standing over her with his cracked spear raised and poised. Her eyes were wild and wide. "That''s not human magic," she managed. Nicau felt the grin settle sharply over his face. "You''re right." Then he plunged the spear through her neck. She died in a wet gurgle of blood. Nicau then promptly dropped his spear, staggered a few steps away, and threw up. Half the actual contents of his stomach and half the condensed anxiety their conversation had given him; Nicau got off his knees with a low groan, hands clammy and pale. There was scarlet splattered over his lower legs, every sensation tugging at his nerves like they were on fire, his head aching. He''d killed someone. He''d killed someone. It wasn''t a thought he was unfamiliar with¡ªCalarata didn''t exactly have room for bleeding hearts in a city of pirates and desperados¡ªbut he''d only watched others die before. Never been the one to do the deed himself. Except he had, hadn''t he? What else could he call leading all those hungry souls to the dungeon''s maw? Nicau, with neither his mother or father''s family name to hold, had killed someone, and he''d done it successfully, and he''d done it with magic. His throat still smarted and burned from the mana he''d shouted, but it was a welcome pain, a reminder that he''d done that. An invader¡ªone with proper mana, he thought, though his heart had been beating bad enough he couldn''t be sure and now they were dead so it wasn''t like he could check¡ªwith weapons, and armour, and strength. But he''d been the survivor. The hound had been one notch under his belt. But Nicau had reached out, bloody and victorious, and taken another. Somewhere, he knew he should feel more emotions. As much as death was a part of life on Aiqith, that invader could have been him, someone just as full of dreams and aspirations. Maybe shame, or horror. Instead, Nicau burned with pride. - Goodness. Ealdhere remembered being a boy, a slip of a thing in the sprawling Darlington Manor, and the first time he''d seen his mother''s laboratory. It was a mystic thing full of potential and mysteries, great iron-clad machines that hissed and spat steam, vials full of foul-smelling liquids or preserved bodies of fantastic beasts, plants and minerals and elements by the mountain. He''d never been so excited to learn. There was something similar here. He crept forward, smile stretching to his ears, cheerily ignoring Jorge''s hissed command to stay low as he beheld the beauty before him. His well-ironed pants were sopping wet from the splash through the pond on the first floor, blood splattered over his sleeves that he knew would be hells to get out, even an odd twinge in his ankle from a mistimed step over a rather rowdy stone-backed toad¡ª?tondorsaj bufoj¡ªthat Neus had taken care of like the delight she was. He felt wonderfully alive. The second floor opened its welcoming arms before him, alight with the sound of rushing water and the rustle of leaves in wind¡ªbut what wind? He was many hundreds of feet below the surface, standing in a mighty cavern of stone, but still he felt a humid breeze kiss his cheek, saw the flicker of mist skimming over the surface of the canal. Light bloomed overhead, some variant of green algae that had spontaneously developed bioluminescence, fascinating, walls covered in familiar dens and stalactites. But no, the real treasure stood proudly in the center of the room. A tree. It was a short but sprawling figure, its bark a deep ruby-red and a delightful mixture between scaled and furrowed, completely at odds with its waterlogged environment. He could see pits and pockets where thorns lurked, great pointed things disguised beneath the furrowed pattern of the bark. It didn''t have a multi-stemmed habit but its trunk stayed thin, held upright by a twisted collection of roots, a clear indicator of a fibrous system as opposed to taproot. He could recognize the typical pattern of a mangrove, the combination of buttress roots to hold it in place and breathing roots to take in the extra oxygen that the waterlogged bases had no access to. But it was missing several key features he''d grown used to¡ªfor one, the tree was half situated on land instead of fully in the water, rooting both in soil and stone. Its roots were also covered in thorns, though smaller than those on its bark and trunk. And its leaves! Instead of a classic green they were purely white, not even the pale shade of variegation but the uninterrupted hue that spoke to a complete lack of nutrients gathered from the sun. Utterly fascinating! However did they grow, even if their habit was stunted and limited compared to the sprawling masses of mangroves he''d seen before? Ealdhere had never seen anything so wonderful. If he obtained nothing else from this expedition, if he truly had to retreat to his homeland empty handed, then this sight would be enough. "My goodness," he breathed, stepping right up to the trunk; he fumbled through his pockets, tugging out spectacle after spectacle until he eventually landed on the silver-wired set he used for close examinations. Ealdhere settled them on the bridge of his nose and leaned in, drinking greedily of the finer details of the mangrove''s bark; it appeared the unevolved characteristics didn''t end with its colouration. Its outer bark had strips of sapwood racing through it, full of the pipelines that delivered nutrients through the tree not yet hardened to heartwood or bark, thus unprotected. Perhaps to limit unnecessary storage in its already-thin trunk? Or perhaps its thorns were so effective it had no need to defend itself? "Old man," Jorge snapped¡ªhe wasn''t old, he was barely thirty. It was rather rude; how could his red hair ever be construed to be greying, especially alongside his spryness? Perhaps it was a compliment disguised as an insult; his knowledge of the natural world was well beyond his years. "What part of stay together are you not getting?" "Hm?" Ealdhere glanced back to find his trio of protectors crouched around him, that same shrewd paranoia filling their eyes and tensed shoulders. Neus stepped forward, dryad ancestry on full display as she called upon her barkskin protection, mossy hair beaded with water. "Baron," she said, because she was polite, unlike others that Ealdhere could name. "We do need you to stay between us if you wish to be protected." Ah. It was easy to forget that this wasn''t the tamed dungeons of his childhood, with guards by the dozen and even the core-holder keeping him from any overt harm¡ªthere was a reason he was pressing gold coins into these three fine fellows'' hands to keep them by his side. Even if they hardly seemed as excited by these discoveries as they should have been. "My apologies," he said, tipping his hand forward in the high-status-to-appreciated-lower-status bow that none of his companions appeared to understand. Pity. "Simply allow me a moment to collect a sample and we shall be on our way!" His original plan had been to explore first and collect samples on the way out, but there wasn''t a chance he would let any other adventurers brutalize this glorious specimen before he could come back. Steshe rolled his eyes. Ealdhere took that as confirmation and turned back to the mangrove. "Hello," he said, because there was certainly no reason not to be polite and if his companions weren''t going to be excited, then he would simply have to share his cheer with the object of his appreciation. "You are simply the most beautiful thing I''ve ever seen." Perhaps it was his imagination, but he thought that the branches shifted a touch closer to him, shifting in a breeze he knew wasn''t strong enough to move it. "If you wouldn''t mind too terribly, I would adore the chance to study you further," he said, fumbling in his pockets. "Nothing much, mind! Just a small cutting that I can attempt to propagate; ah, grow into a new plant. I''ve never seen anything quite like you before and I think it''s a travesty that the wider world isn''t aware of you." Ealdhere got the distinct impression that his companions were laughing behind his back. He smiled beautifically and pulled out a wide, flat knife with notches carved near the hilt; monogrammed, of course. He''d had it made alongside his rapier. The mangrove stayed still as he padded forward, selecting a branch freshly growing a foot above his head; white terminal buds about to break out into new leaves, wood still green¡ªwas it called greenwood when it was coloured red?¡ªand less than the length of his arm. Plenty to grow a sample for himself. His serrated knife made short work of the branch''s base and soon he was holding something worth more than gold, though carefully with the thorns still poking around through the bark. His smile was starting to hurt his face. "Thank you kindly!" He offered, slipping both the knife and the cutting into one of his many pockets. The mangrove, as expected, had no response. Jorge''s flail slithered over the ground, chain clattering against itself. His eyes stayed flinty as Ealdhere padded back into the center of the group, straightening his feather-lined hat and patting the filled pocket. "Onward, my friends!" Neus exhaled strong enough to blow her mossy hair out of her face. In a proper quartet, they moved out of the first room, weapons raised and eyes narrowed; the canal branched to the left or right and Jorge made the executive decision to avoid following the footsteps of other adventuring parties before them, stomping over to an untested room. Distant sounds of combat echoed through the twisting tunnels, the squeak of rats and distant roar of something vaguely metallic, but unlike the first floor, the silver-flecked limestone and rumbling canals muffled most sounds. If Ealdhere concentrated, he could almost imagine they were alone in the dungeon. That was almost as exciting as the discoveries. He remembered being a young boy and raised sticks alongside his siblings, pretending to be the Last King invading the Dungeon of Le¨®ro, dreams of being Mythril and powerful and the greatest to ever live. This was as close as he would ever be. Five rooms later full of beautiful creatures and glorious discoveries¡ªincluding dead mangroves with faux leaves, webs spun in the shape of pinnately-bound leaves, overseen by ghostly white spiders that watched Ealdhere pass underneath. Steshe, with his glowing eyes, located each tree before anyone could stray too close, but Ealdhere was already rather interested in collecting of the mysterious species on the way back out. Maybe a variant of ghostblood spiders, fantomsangaj araneoj, or icetouch spiders, glacitu?aj araneoj? Utterly fascinating. It was rare he encountered creatures he wasn''t already familiar with, and he welcomed the challenge of discovery with open arms. Something was moving in the far shadows of the next room. Ealdhere squinted, fighting the urge to pull out another spectacle more suited for distance viewings. Steshe frowned, clicking his tongue twice in some apparent signal; both Neus and Jorge pulled up short, flail raised and barkskin extended splintered thorns. With a hum, Steshe''s mutated mana-sight lit up to double the glow, twin spotlights scouring through the misty air to lance into the next room. Deprived of their shadows, the gathered swarm of creatures leapt for them. Two dozen reptilian humanoids, pale red and scarlet and crimson, igneous-rock styled horns, digitigrade legs, stubby tails, blunt claws, amber-gold eyes, slightly shorter than him, wielding scarlet spears, presumably made of the mystery mangrove wood, extended muzzle, visible fangs, ridged heads, overly large scales for their small bodies¨C Kobolds. Koboldoj. It happened in a split second. Jorge spat a curse and slammed a hand into Ealdhere''s chest, shoving him back; Steshe''s eyes burned like a second sun and the kobolds flinched back from the light, hooting and warbling in a serpentine tongue. Neus slammed her fists together and bark exploded over her skin, and oh, maybe that wasn''t her ancestry but merely the path she''d chosen to follow, looked like an enhancement, bark for defense and also thorns and splinters for offense? "Stay back!" Jorge barked, whistling three sharp notes; Steshe scrambled up a raised rocky platform as both Jorge and Neus took position on their side of the canal, water rushing less than ten feet past their feet. The kobolds hissed and spat but short as they were, the canal was narrow here. Behind them, to enter this room, they''d had to rely on traipsing through shallower sections¡ªsomething that would require them to turn their back to the kobolds if they wanted to run. A perfect ambush. Steshe''s eyes flared and sharpened to two distinct beams, locked onto the forerunning kobold; it squawked from the light and then from the dagger suddenly protruding from its chest. Steshe grabbed another throwing knife, eyes flicking to the next target, burning through the previous algae-light like the breaking dawn. "Draw your rapier," Steshe commanded, his wiry frame tense as iron. "I¨C" his hands were shaking. Why were they shaking? Why was this happening? A kobold in the back, with an unsharpened spear and odd bits of fur and bone dangling from their horns, raised their staff with a low, squawking howl. Some type of leader, it seemed; the kobolds charged at the command, scampering over moss and stones. Jorge slipped into a two-point stance, flail whirling over his head with the scream of clattering chains. The kobolds reached the water''s edge and flung themselves forward. Short as the gap was, a few still missed, floundering in the current, but the vast majority made it over and they were running, spears raised and beating at the air. Jorge roared, flail arcing down; in a second a kobold went from a living, breathing thing to a collection of scales and gore against the riverbank. But there were more. There were so many more. Steshe''s mana-sight disappeared once as he took a desperately-needed blink and the kobolds hurled themselves forward. Neus and Jorge stood, back to back, and engaged. A hit from the flail threw a kobold into another, both going down in a tangle of limbs; a bark-encrusted fist missed its target but the thorns on the edge ripped through scale and sinew alike; a dagger punished the slightest misstep and kept the kobold from climbing out of the canal; a clicked tongue and both Jorge and Neus shut their eyes, missing the explosion of light that blinded half a dozen kobolds. Neus reared, bark growing over her fist until it was three times the size, and bashed in the side of a kobold''s head¡ªit flew back into the canal with a splash, scrabbling helplessly at the air before it slipped underneath. But her attention was split. Another kobold darted forward, jabbing its spear under her guard; the sharpened end slammed into her thigh. She didn''t scream, just a sharp inhale; the bark swarmed over her body and engulfed the spear, ripping it out of the kobold''s hands and swallowing the wood, adding to the growing armour coating her form. Neus snarled and lashed out with another massively-increased fist, blasting the monster back. Her retreat back to Jorge''s side was slow, limping. As much as she''d stolen the weapon, the hit had still landed. He switched his attack to lash out in a wide half-circle, forcing the kobolds back for a second, but the leader warbled more commands and they were moving with purpose now, flanking around the back, tucking themselves behind mangroves and rocks to keep from Steshe''s dagger rain. There were so many. There''s no defense against numbers, Ealdhere thought wildly, lessons from his old master burning through his brain. Section off, isolate, retreat. Never fight when outnumbered. The kobolds knew it. A group split and charged Jorge, claws ripping at the moss¡ªthe man snarled back, chain cracking against the air as he forced out another wide circle of free space, stepping away from Neus to avoid catching her in the flail. A dozen kobolds immediately took the opening at their leader''s hissed command and flung themselves for her. Her barkskin ate two, three spears, tugging them into her body until she was a bristling mass of red-brown armour, glancing hits to her side and calf¡ªbut the kobolds had learned. Even that attack had been another distraction from a kobold creeping up behind with a rock clutched awkwardly in its blunt claws. Neus ducked another hit and the kobold cracked its stone against the back of her head. She wobbled for a second, eyes wide and fuzzy. It raised its makeshift weapon even as Steshe''s eyes snapped over, dagger already in the air, and bashed her skull open. Neus fell. The kobold fell after, dagger buried to the hilt in its throat, but both Jorge and Steshe shouted something wordless¡ªhis flail slammed into the ground hard enough to crack the stone, blowing back a wave of kobolds, their numbers reduced by half but still the leader chirped and squawked their commands and they moved. Steshe''s knives flew and Jorge''s bulk fought but Neus¨C Polite, kind Neus with the dryadic ancestry he''d never asked enough questions about, never talked about why she''d chosen to be an adventurer, never found her favourite flavour of tea or what she liked to do in the evenings. Her hair sprawled over the moss already in the dungeon, red alongside the green, and the kobolds were still moving forward and forward and forward¨C His rapier trembled in his hands. Jorge lurched forward but there was nothing to catch him¡ªinstead of ground the moss broke beneath his foot and he fell, disappearing through the ground, his flail scattering from his grip. There was some flash of icy blue light as he activated mana but it was too little, too late; the kobolds swarmed over whatever trap he''d befallen. A high, piping scream. Steshe stumbled back, eyes red and twitching even through the mana¡ªhis daggers flew but now they were bouncing off scales instead of digging underneath, throws going wild or hilts impacting his opponents until eventually his hand fell to his side and there was nothing there to grasp, every dagger already thrown. And with that, there was nothing keeping the kobolds from their charge. Steshe howled something wordless, reaching back¡ªhe tore Ealdhere''s rapier from limp fingers and slashed it forward. His monogrammed name splattered with scarlet as a kobold making the daring charge met the business end that had never been used, had only been polished and pushed through forms in books, in training, in practice. There was no practice now. Steshe stood against the horde, lashing desperately at the kobolds, but they knew their way across the canal and through the trees without injuries, without pain, and they were upon him, and they were biting and clawing and ripping and screaming¨C Baron Ealdhere Darlington, beloved of his family name, hung with awards and certifications and knowledge beyond his years. Young Ealdhere, clutching a stick, wishing to be a hero and an adventurer and a legend. He turned and ran. Chapter 82 - Third Fall X¨¦nia peered into the dark water below. The first floor had been child''s play, filled with rats and snakes and other scuttling things without any bite to their bark, and she had marched forward without slowing. The second floor had been less kind but still forgiving; there had been turtles that snapped feet from legs and eels that punished those who went in the waters, but X¨¦nia was not so foolhardy, and she passed through untouched. Those that crossed her path found themselves crossed, limbs torn out of alignment, movement exchanged for agony. And thus she moved on. But now the third floor loomed. With Lluc''s announcement, it was clear the dungeon was young. A few months at worst, maybe weeks at best; as she had ventured inside, she knew it leaned on the older side of her estimate, but still within. There was none of the efficiency within High Lord Thiago''s dungeon, nor the raw brutal power of the Dungeon of Le¨®ro. Still a foal, stumbling on unsteady legs as it figured out how to run, though the power it wielded was far from zero. She hadn''t let herself make the mistake of hoping, but there was still a twinge in her chest at the reveal it had more than two floors. Even through the water, she could feel the mana pick up, humming gently against her skin. It was dark but she could see faint figures between the rippling surface, the twist of silver bodies and darker shapes. They looked like fish, which was good. The various insects on the previous floors that had no bones for her to work her mana on had been irritating. She wasn''t overly fond of being irritated. But when X¨¦nia made it out of this dungeon, she would never have to suffer irritation again. Because a dungeon core was at stake. The others were dreamers. They made teams shaped from ideals and pretty words instead of meaning, hoping that hope would carry them through where experience failed. X¨¦nia wasn''t so na?ve. She understood how the world worked. Power came with price. Her face ached, in that old, familiar way, behind her mask. The others sought the core with the childish, grasping desire for the power it would bring. Perhaps they spared a thought for if the Dread Pirate would simply allow them to take it, and their next thought followed the argument that if the First Mate was the one organizing the raid, then surely Varc¨ªs Bilaro approved and sanctioned the attack. That they would be able to claim a dungeon core and merely walk out. Fools. Dreamers. Idiots. From the moment Lluc had given his speech beneath the borwood tree, a clock had started. The dungeon had been revealed to the public, proving the rumors true, and now that it was open, it was also watched. People would slide their eyes to its entrance, wonder about the power hidden beneath its stony surface, weigh the danger of potential monsters to the prize of unimaginable treasures. No matter how wary Calarata as a city was, no matter how many desperados who only drank what they prepared and never shook hands lived there, eventually there would be those that took up the sword for themselves. And in an uncontrollable, untestable situation, eventually there would be someone powerful enough to claim the core. If she wanted it for herself, she had to get it now. In the raid, she was merely one face amongst dozens; while her mask was distinctive, adventurers tended to develop physical quirks like papercuts, and she would blend in amongst a crowd of others. She needed that, because she couldn''t remove her mask, not any longer, and her plan required her to fade to the background. There had only been a handful of other high-rank Silvers there, and perhaps that would etch her mask in their memory, but there had been other faces that were both memorable and had a history to them. She had moved fast, stayed away from others, and was now the first to reach the next floor. Speed was of the essence here, and she was out of time to play it safe. A third floor, one filled with water. Past that, either the core or another floor, which she would have to fight through and quickly; because her plan would be splintering then, and she refused to fail. Those that claimed dungeon cores were notoriously tight-lipped about the process, the better to keep others from taking it. Even with that, she knew the generalities of what would happen; once she arrived at the final room, there would be two choices. Either claim the dungeon or claim the core. In the first, she would bind her will over the core''s and allow the dungeon to continue existing under her command, controlling all that went on inside and how it functioned. Tempting, considering that there was no golden egg as bright or beautiful as owning a dungeon, and if she showed it to the Le¨®ro Kingdom she would claim the entire surrounding territory and the title of High Lady. It was unsurprising that most people went this route. But in order to get to Le¨®ro, she would have to leave the dungeon, and the only path out took her directly through Calarata. For as powerful as a dungeon was, it could not defend its master from the Dread Pirate. So she would be claiming the core. There was much less known about this process, frightful few people doing it and even less reporting on the process; she had only heard whispers of men with power above their ranking, eyes black and fingers gold. Clearly there was something involved with taking the core into oneself, binding its power to yours, and thus allowing her a chance. She hated basing anything on chance. Time had shown her how fickle such a thing could be. But there was no other option. In the best scenario, claiming the core allowed her to sneak out before anyone noticed that anything was wrong, slipping back through all the floors and disappearing in the chaos. With the power of a dungeon core, she would be able to fight her way through the unnamed jungle, and make her way to Le¨®ro. Maybe they would give her the High Lady position with a core bound to her, even if she didn''t have a dungeon proper, but either way, she would be powerful enough to obtain standing there. In the worst scenario, the dungeon collapsed when she removed the core and thus everyone knew it was her, but with its power by her side she was able to fight her way out. It wasn''t hope. She didn''t rely on hope. But both options spoke to a chance for a future. For too long had X¨¦nia scrounged at the scraps, using her powers as a mere second-rate healer to whatever group offered to pay. No longer. This was her destiny, and she would grab it with bloody, filthy hands if she needed to. She jumped into the water. - Valentulus was truly very close to abandoning his cloak, which should have been a sign of the apocalypse. But as it turned out, swimming was rather difficult when he was dragging the equivalent of several dozen pounds of wool and feathers behind him. The cloak had already been on a thin edge, considering Calarata was rather warmer than the Wandering Empire and he''d been overheating from his first day in the blasted city, and the blue of his feathered mask did not exactly pair well with ruddy cheeks. But he''d survived that, kept it up alongside his high boots and dyed armour, and then he''d gone and decided to invade a dungeon that had a waterlogged floor. Terribly inconsiderate. Who did this dungeon think it was? Well, when he claimed the core and wrangled his control over these floors, the water would be the first thing to go. The floor wasn''t even displeasing to look at, which was annoying; plenty of interesting tunnels snaking off and promising exciting adventures within, algae-light lancing through the water in brilliant shafts, a great forest of amber-gold kelp of some variety that seemed to move a little more than he thought plants necessarily should. Even a few special touches with the godly whirlpool that''d tugged him further into the floor from the first moment he''d jumped into the water, keeping him from just popping back out, and another tunnel that appeared to exit directly into the ocean. Fascinating! For all his exploration of dungeons before, he''d never seen one that had willingly opened another entrance for adventurers to take advantage of. Perhaps that was the reason it had been discovered; simply too idiotic or foolhardy to protect itself. But either way, he''d be taking things from here. With a sigh that he unfortunately had to keep in his mouth to avoid losing what air he had, Valentulus reached up and unlatched his cloak, letting the ruffled feathers drift to the sandy ground. Sanguine''s eyes snapped over, hand twitching like she wanted to grab it. She was terribly loyal like that. For all that he had been the one to free her, Valentulus counted himself the lucky one he''d managed to stumble across her; as his only companion for the years he was supposed to spend wandering and gaining skills before returning to his homeland, she had been the stable presence he rather needed. The southern dryad had never complained as they traveled far and wide, staying at his side with her twin blades, ever watching for danger, ever prepared. Admittedly, it was hard to be prepared for jumping into an underground lake on the hunt for a magic rock, but she made it work. Both of them did, really. Once you got strong enough, mundane environments lost their danger¡ªnot entirely, of course, there were too many stories of Golds getting overly cocky and quickly paying the price¡ªand even being underwater wasn''t much of a threat. Fragile little human lungs were one thing but Valentulus was Silver, proud and indomitable, and with the mana he could direct to wrap around his lungs he could hold his breath for ten minutes before the vague thought to inhale even hit. Now, to be fair, he would be fighting at a disadvantage¡ªoxygen was rather important to movement, unfortunately, and the mana used on his lungs was mana that he couldn''t use for his gravitas¡ªbut simply being underwater did nothing to stop his power. Sanguine was even better off. Dryads already had odd needs and she was from the tropical south, where environments had the nasty little habit of changing wildly from day to day, and her body was adaptable in response. She''d need to spend a few days shaking off how waterlogged she''d be after this fight, but air wouldn''t be a problem unless they got pinned on this floor. And considering both of their skills, Valentulus rather doubted that would be an issue. It wasn''t arrogance that said he was powerful. He simply was! The Wandering Empire had started as little more than a traveling band of mercenaries and while it had now grown into a proper country with ideals of expanding, it had never quite abandoned its roots. He was trained like a true warrior since he was very young, and while he was now free to complete his Wandering Years, he had kept the skills as he kept his heritage. Gold was near, he knew. Not close enough he was returning to his homeland to prepare for the transition, but close enough he wasn''t making long term plans. Sanguine was similar. Still Bronze, but her healing ability had been what had led to him finding her in the first place. An enhancer skill combined of her own mana and her dryadic abilities; as long as she had access to sunlight, all of her injuries would eventually heal. She''d healed broken bones, had burns fall off to reveal new skin, regrown missing limbs. Nothing to help her in battles proper, but there was a reason she''d been the most popular gladiator fighter, for all that dryads were typically non combative. There was nothing as exciting for the savages that had employed her as knowing that as long as they kept from fatal injuries, she would return to the field unscathed. Soon she would reach Silver, and he couldn''t wait to see what she''d do then. But for now she stayed at his side, her green skin dappled with old red and her twin daggers held in tight fists, and they prowled as one through the dungeon. Other adventurers soon joined them on the floor, snot-nosed brats who had only learned how to fight from an urge to fight and not for honour, and they floundered their way through the water. Their abilities were less than useless here, wooden weapons waterlogged and elemental powers squashed by swimming through water; typical. For most children, they selected whatever the flashiest ability they could find resources to train with, and then they were stuck with it, even as it became more and more readily apparent that combat potential didn''t mean potential for every¡ªor even most¡ªsituations. Valentulus hadn''t made the same mistake. His gravitas was extremely, profoundly adaptable¡ªwith nary a thought, his mana manifested as invisible hands, stretching from his sides in a bouquet of strength. Lesser creatures found themselves pinned to the ground by forces unknown or with sword strokes dealt with a speed that his form should never have had. It was certainly one of his favourite techniques, and the first time he''d seen the general with it he had decided that would be how his power manifested, even as a boy. It had been a long journey to learn the difficult casting technique, considering the general was uninterested in a child dogging her footsteps, but he''d done it. He always did what he put his mind to. So Sanguine dealt with the greater crabs with her blades and he used his web of hands to keep the silverheads and silvertooths back, and they moved together to fight the roughwater sharks. Corpse after corpse landed on the sandy ground as they carried on, mana bright and sharp around them, picking their way through a battlefield. One by one, the rest of the adventurers fell away, too weak to continue or needing to surface for air. Valentulus didn''t mind. It was impolite to think about teaming up, really, considering if they both made it past this floor they''d then start fighting to the death over the core. It was also impolite to say that aloud, so he moved on instead. Sanguine was more than enough. The floor was long and irritating, however, and he did have to surface several times himself just to keep in peak form as they swam on, avoiding the kelp forest for its lack of visibility even as the currents tried quite diligently to shove them into the midst; it was only his gravitas that kept him fighting against the tug and pull. Sanguine rooted her feet into the sand and stayed underwater the whole time, though her lips twisted in distaste; for all being a tropical dryad meant she was used to plenty of water, that didn''t mean she enjoyed this much of it. But temporary discomfort paid off, for the rest of the adventurers had fallen behind by the time they came across the tunnel. Partially hidden, tucked underneath an undercropping that would have disguised it against the back wall had Valentulus'' eyes not been peeled for anything out of place. It was clearly the entrance to the next floor, the stone walls coming together to form a tunnel that lifted out of the water, narrower than its pair on the other side. Hopefully the fourth floor was dry, because Valentulus didn''t even want to consider what all this traipsing around underwater was doing to the feathered ruff of his mask, but there was another issue. From above, black eyes stared through the water. A proper combatant. Crocodilian in shape, though larger and more armoured, with a tail fitting for a battering ram and jaws with a plentiful collection of fangs. There was something rather exciting about seeing one, though he couldn''t place the exact species¡ªthe Wandering Empire had no crocodiles and he''d only seen them in scrolls before, artistic renderings of the shallow water beasts. And now to fight one! All three of them were aware of each other now, Sanguine''s eyes dark and assessing, and the crocodile pushed off the shallow ledge it had been languishing on, sliding into the water fully. It was some forty feet long, covered in ridged grey-green scales like platemail, eyes hooded but sharp. Valentulus was no scholar, particularly not of monsters¡ªhis favoured enemies tended to run a little more humanoid¡ªbut he couldn''t help but feel like it was¡­ oddly primitive, in a way. Its armour was enormous and layered but almost overly so, some of its movements stiff or limited, and its tail was truly much too large for its body. There was an asymmetrical bump on its nose he couldn''t decipher the swirl of mana around, much less the spirals in its veins, but something tasted vaguely¡­ off about the whole thing. Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. Maybe he''d take its corpse with him when he left. Surely there had to be some researcher in Calarata who would know what it was. But that moment wasn''t now, so Valentulus reached out and pulled his mana back to his side, arms spreading from his shoulders like an eagle''s wings. No reason to pull his falchion, considering the water pressure would be enough of an irritant with the longer blade, and his fists would be plenty. Sanguine swam up, unrooting her feet, and there was a swirl of mana as she settled herself against the current. She was strong like that, unyielding; he''d never met anyone quite like her. It pushed him to do better every day. The bulb on the crocodile''s nose twitched¡ªsensing their mana?¡ªand it charged. Valentulus and Sanguine immediately threw themselves to opposite sides, kicking off the ground and flattening their bodies to carry the momentum¡ªthe crocodile thundered past, its enormous tail slashing at their retreating forms. He reached out with a collection of arms and pulled away from its lashing claws, carrying him up and over; twin punches to its scaled back, just to test its defense against blunt force. Judging by how it barely glanced at him, it looked like Sanguine would be the one to finish this battle, not him. But that didn''t mean he couldn''t help. Valentulus kicked off the back wall¡ªit was easier to do that than try to swim, not nearly as aquatically skilled as his opponent¡ªand darted overhead, gravitas brimming at his hands. Sanguine''s eyes flicked to him and then away. Neither of them needed to speak to fight together, even in the unfamiliar underwater environment. She was looking for an opening, having found a weak point on its body, and he would give it to her. So when the crocodile looked to her and made as if to charge again, Valentulus layered together several dozen invisible arms and slapped the crocodile right across the eyes. It flinched back, secondary eyelids pulling up to protect it from further blows; and that moment of blindness was plenty for Sanguine to swim forward, somehow making the motion look graceful despite the floundering, and drag twin blades in the joint between one of its back legs. Then she spun and kicked off its back right as its tail lashed through where she had been. Water carried weight and the blow didn''t have to connect to push her back, spiraling away in the eddies kicked up from the motion. Valentulus swallowed a curse as their rhythm suffered, dancing back awkwardly in the water, the crocodile focused back on him. He ducked under a lash of its enormous jaws, landed twin punches on its chest as its claws leapt for his legs, and darted to the side. The current he was still unused to fighting with tugged him in the opposite direction. Its tail swung for him¡ªSanguine flung herself forward, ignoring her own safety, but she was too far away¡ªValentulus exploded into a burst of gravitas as arms curled around him, cradling his head, and protected himself an instant before impact. Even with all his mana, he was shot backward like a loosed arrow, slamming hard into the limestone wall. Stars popped behind his eyes in the kind of hurt he hadn''t felt since he''d grown from Bronze, but that nostalgia was admittedly lessened by the brutal ache already surfacing in his ribs. Fuck. Turned out the beast packed a punch. He''d been hopeful for a good fight after the cave bear on the first floor, and it was looking like he''d get it. Valentulus ripped himself off the wall, pulling more of his active mana to spiral around his ribs and chest; his lungs were already taking most of the stuff he needed to fight with but breathing wasn''t exactly something he could give up at the moment, and pain was just another distraction. Sanguine flew to his side, eyes wide and wild, but he waved her off. The battle was more important. She turned back to the crocodile with a snarl. They blitzed together again, Valentulus keeping his gravitas wrapped around his own fists and Sanguine reserving her holds on her daggers. The crocodile spun but for all it was an aquatic creature, the primitive design of its armour kept it from making the hairpin turns they could, and it wasn''t long before they were scampering over its head, pulling their feet out of the snap of its teeth. Valentulus swept an arm out and shoved its head down, closing its jaws before it could even try for a bite, and then reached deep. Hundreds of hands manifested just to hold it in place, grabbing at its tail and legs, and for a brief second it was completely still. Sanguine, teeth bared in an inaudible challenge, kicked off the ground and tore her daggers through its neck on the way up. It snapped instinctually where she had been but she was already gone, tucking her limbs in to let the current carry her further¡ªa massive, bloody gash burned against the side of its neck, scarlet already blooming through the water. With a hissing, spitting roar that echoed oddly underwater, it broke out of Valentulus'' gravitas and charged for her, eyes wide and furious. She kicked off the nearest wall and went fully upside down, curling up, and shot away from its teeth; Valentulus reached out and snagged her with a spare arm before she could throw herself too far from the fight. The crocodile spun, tail lashing, and charged for the next irritant, which Valentulus supposed was him. No time to dodge; he raised gravitas-enhanced arms and slammed them both on the bridge of its snout. Its jaws slammed closed just a second early, inches from his face, and the shockwave buffeted him back in a burst of water; Sanguine''s attention snapped over, already kicking off the ground to catch him before he hit the wall again, arms extended. Her eyes were fixed on him. Not behind her. Because for all the crocodile had missed, she had turned her back. He flung a hand out, desperate, and his gravitas caught the underside of its mouth; its fangs slammed into each other with a sickening crack that echoed across the water, blood spurting from its gums, bite turned back on itself. Its tail thrashed. But its claws still moved, long and sharp and biting, and tore through. Sanguine froze, still reaching for him. He saw the white of her ribs, green skin no longer dappled with red but covered, daggers drifting from limp fingers. She fell. Valentulus screamed. Water poured into his throat as he abandoned the mana in his lungs, ripping at every scrap he had left, dragging mana in from his surroundings, tearing and cutting and rending¨C His gravitas slammed into the crocodile with all the weight of a mountain, dozens and hundreds and thousands of invisible hands forcing it down. Water boiled as raw mana sparked to life, centered around his hands as he reached forward, propelled to match, and swam to its side. It thrashed, jaws open and slavering, eyes starving for more blood than it had already spilled; but hands by the thousands kept it still, kept it down, and Valentulus reached forward. He dug his fingers into the cut Sanguine had opened on its neck, wormed between the thick scales and sinew, and felt every invisible hand conjoin with his, power alongside physical, mana like a roiling storm as he reached in and pulled. His gravitas rang like a bell as he tore the monster''s head off. Nearly all of his hands immediately dissolved, no longer enough mana to maintain them, and the exhaustion tore jagged fangs through his awareness. Blood hazed before him, half from the creature and half from his own eyes and nose, thoughts heavy and mind stuffed full of clouds. He watched its corpse twitch once before drifting to the sandy ground, jaws splayed and eyes empty. It was dead. He''d killed it. Valentulus didn''t care. The last of his surviving gravitas pulled him forward, lungs fluttering and black spots in the corners of his eyes, but he ignored that in favour of gathering Sanguine''s limp form into his arms. Every other creature had fled from his display or been ripped apart, and the way was clear for his invisible arms to pull him up, through the tunnel the crocodile had been guarding, and deposit them on the ledge. The fourth floor lurked past it, the prize he''d been so eager to reach. Sanguine smiled up at him. Her eyes were calm despite the pain, blood pouring between the arms she''d wrapped around herself in an attempt to stifle the bleeding, but with no sunlight and no time for her healing abilities to come into play, it meant little. Neither of them were uncouth children, untrained and untested in proper battles. She had been a gladiator and he a warrior of the Wandering Empire. This was hardly the first time they''d encountered an injury like this, and they both knew what it meant. So she smiled at him, head lolling back, moss splaying around her head like a forest floor. "Thank you," she managed, and he knew it was an answer to something he''d done long ago, buying her freedom from the gladiator ring that had stained her green skin red and lost her connection to her ancestral forest. "It was an honour to serve." Their old call and response¡ªyou serve no one¡ªrose to his tongue, but it didn''t feel right, not this time. "You were the best," he said instead. "And there was no one like you." Her smile softened, reaching her eyes, and then she was gone. - Gon?al did not consider himself a terribly paranoid man. There was still paranoia, because he was a nightmarketer who regularly captured monsters and traded them with the type of people that wanted monsters, but he wasn''t the type to flinch away from shadows and curl his lip at strangers. He was a trader; he dealt with odd people and odder habits, picking apart motivations over smiles and casual conversation. He kept monsters in cages that would kill him if they ever sprung their lock and juggled crystals with enough mana to level cities, and he had to be observant enough to manage that all. So when he felt that urge to tense, he was able to piece together why he felt that way, and then it wans''t paranoia but proper situational awareness. But as he swam through the third floor of the mystery dungeon, every nerve was pinging, and he didn''t know why. Some of it was clearly danger; he''d already had to shred his way through schools of silverheads ignited in the raid-frenzy. Silver as he was, he still struggled in aquatic combat, and after the third time one of the little bastards had punched through his claws and landed a hit somewhere soft, he''d switched from his previous strategy and hung close to the walls of the floor. Let the other adventurers pouring into the water handle the bigger threats. It wasn''t like he had any way of capturing live specimens that lived on this floor; his mana-enhanced chains were better served on monsters from higher floors, where he could safely entrap them and drag them back to the Silent Market without having to figure out a way to keep them in water. And he would be taking them home. For all that corpses and materials and relics sold well, there was nothing quite like live monsters. So for now, he slunk around the third floor, mana circulating through his lungs to keep him from needing to come up for air. An exhausting tactic, considering that his body still very much needed oxygen and this was only a temporary fix, but doable. Nearly everyone in Calarata could do it, a helpful thing for a city where tropical storms could politely deposit the ocean on their heads, but that didn''t mean it still wouldn''t weaken them. If he made a push for the fourth floor, he''d be working with a disadvantage. But even with all that, it didn''t explain why he was so paranoid. The emotions he felt went far beyond just invading a new dungeon, with untested threats and monsters; because while he was keeping his head on a swivel and his claws unsheathed, his attention kept darting back to his chest, where his mana coiled and trembled uncomfortably. It sensed something. He just didn''t know what. Gon?al didn''t like not knowing things. The frustration built until a shadow passed overhead. Not for the first time, he cursed that this damned floor was underwater; his clothes billowed around him as he tried to jump back, legs kicking to push him away from the bloodline kelp forest and closer to the wall, fists raised and claws extended. He saw it and felt his stomach drop. It was fucking enormous, three times his height, and built like a mountain itself; all bony plates of armour covering every bit of skin, including pieces that angled around its mouth like fucking fangs that a fish should not have, eyes a furious, burning red and hungry. Alright. New monster that he didn''t recognize¡ªwhich, why, he made a point to learn every monster no matter how small the chance he''d encounter one and this thing was pretty fucking distinct¡ªand he was on its home turf. Enormous and impossibly dense, heavily armoured against anything even resembling physical attacks, bearing down on him like the charge from an avalanche. No time to think¡ªGon?al pulled up his mana in a massive, spiraling position behind his eyes, anything for a quick analysis before he had to rely on his ancestry to fight, searching for any weakness he could exploit¨C The thing paused. Gon?al didn''t look a gift horse in the mouth; he darted back awkwardly in the water, mana flashing through his eyes as he forced them open wider. Bony armour but with seams and fittings, cracks he could attack. Large fins but seemingly too much weight, struggling to stay upright, presumably a charge attacker, fangs like a guillotine. And deeper inside, the pale swirl of its mana, sitting docile as though¨C As though¨C Its mana. Gon?al had been a nightmarketer for a very, very long time, ever since his mentor had picked him up like another piece for his exotic collection and found a decent brain alongside the ancestry, and he had only seen mana like this twice before. One in the story he dared not remember, and the other¨C The other in his own chest. Oh, he breathed, bubbles trickling out of his mouth. He''d wondered why he hadn''t recognized the creature; it had been easy to handwave the trees on the second floor as some mangrove evolution he hadn''t heard of and the crocodile in the same boat, some dungeon bullshittery, but he could no longer do the same now that he was close, feeling the energy in both him and this monster rebound and react. Because it was ancient. It was from the Old World. The scales around his eyes and neck felt suddenly tight, nerves he had long-since learned to swallow rising up his spine; it was only his mentor''s lessons that kept him stable, meeting the monster''s red eyes without flinching, for all that its armoured fangs flashed in the dim algae-light. It circled him, seemingly unwilling to stop moving, its bulk dragging it down even as the currents pushed it forward. The raw hunger in its gaze hadn''t left but there was a competitor, a dark curiosity spurring it to continue investigating him even as it clearly wished to take his head off. He, very carefully, didn''t react as it swam around him. His throat was tight. Gon?al wasn''t from the Old World, not like this thing. But he was close. The mana in his veins sang in the presence of another, a mirror''s reflection, and he imagined that the creature could feel it as well. Not brothers but kindred; and in Aiqith, where precious few things were properly Old, he imagined it felt comfortable. Nostalgic, in a way, even if both of them lived here now. The monster finished its examination and stared at him for just a second longer. It was hungry, starving for action, fangs bared and ready to tear. It turned and swam away to search for other prey. Well. Time to leave, he thought, a little faintly. Most of his reasons for coming here were profit and power; the Silent Market liked exotics more than anything, and there was simply no better place to find unique beasties than a dungeon. He was confident enough in his ancestry and abilities to make it through, and given as he wasn''t idiotic enough to shoot for the core proper with so many other people around, he knew he could collect whatever struck his fancy while other fools punched a hole through the defenses. So far, it had all been going perfectly. But if the dungeon was awakening things of the Old World, then Gon?al didn''t have the firepower necessary to keep exploring, and that monster was a pretty good sign he''d already pushed his luck as it was. It was only unfounded good fortune that it had been that beast to discover him first, and even more so that it had honoured their shared bloodline rather than just ripping him to shreds. Because he wasn''t an aquatic fighter; if that thing had wanted to kill him, he''d be dead. So. Time to leave. He pushed off the bottom, silt spiraling around his legs; the bloodline kelp wavered as he passed, tendrils reaching out in a facsimile of a current to grab at him, hungry to reclaim the few pieces he''d already tucked into his pockets. But Gon?al would be a goddamn moron not to prepare for the rather common threat in Calaratan waters and so he just slipped away, switching his kicking pattern until he was past the forest, rising through trembling waters. Silverheads and silvertooths alike swarmed nearby, blood-frenzy and ravenous, but whatever poor saps had engaged the fledgling sea serpent behind him were taking all of the attention. For all Gon?al was used to being the center of attention, with his position in the Silent Market and his ancient ancestry, he was quite content to slip by now. He breached the surface with a gasp, lungs heaving gratefully, and he floundered for a second before his eyes adjusted¡ªthe ledge back up to the second floor was a mere hundred feet away, algae-light burning overhead and mist slithering over the kicked up waves. He''d haul his way back, collect samples of anything that had even half a point of interest, and then he''d wait to see what came from the full invasion. Depending on who captured the core, it could either stay open for future excursions or it''d be ripped open. The quiet part of him that echoed with age-old teeth wondered if the core would even be captured. But that was a question for a later day. This mission was nearly a failure, only a few claimed bits that wouldn''t attract attention from any of the people with the pockets to really matter, though he knew he could pawn off everything he collected without too much trouble. Information, too, about the Old World monster and other beasties inside, though knowledge of creatures didn''t sell as well as the actual thing. It still stung, though. It had been a long time since Gon?al had returned without at least one diamond from his missions. He had only swam halfway back to the ledge when he noticed it. There was a god''s magic here, a boon from some watery deity that kicked up currents and whirlpools, though he couldn''t place the taste of stone-teeth and crushing depths in the back of his throat. But for all that, there was something more; because for all that whirlpools created currents, they didn''t make mist. And there was mist, spiraling over the water''s surface. Beyond that, he caught the barest glimpse of a canine form, only a few feet in size, sprinting over the waves and trailing clouds in its wake. A wisp. Anything of an elemental line was fantastically rare; the sheer mana needed to form one meant they were hard to find and even harder to encounter, saying that they could disappear with nary more than a thought. But maybe this one had gotten too used to living on a floor with the only inhabitants living below the water; it had no predators to fear, not here, not that wisps typically had anything hunting them. There were precious few creatures willing to go against a living incarnate being of pure power. Which was why they were prized beyond belief. Gon?al was suddenly very, very aware of the carved piece of quartz in a pouch by his side, the one he had been planning to fill with pure mana as a final souvenir from the dungeon. It wouldn''t be identical to what he would need here, but it was pretty close, and Gon?al had made a career out of making impossible situations work. Well. He hadn''t gotten into the Silent Market by being safe. Maybe he had time for one more prize. Chapter 83 - Fourth Sun Coseth hissed through clenched teeth. He shifted his weight as agony lanced through his calf; Kriya shot him an apologetic look even as she bound his leg tighter, pulling the bandages with strength that her thin arms didn''t show. She''d only halfway healed him, stopping any further bleeding and removing the tears in his muscle, but it wasn''t worth exhausting her when they didn''t know how much worse it''d get later on. It was pretty bad already. The fourth floor was fucking bullshit, if he had to put it politely¡ªthe third had already been terrible, fully underwater and swarming in more monsters than anything previous, and it wasn''t like he could fire arrows while swimming. They had still been more prepared than other groups, which was the only reason they''d made it across. Getting through had the unfortunate downside of bringing up memories of why they needed to know how to fight underwater, which none of them were too fond of remembering, but the strategy still worked. Sarissa had grown massive, craggy wings of stone and wrapped them all up, Birrin had reached out to sense every mind in their nearby surroundings, and Kentra had swam overtop and summoned a floodplain of lightning. All of them had needed Kriya to remove the paralysis from their systems, but the detonation had given them just enough time to swim for the exit before the fledging sea serpent¡ªthe fucking sea serpent¡ªhad shaken off its own condition and pursued them. Coseth could still hear its furious shriek echoing through the marrow of his bones. He rather pitied any group that had been behind them, because they sure as all hells weren''t making it to the fourth floor now. Not that he was particularly enjoying that honour himself. They''d gotten used to the algae-light and quartz-light of previous floors; the only thing to greet them when they''d pulled themselves out of the water of the third floor was darkness, pressing and absolute. Even Birrin had tugged up his blindfold just to stare at it with wide eyes, though he''d pulled it down before he could look at anyone. Eventually, Coseth could see that there was light, faint and near imperceptible. The walls were covered in algae that released drifting spores like tiny stars, floating in lazy, unconcerned circles until they eventually winked out as they landed. Barely large enough to see, let alone illuminate the floor they were now needing to be navigating, and inconsistent enough it couldn''t be relied on. They''d had a discussion, quick and hurried, before deciding that Coseth would be the one making the sacrifice; it wasn''t like his arrows would be of much use in these cramped corners they were entering, and his mana only aided in aiming, which he could still do even without. So it was him that would be powering the quartz-light they would absolutely be needing. It stung, just a hair. For all the four years they''d been working together, he knew that it was a clinical decision¡ªhis mana was the least helpful in this specific scenario¡ªbut that didn''t remove the bite. He''d come a long way from the merchant''s son who gambled without care for consequences; he''d grown into the world just as it had grown around him, and adventurer was the title he claimed with proud hands. But you didn''t become an adventurer¡ªor at least a surviving one¡ªwithout working with your team, so Coseth slung his bow across his back and held the sliver of quartz above all their heads. Faint yellow-white light bled through his fingers, splashing against the walls, and promptly introduced them to the latest nightmare they''d be traversing. A little more than ten feet in diameter, a perfect circle boring into the mountain face, positively covered in various flora. He could see the gold-red-grey stripes of razorleaf lichen, the deep green pearls surrounding clumps of jadestone moss, and even a strange, ridged algae that he didn''t recognize but was the majority. Everything shifted and twitched in a manner a little too alive for his liking. Fucking hells, hadn''t Lluc said the dungeon was young? As a group, they''d seen the first floor and settled their expectations, content that this would be just as hard a fight as they''d imagined. Difficult, tricky at the moment, but ultimately doable¡ªeven after the second floor, that had continued, though the groups at their side were quickly losing numbers. The third floor had been their first real hesitation; because for all that they had escaped through it nearly unscathed, that was only due to Kentra''s strange abilities. If they had been any other group, Coseth wasn''t nearly as confident they would have made it through. It wasn''t just any dungeon that could command a sea serpent, even as young as that one had seemed. But as pressing the thought, there was another flicker of excitement. Because as they''d emerged onto the ledge leading to the fourth floor, all they''d encountered had been a worryingly large splatter of blood¡ªmuch too large for any one person to have spilled and then survive. And past that, they hadn''t encountered another adventurer for their entire trek through the fourth floor so far. Now. To be fair. The fourth floor was a maze of identical tunnels and endless darkness, so there was the not insignificant chance that they''d merely not crossed paths with other explorers, but there was also the easily likely chance that they were the only ones who had gotten this far. And oh if that wasn''t a lovely, lovely thought. Only five of them, mixed between Bronzes and Silvers, unbalanced and young¡ªbut they were strong. Powerful. And if they reached the dungeon''s core, they would only become more so. If they fucking got there. Because in a surprise that no one could claim they saw coming, that mystery algae was alive and rather disliking of adventurers; it lashed out in thorned arms without precision but with the numbers to make up for it, whipping through the air and blending well enough in the blackness that there truly was no way to prepare for it. In the only stroke of good luck they''d had, it seemed hesitant around light, cringing away from Coseth''s hands whenever he came too close¡ªthat was the only way they had gotten it to release Sarissa, since it seemed durable enough to the blunt force trauma she was beating at it with her stone gauntlets. So Coseth had passed around his back up pair of daggers to Kentra and Kriya and just hoped that he wouldn''t have any need for them. Maybe he could stab at it with a spare arrow. Surely that would work. Except it didn''t matter, because there were still monsters on this floor, and Coseth was really starting to understand why dungeon-delving adventurers didn''t last too long. Bugs nearly as tall as his waist scuttling from the dark; slow, lumbering pill bugs with backs like a knight''s armour, mantises with claws like sickles and eyes starved for violence, even spiders that spun webs of pure iron, sharpened to a knife''s point. Gods. He was too old for this shit. The mantises were the most pressing issue, fast as all hells and vicious; they had to be more wary of the algae, considering that was a threat pressing in on all sides, and that didn''t give them time to react to the shadows blitzing in from every turned corner. Sarissa''s limestone gauntlets were able to defend against them easily enough and a thunderclapping punch did the same, but that distraction meant that the algae could try to strike for an opportunity, and Kriya''s energy was dipping much faster than they were hoping for as she tried to keep up with all of their opened wounds. As close as she was to Silver, she was still Bronze, and her mana was going to run out sooner than any of them were really comfortable with. So instead she was switching to partial heals and bandaging, and they would just hope they would get through it all fast enough. The last, and probably most annoying issue, was that the dungeon had clearly decided all its previous floors were too straight forward, and that it wasn''t going to make the same mistake this time. Coseth had been initially hopeful, traipsing through the tunnel as it curved invitingly downwards towards whatever room presumably housed the core, and then that hope had been squashed and danced upon as his quartz-light lit up a branching path, two identical tunnels forking off in opposite directions. Which. Fantastic. In the choking darkness and cramped surroundings, there was no real way to tell time, and Coseth was really not a fan of that. At least with Sarissa they could be sure they were taking new paths; she was raising little spikes of stone across the entrance and exit of every new tunnel they went through, preventing them from looping back, and though it wasn''t an exact science Coseth could feel the mana pick up, just a slight pressure against his skin. Eventually they''d be able to find their way through this fucking labyrinth. And by the gods, when Coseth got his hands on the core, he would be turning this floor into an empty white hallway with arrows made of glowing quartz pointed directly at the exit. Kriya tied off the bandages with a whispered apology as Coseth swallowed a yelp, tucking the end out of the way near his ankle. Sarissa glanced over, scaled fingers glowing as she kept a temporary wall up on the both sides of their tunnel just in case more mantises attacked, Birrin''s eyes almost glowing underneath his blindfold as he prepared to muddle the minds of anything approaching, Kentra''s hair crackling with excess electricity. For all that they were covered in scratches and bruises and Sarissa was nursing a patch of ripped-off scales on her side, they were still up, and they were still fighting. That was damned more than most of the groups could say¡ªand of course it had been them, the misfits, the silver-templed and the unbalanced, that had done so. Coseth flashed a grin as Kriya pulled him back to his feet, her hood fluttering before she pressed it back to her neck. "Thanks, kid." She smiled at him with twin fangs. Sarissa let the stone walls drop, breathing a little heavily, but Coseth had his quartz-light raised and off they set before long, stomping through the tunnels with a single-minded focus. Whips of algae opened lashes across Birrin''s back and scoured at Kentra''s ankles but the mana was getting heavier, hanging densely against his skin. Coseth abandoned restraint and cycled mana through both the quartz-light and his eyes, peering through the dimness with enhanced vision for even a chance of something new. it had to be close¨C Something shot through the air; Coseth''s enhanced gaze snapped to it and he opened his mouth in warning, but it was faster than he could speak, faster than an arrow, splattering across the face of the one out front. There were two distincts popping sounds. Kentra screamed. Lightning exploded out from her skin, wild and thrashing, striking through the quartz-light like the sun. Birrin let out a choked cry as he stumbled back, electricity crackling over his crossed arms, and Kentra hardly seemed to notice; her fists went wild, spinning, punching at the empty air. She hadn''t stopped screaming. You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story. Coseth swore and thrust the quartz-light higher, forcing more mana through the stone¡ªlight bloomed between them, fiery tendrils of yellow-white, and reflected off serpents right before them. Dozens, more, mostly luminous constrictors but with a few grey-blue ones with crowned hoods and extended fangs. Sarissa hissed and slammed her fists together, wrenching up a wall of stone¡ªbut then a lightning-enhanced kick exploded through it, hurling rubble through the cramped tunnel. Kentra spun, still lashing out wildly, and he got a horrible, horrible look at her eyes¡ªat her face, because instead of eyes she just had a streak of venom hissing across empty sockets, blood and bile trickling down her cheeks. She couldn''t see them. Couldn''t understand the situation. And Kentra''s first reaction to danger had always been to attack. There was no time for second guessing¡ªBirrin snapped his fingers and Kentra stilled, shoulders wavering, her mind fleeing from her control as he tangled together sensations and directions into a muddled mess. Lightning still crackled off her skin but she wasn''t attacking, fumbling for balance, head wobbling on her shoulders. But they didn''t have time to focus on her because the serpents were attacking. Half a dozen luminous constrictors reared, pale underbellies exploding in a blinding flash of light; Coseth stumbled back with a howl, arm wrenched in front of his overly-sensitive eyes, agony sparking through his head. He heard Kriya move, felt Sarissa brush past in the crowded corridor¡ªhe dropped the quartz-light to rub furiously at his eyes with the palms of his hands, anything to shake off the white spots flooding his vision. He needed to fight. Coseth wrangled his sight back just as the first of the serpents threw themselves forward. No place to climb for their typical falling ambush style but they were still twelve feet long and powerful; Sarissa''s hands disappeared under stone gauntlets as she punched one out of the air, skittering back to avoid another, teeth bared and hood flared. But there were too many of them and with the narrow tunnels, only Sarissa could be in the front to battle, close combat too risky with others at their side. She wouldn''t hold forever and all of them knew it¨C they needed to do something¨C Birrin, hesitant but desperately understanding the danger, ripped his blindfold off. Instantly, every serpent in his line of sight froze, trembling as their heads darted from side to side; mana coiled over their eyes, throwing together imaginary enemies or threats or dangers, whatever Birrin was thinking of as he kept them locked in his eyesight, careful not to look at anyone else on his team. This ability was old but untrained, too dangerous to unleash in ordinary situations, but¨C Well. This was pretty fucking far from ordinary. Coseth swept back as Birrin kept the horde at bay, reaching out to put a hand on Kentra''s shoulder¡ªshe flinched, arms rising, the last of Birrin''s muddlement fading from her mind. Her eyeless face turned in his direction, mouth open and lips trembling, skin tight with pain. Kriya could fix it. She could. No time for delicacy¡ªhe grabbed at her shoulders and shoved her back, pushing her away from the serpents. As much as she was their strongest offensive member, she probably needed eyes to do that, and they''d just have to protect her until they could get away. At a muffled command from Birrin, Sarissa stepped forward, preparing to drag up a stone wall and separate both sides from each other. A new opponent emerged. Serpentine but dwarfing the others present, some thirty feet long¡ªits scales were a patternless grey-black, large and well-grown. Most pressing were the twin horns curling over its head, pronged like antlers but almost crystalline in material, a ghostly, translucent white. Birrin''s eyes flicked up to lock it under his illusions. The serpent didn''t so much as flinch. Its horns started to glow. One by one, the other constrictors stopped trembling, their heads snapping back to face Sarissa. The illusionary mana faded from their eyes, drifting away in dying tendrils, and the constrictors reared back up¡ªBirrin bared his teeth and redoubled his efforts, fully dropping his blindfold to the ground as he reached for power. The serpent''s horns glowed all the brighter. Almost like it was fighting back. Oh. Birrin''s mouth opened in a silent gasp, eyes undulating between red and gold as he stared at the creature, something like quiet horror dawning in his gaze. "Psychic," he breathed¡ªand for all that he was looking directly at the creature, all that his uncontrollable illusions should have rendered it immobile, it was looking directly back at him. Its serpents¡ªits underlings¡ªcontinued to free themselves. Coseth had fought alongside this group for four years. He had never before seen anything counter Birrin''s abilities, not when the boy was Bronze, and certainly not when he''d made the climb to Silver. Both of them were frozen stiff, staring at the creature, unable to comprehend what was happening. And in all the confusion, they had forgotten about the first enemy they''d encountered in these twisting tunnels. Sarissa only had a moment before a whip of algae latched around her shoulders, jerking her punch out of alignment¡ªair fell from her lips in a pained grunt but then the thorns wrapped tighter, snaking around her throat, digging past her scales hard enough the exposed slivers of skin turned white. Kriya immediately spun, eyes wide. "No!" The serpent''s horns flashed. At whatever unspoken command, another group of luminous constrictors rose and unleashed their blast of light, forcing Coseth and Birrin to stumble back; the cobra spat another blast of venom in the split second that followed and Coseth could only squeeze his eyes shut, praying that he wasn''t in its path¨C Birrin made a high, piping scream. He wasn''t, but someone else was. Serpents threw themselves forward and Coseth didn''t have his daggers, didn''t have his bow out, and he''d dropped the quartz-light already; something slammed into his legs and he thrashed, staggering back. His eyes flew open despite the pain¡ªmore constrictors poured in, summoned by the horned serpent, and the others were defenseless. Birrin, shaking his hands desperately as they hissed and bubbled with venom, fell as a constrictor wrapped around his ankles. Kentra, still stumbling and blind, had no choice but to fall when something slammed into her from behind, lightning crackling unconsciously as she thrashed and spat. Sarissa snarled wordlessly but the thorns were pulling her closer to the wall, more whips wrapping around her arms. And Kriya¨C And Kriya¨C Kriya''s eyes had flattened to pale slitted pupils, hands pressing to the sides of her temples. "No," she gasped, hood fluttering like it was caught in a storm. "No, no, get out get out get out¨C" Coseth reached for her, even as the others fell, even as he fell. Protect the healer. Scales tightened around his chest and wrenched his arm back to his side, coiling until his collarbones creaked and his breath hissed out in pained little exhales but no inhales. Dimly, he was aware of the lightning ceasing, the thrash of Birrin''s boots cooling to stillness, the stone around him settling back to placid calm. Black curled in the corners of his vision. The last he saw was the horned serpent curling around Kriya, its eyes a burning, soothing blue. - Seros prowled through the twisting paths of the jungle-floor. Water scattered off his scales as he moved, claws dragging through lichen, eyes fixed on the blackness he could see through easy as light; for he was blessed with the power of dark seas, and this had no bearing on him. Few things did, for he was the chosen, the first chosen of the Core, and he was strong. And soon he would be stronger. His last kill had gotten him close, for all that it hadn''t been a fight¡ªjust a man, kneeling beside the body of someone with mana tasting like mangroves, and he hadn''t fought back. His mana had been sharp and bright, powerful, and it filled him in a way that meat never would. Still the blood in his veins hungered, calling for more, dreaming of wider skies and endless seas. It wasn''t content with this miniscule form. Neither was he. And so Seros stalked, following the trail of overturned greenery and the hesitant thump of a distant heart, the pull of water that wasn''t water at all, sloshing inside veins like river currents. His claws padded through algae and glowing spores, words he only knew because of the Core and all the knowledge he learned through their connection. With the Core, he had grown strong, the only one to move through all floors and keep the watch, the only one to curl in the hoard room and guard the precious stone that housed the soul of the dungeon. The only one who would finish this. In the back of his mind, he could hear the raid-frenzy, that which called him to hunt; but he needed no extra encouragement. Already he moved, already he searched, and his target would not escape like they so clearly thought they could. He still did not understand everything. Information passed like shooting stars around his head, though the Core understood all and explained things when he requested it. All he knew was that these beasts, these invaders, would seek to take the Core. To claim it. To remove that which had granted him thoughts. Both Seros and Seros would never allow that to stand. He prowled forward, algae retreating from the weight of his presence. The tunnels had long ago ceased to confuse him, though he watched lesser creatures fumble their way through¡ªthey could not taste the coils of mana billowing from one tunnel to the next, telling him precisely where he was and where he needed to go, a comforting guide in the darkness that had no hold over him. For he was Seros, chosen of the Core, and there was no place within this mountain that could keep him out or away. But he wasn''t trying to find his way to the Core. No, he had another monster to fetch. The invader stumbled through the choking tunnels, power snaking out and tasting of bone. It¡ªshe¡ªmoved with a graceless haste, bashing through other creatures, tearing herself free of algae as she pushed forward. He could smell blood, thin little droplets, and only some of it was from the rats and bugs that filled the halls. She was injured. But not defeated. That would fall to him. He padded alongside algae trampled by boots, rats twitching through death throes with limbs torn from alignment, scattered curls of mana that tasted white and cold. For all that she was blind and unaware of the beauty of the Core, she had managed a relatively correct path, winding her way through the tunnels with only a few crossbacks. Nowhere near the stone jungle at the core, still much more trekking to do, but slowly she chipped at the distance. He had no real reference of time, unnecessary as it was in the dungeon, but if she continued for long enough, she would reach the final room. Would the¡ªhe fumbled for the right word for a moment before remembering¡ªratkin be strong enough to defeat her, keep her back from the fifth floor? Perhaps. Unacceptable. The risk was far too great. Seros picked up the pace, ignoring mantises that lashed at his scaled bulk and walking boulder-bugs that refused to flee in terror as he stalked past. The blood grew stronger, sharper¡ªhe could feel her mana, pressing coils around his insides, strangely enough. Not enough to figure out what she could do with it, but enough it made him bare his teeth and flare his frills. For someone to have come so far, she would be dangerous. But Seros was more dangerous. The bloody, ancient thing in his veins hummed, pleased with the thought, still yearning and snapping and hungry for more¡ªhe still didn''t know what it was but he knew it was good. Was strong. And soon he would unlock it. For he was Seros, was Seros, and there was strength in the Name. The ferocity carried him forward around the twist in the tunnel and brought him to his prey. She was another fleshy human, though with something odd over her face, shorter than him with flowing wrappings around her body. No light, not that he needed it, but it seemed she did¡ªeven as she raised her hand, a rat thrashing under spools of her mana, she had her head tilted to the side, listening. He felt loops of mana brush all around her, sensing for bones to tell her when enemies approached. There was a wonderful sort of pride as her mana brushed him and she froze. She was right to be scared. Seros padded forward, tail swishing in the cramped corners. Soon he would outgrow these halls, his bulk already forcing him to duck and restrict his movement. She abandoned the rat and turned to face him, locking onto his form despite the dark. She was strong, power thrumming underneath her oddly-shaped face, fleshy arms raised. Already preparing to stop him. To grind all his progress to a stop. Her eyes, while initially frightened, were calm. Whatever power she had, she expected to come out on top. To twist the favour until it wasn''t a fair fight. Seros had no intentions of ever letting it be a fair fight. He charged, and for just a moment, he felt wings spread behind him. Chapter 84 - Ruminations Seros ripped the head off the last invader in a bloody, visceral explosion. I''d had no reason to as a dragon and I wasn''t capable of it as a dungeon core, but there was a very strong desire to weep in relief. To be very clear, I didn''t, but I wanted to. My brave, beautiful bastard of a seabound monitor sagged back, spitting out the invader''s head¡ªa tall, willowy woman with a mask built into her face and an unpleasant habit of manipulating bones¡ªwith a weary hiss. In the cramped corners of the Jungle Labyrinth, he could only fight so well, no room to batter opponents with his tail or slash out with his back claws. She had taken full advantage of that, reaching out with her wretched little powers to twist his limbs out of alignment, forcing him to stumble and heave for breath against ribs that constricted around his lungs¡ªbut for all that she was terrible and awful, he was still Seros, chosen of me. It would take more than someone who fancied herself an invader of my dungeon to take him down. And though he dragged a broken back leg and fragile ribcage, his fangs had found a home around her neck comfortably enough. I flew to him with all speed, heedless of waste as I poured healing mana into him like a waterfall; his frills perked up when he felt me, even as he collapsed against the ground to take the weight off his broken bones, our connection thrumming with pride. Only slightly begrudgingly I lavished praise on him as I healed the worst of his injuries, bullying bones back in place as I stitched them together and smoothing over fractures and misaligned joints. It had been a special sort of agony to be unable to help when the invader was here, sucking up all my mana as I tried to heal his injuries and only strengthened her instead, and I more than made up for it now. Because for all that today had been a disaster on levels I was only barely starting to comprehend, Seros would survive, and that was enough to calm part of my soul. But it had been a disaster. The first minutes had been tense enough when I''d thought there were only a handful of invaders¡ªsurprise of all surprises, my mood had not improved when damn fifty of the bloody things had tramped through my Calaratan entrance like they owned the place. No one above Silver, thank the gods, but Silvers were still stronger than the vast majority of my creatures and there were a lot of them. So. Yeah. I was having a great time. They''d poured through my first floor in droves, letting me get a real glimpse of how adventuring parties worked¡ªthe largest I''d seen had been seven and they hadn''t been the most coordinated, much more common in sizes between three and five. Plenty of interesting specializations, from casters to enhancers and everything in between, what would have been glorious study if they hadn''t been attacking me, and from my useless, helpless position overhead, I had embedded every image into my core. If I used mana, they just absorbed it and knew that I was active, so I just had to sit out. It burned. I hated it. So I had gotten to just watch as they sliced and cut through my burrowing rats and luminous constrictors, joking and confident as they rated my danger level. Nuvja hide some attacks and weaker fools fell, but those higher-ranked Silvers had strolled through. The Fungal Gardens had served their purpose, though. The glint and flash of jewels pulled everyone further in, whispered of wealth and glory with sweet little nothings, and the invaders marched forward without a glance back. The second the last one had come through, I had calculated the risk as enough and made my first active command, tunneling away at water until the creeping vine had unfurled from its position overhead and crawled over the entrances. In the darkness of the first floor, it had been indistinguishable. The joy at seeing invaders stumble blindly in search of their escape had not been enough to make up for the death of the mother cave bear. She''d died quickly, which was the smallest of comforts, but one I would take. Her mate had taken revenge but not on the pair that had actually killed her, just hapless bystanders, but their blood had at least helped. Objectively, I knew her cubs could survive on their own and her mate could guide them for the rest of their journey, but. Well. I saw her corpse and thought of my first lunar cave bear, so long ago, and how the den that had once housed him was now empty once again. For all I made and spawned and cared for thousands of creatures, their losses would always hurt. But onward the invaders came, and there was no time to mourn because more of my beloved creatures were dying. The eldest and firstborn ironback toad, an arrow through the mouth¡ªan electric eel that''d been so close to evolution stabbed through the stomach and dragged out of the water to flop until she died¡ªa dead mangrove crawling with webweavers set alight until they burned. With each, I snarled and snapped at the air, watching invaders clap each other on the back and cheer like it wasn''t lives they were claiming, like they weren''t killing my creatures without a thought for their actions. But I wasn''t the only one losing here. Those who brushed too close to the mangroves felt the bite of their thorns, and one poor sap had gotten a stab through the neck with nothing for his adventuring party to do as he died a messy death. Electric eels punished all those who entered the canals if the silvertooths didn''t get there first, and the waters thrashed with scarlet froth. It had taken three whole suddenly-missing feet before people started to distrust the stepping stones over the canals, the lichenridge snapping turtles getting more than their fill from the woeful little fools so stupid as to step on their back. There was something gratifying about seeing my traps work, in a way. Because while I had carved the ledges with the specific intention for razorleaf lichen to sit and wait for unsuspecting hands, it was another thing entirely to see someone reach to the surrounding wall for support and rear back with crimson fingers, and then promptly regret their mistake further as the blood awoke the silvertooths when they tried to cross the canals. Or to see the little holes kobolds had dug and filled with sharpened spears actually serve a purpose, trapping invaders until they bled out, or how the chieftess had been able to command a whole hoard to overwhelm their opponents with a semblance of strategy. Or the very, very welcome surprise that Nicau, human as he was, had killed an invader. He''d mentioned something about his abilities when he came back from the jungle I still had yet to name, and to see it in action was eye-opening. Not just able to talk to other beings but¡­ command them, in some way? It also made me excited about Seros'' blessing of the depths. Surely that had more abilities than just hydrokinesis if little Nicau could force his opponents to freeze before him. Questions for later days, though. The Drowned Forest had been when the invaders truly started to feel losses¡ªalready they were split up by the branching paths, no longer having the pure advantage of numbers as they were reduced to only their adventuring party instead of a crowd, and whole groups disappeared under the tangle of my creatures while others walked on in blissful ignorance. Perhaps ten dead, though my own forces were decimated as well¡ªkobolds slumped over the canal banks, greater crabs twitching through punctured carapaces, mangroves chopped and bleeding scarlet from gashes over their trunk. But oh, the losses did not stay on my side as the invaders made the push to the third floor. I had been getting the sense that this was not a particularly prepared group from the beginning, with the heedless way they had thrown themselves into my depths and seemingly had no information about why they were facing. This fact was only made abundantly clear when they came to face my beloved Underlake. Some had seen the water and immediately turned around, which was gratifying, and only more so when they found that my first two floors had not stayed docile and clear while they were gone. Others still had plunged into the water, and it did turn out that there was an irritating little ability where they could circulate mana in their lungs to avoid needing to swim along the surface¡ªinfuriating, but I had expected at least something similar. My life would have been just too easy if only aquatic races could make it past my third floor. Ah well. If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. Because for all that they could survive the water, that did not mean that they could fight in it. There was something extremely satisfying to be a sea-drake and watch those that had killed me flounder uselessly in the water. For all they tried to remember how to swim and figured out that no, you could not, in fact, swing a sword as efficiently underwater, my creatures were built to fight in this environment. I''d watched gleefully as the royal silvertooth commanded his horde of followers to shred unsuspecting fools apart, the greater crabs swarming over those walking along the bottom, roughwater sharks tearing anyone without the firepower to stand up to them to shreds. There had been a particularly delightful moment where a fire mage who''d been so terribly cocky as she burned my mangroves to stumps on the second floor had come face-to-face with the fledgling sea serpent and learned that no, fire did not work well underwater, and sea serpents were not kind enough to give her a second chance to attack. Glorious. I reveled in that. And then the duo that had killed my cave bear struck once more, and they''d ripped off the sarco''s head. I wouldn''t quite call it shock, since they had paid dearly for the victory, but there was a part of me that didn''t really know what to do with the situation. Because as powerful as Seros was, and as cunning as the horned serpent was, and as determined as Rihsu was, the sarco had been a beast. Larger than anything else in my dungeon, capable of both terrestrial and aquatic combat, lazy and slow but capable of taking down anything else in my dungeon. Though I would never have told him, I was fairly sure he would have defeated Seros out of the water. His bulk was just so intense. And then he''d been defeated. I''d barely had a moment to think over it, trying to piece together what to do with that information, when a point of awareness watching the armoured jawfish tear into a full adventuring party noticed something near the surface of the floor. I''d looked up, and. Well. There was an invader, a tall, broad man with scales and fangs unlike any creature I''d seen before, swimming to the top of the water. Above him, the cloudskipper wisp darted to and fro, kicking up larger waves as she delighted in the raid-frenzy without any combat from herself, barking and howling in that odd, storm-like voice of hers. And then the bastard, the goddamn savage, had reached out with a sliver of crystal and stolen my wisp, trapped her beautiful canine form in quartz, and then had the fucking audacity to just leave. Because apparently, there had been some scholar I hadn''t paid enough attention to, and when he''d fled back up to the first floor, he''d managed to both avoid the cave bear and spot the difference between limestone and creeping vine to find his way out. Which, fantastic for him, except then that others had managed to leave¡ªsome shadowy figure who hadn''t tried past the second floor, the scholar, maybe half a dozen other cowards, and now this wretched thief. I had killed those that had killed my cave bear, my sarco, my toad, all my beloved creatures who had deserved better. Even if they had defeated them, they paid for it in their life, and I could only get so angry at a corpse before I was wasting time. But this man had stolen my wisp, and he''d gotten away with it. I ached and I raged and I seethed. Only half a dozen invaders made it to the fourth floor, which was a bit of a balm, and I watched with greedy, hungry eyes for their destruction¡ªthey stumbled through the twisting tunnels, one party and one solo, and my creatures closed in. Seros took out the man who had defeated the sarco and joined the hunt as well. The adventuring party made it far, their unique collection of abilities certainly not countering my Jungle Labyrinth but at least allowing them to scrape their way through, though they paid in plenty of blood. Their healer took off the edge, which felt vaguely like cheating when I was on the opposite side, but for all their brutish tactics, they were not the strongest thing on this floor. That was made abundantly clear as they turned one final corner and came face-to-face not with the exit, but instead the horned serpent''s army. The destruction was quick and lovely to watch, shredding past their defenses and taking them all down with the kind of speed that didn''t give them a moment to react, turning them into sad little corpses that didn''t deserve to go any further. Or. Well. Mostly. For all I was saying the invasion was over, there was still one alive. They just weren''t in any position to be attacking. A human, but with an extremely prevalent serpentine ancestry¡ªprobably naga or lamia, I couldn''t tell yet. She was young with powerful healing mana, which I would''ve welcomed collecting from her soul, but for some reason, the horned serpent had curled around her. Psionic mana bloomed from her antlers, pressing into the human''s¡ªKriya''s, I thought, because I apparently paid attention to all these unimportant details¡ªmind and tugging her into sleep. And then, even when she was asleep, she wasn''t killed. Which. Why? She was serpentine, yeah, but I had pegged the horned serpent as intelligent enough to know that I couldn''t just recreate a fully sapient being for her army. And even if she knew that, what was the point in taking a human? They weren''t exactly helpful. But the horned serpent just dragged her slumped body onto her back and started to transport her down to the stone jungle of the fourth floor. I hoped she didn''t intend for me to keep the brat. Nicau was already stretching the limits of my patience¡ªnot through anything the boy had done, admittedly, but I hadn''t been particularly fond of odd, fleshy humans before and I certainly hadn''t grown more so after one had killed me¡ªand while this one had a few more pleasing serpentine qualities, it wasn''t enough for me to actually tolerate her. And judging by the light threatening to burst out from underneath the horned serpent''s scales, I wouldn''t be able to have a nice, long conversation with her before her evolution started. I shoved aside the excitement from that thought and continued to care for the more pressing issues. Seros had taken out the last invader, because of course he had, and once more my halls were empty of threats¡ªwhich was fantastic, because I''d probably lost a third of my total creatures. My lower prey-level populations were utterly decimated, rats down to a sniveling fraction of their previous number, and the halls were littered with corpses¡ªbut the most irritating, frustrating, infuriating thing? I couldn''t claim it. Already my core heaved and swelled with mana, plugged full to burst, and I was hard limited by my seventy-five point capacity. Just a handful of humans had released more than that with their death, and for all that a significant portion had gone to the creatures who had killed them, far more was just now floating aimlessly around my halls, drifting away with nothing to hold it. Because I didn''t have room. Do you know how annoying that was? Could you even begin to comprehend the raw fury I felt at having successfully defended myself, killed nearly fifty invaders, and I couldn''t even profit from it? If I hadn''t already sworn to destroy Calarata, I would have made that promise now. But for as much was slipping out of my grasp, I could at least try to reclaim some¡ªI dumped an immediate seventy points into the first and second floor, regrowing rats by the dozen, swarming little bodies born into the aftermath of devastation. Then I reached out and grappled for the mana hovering overhead, trawling along the edges of my control like a tease. It was an infuriating, difficult process that took far too long, but I was able to reclaim about a quarter of the mana I would have gotten had I had room, and I was only able to do it by continuously using up what I collected to make more creatures and then returning to desperately scrapping at the air like a lowly beggar. In the end, it was enough to mostly replenish my numbers, and I suppose I''d just have to take it. If I wanted an answer on why I should select increased mana capacity on my evolutions instead of just increased regeneration, I''d gotten it in spades. Bah. Bloody rules. There was still more mana waiting to be harvested in all the bodies scattered over my floor, but I decided to hold off on that for now¡ªit wasn''t nearly as time sensitive as other issues, and I needed a better distraction. And oh was I about to get one. Because as my creatures shook off the last of their raid-frenzy, calming down as my healing mana swept through the halls and took the edge off the worst of their wounds, there were some a little larger than the others, a little fiercer, a little more full. There had been over forty invaders killed in my halls, invaders fat and ripe with mana, and while half went to me, half also went elsewhere. And for some, that half had been enough to push them over the edge. Spread all over my floors, creatures lit up from inside with pale white light, minds crawling with the instinctual urge to protect themselves in preparation for a rest. All around, I could feel their awarenesses pinging against mine, thoughts racing, impossible possibilities filling the air with the sweet, sweet taste of mana. I had other tasks to do. Invaders hadn''t just attacked my creatures but also my halls, burning down my mangroves, destroying my stone, leaving behind filthy little remains and traps and other repulsive things that I would have to clean up. I''d have to send out scouts and make sure that there would be no further attacks while I was recovering, make sure that the mountain was quiet again, make sure that I could have this very necessary time to protect my own. But not right now. Because there were messages by the dozens, by the hundreds, crawling across my core, and I knew exactly what they were. Excitement flickered, bright and sharp, as I curled around the golden letters and prepared myself. It was time to decide on evolutions. Chapter 85 - Lesser Starts Evolutions were a beautiful, glorious thing. I treasured them immensely, loved all who climbed their path, and worked with both my knowledge and their soul to choose the best they could become. So it was truly a balm to feel so many little lights spring up throughout my halls. Both of excitement, and also of relief. Because yeah. I needed these evolutions. With the mana I''d scrapped and scraped, losing three fourths of what I should have gotten, I''d only had enough to recreate the lesser creatures of my halls. So the populations of burrowing rats were back up, not at what they had been but with enough to regrow back to their previous size. So still empty dens, still less movement and life and hunger than had been there before, but enough to regrow. That was why I built ecosystems, after all. The mana gained from invasions was better used for more important things, not constantly replenishing my populations. Even in the raid-frenzy I only called for most of my creatures, leaving those pregnant or guarding eggs back in their dens, keeping away the too-young and a small group that would be enough to keep the group alive. For all that I''d mostly evolved past needing to rely on my innate dungeon abilities, I was endlessly grateful for the part of me made of stone walls and endless deeps that knew exactly how many I needed to retain, how large to make the groups, how intricate to make the family lines. I was a dragon. I certainly wouldn''t know how to keep rats alive without those instincts. So my halls weren''t exactly back in perfect shape, still down about a third of their previous prey populations, and that was without the larger beasts I had yet to recreate. It had simply been too much of a mana sink¡ªI had to get the food sources back before I could add predators, of course. But it hurt, I must admit, to create a pitiful little school of silverheads instead of shaping a new sarco crocodile. I missed him, and I missed my cloudskipper wisp, and I missed my mother cave bear. They''d lived such brilliant, beautiful lives, only to be cut short before any of them had even gotten a chance to evolve. So I would evolve new monsters that would grow strong enough to never allow those invaders to take from me again. I swore it. Was it something I could swear? Technically not. Invaders would keep invading me no matter how much I spat and cursed their presence, and they would always bring swords and blades and magic. I couldn''t stop them from killing my creatures entirely. But I could make damn sure they wouldn''t make it out of my halls alive. I reached for the messages crawling over my core. Easily dozens, all bright and shining and wonderful, and I let my attention get tugged between all the creatures¡ªI''d start on the smaller ones first, move through those that I knew I could pick quicker and let them get evolving, because there were certain lights in the back of my mind that I knew I would be agonizing for hours over and there was no need to let littler things wait around while I tried to make a decision. So.
Your creature, a Burrowing Rat, is undergoing evolution! Please select your desired path. Ratking (Uncommon): Commander of the lesser rats, it uses its long and powerful tail to bind them to its will, forcing all those in the vicinity to serve it with reckless abandon whether their lives are kept or lost. Shadowthief Rat (Rare): Burglars, collectors, rogues. It has learned that it serves best from the darkness as it seeks to build its shining hoard, striking in a flurry of blows before disappearing back to lairs unseen. Mage Ratkin (Rare): Unlike its arcane brethren, this creature chooses a specialization in only one branch of mana, and can now generate their own attuned mana to use as they see fit. As they study and train, their power can grow to be reminiscent of a true mage.
Huh. These were the first rats evolving that hadn''t had to spontaneously upgrade their diet to include inorganic jewels, and the choices reflected that. Initially, I wanted to select mage ratkin¡ªthe colony on the fourth floor was growing stronger and stronger with every passing day, and soon both the original would be evolving and they would be able to venture out into the wider halls to claim wider territory. Adding more to their number would only speed up that process. But then I paused, and looked at the rats glowing in preparation for evolution. The path down to the fourth floor was always open, and I''d dropped all my less-than-subtle hints about how much more mana was down there about as many times as I possibly could. But these rats hadn''t made the journey, hadn''t ventured further below in search of greater prizes. They stayed here to guard their current jewels. Hm. They couldn''t stay on the first floor after their evolution, I knew that. Nuvja wouldn''t exactly approve of too many changes to her floor, even for all she''d changed the original contract and was probably a little more cut-and-loose with rules than the other gods I''d made deals with, and thus they''d have to travel below. I''d take time out of my busy schedule and help bring their jewels with them, because I was a kindly overlord like that, but even with that, I doubted they would just team up with the mage ratkin. They''d had the chance to swallow jewels and travel below before, and they hadn''t taken it. And, well. There were nearly a dozen of them primed for evolution, which was plenty to start their own species. The Jungle Labyrinth was already a group-filled floor, with the competing ratkin and horned serpent''s army. What was one more? In objective terms, the ratking would be the first choice there¡ªchoose several strong leaders and entreat other burrowing rats to follow them, disappearing underground as they built an army of unforseen proportions that all served with a suicidal loyalty. Certainly something that blended very well with the fourth floor''s cramped corners and endless distractions. But then I saw the word hoard. Shadowthief rats were clearly an evolution born from Nuvja''s blessing, one of the first true god-inspired paths I''d had the option of taking, though clearly Rhoborh had played some part in the thornwhip algae. The description was unhelpfully vague¡ªdid they have shadow mana or merely disguised themselves in it, and was flurry of blows based on their physical ability or something more?¡ªbut in the end, it was enough. Because these rats had stayed on the first floor instead of venturing further down to protect their jewels, and this evolution would only strengthen that. And, besides. Invaders often brought tasty little treats with them, and this invasion had already given me several new artefacts I was very interested in getting my claws on¡ªwhat about an entire race of creatures who were built entirely to steal and take more things? I would certainly never say no. So I guided the rats into a hollow I carved in the first floor, bundling them all together and spooking a hungry luminous constrictor away, and selected shadowthief rat. All dozen of them lit up in pale yellow-white, eyes closing and minds soothing over as the mana bursting in their channels was finally released; their first evolution, so I had hopes it wouldn''t take too long and I could soon welcome these lovely new creatures to my halls. Thieves indeed. To be fair, I liked thieves only when they were on my side. There''d been too many moronic fools who''d thought they could steal my dragonhoard, and there were only so many times that could be amusing before it became infuriating. But these little rats would be stealing for me, and that was more than acceptable. And they were hardly the last of my evolutions. I reached for the next bunch, even more numerous than the last, spread over my first four floors with almost two dozen ready to reach new scattered heights¡ªluminous constrictors. And where the rats had been uniform, the evolution messages here I was receiving were very, very different. Fascinating. The constrictors on the first two floors, about a dozen, had the same core message, one studded with familiar options. It made sense; I was starting to really understand evolutions, more than just fun powerups that appeared whenever my creatures gathered enough mana. They were born from experiences and exposures, whether from enemies, environments, or godly influence. For these constrictors, without going deeper, they hadn''t had the chance to find anything new, and thus were stuck with more baseline evolutions. Didn''t mean they were bad evolutions. I was still certainly going to take it.
Your creature, a Luminous Constrictor, is undergoing evolution! Please select your desired path. Colossal Boa (Uncommon): Growing to titanic lengths, this constrictor lurks in the shadows and strikes at passing victims. With its immense strength and size, there is little that can successfully fight off its fatal hold. This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it. Umbral Constrictor (Rare): It forsakes its previous life in favour of its new hunting style, shrouding itself in shadows as it slinks through the undergrowth. Its prey never sees it coming, and they rarely have time to regret that mistake. Crowned Cobra (Uncommon): Where once it waited, now it strikes. Armed with venom-launching fangs and a flared hood, it stalks through the undergrowth in search of richer prey.
Damnit. For all I knew it was unlikely, I''d still kind of hoped for another horned serpent. Her power was just so brilliant. All three options appealed to me, but I also had to consider that these creatures would very likely be joining the horned serpent''s army, whether they wanted to or not. So far, only the snakes too weak to venture past the first two floors and the fledgling sea serpent had been able to resist her call, and given that she was going to evolve, I doubted that anyone would be resisting her after that. She was a powerful, powerful beast, and for all that I loved my serpentine brethren, they didn''t exactly have the mind needed to stay independent. Dragons had no such problem, but snakes unfortunately did. Ah well. Her strength meant more for me. I pondered the available options. The crowned cobras on the fourth floor had well proved how useful ranged attacks were, especially those of a venom influence, and the mentioned crown had the elegance that I rather appreciated. Umbral constrictors were more physical, taking out enemies with force for all that they remained hidden, and colossal boas were brawlers, focusing on brute strength and raw power. All good, really. That was irritating. But Seros'' battle had shown me how overly massive creatures weren''t aided by the fourth floor, too pinned down in the endless winding tunnels and cramped corridors, and for something that didn''t have four limbs to move around quickly, the colossal boa would have a very poor time of things trying to utilize its massive size. Another issue with the umbral constrictor; it was too similar to luminous constrictors in its hunting style to really validate picking it as opposed to something more strictly useful for the horned serpent. One day I''d picked colossal boa. I still wanted its devastating size. For all dozen serpents, I selected crowned cobras. The next five came from one floor down, and I barely had to skim their options¡ªluminous viper, umbral constrictor, and silver krait¡ªbefore I was shuffling them off, guiding them out of the water they''d been floundering through their attempts to swim in and carving a little hollow before them to curl up inside. They lazily snapped at each other, the hunger and the hunt pushing past the pressing calm of evolution, but it was child''s play to get them to settle down and stay in the same den. Easier to protect them through the changes. Because they would all be silver kraits. As much as I loved the fledgling sea serpent and I would only love him more as he evolved past fledgling and into a true monster of the sea, giving up his speed and venom had been a painful cost. He''d terrorized the Underlake in ways that the brutish sarco or enormous Seros just couldn''t, and I''d desperately missed his stealthy ways. So yeah, I was welcoming these new additions. I hoped they would take his place well. And there would be five this time, a proper coiling threat slinking through the shadows with fangs bared¡ªstill having to breathe air and limited by their only partial water adaptations, but infinitely more graceful than their current form. Hazy light overtook all their forms, curling up in slumbering piles of evolutions. And then my attention was dragged down one more floor to the six I''d been most excited about. Because these luminous constrictors were already a part of the horned serpent''s army, and that meant potential. I latched onto their messages with very characteristic greed. Two were disappointing, having the same options as the first batch¡ªI guided them back to the stone jungle, resting in the sprawling den that the horned serpent allowed her servants to rest in when they had earned their keep with food. She was a harsh tyrant, but a powerful one, given as for all the time she''d had her army the only losses had come from infighting, punishment, and this invasion, and even then they were minimal compared to the bloodshed happening on higher floors. The snakes were happy to either bring her food or become food themselves. In another life, she would have been a gold-drake. And now her army was about to spread. Three of the luminous constrictors had their own lists, and I read them with rising glee.
Your creature, a Luminous Constrictor, is undergoing evolution! Please select your desired path. Crowned Cobra (Uncommon): Where once it waited, now it strikes. Armed with venom-launching fangs and a flared hood, it stalks through the undergrowth in search of richer prey. Radiant Lizard (Uncommon): Shedding its previous form, it skitters through the twisting underbrush of its home with speed it could only have dreamed of before. It leaves a twisting trail of light in its wake, marking its territory and burning its enemies if they dare cross it. Jeweltone Serpent (Rare): Learning from those around it, they sacrifice their scales for the elegance of gems. Though they are slow and ponderous, they can force great feats of magic, and only need replace their jewels once they are used up.
Oho. The second one, unfortunately, was right out¡ªit was the horned serpent and her serpentine horde, and she had enough pride that I guessed she wouldn''t accept any outliers. Knew that she wouldn''t, actually, as shown by the spined lizards I''d attempted to send her way; she''d killed them outright no matter how useful their spine-launching ability would have been to her cause. Cantankerous little bastard. I loved her dearly. But the loss of radiant lizards meant nothing in face of the jeweltone serpent. Inspired by the mage ratkin I had to guess, which meant that the horned serpent might have to open a sort of truce to be able to obtain new gems for her followers, but I saw the words magic and barely had to think past them. The tone was strange, implying that the serpents didn''t have magic themselves but merely forced the gems to cooperate, but that was fine. A later evolution could help solve that. All that mattered was that there was magic involved. I curled all three lovely little constrictors up in the den, tucked further back than the others because I was rather expecting this to be a longer evolution, and then let my gaze fall upon the last serpent, scales alit with spiraling mana. She was a fierce thing, still young and growing, but she had killed one of the humans that had made it to her floor¡ªmore specifically, she had killed one of the mages. One of the mages that used psychic mana. Her evolution options were luminous viper, colossal boa, and horned serpent. I could have purred. Did I know that my first horned serpent was an outlier? Yes. The power she wielded was well and above what any second-evolution creature should have; controlling a few snakes, yes, but not nearly a hundred and with a compulsion that extended three floors straight up. I wasn''t expecting this new one to have that same level of strength. But I had hopes she would grow into it eventually. And besides, the fourth floor wouldn''t house my horned serpent forever. She''d set her sights far above these cramped tunnels, lovely as they were, and I would indulge her as all good dungeons should. One day, when she reached that fabled peak of her fifth evolution, I would likely grant her an entire floor to herself. One day. And in that event, or even just with her coming evolution, she would need someone to take over the fourth floor, and this new snake had just presented herself as a likely candidate. I had little doubt that the horned serpent would first beat her into the ground to make sure she didn''t even think about rebelling, but after that, well. I had my guesses that the current horned serpent, for all that she was evolving, was setting this up to be a matriarchal horde. A new successor would need time to learn from her before claiming territory, and I was more than happy to provide assistance needed. I pressed soothing encouragement into the constrictor''s mind as I guided her away, tucking her in the far back with all manner of delicate green moss and available water. Her evolution would take forever just like before. Ah well. A cost I was very much willing to pay. I tore myself away from the message bleeding off the current horned serpent''s form, the options lingering on the edges of my mana¡ªget the smaller stuff done first. I knew I needed time to think over hers. A couple more mundane evolutions were easily dealt with¡ªcave spiders into webweavers or shardrunner spiders, depending on what floor they were on; stone-backed toads into ironback toads; silverheads into silvertooths or electric silverheads, whichever school they were closest to. I shuffled them all off into safe places to evolve even as my excitement built to a fever pitch inside me. Because, well. Make no mistake. I loved all my creatures, brilliant and brave and fierce as they were, and my time as a dungeon had shown me how much strength even a silverhead could have. Everything in my halls could kill when push came to shove, and many of them already had¡ªthis invasion in particular had raised the lesser up from their previous meaningless existence, earning mana the likes of which they had never felt before. There was a strange, almost paternal pride I felt as I watched them kill. But for all I loved them, there were some I loved more. Why would I try to pretend otherwise? I was a dragon. We were terribly biased creatures. And so I reached for the first message that was lit up in beautiful strands of purple-grey, one I''d been very aware of but had restrained myself until I had enough time to think it over. My attention tugged back up to the first floor, curling around a den. A den with two figures inside, one dead, one alive. I hadn''t dissolved any corpses yet, saving the mana for when I needed it and also because I had some experimentations I wanted to achieve with several specific corpses, and thus the lunar cave bear had been able to drag the body of his deceased mate over to the safety of his den. She was larger than him almost half over and his claws weren''t made for any delicate movement, but still he''d managed to curl her up, tuck her paws over the hole in her head until she almost looked asleep. Then he''d laid down by her side, ignoring the call of his own evolution, and pulled shadows to surround both of their forms in the comfort of obscurity. I watched them with a strange sense of grief. I''d never had a mate. There was simply no need; dragons could feel when their population dropped enough to need more, and then one parent would choose to care for the eggs before they split again. Solitary beasts we were, and I''d been content with that. Because surely I wouldn''t have wanted to feel this pain, right? I hadn''t thought they were this close¡ªfor all they''d had three cubs together, they spent the vast majority of their time trying their best to kill each other. Both had numerous scars from each other''s claws. But watching them curl up together, even in death, made something stir in my core. Would it have been nice, having someone who cared so much about me? It didn''t matter. I opened my connection with him, shoving past the raw pain that echoed over his thoughts; I soothed the last of his remaining injuries and knitted calmness over his mind until his breathing evened out, slumping more to the ground as some of the tortured grief retreated. It was the least I could do. Blooming green algae under them both, softening the bed of limestone, I peered at the message spilling from his core.
Congratulations! Your creature, a Lunar Cave Bear, is undergoing evolution! Please select your desired path. Midnight Cave Bear (Rare): A friend of shadows and darkness, it rings itself in pitch black regardless of what is around. Its attacks are never seen and its home is never found, and it lurks in the quiet space before dawn. Lesser Bugbear (Rare): Rising to its back paws, it learns to learn and be aware of the wider world, though still seeing life through a haze of violence. Its battle tactics harden, its aggression increasing, and there are hints of some greater wisdom behind its eyes. Two-Headed Bear (Exotic): A life spent in grief is no life at all. Summoning back the spirit of one departed, they combine in strength and intelligence, so long as they are able to work together. With doubled minds and a fearsome appearance, they are either slavering wrecks or dreadful beasts.
Oh. Fucking hell, I would have made more bears if the system had told me their evolutions would have been this good, exceedingly high mana cost be damned. Even the annoyance of having to age them out of being juveniles wasn''t that bad in face of this. Now just to pick. Chapter 86 - Greater Continuations Perhaps unsurprisingly, spending five minutes just staring at my core did not help me choose an evolution. All three of the options were very lovely, really. Shadow, intelligence, strength¡ªa perfect marriage of all the cave bear''s abilities, but I had to choose only one. Very unfortunate. Lesser bugbear called to me¡ªnot the word lesser, admittedly, but the phrasing of it. I could still remember the available schemas from my own evolutions, the ones that started out with sapience instead of having to evolve it like the horned serpent or obtain it through exposure to my own brilliance like Seros. Lesser bugbear seemed to follow a similar vein, rising through the ranks of their own brutish strength and learning intelligence alongside it, although I imagined it was still a lesser form of sapience like the kobolds than the type that could sit down and have a proper conversation with me. Ah well. Midnight cave bear as well¡ªthat lined up with what he had been studying, sticking to his shadow-attuned mana and the darkness he had so learned to coat himself in. Combined with Nuvja''s blessing, I could see how this choice would blossom him to new heights, protecting both him and all those he wanted, hidden from both the moon and day as he hunted. A wonderful image, really. And then two-headed bear. I could practically taste the potential through the words, the lingering power that lurked on the edge of my core like jagged claws. With his shadow-magic and her brute strength, they would be a monster upon my halls; stalking through the darkness of the fourth floor or a towering force on the fifth, there would be little that could ever stand in their path. Objectively, it was the strongest choice. Ignoring everything else, two heads were better than one, and already my mind swam with the potential of staggered sleep schedules, dual attacks, training, split awarenesses¡ªa brief mention of slavering wreck, sure, but power beyond power as well. But. Well. If I were a purely power-focused beast, I would have killed Seros on the first day, brought down the cavern to crush his head and claim his schema. I would have evolved all my creatures into only the fiercest and most vicious options, crafted my halls as only endless hallways of monstrous beasts and hidden traps, burrowed straight down and murdered all those in my path. But that wasn''t me. I didn''t want that to be me. Because as much as I shoved it off, as much as I would never mention it, I looked forward to my chats with Seros, discussing the going-ons of the dungeon and what he should try hunting next. I enjoyed watching the mage ratkin train her underlings to harness their own magic, watching the horned serpent command her army with tyrannical precision, Nicau grow into his Name and the power with it. The floors I built thrived under my care and detail¡ªbecause they were ecosystems, not just floors, not just corridors to kill invaders. I was building something in the way that I wanted to, and I cared for my creatures. A life spent in grief is no life at all. Not an untrue phrase, but equally pressing was the concern that the two-headed bear only functioned if the two heads actually got along. And for all they had been mates, they had been rivals first, and both bore the scars of their fierce and bitter fights. Would they be able to work together if I evolved him? Perhaps. And perhaps bringing her soul back would be enough for him to get over his grief, to learn to live with her and work together in this new form, but. But. But maybe it made him miserable, maybe it trapped him alongside an endless reminder of what could never be, maybe they ripped each other to shreds in a desperate attempt for freedom that their shared body could never provide. I poked through his mind, glimpsing his most recent thoughts¡ªgrief, raw and jagged, echoed back at me, but also the understanding that she was dead. He was a dungeonborn creature and death was no stranger; she had been the closest to him, but already he had watched generation after generation of burrowing rats meet their end in the Fungal Gardens. He understood death. And past his grief for his mate, there was also the new, rising thought of his cubs. They were almost grown, nearly self-sufficient, but still young; the world was dark and cruel and cold, and he had just watched his mate die. Past the grief, past the pain, there was the deep promise that he would protect them. And for his strength in the past, he had always turned to shadows. I loved my creatures. In the end, I would always listen to them for their future. I selected midnight cave bear. He slumped further to the ground as light overtook his fur, spiraling through the den even as Nuvja''s shadows fell to blanket it; he curled in on himself, still next to the dead body of his mate, but changing. Growing. Once he evolved, I would help guide him further below, to the fourth floor and the stone jungle within. It was a temporary solution¡ªhe wouldn''t fight well in the cramped corners of the twisting tunnels, for all his shadows would help, but it was the best I could offer now. But I would carve a path for him to return above, to keep shadowed watch over his cubs, to protect them. It was what he wanted, and as much as I would urge him to delve to deeper floors, I would not deprive him of his original home. Just as soon as I, you know. Finished said deeper floors. Gods. Once I finished these evolutions and properly restocked my halls, I needed to jump head first into planning new floors. The sixth would be my coral reef, the seventh some type of forest for all my larger creatures, and then something relating to fire for the eight¡ªyou know, if I ever got time to build them all. They didn''t tell you about things like this when you became a dungeon core. Incredibly irritating. But for now, I slipped down a floor, letting the Fungal Gardens drift back to its previous hustle and bustle as I floated my points of awareness to the Drowned Forest and all the golden treasures within. Of which there were many. I''d handled most of them¡ªstone-backed toads into ironback toads, cave spiders into webweavers, whitecap mushrooms into lacecaps. Even more than those, though, I mourned the losses¡ªthere had been several electric eels so bursting with power, so ready to evolve, and before they''d even had a chance their lives had been cut short. I mourned them with a ferocity that honestly surprised me; but I''d collected the schema for the electric eels what felt like forever ago, back when my dungeon was small and barely growing, and they hadn''t had a chance to really shine since. When they''d almost stumbled across that opportunity, it had been ripped from them. For all that I wanted my creatures to grow and fight and thrive, sometimes there was nothing I could do. Moving them lower wouldn''t help, where there were more dangers that their unevolved forms couldn''t handle, and moving them up meant there wasn''t enough mana to really help in their evolutions. No right answer beyond hoping that one day they would reach that intangible barrier and break through. In a similar vein, both the greater crabs and lichenridge turtles on this floor also hadn''t reached their barrier; they''d gotten close, but not each yet to what they needed. The greater crabs needed more mana than others given they were on their second evolution¡ªkind of? They had been born into their second evolution, given both their parents were greater crabs, but apparently that counted for their own evolution? The rules were confusing¡ªand the turtles were ambush predators that weren''t supplied with targets at the same frequency as other creatures in my halls. Sure, they snapped down feet lovingly detached from legs and welcomed the mana bursting through their channels, but it wasn''t enough. Soon, though. There were a few I already had my eyes on that were looking particularly bright and growing. But for all that the lesser creatures in the Drowned Forest were still waiting on evolutions, others were already there. One group in particular. The kobolds had spread out in a handful of separate hunting parties, one led by the female chieftain and others by her subordinates; for all they''d been clumsy and limited by their primitive weapons, their efficiency could not be denied. They stole swarm tactics from the burrowing rats, used the same hidden lunges as the luminous constrictors, even the raised blocks as the ironback toads¡ªfor all that they weren''t trained fighters, they were infinitely more coordinated than my other monsters, and what they lacked in quality they more than made up for in quantity. The three adventuring parties they''d attacked had all gone down. Not flawlessly, unfortunately¡ªof the perhaps five, six dozen kobolds I''d had, they''d lost some fifteen in the attack, and more were prone and injured around the halls. I darted to and fro, dissolving some lesser corpses for bursts of mana needed to soothe their minds and heal their wounds¡ªscales and muscles reknitted under my careful claws, stitching back together and leaving gnarled scars in their wake. If anything, the kobolds seemed more pleased at their newly-earned scars than the fact I was healing them, warbling excitedly as they traced their dull claws over their pockmarked arms and torsos. Foolish, but I supposed when you were a kobold, proof that you could do any fighting at all was probably welcome. If any of them willingly tried to get more scars just to look cool, I wasn''t going to heal them. But under my curling swoops of mana, the kobolds were able to stand back up, though wincing and limping under muscles that had been pushed past exhaustion in the battle; I didn''t have enough spare mana to heal them all completely, so I just carried them to the point they would be okay and then let their actual healers patch them up the rest of the way. I wanted more mana. Infuriating not to have enough. But for the moment, I guided them back to their den, soothing the surrounding creatures so they had an uninterrupted journey back. One comfort, at least. At the entrance, Nicau emerged, shins splattered with drying blood and eyes wild¡ªthere was a moment where I almost worried over what he would do, looking more than a bit like he was about to collapse and crumble to pieces. But then the leader kobold stepped forward, churring quietly, and Nicau''s shoulders slumped. He chirped something back, a trickle of mana spilling into his voice, and then he was stepping forward, getting another kobold''s arm and helping guide them inside. Between him and the uninjured kobolds, they were able to get everyone inside and situated on moss beds and flat surfaces, healers pulling out rolls of billowing moss and half-carved cups of water to clean their wounds. I watched with a strange sense of glee. They''d truly come so far from the savage, primitive little brutes just sprinting through my dungeon. But only some of them had to be healed, because others were glowing with an incandescent inner light. Those I guided to the back of the den, side-stepping other kobolds and pushing them to set their spears down, and let them curl up in a massive, slumbering pile in a room I''d already carved for this express purpose. No one could say I wasn''t an overachiever. Then, with a giddiness only accented by the near dozen and a half evolutions presented to me, I read the message scrolling across my core.
Congratulations! Your creature, a Kobold, is undergoing evolution! Please select your desired path. Kobold Warrior (Rare): In a world of dangers, one rises to match. This creature fights with a brawn well beyond what its body should hold, ending battles with the sheer strength of its will and an unwillingness to concede. Lizardfolk (Common): Some dreams are so large they crush those who dream them. Abandoning its previous legacy, this creature turns to its own strengths, growing in both physical and mental prowess as it seeks to carve its own destiny. Kobold Hunter (Rare): In tune with beasts and birds, this creature stalks through the undergrowth with raised claws and keen eyes. Either solitary or serving a greater tribe, they strike from the shadows and drag home corpses large enough to feed dozens. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.
Exceedingly welcome options. Similar to my last sapient race evolution, actually¡ªnot changing the species but merely the position within it, though I imagined that eventually I would get a different option. Hopefully. It would be rather boring to simply move from warrior to champion. Hunter was an interesting choice, seemingly less outwardly combative but more resource-gathering focused; still certainly helpful. Most of the kobolds spent much of their time hunting to feed their growing population, and any number that they could spend better developing their weapons and traps would always be good. And I had already seen just how powerful a kobold warrior could be. Unlike with Rihsu, I could see myself selecting lizardfolk¡ªthese kobolds were still followers of dragons, as given by the crude carvings they''d littered the walls of their den, but they weren''t nearly as fanatic. They could do well by striking off on their own, hunting for meaning in their piddly little lives, but, well. I rather liked that kobolds worshipped dragons. I was decidedly uninterested in losing that. Also unlike Rihsu, rather unfortunately I imagined this would be a similar case to the horned serpent¡ªher strength and sheer force of will as a kobold warrior was not the norm. Any kobolds I evolved wouldn''t be as overwhelmingly fierce as she was, for all that she''d mostly kept to training over the past few weeks; she was just in a different boat altogether. None of these kobolds had really achieved the same raw, potent persistence she had. Ah well. Some were better than none. I poked through each of their minds, scanning the bare outlines of their thoughts and dividing them into two categories; those that were flashy and brilliant, mostly covered in scars, and had been the ones to do the frontal charge when commanded became kobold warriors; those that had stuck more to the shadows, gone unnoticed and unheeded, became kobold hunters. About six for each, which was convenient. All their scales, dappled and speckled and variegated, disappeared under a hazy glow¡ªwith all the light, I couldn''t even tell what type of dragon they were descended from. Still far too many fire-drake kin. Maybe I could do the same trick with the luminous constrictors and just shove them into the Underlake in hopes they''d evolve into a much more pleasing form. But in the pile, two kobolds stayed unglowing, sleeping but not yet having their evolutions chosen¡ªbecause their messages were different.
Congratulations! Your creature, a Kobold, is undergoing evolution! Please select your desired path. Kobold Warrior (Rare): In a world of dangers, one rises to match. This creature fights with a brawn well beyond what its body should hold, ending battles with the sheer strength of its will and an unwillingness to concede. Kobold Shaman (Rare): For all they are limited by dull claws and diminutive size, this creature rises above with a grasp on something greater. They become crucial to both the fight and the recovery, prized more than any gold or treasure won, and protected by loyalty fiercer than death. Kobold Hunter (Rare): In tune with beasts and birds, this creature stalks through the undergrowth with raised claws and keen eyes. Either solitary or serving a greater tribe, they strike from the shadows and drag home corpses large enough to feed dozens.
I preened. Glorious, glorious magic. All my creatures were shifting in a lovely direction towards mana¡ªwith the mage ratkin, the jeweltone serpents, and now shining, gleaming, brilliant kobold shamans. I wasn''t exactly positive what had given them this evolution, but a quick peek inside their most recent memories revealed at least part of the story. They''d been in the fighting groups, hunting alongside their brethren, but not as actual warriors¡ªthey were the healers brought to make sure that any kobolds didn''t bleed out when there was still a chance to save them. Mana was won and earned in strange ways, I was finding. Though neither of them had killed anything, they''d apparently gained mana from healing kobolds¡ªor maybe taken mana from the kills of the kobolds they were healing? Again, I was no mana scholar. When I''d been a dragon, this had all happened in the background¡ªI''d just taken what mana I was given and went along with it. Much easier to deal with. But either way, they''d reached the peak of evolution and were ready to blossom in proper little shamans. They disappeared under light as I selected kobold shaman for both, slumping into the pile of scaly bodies and curling up with a breathy warble. Already mana hissed and snapped at the air in the den, so many evolutions happening all at once, and kobolds meandering outside who hadn''t earned enough mana shot vaguely jealous looks at those within. I imagined once they saw what their brethren were becoming, that would only light hotter fires under their asses to go find their own growth. Everyone wanted to become stronger, after all, and seeing warriors and hunters and shamans in full force would be inspiration beyond inspiration. Gods, I was going to have to wait forever to see any of these evolutions. That was a particular sort of hell. And there was one more kobold still waiting. I''d saved her for last but it seemed she was in a similar vein, withholding her evolution through sheer force of will¡ªthough light burst and crackled under her scales, still she marched around her den, checking on each kobold and making sure that they were either getting healing or food. Everyone she passed looked up at her in awe, seeing the raw mana just begging to be unleashed, but she refused to let it until she had made sure her tribe was in good order. Because it was her tribe. There was no doubt in my mind. Of my three original kobolds, Rihsu had sworn herself to Seros, the dappled male had stayed focused on lesser creatures, and only she had stayed to watch over the other kobolds I created. They were hers as much as they were mine. Nicau called her Chieftess, like he had any naming rights in my dungeon, but even I couldn''t deny that it fit. What made it fit even more were her evolution options.
Congratulations! Your creature, a Kobold, is undergoing evolution! Please select your desired path. Kobold Warrior (Rare): In a world of dangers, one rises to match. This creature fights with a brawn well beyond what its body should hold, ending battles with the sheer strength of its will and an unwillingness to concede. Kobold Hunter (Rare): In tune with beasts and birds, this creature stalks through the undergrowth with raised claws and keen eyes. Either solitary or serving a greater tribe, they strike from the shadows and drag home corpses large enough to feed dozens. Kobold Chief (Rare): A group of scavengers no longer¡ªa leader rises to claim dominion over its brethren, leading them to greater peaks than ever before. With a vastly improved intelligence and sense of self, this chief commands its fellow kobolds to rise above.
There wasn''t even a question in my mind. She would be wasted as a brutish warrior and for all she had stealth and cunning, hunting was not where she needed to spend her time. The way that the other kobolds in the den looked up at her, alert and ready for any instruction, awe-filled and determined to prove themselves. She was already their chief. This would just be confirming it. I helped her out as best I could, carving new beds into the walls and blooming moss to soften the edge, shifting stone to stack up spears in polite little piles off to the side, burrowing into limestone until splashes of fresh water raced into shallow pools. Nicau trotted at her heels, a little like a lost guppy if it wasn''t for the splattered blood over his legs and the corpse of an invader he''d already dragged out of the den, and with our efforts combined, she managed to finish checking up on every kobold. Then, and only then, did she walk to her own bed in the back of the den and curl up. I pushed soothing thoughts and whispered encouragement through our bond as I selected kobold chief. Something distinctly pleased and proud echoed back as she disappeared under the glow of evolution. The last big invasion she''d been a part of, she''d been throwing rats and sprinting away from any active combat. Gods that I would never admit it, but there was a brilliant, burning pride in my core as I watched over her, as I watched over them all. My creatures. My lovely, lovely creatures. And there was still one more on this floor. Watching the kobold chief¡ªI suppose I could call her Chieftess, so long as everyone was very, very aware that it was not a Name¡ªhad given me an idea. Seros, still on the fourth floor and bursting with power, had a stronger will than the Chieftess; it took me a second to properly convey my plan, his own thoughts drifting with a vague sense of confusion, but still he dutifully suppressed the mana crackling over his frills and padded deeper into the Jungle Labyrinth to complete my mission. Because there was something I wanted to test. Clearly, I could manipulate evolutions. I still remembered my hatchling days¡ªcould I still call them that when I was a rock instead of an actual hatchling?¡ªwhen I''d brute-forced my whitecap mushroom into an evolution, just shoving enough mana into it until it decided that yes, it did want to evolve. Given how much mana I''d wasted even with the truly weakest plant in my dungeon, I''d decided against doing that again. But I had influenced the evolution. I also guessed that my shining intellect had given other options; there was no other source for my horned serpent to have unlocked her psychic abilities, and same for Seros'' own intelligence. So changes I made did seemingly alert the evolutions. Which brought me to the last message from the Drowned Forest. I hadn''t read it, specifically dragging my attention away from whatever was inscribed in golden letters over my core, but I was very aware of where it led to. A vampiric mangrove. Tall and proud in the second room of the floor, sprawling half in and half out of the canals, broader than its brethren with dozens of knotting roots alight in jagged little thorns. It''d managed to kill one lonely little fool who''d thought she could go through this floor alone, cradling her bone-dry corpse in its roots, skin pale and ghostly white. A very fine kill, if I did say so myself, done by an equally fine tree. This one hadn''t been injured in the raid, thanks all the gods¡ªalthough one of its lower branches had been removed, bark stripped by some sort of serrated blade. I spared a moment to ponder that. It looked a little too deliberate for just losing a branch to a hollow core or bad connection, but I couldn''t imagine what could have possibly gotten close enough to remove a stick without also getting stabbed like the other invader. Curious. Maybe one of the kobolds had figured out a way to use fresh wood for their spears instead of fallen branches. Their scales might have protected them. But what mattered was the power I felt lurking beneath its bark. This tree was special in ways that I was only now starting to realize. I''d long had a suspicion that something was happening on my second floor, which had been sent from suspicion into actively noticing when I''d caught Chieftess talking to a mangrove¡ªthis specific mangrove, actually. This specific mangrove that had, when I''d last noticed it, been back at the kobold''s den. The kobold''s den that was half a floor away. Yeah. That didn''t just happen by coincidence. Trees were, rather famously, stationary beings¡ªbut vampiric mangroves weren''t the trees I was familiar with. They were much more ancient, coming from the Old World, and I''d been a fool to treat them like any old plant. I was learning that lesson now with the armoured jawfish and the sarco crocodile, who needed special care to keep them alive in a world that had already managed to kill them before, and now once more I could fight through it with the mangroves. Somehow, this plant was talking and thinking and moving, and Rhoborh''s boon had rapidly sped up whatever it had planned. So. Henceforth why I was very, very determinedly not looking at its evolution options yet. I had a theory, and a theory that needed to be tested, and a choice that had to be made. With a low rumble, Seros pulled himself out of the canal, shaking water off his dazzling scales¡ªliterally dazzling, considering that their sea-green colour was hidden under an incandescent light. He was moving stiffly, not with injuries considering that I''d already healed them, but with the sheer effort of holding back all the mana that begged and pleaded and leapt at the chance to evolve him. I wasn''t pleased at asking him to hold back just to help me, but he was the only one who could both understand me well enough and traverse all my floors to do so. Even then, I sent a burst of apology through our shared connection. He crooned back his acceptance around the corpse in his mouth. Because if I wanted to help my mangrove evolve, I just so happened to have two invaders who had provided very helpful corpses. Seros spat the body of the dryad onto the mangrove''s roots. She was near bisected, entrails split and stinking, mossy green skin splattered with red both old and new, eyes glassy and distant; but a pure blooded dryad. Southern variant, I thought, which would help more given a mangrove''s inherently tropical nature. I urged Seros with another series of instructions and he padded off to a nearby room, where the other corpse I wanted was¡ªnot a true dryad, but a human with dryadic ancestry. Hopefully that would be enough. It took a little effort, considering Seros had claws and these were small, fragile little bodies, but eventually he got them both wrapped around the mangrove''s base. No reaction from it yet, just the shift of its branches in the cloudskipper wisps'' wind, but I''d expected that. Evolution tended to flatten out any thoughts from my creatures, and this was a full plant who had only just started to break over the barrier of awareness. But hopefully after this, it would be something more. So I reached down and dissolved both the corpses. They exploded into motes of white-silver light, but I didn''t let it flow into my core just yet¡ªI shoved outward, forcing the motes into the scarlet-red bark. Just as it had with the whitecap mushroom all those months ago, most of it splashed uselessly off, drifting away in eddying spirals¡ªbut some entered the mangrove and stayed there. Influenced it. I waited a breathless second as the last of the mana faded away, points of awareness arrowed in on the tree. No visible reaction, but. But. But maybe the evolution message had changed. With excitement thrumming through my core strong enough that even Seros could feel it, I finally read what it said.
Your creature, a Vampiric Mangrove, is undergoing evolution! Please select your desired path. Fungal Mangrove (Uncommon): It spreads in a sprawling, shambling growth, leeching roots through stone and soil and sea alike. Needing no light, there is nothing that can stop its encroaching habit, devouring the land before it in endless waves of green. Bloodhunt Mangrove (Exotic): No longer will passive thorns satiate its thirst. Its roots grow and spread as living whips, lashing for anything that moves, disguised as simple foliage until they choose to strike and drag its victims back to be pierced by countless thorns. Vampiric Dryad (Exotic): This Ancestral Tree is one of death and consequence, and so too is its servant. It stalks the world for blood to deliver back to its home, armed with piercing fangs and the loyalty that brings empire to their knees.
A-fucking-ha. Did my trick with the corpses do anything? Gods if I knew. But either way, I''d gotten exactly what I wanted. Was it even a choice? The fungal mangrove would be something I would bring down to my fourth floor to swallow the tunnels in another devastating threat, and the bloodhunt mangrove would pair absolutely beautifully with the silvertooths in the canals, but they were simple, fleeting things in comparison to the absolute glory of the last option. I burned with a fierce, brilliant hunger as I selected vampiric dryad. Chapter 87 - Final Choices Even with all of the wonderful, lovely, darling, beautiful evolutions I''d already done, there were still three more messages crawling across my core. Don''t misunderstand it, I was still not particularly pleased at the mass-scale invasion, and I raged and cursed and hated all that they had taken from me; but, well. These evolutions were very, very appreciated. Not even appreciated, earned. I''d earned these fucking evolutions, and it was well within my right to claim them. So claim them I shall. The vampiric mangrove disappeared under a scarlet glow, the last of the blood from the dryadic corpses dissolving into motes of light that swirled around its trunk as it settled in for a long change¡ªI''d, um. Hm. It was a tree. How was I supposed to move it down a floor once it finished evolving? I couldn''t just keep it in the Drowned Forest¡ªRhoborh wouldn''t accept the new changes and for all that I''d been a sea-drake, I had a moderate understanding of how dryads worked. They needed to protect their Ancestral Tree, and leaving said vulnerable tree in the front entrance of my second floor felt like, to put it lightly, a terrible idea. But. Ah. Again, it was a tree. I couldn''t very well open up a path down a floor and wait for it to merrily trot its way down. A question for a later me. I drifted away from its evolution, sending a few calming tendrils of mana throughout the room to keep creatures from latching onto its current defenseless state, and called Seros back to me; he straightened, sea-green scales still crackling with excess mana, lightning forking around his frills and ivory fangs. His will was indomitable, but creatures were meant to evolve; he could only hold this back for so long before the urge to sleep took over the hunger and the hunt. To my hoard room, I urged, carving the quickest path out in his mind; he rumbled his agreement and slipped back into the canals, letting the current tug him along as he swam on. A few creatures, particularly those slighted by not having received an evolution, poked their heads out of their dens as if they planned to attack. The mana burning off Seros'' scales quickly convinced them that no, they did not in fact want to fight him. Smart choice. As Seros made his way down to my fifth floor, I had one more task to complete before I read his message, and I flew to the Jungle Labyrinth with a glee that bordered on hysteria. It had been a long, long time since the first cave bear had graced my halls with its presence, and since a crushing force had fallen from the ceiling and wrapped it up tight enough to cut off blood flow and let the cave spider''s venom and Seros'' mighty claws finish off the rest. Her evolution had been one of my first, and look how far she''d already come with it. So now it was time for another. The horned serpent was ready to evolve. She hadn''t taken quite the same level of care as Chieftess, merely a few glances over her serpentine horde before she''d slithered back to the den herself, dragging the unconscious body of the naga-ancestry human, Kriya. But I''d expected that of her. She ruled her horde with tyrannical precision, and those that fell behind were left behind; she had no time nor care for those that couldn''t keep up with her. It was an interesting discussion. Were the kobolds made weaker by Chieftess'' kindness, or were the snakes made too few by the horned serpent''s apathetic cruelty? I certainly tended to lean towards draconic strength, but I had also seen how well the kobolds worked together and how one could rise above, such as with Chieftess, where in the horned serpent''s army, the only way a snake could prove itself was by evolution. Whereas there were healing kobolds, hunting kobolds, defending kobolds already, even if they all shared the same species. On the fourth floor, a snake proved themself by either bringing back enough food for the horned serpent or becoming food themselves, but by sticking with her, eventually they garnered enough mana to evolve, which was more than many of the kobolds above could say, and they''d been a group for much longer than the horned serpent''s horde. Fascinating, really. That was why I had such a diverse dungeon; if I only had one or the other, I would never have seen this perspective. But for now, the horned serpent slithered back to her den, snakes clearing the way before her in a rippling wave; very understandable, considering her grey-black scales were glowing like a second sun with excess mana. She bowed her antlered head to get through the opening, underbelly scrapping on harsh limestone before she reached the gentle moss I''d spread over her den. She peered into the mound I''d carved in the back, piled high with slumped bodies of other evolving serpents, and made a distinctly pleased hiss; greater soldiers for her sprawling army. I was, in particular, looking forward to seeing her reaction to the newest horned serpent. Absolutely no doubt in my mind she''d beat the young thing into the ground first, to make very, very clear that this would not be a rivalry situation, but then hopefully she would train her little follower into reaching the same heights that she had. The heights that were only ever climbing as she finally, finally, curled up atop a bed of granite I warmed as best I could with a faux sun of quartz-light and settled down for her evolution. I read her message with a glee that can truly not be overstated.
Your creature, a Horned Serpent, is undergoing evolution! Please select your desired path. Psionic Serpent (Rare): Its body is covered in crystalline horns, extending from the point of its nose to the tip of its tail; harnessing raw mental force, it has no need for simplistic movement, carrying itself by power of mind alone. Naga (Rare): From the foes it kills and claims, it takes; shedding its animalistic form, it hunts with both claws and tail, speaking hissed lies to those greater and ripping out throats of those weaker. Empress Serpent (Rare): For all its followers are blindly loyal, it demands more; slipping from mind to mind, it controls its rising horde to do its bidding, allowing only perfection from those that swear fealty.
Fucking fantastic. Everything immediately jumped out to me¡ªunlike with the cave bears, whose evolution of lesser bugbear had been a, well, lesser variation on a sapient race, her potential went immediately into a pureblooded naga. Seemingly abandoning her psychic power, but exchanging it for speaking, which paired very well with the honeyed lies that nagas were known for. And considering I had already made a trend of entreating invaders further into my halls with promises of treasure and power and respect, having a naga spokesperson who also came equipped with jagged claws was a lovely little deal indeed. But if I didn''t want to leave behind the psychic powers that made up so much of herself, there came the psionic serpent¡ªabandoning mere mortal styles of movement and flying through the halls, twisting and undulating in the air like some avenging thundercloud, presumably also a power that could be used to rip her enemies to shreds as she soared overhead. And while her horns were already very attractive, I couldn''t help but picture them spreading down her back like a waterfall of crystals, glimmering over her scales with a glow that rivaled the sun. And then the empress serpent. It was¡ªwell, it was her. Tyrannical, vicious, hungry for more than what simple prey or followers could provide. Her previous abilities had merely been a mana-light, something to trick invaders into walking to her fangs with open arms; it had been her that transformed it into a summons, calling snakes of all types and sizes to serve her. She had been the one to take herself from an ambush predator to a ruler, a monarch, a queen. An empress, some might say. And when faced with that, there was really no option at all. It was curious, though, how it was simply called a serpent. My other snakes were constrictors, or cobras, or kraits; but the two options here that weren''t naga were merely plain serpents. Was there something important in that? An archetypal serpentine being, above previous species, or perhaps the rising steps toward some greater height? Creatures could only evolve five times, I knew, until they could no longer condense their mana any further into a new shape. There were hardly any hard and fast rules on the matter, always filled with exceptions, but I knew that the general ideal was that each evolution narrowed in their focus more and more. Why something like my little silverhead had gone from a simple-minded schooler to a vicious schooler to the vicious leader of a school, as with the royal silvertooth. Each step of their journey only carried them further and further towards that mythical fifth evolution, where they would reach the stars that had been promised to them. Very few creatures ever got that far, my instincts told me. For all that creatures were born the same as their parents, getting to skip as many steps as they had and start off powerful, that still didn''t make it easy. Natural evolutions were rare, limited by the lack of pure mana needed to power such a change, and dungeons were even more rare; considering the danger that lived and breathed inside dungeons, creatures didn''t get a chance to reach that impossible height. Even dragons, as loathe as I was to admit it, were only fourth evolutions. There was still somewhere higher to be. But I wanted my creatures to reach that peak. The horned serpent was narrowing in her focus, staying as merely serpent for the time being. I couldn''t wait to see what she became next. I selected empress serpent. She hissed, curling up as waves of light radiated through her antlers, spilling over the den as her serpentine followers watched in awe. As they damn well better. Once she finished evolving¡ªwhich I had the terrible feeling was going to take forever¡ªshe was going to be a god compared to their pitiful little minds and forms. I would need to speed up my plans for further floors, giving her more space to roam and control and conquer; she deserved the world already, and hells if I wasn''t going to give it to her. I watched her evolution settle over her, mana curling with a strange paternal pride. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it. But I couldn''t just wait around as her body slowly rebuilt itself; because a floor below, having successfully stomped his way past scorch hounds and mottled scorpions and greater pigeons and baterwauls, Seros had reached my hoard room. I flew down like a loosed hurricane; points of awareness spiraled around him, mana thrumming against the silver and draconic runes spread over the walls, the moonstar flowers gleaming delicately below their quartz-light, my core in all its marbled scarlet-black glory proud overhead. Seros was curled around it, the light under his scales so bright it was blinding; he''d held out for as physically long as he was able but now the evolutionary sleep struck him like a physical blow, our connection littered with drifting and hazy thoughts. And excitement from both of us. I pressed soothing mana over him, let silver root and sprawl around him like a comforting embrace, and peered at the golden letters crawling over my core.
Your creature, a Seabound Monitor, is undergoing evolution! Your Title of Resurrector bestows a path. Draconic Monitor (Exotic): It has consumed of a sea-drake''s flesh and reawoken its power; though the world does not yet bow to it, the times are changing, and soon it will grab onto the legacy it has chosen with brandished claws and bared fangs.
I purred, and my mana trembled at the walls of my hoard room. Not yet a dragon, but I would frankly have been rather insulted if it were so easy to become a dragon¡ªhe had three more evolutions before he would reach that fabled peak, and gods above if I wasn''t going to get him there. He''d fought for this honour, for this glory, and now he was scraping his claws on the barest hints of the potential he would one day become¡ªwhat could be a pride greater than that? Also. Hm. I''d forgotten that I''d first met Seros because he''d been eating my corpse. Fun way to remember that. But that meant nothing¡ªwell, not nothing, but I was rather determinedly choosing to forget once again¡ªin face of this evolution. Lowly little peasants, the pissants of the sea who had dared live on my territory, had their own thoughts on what being a dragon was. That it was simply a lizard who had picked up wings and mana along the way, perhaps a breath-weapon if they were in the mood, and then grown to monstrous sizes. They thought that was it. That was very much not it. Being a dragon meant being more. It meant separating yourself from the mere mortals of those lesser, claiming a gravitas over the world, staking a claim in Aiqith that went beyond simple territory or measurable land. Our numbers were few and far between because Aiqith just didn''t have enough to support more of us; didn''t have the mana, didn''t have the power, didn''t have the room. For all that we were only fourth evolutions, still with greater peaks to climb, there was nothing that could be called merely draconic. If you were draconic, then you were important, and you had the power to match. This wouldn''t be just an increase in size, maybe a boost to Seros'' hydrokinesis. I didn''t know what aspect of draconic abilities he would be getting, but he would be getting something, and it was going to change him in ways that other evolutions simply didn''t. I burned with pride as I selected draconic monitor. Seros disappeared under a silver gleam, reflecting off my hoard room and the various treasures and runes and artefacts I''d spaced around; this would no doubt be an enormously long evolution, reaching peaks of time I would absolutely not be able to wait patiently for, and I would need to make sure that my hoard room would keep him safe. I hoped that the surrounding silver would help, actually; feed extra mana into him like actual dragons used their hoards for, maybe speed up the process. Maybe. I wasn''t holding my breath. But there Seros laid, curled around my pillar and preparing for a change that would shake this little pirating city to its core. They thought they''d killed a dragon? Sure. I wondered how they''d react when it came back. But for all that I could very safely fall into a pit of delightful fantasies about watching Seros rip the Dread Pirate''s head off in a glorious explosion of blood and gore, there was still one more message etched across my core, a force that I''d been forcibly shoving to the back of my awareness as I dealt with all my other evolutions first. Because even though I''d lost most of the mana that I''d won, even though my creatures had been lost or killed or captured, even though I still had so much I needed to rebuild; I had won, and those above recognized it.
Congratulations! You have reached the threshold for evolution. As a reward, the gods have deigned themselves to offer you gifts, if you believe you are worthy to accept them. You may choose an Otherworld schema and either an expansion to your mana pool or regeneration.
Finally. It had been a long, long time since I''d evolved last¡ªwhich did make unfortunate sense, considering that it would only take more and more mana for me to keep reaching new barriers, much like with my creature''s own evolutions¡ªand I read the alert greedily. I''d well deserved it, after surviving such an explosion of invaders. Still the irritating, pissy little message from the gods about them deigning themselves to give me a gift, but I was content to ignore that for the moment. I still hadn''t forgotten that they had chosen not to give me a schema when I''d first become a dungeon core. I loved Seros, but starting off with kobolds would have made this much, much easier. Frustration for another day. I reread it again, just making sure everything was as I remembered it; two options to pick from, either an expansion to my pool or my regeneration. There was a brief moment of debating¡ªI''d well seen how much mana I''d lost due to my shallow reserves, only a handful of invaders filling up my available seventy-five points and the rest lost and useless even as I desperately needed it to refill my halls. Not a pleasant feeling, to be certain. But then I thought of Seros, of Nicau, and the power their Names had granted them. With these new evolutions, I had many more creatures that deserved Names of their own. The empress serpent, without a shadow of a doubt¡ªmaybe Chieftess, giving her the actual Name instead of the funny little name Nicau had called her¡ªthe mage ratkin, leading her own budding group of scholars¡ªthe midnight cave bear, silent guardian of cubs and floors alike¡ªthe fledgling sea serpent, terrorizing the Underlake and the new floor I was constructing for him¡ªthe vampiric dryad, first proper humanoid of my halls. Far too many options for the piddly two-thirds of a point I regained per hour. Seros and Nicau had both taken roughly a third for themselves; I couldn''t just cut myself off by continuing to Name creatures without increasing the amount I got from the Otherworld. So. I selected regeneration. There was a vague hole somewhere deep in my core where Otherworld mana poured through¡ªI was only tangentially aware of it at most times, a distant hum as pure mana filtered through my stores and filled up my reserves. If I focused, I could actively feel and concentrate on it, but most of the time it was content in the background. It was decidedly not in the background now. I hissed and barked as my insides did their damnedest to shred themselves, the hole widening and tearing and ripping¡ªmy mana spiraled out of my control, lashing at the walls of my hoard room, before there came a deep, earthshaking snap. Pure, delicious, wonderful Otherworld mana flowed through me, brighter and stronger and more brilliant than before. I heaved for intangible breath as I wrangled my own strands back under my control, tucking them tight around my core as I peered back to see what I was working with.
Dragonheart Core
Mana: 13.9 / 75 Mana Regeneration: +1.8 per hour
Patrons: Rhoborh, God of Symbiosis; Mayalle, Goddess of Whirlpools; Nuvja, Goddess of Shadows
Titles: Resurrector
Absolutely brilliant. That was enough for multiple new Names; it seemed that every evolution tripled either my pool or my regeneration, whatever I chose. The simplicity was appreciated. There was a slight fear that maybe Seros'' evolution would mean that he would take more of my Otherworld mana, so I would wait for him to finish before I actually started Naming things, but still the potential lurked heavy on the tip of my awareness. So many beautiful, brilliant Names and all the power they brought; Blessing of the Depths and Blessing of the Communer had already given me so many opportunities. I couldn''t wait to see what more brought. Well. I would have to wait, unfortunately. Terribly inconvenient. But at least there was one more prize I could claim for today.
Please select an Otherworld schema: Ironridge Crab (Rare): Hunters often specialize¡ªthis creature specializes in all. Boasting massive claws for both defense and offense, it gathers ore from seafloors to build up its shell as an impervious shield and for ramming opponents. Firetail Fox (Rare): Born half fox and half elemental, this wiry creature has no fear of environments or predators. Spraying sparks from its tail, it runs faster than the eye can see and sets forests ablaze in its wake, fireproof fur allowing it to feast on its prey as they burn. Iceborn Mammoth (Rare): Not so much akin to ice as shaped from it, this creature announces its arrival with both a shout and a charge like an avalanche. Its tusks are made from ever-growing ice, carefully sharpened to gore all those in its path. Oceanic Slime (Rare): Water bound together by an immense mana-gem, this patient predator disguises itself as a massive body of water, attracting all manners of prey. Because of its biology, smaller creatures can swim freely through its body, fooling larger creatures into trusting its waters, a mistake they can only make once. Capturing Coral (Rare): It spreads and collects; anything it grows over is stored and kept safe inside, creating dizzying patches of reef where attunements run wild and spirits howl for freedom.
That was¡­ hm. I didn''t believe in coincidence, not really. There were far too many spirits and deities and sufficiently powerful beings out there that changed the facts to their liking for me to ever really believe that things just happened. My sixth floor was going to be a coral reef, my seventh fire, my eighth a proper jungle. These were planned out, for all that I hadn''t shaped them yet, and I''d been collecting schemas in preparation for them. I hadn''t been subtle about my plans. But for all I made plans, it was rather hard to ignore that I was missing a key ingredient of one of those floors. A key ingredient that was now offered to me. It didn''t¡­ it didn''t feel like a test, because it would be a shitty test, but neither did it feel like a challenge. How could this possibly be a challenge? They were giving me what I needed. It couldn''t be an apology either, considering the demeaning message of my evolution and the fact that they had specifically only offered older options that had no use to my next couple of floors, thus forcing me to pick this one. But it certainly felt like something. I just didn''t know what. I already had a crab, the firetail fox was too similar to my scorch hounds, the iceborn mammoth didn''t fit in any of my plans, and the oceanic slime had no floor to house it. The gods must have known that. And that left only the coral. I would have picked it anyway, because I''d already been shown those other options and I hadn''t picked them before, but now something uncomfortable crawled over my core. A vague sense that I was playing into some greater power''s hands¡ªwhich, as a dragon, I was supremely uninterested in. But I did want a coral reef. I selected capturing coral. My core snapped open and the raw impression of coral was shoveled into the crack; impressions of silver polyps and sprawling reefs and an impossible number of colours and shines and voices¡ªI broke off with a hiss, gathering my mana tight around my core as if that would soothe me. It didn''t, but the transfer ended soon enough, and a new schema sat proudly and ready to be made. Because I would be making it. With all my creatures sitting in dormancy, waiting to evolve, there was finally nothing more to pull my attention. Still more creatures to make, still floors to restock as I reclaimed my mana¡ªfaster now, thankfully, with the evolution¡ªbut it had been far, far too long since I''d made a floor. And, well. The invasion had shown me how powerful I was. I couldn''t wait to be even more. Chapter 88 - Sights Set High I let the last of the evolutions fade from my active control, mana spiraling out into my halls; already my improved regeneration rate felt like a breath of fresh air, pure mana unlike anything found naturally on Aiqith bright and vibrant through my control. Coral lingered on the back of my awareness, the schema ready to be used. Which I could be using; my little faux plan for the sixth floor was ready to be set into action, to carve out a new home for the fledgling sea serpent and Seros to reign over, to create a reef with all the majesty that my memories reminded me of. Even if I couldn''t go back to the ocean of my previous life, I could still bring it to me. But not yet. For all that I''d finished choosing the evolutions, I still wasn''t done¡ªmy halls were littered in bodies and debris beyond number, scattered all over the place without a single care for all the work I put into maintaining this place. Terribly rude. But, well. When invaders came in, all brash and bold and idiotic, and cluttered up my gorgeous halls; they were cluttering it with things. Delicious, wonderful things delivered straight to my waiting grasp. This had not been a particularly established horde, unfortunately, and I''d already noticed how many of them weren''t particularly strapped in the way that I presumed dungeon delving groups tended to be. Ah well. Even the bare trinkets they wore were prizes nonetheless. I rooted my way around the scattered corpses, slipping tendrils of mana through bloodstained armour and abandoned spell focuses. Creatures scattered from my heightened concentration, letting me meander my way through at my leisure. There wasn''t a chance I would risk missing something of importance, because I knew damn well that if I didn''t stake a claim on it, a burrowing rat with a greed far too big for its pitiful little body would be trying to drag the damn thing into its den. And for all I encouraged their evolution, I would not allow them to steal from me. So. Mine first. I flitted my way around, points of awareness spiraling throughout my endless caverns. A few things jumped immediately out at me: underdressed and ill-prepared as they were, these were still adventurers, and mages didn''t risk coming without¡ªso numerous gems were littered over their bodies, tucked into pockets or strung up on either tasteful or crude jewelry. Most were those I''d already collected, but I found a beautiful little opal that hummed and glowed with air-attuned mana, so that was a lovely addition. That brought me up to eight different jewels I could reproduce, each with their own attunement; sapphire for water, ruby for fire, topaz for lightning, jet for shadow, jade for plants, rose quartz for healing, and now opal for air¡ªalongside diamond for pure mana, and regular quartz for simple light. Quite a little haul, if I did say so myself. Once I had mana to spare, I would adorn my hoard room with more jewels. The operative words being mana to spare. Considering I had many, many creatures to make, it would be a long while until I had any, but it was a pleasant thought for the future. I dissolved down at least one of each to make sure I knew how to make them, and then left the rest for clever little rats to siphon away. With any luck, one would bring an opal down to the fourth floor; I wanted to see how the mage ratkin would respond to a newly introduced attunement. She was a delightfully clever little thing; though she had already chosen the jadestone as her attunement, would she be able to experiment with others? I was very interested in seeing it. Something else quickly caught my attention¡ªone of my many, many gripes with invaders was that they didn''t coordinate on what they brought in to help me. One would wear armour made from the skin of a creature but that was it; no bone, no flesh, no nothing that would actually allow me to gain their schema. Just scattered bits and pieces in a horrible mosaic that never went anywhere. One of these bastards had a handle on her dagger made of ivory, and as I dissolved it I got a taste of a massive, lumbering beast with leathery skin and the weight of a mountain¡ªbut with only ivory, it wasn''t enough for a schema. Can you even comprehend how infuriating that is? So desperately close to such a powerful schema, yet no way to properly obtain it? So that made it all the sweeter when I noticed that one of the invaders¡ªa bulky, strong-jawed woman with fists still splattered in gore¡ªhad modified her armour to have odd, ribcage-like protrusions extending over her chest. Clearly they''d done their job; things that hit her had their force redirected off of her more squishy organs, though that hadn''t stopped the strike to the back of her head that had taken her to the ground, where other kobolds had been quick to finish the job. But those protrusions weren''t simple wood or metal; no, they were antlers. I flew through my dungeon in a mad rush of speed; every corpse was investigated, a fraction dissolved just so I could know what they were made of, until¨C there. A body, bobbing through the Underlake, its leather armour drifting in Mayalle''s current. Leather armour with the same pattern as the antlers. I ate them both, shoving the information together until they twined and combined and melded and shifted and joined and¨C Click.
Bounding Deer (Common) Traveling in herds, they flee at the slightest sign of danger with wild, extensive leaps, carrying them far from the threat. If needed, they can defend themselves with their branching antlers, but they much prefer to run.
Ah. A coward. Not fantastic, but very welcome otherwise; so far, most of my prey species had been little, scuttling things, and with the new evolutions racing through my halls, I would need larger meals. Deer certainly seemed to fit those requirements. And besides, it felt absolutely wonderful to finally receive a schema from invaders. I had taken the bloodline kelp from a fossil the merrow brought in and Nicau had brought me the greater pigeon, but this one was all mine. If just to spite me, no other invaders had appropriately matching pieces. Plenty of singular sets, but of course, nothing else. The bastards. They did have other prizes, though; on a strangely necrotic finger, a ring made of a deep blue-black metal lurked, sucking the light away from anything near it and even tugging oddly on my mana. I examined it from a distance, peering at the runes carved over its surface; nothing I recognized, but something shivered in my core regardless; a pale sort of recognition, something deeper than what I was consciously aware of. The man wearing it seemed normal enough; tall but pressingly thin, bones pressing through his skin, what was left of his eyes sunken into his face and his jawbone protruding hollowly. A gaunt fellow, his teeth pitch black. The fledgling sea serpent had ripped him apart, and I didn''t have any precise memories of how he''d fought. Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. The ring wasn''t normal, though. I''d be investigating that. Another woman had a staff, old, gnarled wood that gleamed with some sort of enchantment; nothing I could piece together by merely looking at it, but certainly the type that I could break apart and see what it was. I shifted the earth underneath it to shove it away from the corpse it had been next to, doing the same for the runes. I didn''t have Seros to deliver things down a floor so this would have to do for now, though I would have to protect them in the time being so none of my creatures got any interesting ideas about the mana sources. Still, though. For all that I had been a collector in my past life, I''d been rather content to fill that void with creatures and schemas and floors beyond splendor¡ªbut I couldn''t deny the pleased little quiver of my mana as I beheld the new treasures that I would be displaying in my hoard room. When Seros woke up and could properly watch over my halls again, I would fully investigate the mysteries of those artefacts; what magic did they hold, and how could I take it? The ring stunk of something dark and twisted, the staff more straightforward, and the¡­ I paused. There had been a¡­ sword, hadn''t there? I did not like that question. Points of awareness bloomed into existence as I spread my gaze far and wide over the Drowned Forest, peering under every clump of billowing moss and every knotted mess of vampiric mangrove roots; but for all that corpses sat demure and lifeless, hands open and outstretched, their grips stayed empty. There had been a sword, I was positive. It had been similar to the staff, baseline metal glimmering with a hidden enchantment, and I''d watched to save it to examine it further and see if I could replicate whatever ability it had for my own weapons. The woman who''d had it had died a messy, bloody death pinned down by ironback toads¡ªbut now her corpse sat, alone. Alone. Hadn''t there been ironback toad bodies surrounding her? I wasn''t infallible, as much as I would forever deny that fact, and today had certainly been the type of clusterfuck that led to me missing things, but I couldn''t shake the quiet little feeling that she''d had a sword and she''d killed two of the ironback toads, and now neither were here. But there were plenty of creatures in my halls; maybe they had just been eaten? I could see the kobolds dragging back the essentially free food for their deplenished numbers. The sword, though. I''d wanted that sword, and it was gone. Maybe it would turn up later. I had too much to do to focus on it now; later, always later. I had a lot of things to do later. One of the many curses of going from managing one body, though elaborate and complex, to suddenly managing thousands. Planning, though. I''d keep the corpses on the first two floors for a while longer, let my creatures eat their fill and see their victory as I stored the last little mana from the invasion in their bodies. Tomorrow, when I started to carve out the sixth floor, I''d dissolve them for the boost, but I was feeling rather indulgent. It wasn''t often that my creatures got to eat invaders, and that was a source of mana that even my own creations couldn''t hope to match. The same, unfortunately, could not be done for the Underlake. Leaving corpses just bobbing along would only foul the water, and I still had too much lingering fury over the saltwater incident to ever let that happen. Dozens of bodies dissolved into fragile motes of light, flitting back to my core as the emptiness that had been creeping along the edges of my awareness fled; a corpse wasn''t worth nearly as much as a soul and each only provided mere flecks, but with the near two dozen bodies in the Underlake, it was enough to push me up to fifty points. And while that certainly wasn''t endless, it was enough for me to rationalize using almost all of it. Most, if not all, of my most powerful creatures were slumbering away under the glow of evolution; if any invaders came in now, my halls were still at a little over half of the population they''d been before, though they were rebuilding quickly enough. Sheer numbers could take them down, but if someone suitably powerful enough came in, they could bulldoze past my first two floors, and that was if they weren''t a merrow and just entered the Underlake straight away. The armoured jawfish and fledgling sea serpent would make mincemeat of anyone who dared, but, well. Just in case. I reached deep, gathered my mana, and shaped a sarco crocodile. Thirty points fled from my command, immediately reducing me back to the scraps needed to keep my populations up, but the water bucked and spiraled as a new form forced itself into their midst; pebbled green-grey scales, enormous jaws, the body of a tank and the tail of a battering ram¨C She emerged from the cocoon of her creation with a deep, earth-shaking roar. Her clawed feet splayed, pushing her up to the surface to inhale, the denizens of the Underlake fleeing from her enormous shadow. Not as enormous as I remembered, though. My previous sarco had grown over his time under my care, immense and profound and unbelievably sized; now I was back to their starting size, her channels empty of mana, nowhere near full. My previous sarco had been closing in on evolution. Now I would never get to see what he could become. I shoved those thoughts aside as I watched the newest addition to my dungeon. There was a time for mourning, and it wasn''t now; I would wait for a quiet evening, when I could talk to Seros about all that had happened, and there were too many things to do still. So I would wait. She hauled herself out of the water, droplets glittering on the edge of her scales, and sprawled beneath the quartz-light I''d installed over the entrance down to the fourth floor; there she sat, staring into the water below, tasting the air with brand new lungs and swishing her enormous tail. Perhaps a little less lazy than her predecessor, if the bare gleam of her thoughts said anything. I''d take that. She''d also made the right move to get out of the water as she adjusted to her new existence; already the fledgling sea serpent and armoured jawfish could sense the latest addition to their waters, and their thoughts were decidedly about fighting. Which. Not what I needed for a line of defense. Just a little cooperation wouldn''t kill them. Maybe. Maybe it would take a draconic monitor to beat them all into submission. Oh, I couldn''t wait for Seros to finish evolving. He was going to be a legend. But with the sarco now in place, the rest of my creatures still celebrating off the last of their victory and standing proud over the bodies of their enemies, I felt something stir in my core. Because we''d won. Fifty invaders had marched into my halls like they were going to defeat me, like they were going to kill my creatures and burn my plants and take my core; and they hadn''t. With brawn and mind and mana, we had stopped them, crushed them down beneath our claws, and we had won. Calarata had killed me before. Still my corpse sat somewhere in that city of thieves, and still the Dread Pirate probably clapped himself on his back and preened over his shitty little magic. Still these invaders came, thinking themselves so clever and wonderful and strong, and still they would continue to come. But even despite all of that, despite everything they had thrown at me, I was still here. How long had it been since I''d expelled my own heart out into the wider world? Since I''d harvested bare little whitecap mushrooms and green algae and waited patiently for a lone cave spider to fall prey to my primitive trap? Since Seros had been the only one at my side and a single unarmed orphan had been enough to nearly destroy me? And now I survived full frontal assaults and not only won, but thrived. Dozens of new evolutions ready to unleash new powers over all the wayward little fools that dared invade my halls, new floors in preparation for new creatures and new adaptations and new godly boons, power and potential and vicious, burning pride. I had died, yes. That was an unfortunately permanent condition that many mortal creatures suffered¡ªbut I didn''t. Because I''d died, but I had refused to die forever, and now I was climbing the heights towards a strength I had never had before. My halls were filled with beasts Aiqith had never had the pleasure of seeing before¡ªSeros, the empress serpent, Rihsu, Chieftess, Nicau, from the largest roughwater shark to the smallest swarming wasp. All of them were mine. And with them by my side, well. How much further could I go? I curled my points of awareness around Seros, able to feel the deep rumble of his breath even past the light of evolution. Draconic monitor he would soon be, still seabound, still Named, and full dragon perhaps in the distant future; except it wasn''t distant, not anymore. Those in my halls would thrive beyond anything that the apathetic world could muster. Because I was a sea-drake, was a dungeon, and there was nothing that could stop me. Chapter 89 - Changed Fate Lluc stepped onto solid ground for the first time in hours. His mana reserves flopped unpleasantly in his chest; even with the numerous gems he''d collected rattling in his pockets, mana flowing through his channels as it was replenished, more taken from artefacts and corpses and one interesting sword he''d tucked into his pack, he''d simply used so much that everything felt wrong. Stretched and rubbed raw, almost¡ªhe hadn''t felt that way since the gaze-weed run in Le¨®ro, when half the Dread Crew had died or wished they had. A simple dive into a dungeon shouldn''t have provoked a similar response. But this wasn''t like High Lord Thiago''s dungeon, nor the one on Silvertine Island, nor the Last King''s dungeon. It wasn''t born from some three-moon eclipse or the fractals of a wild ley line; the gods hadn''t decided that there needed to be a dungeon here. It had come into existence all on its own, and despite how the world had been against it, most sentientborn dungeons rarely surviving past half of their first floor, it had dug its bloody fucking teeth in and not only survived, but grown strong. Grown powerful. Lluc was Gold. He had abilities that far outranked all the dithering little fools that so filled Calarata, power well above all the idiots he had spurred into the dungeon. If he truly wanted to, if he had been given free leeway and enough time to prepare, he could have taken over this dungeon; not in the brute force that so many prepared, wielding their meager selection of abilities that had chosen to specialize in. He was a wizard, and there was not a situation he did not have a spell for, and he had long since trained to be more than proficient in all of them. Lluc, if he had wanted to, could hold a dungeon core in his grasp right now. But he hadn''t. And the most irritating part? He''d technically been successful. This had been Varc¨ªs'' plan, after all. Use Lluc and all those bushy-tailed idiots of Calarata to soften up the dungeon, kickstart a mad rush that would either wipe out all their creatures or at least the majority, wait a short while until the most powerful were slumbering under the weight of their evolutions, and then Varc¨ªs could merrily meander his way through and either claim the core or destroy it. He expected no problems with it, because why would there ever be? His Dread Crew was too frightened of him to ever think of disobeying, and a dungeon was far too weak to threaten him. His ribs still ached warningly. He remembered the previous First Mate''s head, toppling away from her body as a pitch-shark swam through sea and sky to obey Varc¨ªs'' command. He remembered becoming her replacement, the promise to serve sworn over a borwood desk littered in ancient carvings from the Dead War. He remembered watching through eyes hazed by a lack of mana as Varc¨ªs shot a spear of pure midnight and took out a sea-drake in a singular blow. He remembered the undeniable, uncomfortable fact that no one knew how powerful Varc¨ªs was. But Lluc Cardena Ferr¨¦ showed no weakness, and he had not failed so instead he had succeeded, and this was exactly as he had planned for things to go. So he held his head up and marched through the mountain, following worn paths and the footprints of the fodder he had sent inside to die, and emerged to the waiting attendants of those he had stationed behind. Because only most of them had been fodder, it seemed. A handful had either been strong or cowardly enough to make it back out, though not enough to resist his siren''s call of attacking in the first place, and they''d clearly assumed that was it. Half a dozen Dread Crew members made it abundantly clear that was not going to be the case. They''d set up in the entrance cave of the Al¨®mbra Mountains, sunlight dappling through the twisted entrance and sand spilling over the stone, surrounded by stalagmites on every side. Not necessarily the strongest of his underlings, but those cunning enough to capture any escapees and not question why they were doing so¡ªperfect for the situation, really. One Crew member stood over each of the five escapees they''d captured, leaving one free; Isenda, a tall, bull-nosed woman with an inclination for stabbing those that irritated her. Probably the reason she hadn''t been stationed over a prisoner. She marched up to him, spare motes of mana flickering over her fingers. Lluc strode to meet her, shoving down any lingering discomfort over his own lack of mana and the ache of injured ribs; he was the First Mate, and he showed no weakness. "Just five of ''em," Isenda said, brutish voice a rather perfect match for her attitude. She jerked her head towards a pile they''d set up in the corner, stacked high with stolen prizes from their captives. Jewels, nuggets of silver and gold, corpses that hadn''t yet been skinned or harvested; and, most interestingly, a few creatures that were still alive. They slumbered in magical unconsciousness, curled up, wrapped in thin, bronze-coloured chains that flickered in a manner rather unlike metal; but the runes carved over them were very familiar. The capturing chains of the Silent Market. Which meant one of these captives was connected to that underground collection of nightmarketers. Interesting. Lluc swept his gaze over them. Five in number, and his Crew had the decency to at least bandage their wounds so they wouldn''t keel over and die before he had the chance to kill them himself. A tall, imposing man with golden eyes and some latent ancestry sprawling scales over his cheeks; a shaking, richly-clothed man with haunted eyes and barely a spark of mana; a stout woman with bared teeth and acidic green eyes; a boy with black crawling up his arms like he''d dipped them in ink; a scrawny young man with a busted-open cage splattered with blood hugged tight in his arms. Altogether, not necessarily the ones he''d have thought to survive a dungeon. Or even a backstreet fight. The man with the expensive clothing looked like a stiff breeze would knock him over if his apparent family wealth didn''t weigh his pockets down so much. But against all odds, they''d made it out. More than likely, they''d merely made it to the first floor and broken past the thrall he''d infected their minds with, turning right around and sprinting out¡ªhad probably been the helpful ones that had cut down the vine he had noticed crawling over the entrance in an effort to hide it¡ªand thus they wouldn''t have any information he didn''t already have, and so they''d just be killed. Business as normal. Varc¨ªs had given him a task. Lluc was to interrogate those that had made it out for any details he might have missed himself, scratch together a functioning map of all the floors he''d visited, and then present it back to him where Varc¨ªs could then stroll merrily through and claim the core. Lluc was supposed to give it to him and then sit back and rot as his superior grew even more so. Something roiled in his gut. But still, he padded over the lowly little fools who had dared try escape. "Introduce yourselves," he said, because interrogations tended to go smoother if he opened with a veneer of politeness; and also because he needed connections to kill if it turned out that any of them had any telepathic abilities and had shared secrets of the dungeon with the outside world. All of them averted their eyes as his mana coiled to the surface, cowed by the presence of a Gold as they damn well should be. The man with the ancestry narrowed his golden eyes, jaw working through whatever he wanted to say. But he didn''t get the chance to speak, because someone else decided to leap for the position of first. "You will release me," the man with the ink-black hands snapped, full of all the willful ignorance of youth. "I am Alami, priest of Akohr, and she will not take kindly to you keeping one of her chosen few captive." Ah. Fantastic. Lluc loved priests. There was nothing quite like having a deity grant you both powers and a stick to shove up your ass. "She sent me here on a mission more important than whatever you think I was here for," Alami continued, moving well past willful ignorance and straight into idiocy for speaking as he was to who he was. "So if you value your life, you will release me so I can report back to her." Lluc smiled. It wasn''t a kind smile. He leaned down to be on level with Alami, dragging whatever scraps of mana he had left to spark around the corners of his eyes; flashy, though ultimately just for show. A mere glimpse of who held the real power in this interaction. Because for all that the dungeon had somehow¡ªsomehow¡ªmade pacts with multiple deities to allow them to spread their influence through its floors, Lluc hadn''t felt the Goddess of Night amongst those present, and that vastly reduced anything she could actually do to him. Aiqith was very far from the gods, and even the mightiest of their wraths would lose much of its force by the time it actually got down to him, and, well. Judging by Alami''s¡­ everything, Lluc was willing to bet that Akohr didn''t care about him all that much. "Surely a little priest like you should be able to contact your patron even while captive," Lluc said, damn near purring. Alami bristled. "Of course I''m able! You could lock me in¨C in the depths of the Endless Trench and I''d still be able to commune with her!" "Awfully convenient for you to say that, isn''t it?" Lluc said, tilting his head to the side. "One claim of priesthood and I suppose I''m just to¡­ let you go? Based on nothing but your word?" He didn''t need any slithering mana to make his words sink in like a viper''s fangs. "Why don''t you prove yourself?" Alami did hesitate at that, inferiority complex warring with the real threat issued; while his ink-black hands were certainly a sign of his priesthood, that was easy enough to be faked, and Lluc was more than willing to claim disbelief. But would the promised death be worth potentially revealing his mission? There was a moment of silence as he chewed that over, ink crawling a few inches higher up his arms, curling around his elbows. Lluc let himself settle back, smile curling wider over his face. "As I assumed. So who are you really, boy?" The insult decided it. Alami didn''t so much bristle as shoot upright, the Dread Crew member behind him¡ªa sturdy woman with dwarven ancestry and approximately no shits to give¡ªraising her greataxe threateningly but he hardly seemed to notice, glaring at Lluc with a fury only mostly hidden by the baby fat still clinging to his cheeks. "You will not make a liar of me," he snapped, fists clenching. "And I will laugh as she strikes you down for your insult." Lluc couldn''t wait to see it. Alami closed his eyes and the cave''s shadows deepened around him, night slithering up his shoulders like a shawl; his hands disappearing entirely into the murk as he brought them before his chest to clasp in a circle, opening up to the sky despite the mountain in the way. Things like that rarely bothered the gods. Then, on the back of Lluc''s tongue, he tasted it¡ªthe faint star-burn, humming with potential, mana far beyond his access but still lingering in his throat. The distant awareness of a goddess. "My lady," Alami murmured, voice echoing oddly beyond the cavern they were in. "I have completed my mission, and returned successful." A pause, the boy''s brow furrowing. He seemed a touch hesitant. "I should give my report now. I would not want to wait to inform you," he said, slowly, painfully. No desire to admit that he was worried about Lluc ripping him sternum to spine if he didn''t prove himself, apparently. Pride like that got you killed. "Your suspicions were correct," he said. "The dungeon has been granted a boon by another deity, one of shadows; shadows that reacted¡­ poorly to my presence. I think her name was Nuv¨C" The star-burn sharpened to a vicious edge. Whatever he was about to say broke off as Alami choked, words spluttering up alongside a fountain of black; his eyes flew wide and his hands leapt to his throat, clawing furiously, desperate. Ah. It appeared Akohr had been paying attention. Alami gurgled, ink pouring from his mouth, frothing at the edges of his lips. It spilled over his face and chest, splashing over the stone in rippling pools of night. He couldn''t draw in air and his eyes bugged, thrashing in place, splattering more ink over himself; Lluc took a delicate step back as he collapsed to his knees, twitching, scratching blood from a throat that wouldn''t obey. His hands turned fishbone white as the ink left them, still pouring from his mouth; his chest hit the ground and trembled through the last of the oxygen he''d managed to keep a hold on. In another minute, he was gone, and the star-burn retreated with him. The cavern echoed hollowly in their wake. Lluc hummed, nudging the boy with the tip of his boot, the ink already dissolving in intangible motes of mana. A shame. Though judging by how he had only been a mid-stage Bronze, he likely hadn''t gotten past the first floor, and thus would have no further information. The hint at an apparent rival for Akohr, one she cared enough about so much as to kill her priest rather than risk him say the name in the presence of others, was interesting¡ªbut things tended to go poorly for mortals that involved themselves into godly politics, and Lluc had far too many things on his plate. Irritating, but the benefit of properly terrorizing all the other captives was appreciated. At a tilt of his head, Isenda and the dwarven ancestry woman grabbed Alami''s corpse and dragged it to the side¡ªnot out of the cavern, because he wanted the intimidation to still stand, but enough that at least he didn''t have to think about tripping over the thing. Lluc stepped forward into the place it had occupied, arms loose at his side and smile still in place. "As I said." He swept this gaze over the surviving four. "Introduce yourself." They all stared at him. If anything, the woman with the burning green eyes had only gotten more furious, the Dread Crew member behind her wrapping a warning hand around her shoulder. The man with the ancestry stayed stoic, eyes the careful kind of bland attention that traders shrouded their true thoughts in, the man with the cage curling up more around it. The rich man, who already stuck out like a sore thumb with his fire-red hair and awful pale skin lacking even a hint of colour, stared up at Lluc. Conscious enough to understand he was supposed to introduce himself, though it was clear by the haze in his eyes that he wasn''t all there. "I am Lord Ealdhere Darlington," he said softly, voice trembling on the edges. "Oh, I suppose Baron, here. I''m terribly sorry. I''m normally able to keep track of that." If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. Shock, it seemed. Lluc extended his own awareness and brushed the edges of the man''s mana¡ªnot even ranked, fluttering weakly through his channels. Likely the man''s first true adventure, if it could even be called that, and judging by the blood splattered over his ripped clothing, it hadn''t gone particularly well. The shock was keeping him from reacting, falling back on old habits instead of anything else, and the formal tone and type of Viejabran used, he had been a nobleman of sorts. Potentially useful on that front, because he certainly wouldn''t be worth anything in a fight. Perhaps less than potentially useful, actually, judging by how the man was still shaking. "What were you doing in the dungeon?" Ealdhere splayed his hands a little uselessly, pupils still too wide and voice barely above a whisper. "I¨C I thought it would be full of interesting flora and fauna. I was right, I suppose." His voice gained a drop of bitterness. "I''m a researcher and scholar. I don''t know why I thought I was ever supposed to venture into a dungeon." Lluc raised an eyebrow. That was a surprise, actually. Not that the man had thought he could go into a dungeon¡ªunranked fools had no idea at how powerful things actually were and they often considered themselves immortal simply because they hadn''t been tested yet, especially when there was the promise of golden riches on the line¡ªbut of his chosen profession. Calarata was a land of thieves and pirates, where the education could be called lacking at best; sailing a ship or skinning a beast came with the territory but little else did. A proper researcher opened doors that brute strength simply couldn''t, from scholar to enchanter to inventor¡ªwith a specialization on beasts and plants that led very well to a dungeon. Unaware of Lluc''s thoughts, Ealdhere continued, reaching into his tattered coat. Seemingly ignorant of how the Dread Crew member over him¡ªa man with wet strips of cloth protecting the gills over his neck¡ªunsheathed his blade in preparation for an attack, he pulled out a mere stick of wood. Except not any mere stick¡ªbecause this was the deep, blood red and thorny bark of the mysterious mangroves of the dungeon, the one that Lluc still hadn''t been able to find the species of, and he''d been trying. Also the same mangrove that he''d watched drain an adventurer dry of blood before she''d even had time to react. How on Aiqith had he managed to collect a sample without being killed? "And it was full of such wondrous creatures," Ealdhere said, tone aching. "But that wasn''t worth it. My¡­ team, I suppose the word is, was killed. I only made it out because I could recognize the rampantaj vitoj¡ªapologies, creeping vine¡ªthat was attempting to disguise the exit." He stared at the branch cradled in his hands. "This is all I managed to collect. Seems rather pointless now, doesn''t it?" The shock was still hitting him exceedingly hard. His words were spoken as if to a trusted advisor, not to the man holding him captive, and certainly not spoken as if he''d just watched someone die less than five minutes ago. Lluc spared an idle thought for how long it would take the man to break out of his shock. He certainly had no interest in being there when it happened. But he did have interest in the man himself. Collecting samples without injury and knowing the technical names of things were not common skills by any means, and for all that Varc¨ªs would likely crush the dungeon beneath his heel as soon as Lluc brought him details of what lay within, there would still be the rubble to make gold from. Having someone who could identify both the corpses and perhaps how to make even more valuable things from them would only help. Hm. Lluc had been planning on killing the man after he''d seen he was unranked, no point in even keeping him in the brig in case he had need of fodder when the man wouldn''t survive against a single winterwolf, but perhaps not so. He did level a glare at Isenda for missing the twig when she''d captured him. If that had been a caster''s magical focus, Ealdhere could have gotten a spell off before they could react, and then Lluc would have been very, very displeased with her instead of only mostly displeased. To her credit, she did avert her gaze. The other Dread Crew members also looked away. Ealdhere stayed staring at the branch, face crumpling at the corners. Lluc would only leave him alive if he managed to shape up and move on past a few meaningless deaths. If his hired band of adventurers hadn''t survived, then clearly they weren''t going to make it far past that. Lluc slid his attention to the next fool, the one with the cage clutched to his chest. A little surprising that his Crew hadn''t taken it from him, but with how the bars were already bent inward and looked weak enough to be the thing to break instead of whatever it was swung against, he rather doubted they had cared enough to remove it. The adventurer wilted immediately as Lluc''s attention swept over him, black eyes sunken and umber skin a little darker than most Calaratans. Not so much boy as Alami but still young, arms wiry in that particular manner that came from drawing a bow, presumably the one in the pile of claimed prizes. "Callick Basso Portes," he managed in a horribly nasal voice. Incredibly aggravating. Enough to know both his parents'' given surnames, at least. That marked him a step or two above common Calaratan streetrats. From a brush of his aura, he was a low-ranked Bronze, presumably having broken free of Lluc''s thrall on the first floor and fled back outside. There were some splatters of drying scarlet over the heels of his boots, but it looked like it had come from monsters rather than people, and he was only skittish instead of traumatized. Well. Traumatized by Alami, but not what had come before. "What were you doing in the dungeon?" Lluc said, tilting his head to the side. Callick looked away, shoulders drawn tight to his ears. "You said we should go," he said, a little mulishly, even the fear of watching Alami die not enough to keep him from being fully subservient. A bad trait to have, in Calarata. But the next second the words seemingly registered and he winced, hunching tight over the cage he held in his arms. "Sorry," he managed. "I''m. Um. A hunter. Or adventurer, now. My group wanted to¨C to take the core. Or just gold. They took me because I''m. I can sense creatures surrounding me, so I was useful in a dungeon. And now they''re¨C" he broke off, swallowing the words before they could breach. A typical adventuring brat, then. Starry-eyed for adventure and picked up into a group that saw him only for his mana and not the man attached to it; because clearly an untamed, untested dungeon was such a fantastic place for low-ranked Bronzes. Gods. These were the idiots he was supposed to be governing. That he was aiding Varc¨ªs in governing, he corrected quietly. Assuming they were his was a dangerous presumption to be making. Lluc didn''t spare Callick a nod and instead moved down the line, eyeing the only woman. She had apparently been seething as he worked his way towards her, and now her emotions boiled over in a vicious storm. "I don''t know who you think you are," she hissed, fists clenched so tightly veins popped on the back of her hands. "But you''re a goddamn bastard and I don''t take lightly to cowards who hide in large groups taking my shit when I''ve damn well earned it. So you''re going to give me my fucking jewels back." There was a brief moment of silence. Ah. Judging by her accent, she was decidedly not a Calaratan native, and thus didn''t understand what was about to happen. Those sitting to her side were slightly less fools, and already Callick had averted his eyes. "I''m sorry?" Lluc said, very softly. Not so much an opportunity for her to redeem herself, but more to drag it out and terrify the little shitheads by her side. She bared her teeth. "You fucking heard me. I don''t know how you savages think the world works, but I won''t just let you waltz around thinking you¨C" He was low on mana, so that would keep her from a flashy death, unfortunately. The blade of air that flew from his lips and cored her throat like an apple was still deeply satisfying. She died in a gurgle of blood and slumped to the ground, the Dread Crew member behind her already hauling her corpse out of the way. Callick''s face was appropriately pale and even Ealdhere was reacting, clutching the twig to his chest like it was the only support in the world. Lluc hummed, rolling his neck, and let the last of his mana drift off his mouth. Wizard though he was, not specialized like the mages who relied on a mere handful of abilities, he had always been rather fond of air-attuned mana, and that spell was one he had learned as but a mere boy. Wonderfully versatile, that one. It was with a levity to his steps that he rounded to the final member of the escapes, now that they number only three. There was something to be said of Lluc''s efficiency, considering he''d most likely be killing everyone else before he finished today. Not a point in spreading news of the dungeon when Varc¨ªs was going to kill it. Again that frustration writhed in his gut. The man with the ancestry looked up at him, face schooled, though his scales were set on cheeks perhaps a touch more pale than they had been in the beginning. Lluc had seen it all before¡ªit was one thing to hear that the First Mate had no qualms about death, and quite another thing entirely to watch him kill the person sitting directly next to you. "First Mate Lluc," he said in a much more cordial tone than his eyes suggested he wanted to use. "I am Gon?al of the Silent Market." Hm. That was rather interesting¡ªLluc had heard of him, the youngest nightmarketer to ever join that underground cabal, and that did explain the capturing chains used on several creatures over to the side. "Thank you for sparing me," he said ever so politely, though it was clear he wasn''t particularly fond of the words. "But I would like to ask if the dungeon is off limits¡ªotherwise, if you allow me to keep what I have taken, I feel I could make much gold for Calarata." There. Packaged all up in pretty words. The real statement hidden underneath was give me back what I rightfully won. Lluc raised a very apathetic eyebrow. There was no thing like karma in lawless Calarata, where the rich plundered and the poor died. If Gon?al wanted to complain about fairness, this was certainly the wrong place to do it. Certainly a bold choice after he''d watched Lluc kill the woman sitting directly next to him for trying a similar thing. Lluc padded over to the pile of treasures, nudging things aside with his boot; a luminous constrictor curled around itself, lumped piles of moss and mushrooms, a slumbering ironback toad. And, tucked at the bottom, a jagged piece of quartz. Lluc summoned it to his hand with a flick of air-attuned mana and peered closer at it, feeling something pouring off in whispering little ripples. A canine-esque form raged within, bouncing off the fractals and spitting with fury, barely able to move. A wisp. Judging by Gon?al''s stiffening reaction, this was the particular prize he was so desperate to reclaim. Lluc turned back to him, flipping the quartz over in his hands. A makeshift capturing charm¡ªthe wisp would need to be transferred to a much higher quality prison soon less it escape, even being removed from the dungeon that fed it a constant supply of mana. This kind of thing would fetch quite the high price, especially with the power of the Silent Market to find the highest bidder. "I don''t know," Lluc mused, because he was in a particular mood to be infuriating and there was no reason not to put on a show when he was surrounded by Dread Crew members. "For all the gold you promise you could make Calarata, I certainly feel that if I took this and simply sold it myself, I could take a much larger cut." Gon?al smiled to hide how his jaw tightened enough it was pulling at his cheekbones. "What all due respect," he said, careful enough he seemed to be crawling his way over each word. "This isn''t how you would convince people to continue invading your dungeon." Lluc did tilt his head to the side at that. Nightmarketers were a rather famous bunch for being eclectic, capturing monsters alive that would rip them head to asshole just because they sold a little better than if they were dead, but it was still rather impossible to hide that fifty adventurers had walked into that dungeon and a mere five had walked out. Those weren''t the type of odds that even a mid-ranked Silver as Gon?al was would seemingly be up to keep taking, and certainly not other adventurers. "You would want to continue risking your life in it?" He asked, almost curious. Gon?al blinked at him like he didn''t understand the question. "It''s a dungeon," he offered. Lluc kept his eyebrow raised. "Invading one either means I die, or I collect enough treasures to live very comfortably. And this is a dungeon in Calarata; while there could be a tax on everything like with the ones in Le¨®ro¡ªa tax I''m more than willing to pay," he added, a touch hastily, "¨Cit would hopefully have less restrictions than those in Le¨®ro. Something that would allow me to better profit. Me, and the Dread Crew, of course." Lluc paused. He''d spurred the crowd under the borwood tree into action by claiming the dungeon was threatening their home, threatening their lives, and promised gold as a reward¡ªbut he hadn''t really considered that the dungeon itself would be the reward. Who would consider that? Dungeons offered treasures for a few and death for the vast majority; why would anyone take that risk as something they accepted? Gon?al expected that this dungeon would soon gain an Adventuring Guild and be open for invasions like every other dungeon in the world. Gon?al wanted that, and so had fifty other adventurers who had all plunged into the depths. Fifty other adventurers who had looked to Lluc as the one who had told them of this potential tucked beneath their very city. Unabidden, the plan raced through his mind. Varc¨ªs expected him to come back and report that the dungeon was properly weakened for an attack. Expected him to come back after risking his life, trot over to his side like a loyal dog, heedless of danger in the face of commands. Like he was just another woe-begotten scavenger desperate for any scrap of attention. Lluc Cardena Ferr¨¦ was the First Mate of Varc¨ªs Bilaro, but that wasn''t it. He wasn''t some mongrel pup waiting at the Dread Pirate''s heels, using his name and clawing for the prestige that came with it. He had reached Gold under his own abilities. Had become powerful. But power didn''t come from mana alone, and as he looked in Gon?al''s stubborn, idiotic face, he saw there could be something more. Varc¨ªs expected him back. Expected him to report that the dungeon was now free for the taking and that it was ready to be killed. Expected him to just hand over the only other source of true, untouched potential left in Calarata. Instead, Lluc sat before Gon?al, raising the piece of quartz with the wisp trapped within. He rolled it over his knuckles, watching Gon?al''s eyes track it with burning ferocity only tempered by the sullen knowledge that he couldn''t challenge Lluc for it, both on a mana standpoint and the understanding that Lluc held all the cards in this interaction. That Lluc was powerful. Claiming the core would be the same as suicide. It would be a direct challenge to Varc¨ªs, and for all the power he knew it would bring him, there was still the truth that he did not know how powerful Varc¨ªs was, and Lluc hadn''t scrounged and scrapped and fought his way through Calarata for as long as he had to survive on hope. But if he let Varc¨ªs collect the core, he would be threatening himself. The thought hit him rather strangely. He had known, of course, that Varc¨ªs had wanted the core for the power it brought, whether he merely claimed the dungeon or removed the core itself. But if he got it, then he would either be able to create loyal monsters or wield mana beyond this mortal world, and in both those scenarios, he would need Lluc less. And things that were not needed in the Dread Pirate''s entourage tended to disappear. Lluc Cardena Ferr¨¦ would not disappear. And the only way to prevent that was to make himself invaluable. His gaze flicked over those in the cavern. A nightmarketer, a researcher, a hunter. All currently held with their lives in a fragile, fleeting position¡ªa single motion from him and they would all find themselves dead on the ground, no questions asked by the Dread Crew. And who would try to take revenge for it? He was the First Mate. The Dread Crew in the room didn''t know what was going on. He hadn''t told them anything, and while they likely would have picked up that this was a dungeon he was investigating from the questions he''d been asking, that was it. They looked to him and saw him as in charge, and thus wouldn''t question him changing the script¡ªbecause they didn''t know the script. Because only Lluc and Varc¨ªs did. An Adventuring Guild. One wisp in a crystal was worth little. But dozens of them, piled high and continuously collected, alongside monsters and beasts in capturing chains¡ªsensed by someone who could find their location hidden in the walls¡ªproperly identified and described by a researcher who knew them. Well. That was worth much more. And there would come a tax, another tax not unlike the one that Varc¨ªs forced Calarata to pay him for his protection, but this time a tax that would be paid willingly. Lluc would not have to drag a sea-drake here and kill it in front of the crowds just to remind them why they were paying him; all he would have to do was show them the treasure that they could win within the dungeon, and they would line up outside his door. The money wouldn''t go to him, he knew. That would be another challenge. But Varc¨ªs was a terribly busy man, and if an Adventuring Guild were to open, he would not be the face leading it. That would fall to his First Mate, who would only be ever so interested in the role. Lluc Cardena Ferr¨¦ would not disappear. "Tell me," Lluc said, slowly, enticingly, dangerously. "What would you offer if I not only allowed you to take the wisp, but collect more?" The deep thrum of his mana in his chest, echoing like a fate changed. And in Gon?al''s eyes, he saw only interest. Chapter 90 - One Final Gift The jungle, unnamed, unconquered, blurred together in endless waves of emerald and verdant and teal and olive and viridian as she flew overhead, wings outstretched to capture the last of the setting sun. She swooped over the clouded trees, the golden tips of her scarlet feathers spearing through the light as she soared. As was her way, when the sun died over the mountains, she flew to the meeting-place. It had been her mission for many long years. She was more aware than she should be, she knew. Her brethren back in her birthplace had been brash and uncurious, searching for fruit and flashing their feathers, and she had been that way as well, flitting beneath the stony sky above. But then came the Last Day, and she had escaped, and as she flew beneath an actual sun she had begun to think. Not her own thoughts, not in the beginning; she had been filled with a rage and a fury unbecoming of her inconsequential stature, and there had been words and feelings and metaphors unknown that had filled her skull. It had been difficult. She couldn''t fly, so consumed as she was with these new thoughts, and the world was large and bold and frightening; so to the jungle she fled, fleeing the destruction of her previous home, searching for any familiarity even though these trees were large and unrestrained by stone. There she huddled, fiery wings curled around and hidden beneath the fronds of some massive plant, and she had tried to understand her thoughts. But they were not her thoughts. They spoke with a much deeper voice, one much older, one she remembered from her creation. One she had never heard outside of the caverns she called her home. And once she recognized that, once she was able to even comprehend the concept of recognition, let alone do it, she had been able to talk back. The world had opened to her, after that. She only held a figment of that voice''s power; but it let her think. Let her stay young and unchanged as the years strode past. Let her fly free when the voice was so chained. And thus, her mission. The trees faded away, lost to cragged stone not unlike her former home, and she flew lower¡ªstone to sand to street, that cursed pirate city, built over ruins that should not have been ruined. She screamed, a loud, piercing cry, as she flew; but with the approaching dusk and the clever twist of her wings, there were none that could see her, and she went uncontested. The lesser parrots of this land had none of the intelligence she so cradled and they screamed for reasons like territory or mating; hers would go unnoticed, as it needed to. And there. Below her. Past the city as she was, flying over the encircling slopes of the mountain, her destination was easy to miss; a mere section of blank earth, no moss or lichen overtaking its surface, surrounding a narrow black spot. A hole. She flared her wings and slowed her descent, spiraling down. Quiet, always quiet when she was in the city present¡ªpirates would kill for her feathers, those cleverer would kill for her magic, and the one that could not be allowed to notice her wouldn''t kill but do far worse things. It was not to be risked. Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more. Her talons thumped into the loamy soil, crest flaring, and she paused¡ªthere, in the shadows of the looming mountains and the rising darkness, her brilliant feathers stood out like firelight; but there were no pirates in this abandoned hole to lower places, and there were none to find her. And if there were, she would merely be another bird, prone to squawks and preening; they had no reason to suspect the intellect she wielded. She had no magic, no abilities to call her own. But she was clever, and that would have to be enough. Ever the darkness spread, deep and calling, as she perched near the hole. She hadn''t dared to venture inside, not since she had fled all those years ago, and now it was a hollow and empty place. She couldn''t trust it. All she could do was wait. And eventually, as the moon rose high and beings in the city below slipped into sleep, she felt the voice return. Over the years it had weakened, losing its position in her thoughts and slipping further and further away; it was only at this ancient site she could still find it, when the sun disappeared and he fell asleep. Even then, it was sluggish, tugging itself upward in mere motes of mana and slipping into her thoughts with a weary exhaustion. Hello, little bird. She chirped, shuffling closer to the edge. The voice reached outward, extending careful pressure to her thoughts as it picked through what she had seen; it paused long and hard on the boy she had guided through the jungle, on the mana she had tasted intertwined with his soul, and stopped outright on the wolf-hatted man leading adventurers to the mountain base. Something old and furious flashed through their connection. And when the memory continued, showing how the man had looked at her, the voice recoiled. She chirped again, trying to sound soothing, but she understood the fear. Understood what the man noticing her meant. You''ve been too visible, little bird. He will notice you soon. She flared her crest at the hole. You know I''m right. A sigh, mighty as the mountains, echoed through her thoughts. It''s my fault, in part. I made you too bright. In the darkness of the mountain, in the darkness of the gateway before her, she was a spark of sunlight with her scarlet-gold feathers. It was impossible to miss her if she didn''t fly in the clouds, if she didn''t stay in the jungle; it made gathering information difficult. It made the mission near impossible. Before the Last Day, she had never known the concept of failure. Of all the things she had gained since then, this was not one she appreciated. There''s nothing for it, I''m afraid. Go to him. He will take you in. She twittered, talons sinking into the soil. It was¨C it was the right decision, her awareness told her, and it would be a return to the home she had lost; but it wouldn''t be her home. It wouldn''t be her voice. I''m sorry. You know there is no other way. She did. So you must go. Continue the mission. I know you will succeed. A brush against her thoughts, pushing mana through their connection; immediately the voice weakened, slipping back beneath the ground, energy exhausted. A final gift. She closed her eyes, leaning toward the hole, pouring thanks and gratitude and love back. In its last moment awake, she felt the gentle caress of its presence. One day I will find you again, little bird. And then it disappeared. She stayed there for a moment longer, mourning what had been, before she spread her wings and took off for the distant mountains. Chapter 91 - Mission Set In the depths of my dungeon, Seros slept. He curled around my core like usual, iridescent scales hidden beneath the glow of evolution. His draconic evolution. Still the thought just warmed every inch of my mana, my points of awareness watching over him near vibrating with glee. Was he a dragon? Not yet. But gods, he was getting there. And I couldn''t wait until he did. But for now, I let him rest, surrounded by silver and moonstar flowers and jewels and ancient draconic runes I''d layered over my walls. Unfortunate that he''d settled in for evolution before I could have him bring down all the artefacts I''d gotten during the invasion, but even my silver was enough to build a beginner''s hoard. Maybe that would help speed up his evolution? I was not a terribly patient creature. But for now I drifted away, poking in with my other points of awareness; the pigeon-bat-bug war continued to rampage around the fifth floor, seemingly barely aware that there had even been an invasion; which I was glad of, because that was far too close to my core for comfort, but it also meant they were still only stumbling their way up to evolution. Several of the greater pigeons were inching closer, ripping heads off baterwauls in ways that only made me appreciate them more, but they were still a fair while off. Fire-tongue flowers continued to bloom smoke over their surroundings, eyeblight butterfly cocoons hanging off the rust-red iron branches I''d woven around the surroundings. Down below on the floating islands, scorch hounds ran amuck, hunting burrowing rats with their fiery bites, mottled scorpions scurrying around for scraps. An ecosystem, but not the one I wanted. This floor wasn''t made for them, too narrow, not enough room for dens or proper hunting territory. The scorch hounds slept by just curling up in one massive pile on the farthest island instead of the den that they wanted, guards posted, and the mottled scorpions didn''t have the leaf cover their camouflage was built for to hide under. The fire-tongue flowers, while beautiful, filled the air with smoke when I wanted clouds. But for now, it would have to do. I would build other floors for them soon. I jumped to another set of points of awareness, darting through the thornwhip algae-choked tunnels and drifting bioluminescent spores of the Jungle Labyrinth, the skittering bodies of hunter mantises and platemail bugs looming through the dark. I reached the Stone Jungle at its end, filled with towering limestone trees wreathed in jadestone moss and hazy quartz-lights. In the walls, dens of rats lived, led by the eldest mage ratkin and her five evolved followers, as well as all the other burrowing rats who had made the plunge from the first floor down to the richer fourth, but hadn''t developed their mana channels enough to swallow a jewel. Soon, with any hope. At least until they learned that the shadowthief rats were about to join the fight, and I rather doubted that the mage ratkin would be able to keep as steady a hold on their gems as they had before. In the farthest back den, larger than all the others and carved by me instead of the little teeth of the burrowing rats, glittering piles of scales sat; crowned cobras in the midst of their evolution, jeweltone serpents awash under light of every colour, and a budding horned serpent curled up beneath the growths already extending off her head. And there, in the largest hollow of the den I''d grown quartz-lights above just to warm her granite bed, the empress serpent slept. I hovered overhead, even though I knew it would take forever until she finished evolving. But oh, I couldn''t wait until she did. Her serpentine horde had lost much of their focus without her tyrannical oversight, snapping at each other and hunting food for themselves instead of gathering for her. The eldest crowned cobra had apparently made some claim to power, trying to use his age and ranged venom to scare others into obeying him, but he just didn''t have anywhere near the bulk nor the psychic powers needed. And I also imagined that the empress serpent would not be particularly pleased with his actions when she awoke. She would be getting a Name though, so maybe that would get her in a good enough mood she wouldn''t immediately take his head off. Maybe. She hadn''t exactly shown herself being a paragon of well-thought-out actions. I darted up another level, splashing into the depths of the Underlake¡ªstill a fraction of the previous population, even after I''d spent dozens of points trying to reclaim the excess my core wasn''t able to hold, only a few creatures visible in the murk of the swirling water. The less-swirling water, unfortunately. That fucking bastard with the unknown ancestry who''d stolen my beloved cloudskipper wisp, her canine form no longer darting over the waves and kicking up much-needed currents that kept creatures from escaping my third floor. With all the corpses still scattered over my various floors, I could easily wrangle together enough mana to shape another wisp, but. Well. Maybe I was foolish. I didn''t know what humans wanted with wisps, why they had captured her in a piece of quartz that I had still been able to sense she was alive within, why she was so prized to them at all. But surely if they had gone through all that effort, wouldn''t she still be alive? Sometimes I still thought of my first cave bear, lazy and unmotivated and young as he was. Our connection had snapped once he''d ran out of my dungeon, not Named where our Otherworld shared mana meant I could still be with him even out of my halls, but he''d been alive then. Maybe he was still alive now. I loved my creatures. If there was even a chance for them to still be alive, I wouldn''t give up on them¡ªI still remembered my first message upon ripping my heart out, the one that told me that all creatures within my halls would be my hoard. I had lost my last hoard. I wouldn''t lose this one. So no. I would wait to create a new wisp until time had passed, time enough to give her a chance to escape, to whip up enough brilliant mana to shatter that damned quartz and fly back to the peace of the Underlake. And if she didn''t, well. Then, and only then, would I make a new one, if that came to pass. But for now I merely grew out some limestone and granite deposits, pushing the currents from Mayalle''s whirlpool a little further into my floor, and watched the fledgling sea serpent twine around the depths with regal grace. He needed to move to the sixth as soon as it was done, to utilize his growing size in a land that would appreciate it far more. And. Uh. A floor that wouldn''t have Mayalle constantly looking in. The faint star-burn lingering against my mana was something I was very, very aware of. The armoured jawfish, the cantankerous brute who needed currents just to stay swimming, would stay. So would the sarco, although I imagined she might move down eventually, perhaps to a more marshy floor to match where she had previously lived. But for now, I watched her sun herself beneath the glowing quartz-light, swishing her ten-foot tail lazily against the limestone. What a monster. I loved her dearly. On the first floor, much was unchanged¡ªthe midnight cave bear slumbered, evolution pooling purple-black light over his body as it twisted and changed. It was only his first evolution, so I hoped it wouldn''t take a while; and even if it did, there were still his cubs, slumped up against him. They would protect him if need be. A few luminous constrictors on their way to crowned cobra or silver kraits, stone-backed toads to ironback toads, cave spiders to webweavers; the rest of my evolutions filled my halls with light of every shade and hue, brighter than my algae or quartz-light. There was something unsettling about having so many of my creatures under evolution, especially when my numbers were already so decimated. But there wasn''t like I could do anything to speed up that process; I would just need to wait. I hated waiting. But at least there was something I could do¡ªbecause on the second floor, past the near dozen and a half kobolds all asleep in their own spectral light, there was one creature that was still conscious and still capable. The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation. And I had many, many questions to ask him. High time I finally started to figure out some of the bloody things happening to me. Nicau raised his head as I tugged on our connection, weary with streaks of purple wrinkling the skin under his eyes¡ªin the absence of Chieftess, he had taken it upon himself to help the rest of the kobolds recover from the invasion, which was a trying task even with my healing mana and the numerous corpses strewn about for food. It was less than a day after the invasion and most kobolds were sleeping off their injuries and exhaustion; the two main healers were currently busy evolving into kobold shamans, leaving only a younger healer that hadn''t proved herself yet, though the way she had stepped up to take care of everyone gave me hope an evolution was soon for her as well. She and Nicau flitted from kobold to kobold, rewrapping wounds and offering fresh meat to those that needed it¡ªI helped as best I could, using the fact I hadn''t Named any new creatures and thus my mana regeneration was the highest it''d ever been, clearing paths and warding off adventitious creatures. Was it favoritism? Perhaps. But in my unbiased opinion, draconic creatures, no matter how diluted and unevolved and generally unimpressive, were simply better than those not. So it was in my best interest to focus on them. And Nicau, weak as he currently was, worked with the kobolds, and thus he was lumped in with them. Temporarily. So I looped some healing mana around him as I focused in through our connection, soothing over aches and taking the bite off his exhaustion. He sagged against the stone wall, using half his broken spear to prop himself up, and exhaled deep enough I practically saw it rattle through him. Not the thank you o'' mighty dungeon I was looking for, but I supposed I would elect to forgive that for now. At my gentle urge, he obligingly meandered back into his hollow of the den, slumping over on his moss bed and letting his broken spear clatter to the ground. I needed him to sleep and be capable¡ªwhile I could communicate with all my creatures, that was a vague, compelling sort of impression instead of true speech, and to even make a primitive psionic connection, I needed the horned serpent, who was currently evolving. I didn''t want to lose my last Named creature to something like meager exhaustion. No, he needed to be in better shape, especially if a second invasion was going to happen. Speaking of. I pushed into his mind. Why was I attacked? Nicau frowned, leaning back against the wall surrounding his bed. "I don''t know," he said, voice warbling slightly as he switched away from the primitive kobold language. "I didn''t¨C I didn''t recognize any of them. Or, at least not anyone important. Just adventurers from around Calarata." A pause. Hm. That lined up uncomfortably well with what I''d feared¡ªever since the attack by the invisible man, where the two other invaders had called me a dungeon, I knew that my existence had spread to the outside world. Or, given I''d already had Nicau know about me, at least it had spread to the wider population¡ªsomething that made sense with the fifty invaders that had then marched through my cove entrance. I picked my way through the souls I''d won, slithering through the scraps of memories they retained and the last of their thoughts before they''d died¡ªI saw a town square, crowned by a twisting, black-grey tree that sent a shudder down the spine of the woman witnessing it, and a man standing beneath. He was tall, well-clothed, with a hat wrapped in a wolf''s pelt; someone I''d seen before. And this time, I had a name. Lluc, the First Mate. He had spurred the people of Calarata to attack me, to defend their home from the dastardly little dungeon that was me¡ªbut I hadn''t seen him during the attack. Had he even been there? Something cold shot through my mana. The last time I''d encountered him, he''d been invisible. Only Rhoborh''s patronage had allowed me to sense him in time, and he''d fled before I could even attack him. Had he found a way to break past even that? It was difficult to panic as a living gemstone but I managed¡ªall my mana sharpened to a knife''s edge as my points of awareness spiraled around my halls, searching every nook and cranny, hovering over my evolving creatures like I could protect them. My awake creatures stiffened and disappeared back into their dens as I flew by, hunting with intangible claws and wings as if I was back in the Ilera Sea, fangs extended¨C But nothing. It had already been a day since the invasion and nothing had happened, my halls falling to rest instead of ruin. If that bastard Lluc had been here, he had already fled. But for all I had beaten the Bronzes and Silvers who had invaded me, he was Gold. If he was truly so hungry for my core, why hadn''t he made an attempt? Gods. None of this made any sense. Two points of awareness flicked back down to look at Nicau. I didn''t want to do this, not particularly. It had been my intention when I had first Named him, because I would much rather spend my mana on something even remotely intelligent rather than a bloody pigeon, but so far I''d only sent my little spy out to the jungle, where the only threats were vicious beasts and impossible environments rather than insipid humans. There was always the chance he could get recognized, or that someone had adapted a spell that let them see he was full of Otherworld mana instead of a more regular human variant. And if that happened, I would lose him. But I needed answers, and only Calarata had them. Rest, I murmured, pushing another full point of mana into him, removing the last of his aches and pushing a hidden splinter out of his palm. When more of my creatures awake, I will send you to Calarata to discover more. Ha. I was getting much better at speaking this primitive human tongue. Nicau looked a little less pleased with the situation, but that subservience I''d always appreciated in him won over before long. "Of course," he said, a touch hesitantly, glancing down at himself. Namely, glancing down at the blood-covered rags, marred skin, and distinctly unkempt appearance that he existed as. "Ah, not to question you, but I, ah. Would stick out. A bit." Hm. Irritating. Ah well. I''d seen his amateur attempts to show the kobolds weapons and clothing; I would step in myself and grant him some finer options to blend in with. Presumably some silver and gold as well, so he could buy things to bring back to me. This was a pirate city. If anywhere was going to have some wonderful schemas for me to collect, it would be this blasted place. When Seros woke, I would send him to collect schemas in the cove beyond for my coral reef, but Nicau would be for the more terrestrial schemas. And considering I had already seen several groups of Collectors, surely they would have to gather from places other than me. There could be any unknown number of schemas just waiting to be devoured, and Nicau had done quite good work on selecting choices the last time I''d sent him out. I will assist, I said. But for now. Rest. Nicau dipped into a bow, slumped over on his moss bed, and was out like a light. I left a few more points of awareness watching over for when he woke up and drifted away, checking on the evolving kobold hunters, warriors, shamans, and chief; already the tribe was straining to consume all the Drowned Forest had to offer, and that was without these evolutions. Rihsu ate her weight over again whenever she hunted. I did have the bounding deer schema, but I didn''t know if Rhoborh would allow me to add that to his floor; I''d already pushed my luck with the lichenridge turtles and cloudskipper wisps. I would need to find a place for them on a lower floor; let the unevolved kobolds stay up here while those more hungry traveled beneath. You know. As soon as I got a floor capable of holding them. There was always more to do, as a dungeon. There was no time that I could merely sit to the side and let the world pass by; everything wanted to kill me and I always had to be prepared to escape that fate. Maybe ripping out my heart had been an ill-advised idea. But above worries for further invaders, for another proper assault like before, for monsters and deaths and bastards who thought they could contain me¡ªexcitement thrummed through my mana. Because for all that my creatures were slumbering under the light of their evolution, I had dozens of corpses still scattered across my halls, half-chewed though they might be. And that meant plenty of mana I could harvest from them¡ªmana that I could immediately turn around into great grinding claws for stone. Because it had been far too long since I''d expanded. My Skylands were still just a catch-all for any creatures I didn''t yet have a home for, a dry, fire-esque environment that was the opposite of my final plan for it, Mayalle still watching with growing discontent as I didn''t remove the fledgling sea serpent from her floor. And, well. I was a terribly greedy thing. The gods had given me an Otherworld schema for coral, with characteristics I''d never heard of before, and that spoke to me creating something that had perhaps never existed until me. And that was something I could get behind. I spread out my points of awareness, scattering hundreds throughout my upper floors, pinned on my evolving creatures and my entrances. With Seros asleep, he wouldn''t be able to take second-in-command like he normally did when I focused on big projects, so I''d need to split my awareness a little more than I wanted to, but I could manage. I had already planned on taking my time with this project¡ªall the days having to completely rework the Fungal Gardens before I was satisfied was a lesson I only wanted to learn once. This time around, I would be doing it right. My mana curled around me, sharpening into claws and fangs and enormous, dangerous weapons that the limestone had no defense against. From the entrance tunnel I''d already carved out¡ªnot my hoard room, that would stay separate from the sixth floor¡ªI began to dig. It was time to begin the sixth floor. Chapter 92 - Paradise It had been so long since I''d carved out a new floor; while I imagined this would get old eventually, and quickly, there was still nothing quite like the joy of carving through stone to open new, beautiful pathways through my dungeon. Already my mana coiled and spilled into these lower openings, pooling richly through my twisting tunnels. My creatures had gotten used to the purest density of my mana on the fifth floor; I''d be curious if they''d keep up their little war when it moved down to a new floor. And oh, what a floor it would be. Last time I''d constructed an aquatic floor, I''d made it impossible to be in without venturing into the water; while that certainly had its place, I was still dealing with problems from that. My terrestrial creatures had to venture down to further floors in tunnels I littered through my Drowned Forest, and while I kept them small, there was still the ever-present threat that an invader would find one of the tunnels and head down themselves, skipping a floor entirely. No, that wouldn''t do. But at the same time, I hardly wanted someone to just merrily traipse their way through my sixth floor without so much as dipping their toe in the water. I needed a balance. And thus, my genius plan. Coral reefs weren''t identical things matching across area to area¡ªthere were trench-reefs, atoll-reefs, plateau-reefs, scatter-reefs, pillar-reefs, tower-reefs, and dozens more found all over Aiqith. There was a minimal chance I could do all of those styles¡ªand really, I didn''t need to do them all¡ªbut I could certainly do more than one. So my sixth floor would be divided into three sections, for lack of a more pleasing term. The first would be the smallest and mimic a plateau reef, with a wide bed of sand right on the entrance and a sharp, unforgiving drop into the water after; the second would be a barrier reef fashioned around an atoll, a crescent rind of sand bars studded with small trees and plants, though broken up so my creatures had ways to swim through it. Then the final would be a more wide, open space as a forest reef, sculpting great pillars and underbrush of coral to fill the space and add obstacles. All in all, it would be glorious, devastating, and easily twice the size of my last largest floor. I was increasing at a decently steady clip, I noticed now. From one thousand to two to three to the tunnels, which were harder than hells to measure, to five thousand feet long on the Skylands. This floor was looking to be some nine thousand feet¡ªalright, not completely double the size, it was the principle of the thing¡ªand filled with water. Would I be able to maintain that growth moving down? Unlikely. Even as I kept increasing my mana regeneration, I only had so much mana to spare, and increasing my floors both in number and scale ate at the mana that existed on the higher floors. Now, don''t get me wrong, I did enjoy how the density of mana decreased on my previous floors and spurred my creatures to delve deeper, but reduce it too much and suddenly it would be like they weren''t living in a dungeon anymore. No, that wouldn''t do. The vast majority of my dungeon instincts had faded by now to mere afterthoughts of old stone and rumbling depths, having slipped to the background once I''d gotten my metaphorical claws beneath me and could manage to survive on my own, but still I knew I wasn''t supposed to make too many floors, both at once and entirely. I wasn''t approaching the limit now, but eventually I would, and I refused to let my upper floors suffer in the face of my own greed. And that was with my making my floors enormous and elaborate, fitting of a dragon''s heart¡ªthose same, plain bastards who just chiseled rock and stuffed it with enemies could probably afford to make dozens more floors than I. No doubt filled with only goblins evolving into goblin-brutes evolving into goblin-warriors. Bah. Not a creative thought to spare between the lot of them. I still remembered those first invaders who had seen me for what I was, and how they had mentioned how different I was from High Lord Thiago''s dungeon¡ªthey were damned right I was. As soon as I trusted Nicau''s combat prowess enough, I was sending him straight to that upstart''s dungeon just to see how much better I was than it. But for now, I would continue digging ever down. There was more to be claimed. So on I dug. I had only just begun to shape out the first area of the floor, trying to keep a slower speed so I didn''t outpace my mana regeneration and thus could leave more corpses for my creatures to dine on mana-rich flesh. It was a wider, looming room, reaching high but, more more importantly, reaching even further low. Right outside the entrance tunnel, I churned out quartz, grinding it into the smallest pieces I could manage¡ªexpensive, but the end result was instead of the silver-grey limestone of the walls, a sprawling beach made of pure white sand. I shaped it a bed of granite to hold a rough shape but otherwise let it spill over in great sweeping mounds, already glittering and blinding in the quartz-lights I strung overhead. A lesser beach, to be certain, only a couple hundred feet in diameter; but enough that invaders would have to worry about keeping their balance on my ever-shifting sands and my terrestrial creatures could make their way down here. Eventually, I''d add some granite pillars for contrast and ambush spots, but for now I wanted to focus on what came after. Namely, the steep slope where my coral reef lived. Plateau reefs were built on a bed of stone and so I poured together granite covering the walls, anchoring it firmly with a few veins of iron ore¡ªin a technical term, to be a proper plateau reef the little sandy entrance I had made should have been supported by coral, but I was more interested in using the sand as a trap to slow down invaders than complete accuracy to the wilds. So instead I threw up granite surrounding all the walls and the base of the sand bar, layering smaller plateaus through the center, the ground an endless plain of white sand. This was the smallest room, under two thousand feet in diameter, and only a hundred feet deep. Which, again, the depth was not completely accurate to the outside world¡ªbut when I could make my quartz-lights powered by excessive amounts of mana to provide my much-deeper coral with the light they needed to grow, it was fine. I was a dungeon. I kept the ceiling low, since I wasn''t planning on adding many, if any, trees to this area¡ªand it would make the entrance to the second all the more thrilling. Roughing up the last of the granite to give it little openings for the coral to root into, I gave one last glance over the room. The room that was comparable to the Fungal Gardens in size, really. More simple, with merely differing layers of soon-to-be coral and one sandy expanse for terrestrial beings to stand on, but enormous and brilliant all the same. And it was merely the first¡ªthere were two more sections left, each going to be massive. But I needed this; my problem had always been that I had kept my floor sized to my largest creature. Which. You know. Became a problem when they evolved. The fledgling sea serpent struggled to swim freely in the Underlake, let alone hunt. So this floor would be several orders of magnitude larger than my previous ones. That was why I was taking my time carving it out; I wanted it to be perfect before I started the week-long process it would take filling it up with water. I''d be filling it from the cove at least, rather than the mountain river that fed my more freshwater floors. As I wrapped up the first area, I carved little outlets and overflows to keep it so the water level would stay exactly where I wanted it, a little above the coral line so even if I added some form of waves or currents, the coral would never be fully exposed to the air. I was considerate like that. But with the first room done, it was time for the second. This one took the full breadth of my mana, and I already started dissolving the corpses that had been eaten down to the bones; one, two, then all the way up to five thousand feet in length, much more irregularly shaped than the previous area. I kept having to split my attention between my active carving and the much smaller model I''d made in the Skylands, eating through the limestone in the broad, twisting shape I''d envisioned. It was interesting, though. While I didn''t run into any more fossils, I had found a new type of rock¡ªbasalt. It was a deep grey-black, made up of impossibly fine particles and a more rugged appearance. I hadn''t found it insofar as it replaced the limestone, no¡ªinstead it trickled through the limestone in twisting veins, similar to iron ore. And as I dissolved it, I found out why. This basalt was made from lava, and those tunnels were the ancient remains of a volcanic explosion. It was perhaps a placebo, but I couldn''t help but imagine that as I was digging deeper for this floor, the stone was warmer than it had been before. But alas, I never found any lava, and I stored away my new building material for the eventual seventh floor. Because this floor was taking all of my attention. The five thousand foot long hall billowed up and down; there would be trees here and thus I needed height, scraping as much limestone away as I thought I could get away with while still leaving plenty of room between this floor and the Skylands. Not a chance I was risking some idiotic earth-attuned mage stamping their feet and collapsing all my floors in on each other. But in the end, it was easily some hundred and fifty feet above where the water level would be, stalactites crowding overhead and filled with gently glowing quartz-light. I''d fill it with green algae and other oxygen-producing plants later. The real interest was below the water line. I had shaped a bottleneck between the first and second room, a thin passageway only twenty feet wide to let all my creatures pass through but force invaders not to advance as one group. Then, once they came through, they would swim through into an immediate open area, dropping immediately to two hundred feet deep; much deeper than any of my floors before. As strong as I made my quartz-light, below would still be a deep gloom, impossible to see what was beneath. Perfect for some hungry predator to lunge up undetected. But before them would be the islands. Barrier reefs were just that, barriers; they were tall pillars that stood up from the ground, built on a base of rock¡ªgranite for me then, considering that was my most durable stone¡ªthat curved around the currents. Atoll reefs, however, took it one step further; the reefs stretched so high that they formed islands, sand piled on top and capable of supporting life. They were the hidden gems of the oceans, needing to be formed by ancient volcanos or the death of a sufficiently-powerful elemental, treasured above all else and intensely protected by whoever was lucky enough to have them in their territory. I hadn''t ever had one. So I would be having one now. And it would be the best. I pulled up great pillars of granite, curling them around in a crescent moon; I didn''t want the atoll to be a barrier between rooms, instead allowing my aquatic creatures unlimited access to all the areas. So I had carved out an oblong room, with a divot pressing out on one side, and I wrapped the atoll around that instead. Each island was at a minimum of fifty feet across, piled high with quartz sand, and curled around my floor in an impossibly perfect ring. Again. I wasn''t shooting for a replica of a true atoll; this was mine, and I would alter it how I pleased. And I needed them shaped in a ring, because beyond the coral reefs and the habitable islands, there was one more reason that atolls were so prized. And encircled by the atoll and piled high with glittering white sand, sat my pride and joy. A lagoon. Ranging from as deep as ten to as little as three feet deep, it would be the breeding ground for fish and terrestrial creatures alike; the fractured ring of islands would protect it from stronger currents or waves and the shallowness would keep larger predators like the fledgling sea serpent out. Smaller fish would spawn there, fed by the bloodline kelp and small sections of coral I would seed throughout, and. Well. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. For far too long had my kobolds stayed to their brutish fire-drake roots. Even when I had tried to influence them, I had only created a few stone-drakes, sky-drakes, and forest-drakes; all better than fire-drakes, to be very clear, but not enough. I wanted sea-drakes. And with the new evolutions filling the tribe, they would need more room and more abundant prey. Something that my coral reef would have. On the surrounding islands, I would be planting a combination of vampiric mangroves and cloudsire palms, finally using that schema Nicau had brought me so long ago. Plenty of wood for tools and traps¡ªand on the final island, the one tucked against the outer wall, I would carve another den for them, larger and more sprawling, filling it with nooks and crannies for truly luxurious sleeping spots. Something that, even without the much richer and more intense mana on the floor, would appeal. It would take a while, I knew. Even if I just dropped them into the water, that wouldn''t make them suddenly know how to swim. Rihsu couldn''t be my standard here, even if I would be recruiting her to help guide the other kobolds into learning how to survive in the water. But I had little doubt that once they had made it to the sixth floor and the relatively safety of the lagoon, it wouldn''t be long before they lost that garish red of their scales and gained true, beautiful sea-green. And my lagoon would be the place for that. The rest of the room I carved down, open and shining¡ªthis would be the most crowded area, the barrier reef sloping down on granite beds from fifty feet deep surrounding the atoll to two hundred in the furthest stretches. I wanted this a colourful, beautiful oasis, filled with hundreds of creatures all darting and schooling over a lush field of coral. Combined with the blood that would diffuse through the water and the predators looming overhead, this would be a haunting paradise. Exactly what I wanted my dungeon to be. I would need more creatures to achieve that, though. Once Seros woke up, I would send him into the cove to gather some smaller schemas, proper saltwater fish instead of the silverheads I had to brute force to survive this new floor, as well as anything else that struck his fancy. I trusted his judgment. Mostly. Somewhat. But as the days crawled by, my floors recovered from the assault, my creatures eating the last of the corpses as I watched impatiently overhead to dissolve the leftover bones for more scraps of mana and the rest slumbering under the weight of their evolution. I kept hard at work on the second room of the floor, raising atolls up and building stone platforms for the eventual trees that would rest there, carving the beginning of a den in the farthest island. Five thousand feet long, shockingly, took a little while to finish. But eventually, I got there. It would be a paradise, I could already tell. Enormous, sprawling, ripe with potential for life and death in tandem; and the lagoon, my beloved lagoon, soon-to-be home of spawning fish and kobolds alike. I had specifically kept the second room shallower than my initial plans, only two hundred feet at maximum, to give the kobolds enough opportunities to hunt and swim at their leisure. The first and third room would be open to them, but the true bounty would be in the second. Hm. Should I name the separate rooms? The first needed a gimmick of its own, mostly being shallow and separated from the other rooms; maybe I could plant a certain species there, let them reign over that space, and name it after them? The second was the hunting and spawning grounds, though I could certainly come up with a more creative name than that. And the third? I gave myself one last glance over the second room; the sprawling paradise, tall and deep, filled with glittering white islands and the eventual home of endless coral reefs. I had, perhaps, never felt prouder of a floor. And there was still one more to go; one for my predators. So far, the rooms had been a steady slope downward; hundred feet deep in the first area, up to two hundred in the second, but the third I immediately plummeted to five hundred. The Underlake was filled with murky waters, bloodline kelp, sand stirred up by Mayalle''s currents, and was only lit by algae-light, which was much dimmer than quartz-light. It was easy to hide there, which worked with the relatively straight-forward room. But here, I wanted crystal clear waters, lit by gleaming quartz-lights overhead; all the better to make sure my coral survived. So if I wanted beasts like the fledgling sea serpent to be able to strike from the shadows, I needed to give him depths to hide in. So. Five hundred feet deep. It was a twisting, spiraling room as well, technically smaller than the Underlake but the depth making it larger; plenty of hidden corners for my creatures to lurk in. Still filled with coral, but instead of previous areas, these would just be scattered patches, raised either on granite pillars or attached to the walls. I dug out rugged walls and bits of exposed iron veins, little patches of basalt just for taste, hidden nodes of jewels and gemstones hidden in the deep. Then, even further below, I carved great, sprawling dens, filled with all the luxuries that my schemas told me would be appreciated. Not quite the depths, since I would be saving the true, properly crushing open ocean for another floor, but certainly similar enough that after the gleaming beauty of the second room, it was sure to give any invaders pause. And then, at the final wall furthest from the entrance, I carved a tunnel leading upward and outward. Originally my plan had been to carve the tunnel at the very bottom, forcing invaders to dive and swim through the sea serpent''s den; but alas, I still wanted my other creatures to be able to venture further below for themselves. So the entrance to the eventual seventh floor would be at the top of the water. It was still nine thousand feet of water to cross, so I wasn''t exactly too nervous about invaders just merrily traipsing their way on over and out. I''d love to see them try. But now I flitted around, smoothing out granite pillars and dumping more sand over the atolls and the base of the lagoon; I wanted it perfect before I carved an opening to connect with the cove, considering it would take forever to fill with water and I wanted to focus on my creatures while that happened. My creatures. Speaking of. Halfway through blooming a new patch of granite for a coral archway I was curious if I could make, something tugged at my attention; several of the points of awareness I''d left over my creatures were alerting my consciousness. Because some were stirring. Huh. I supposed it had been almost five days since I''d started work on my sixth floor, with how mana and time-intensive creating sand was¡ªtechnically I could have just ground up limestone and been done with it, but having the pure white that came from using only quartz was infinitely more pleasing. For all that I was a dungeon core, I was still a dragon. I wouldn''t use the boring grey sand if I didn''t have to. Which I didn''t. So shining white shores it would be. But apparently that was enough time for my creatures to finish evolving. I immediately threw myself to the fifth floor; but unfortunately, even though I''d pretty much already guessed, Seros wasn''t one of them. Still he slumbered, the light of evolution curled over his scales; and the empress serpent was in the same boat. It would take longer for them, I supposed. Ah well. I wasn''t disappointed. Not in the slightest. Not in the slightest. The vampiric dryad, midnight cave bear, and horned serpent were stable as well, though I could sense they were right on the cusp; the kobolds as well, the light already starting to dim over their huddled forms. Not yet. But on the fourth floor, deep in the Stone Jungle and the den I''d carved there, three lovely new creatures opened beautiful amber-gold eyes. The jeweltone serpents. From their previous grey-black appearance, they''d shed those scales and instead gained pure white scales, much larger than before. I was confused for a second¡ªI was pretty sure their description said that they lost their scales in return for the gems they used to cast magic¡ªuntil one of them lifted his head upon reawakening, and his scales shook. As in. Physically moved at even the slightest motion. It looked like they had to find gems to replace them with, but that the scales were not particularly difficult to remove when they did. At least I understood better how they were more stationary creatures; without their scales, or with scales that weak, it would be of no use to take them into battle. Perhaps a later evolution would give them more defense. But in the Stone Jungle, where the serpent horde reigned, they would now be uncontested. Perhaps that would be enough for an alliance¡ªor at least truce¡ªbetween the serpents and the rats. For as clever and powerful as the empress serpent was, she had shown no previous interest in gems, and that would come back to bite her if she wanted her jeweltone serpents to be at their best. Although that question would be if she was ever able to suck up her pride enough to ask such lesser lifeforms for help. And some part of me was rather doubtful about that. Ah well. I guided the three jeweltone serpents out from the evolution chambers of the den, sending them out into the Stone Jungle proper. They were beautiful beasts, some ten feet long¡ªshorter than their previous form, actually¡ªwith wide, triangular heads and brilliant gold eyes. Already a few scales had fallen off even in this short journey, though not any of the scales on their undersides; the wide, banded scales that protected their stomachs seemed much more securely attached. Perhaps they were fine to travel then, just not be in battle. I almost wished the kobolds were on this floor. No doubt they would find some great tool for the white scales left in their wake. But soon they were slithering over their territory, tongues flicking out in their search for gems. Even still groggy from evolution they hunted for their new source of power, slithering through billowing moss and stone trees. Without hands or even the rough approximation of hands, they would need the mage ratkin. Yeah. That would be an interesting truce, for certain. And speaking of rats¨C On the first and second floor, more mundane evolutions finished, creatures venturing down paths that had already been tested. New ironback toads rose freshly-armoured heads, plodding around in search of dens to guard; crowned cobras slithered down tunnels I showed them on their way to the fourth floor; webweavers scuttled together and wove their fake trees. But on the first floor, in dens filled with bits of stolen armour and jewels and even a few daggers they''d manage to drag off corpses, just under a dozen shadowthief rats opened new eyes. I was a sea-drake; I respected things draconic both in body and mind, so as much as the mage ratkin was not even remotely covered in scales, her hoarding tendencies and desire for magic was something I could respect. So I found her pleasing, even if I would prefer a few more horns and claws. These little monsters, however, were rats all the way through. They stayed about the same size, only a foot in length, but instead of muddy brown they were a sleek silver-grey, coat rippling over muscles on their lean bodies. They''d lost the forked nature of their tail but it was stronger now, curling as if almost prehensile; or if not that, then seemingly¡­ grasping for something. Perhaps a way to hold whatever they stole. Their eyes, pitch black, gleamed with curiousity as they rose onto their hind legs, examining their almost humanoid paws and twitching their enormous ears. Already the shadows behaved oddly around them, slithering up their flanks and twining through their fur, though slowly and ungracefully. Another true magical evolution, one undeniably influenced by Nuvja''s presence on the first floor. And I could tell how much they wanted to use it. I slipped into the largest one''s mind, a female who had already moved on from examining her new body to scanning her surroundings. Almost immediately I was struck by how clever her thoughts were; she was noting the diamond and gold stalactite I''d hung in the middle of the floor as a distraction, wondering how she could get up there and what routes could get her there. And as much as she''d stayed on the first floor for all her life, her gaze slipped to the rock pond and the treasures that undoubtedly were further below. Yeah. Shadowthief rats¡ªthese were burglars, rogues, bandits, collectors. I''d originally hoped they''d form another colony on the fourth floor, but now I saw them more as wandering threats, taking anything that struck their fancy and building their increasingly-powerful hoards. Something I would only respect. As I dipped into everyone else''s mind, though, the original rat I''d checked in on seemed the most bold. Already she''d poked back into her den, selecting a strip of silver that looked like she''d gnawed it directly from the wall, and wrapped her tail around it. There were little ridges built into her tail so that it was held completely securely even as she left her den, creeping through the whitecap mushrooms as she headed to the second floor. Ambitious little beastie. I''d keep an eye on her. On the second floor, I carved another tunnel down to the fourth just to make sure she had a chance to go lower. Likely they''d choose a lower floor for their eventual permanent dens. But for now, I returned back to the sixth floor, twisting through the separate rooms as I examined everything present. I could already tell how much I was going to fall in love with this sixth floor. Shallow in places, deep in others, winding and twisting in a way that kept it from being a straight line; even now, without the water, I could practically taste the potential. Jewel-coloured schools of fish, darting to and fro; capturing coral alight with every colour of the rainbow, sprawling as far as the eye could see; beautiful sea-green kobolds, diving through waves with hunting spears; the lagoon, filled with baby fish and crabs, preparing to make the leap into open waters as they aged. Paradise. The floor was as perfect as I was going to make it. It was time to add water. Chapter 93 - To The Victor Lluc stood before the borwood door. Littered in ancient carvings from the Dead War, its blue-black surface seemingly drinking in the surrounding light and raising the hairs on the back of his neck, it was the last barrier between him and the Dread Pirate. The last moment to rest before he had to explain himself. His back ached and his eyes hung heavy and wished to close; it had been¡­ hm. Days, perhaps, since he had last slept; there had been information to gather, prisoners to secure, oath-bonds to force from Gon?al, Callick, and Ealdhere. It was a stupid man that made the Dread Pirate wait, and though Lluc had sent a missive explaining his absence, he was not idiotic enough to make the man wait for any longer than he had to. A week would be enough to question mutiny, especially with a dungeon on the line; so he simply couldn''t take that long. Six days later, he was finally ready. Empty of mana, wounds still healing, exhausted and worn and weary, but ready. Because it was time. He had agonized over the decision for every one of those six days; did he truly want to go through with it? It was a comfortable life as the First Mate, and if he did nothing for the rest of his life, just continued to listen to Varc¨ªs'' commands and play the loyal lapdog, he would live as a king about common Calaratans. But that was before the dungeon had entered the picture. What was a First Mate worth when Varc¨ªs could claim a dungeon''s core? Lluc Cardena Ferr¨¦ would not disappear. So he steeled himself, used the last of his mana to flow through his channels and raise his shoulders up, and knocked politely on the door. It echoed like a storm-warning''s bell through the waiting room. Silence, for a moment, then¨C "Enter." Lluc exhaled, smoothed over the front of his crow-wing coat, adjusted his wolf-pelt tricorn hat, and entered. Varc¨ªs Bilaro had an office that sprawled, in the best terms of everything; glass panels, overcast by the sea-green wings mounted just above, a deep purple-red carpet taken from the elden days of the Wandering Empire, an enormous borwood desk with inscriptions new and old that rose the hairs on the back of Lluc''s neck. He still didn''t understand how the man could stand to have so much of the accursed tree near him, much less sit before an office crowned in it. Another show of his power, perhaps. It worked. Most of the time Lluc was in here, he was cleaning blood from meetings that had gone poorly. As always, Varc¨ªs stood near his alchemy set, mounted on the wall opposite the windows. Lluc didn''t know from what land he''d stolen it from, because this was nothing from either Calaratan or Le¨®rian design; full of twisting golden tubes, yawning glass beakers, purple-flamed fires, trembling quartz containers. This time he had a few sea-green scales in the highest container, pouring mana-rich water in an endless cycle over and over their ridged surface. Even just stepping into the room he could feel the mana pick up, vague memories of ocean and water and deep currents. It was odd, prickling at his awareness, but he''d long since grown used to it. In the many months since Varc¨ªs had killed the sea-drake, he had spent that time distilling it down. He hadn''t sold a single piece, no matter how much woe-begotten little scavengers had come forth on pleading knee and begged for a scale or how rich nightmarketers had offered the entirety of their vaults; he had only mounted the wings above his palace home to cast their enormous shadow over the white stone of Calarata and kept the rest for himself. Lluc had heard the rumours as he stalked through Calarata: the Dread Pirate was fashioning its corpse into a god-weapon to strike down the Citadel of the Le¨®ro Kingdom; he had kept its body for an Old World ritual that would allow him to transform into a draconic shape; he was carving out its chest and drying its wings to shape it into a new ship to outpace the Golden Ghost. All manner of things that imbeciles thought. Lluc wished they were right, though. Because the truth was far stranger. He was consuming it. Something cold lingered at the thought. Varc¨ªs was human, no matter his void-black eyes and concealed soul; and humans didn''t eat to increase their powers. They fought, won, bled; if they could merely eat mana-rich items to fuel their own power, it would have been discovered centuries ago. That was simply not the way that they grew stronger. And he didn''t know why Varc¨ªs was doing it. Lluc had been around him for all the time since the dragon''s kill; with the people of Calarata thoroughly cowed and convinced of the Dread Pirate''s power, the taxes had been flowing back in, and there was no need to send the Dread Crew out for any missions beyond their regular. That had been why they had hunted the sea-drake; far too many Calaratans had started to give less and less, even as their own coffers swelled, and that was not an insult Varc¨ªs Bilaro would accept. So since then, he had been here, managing Calarata, an unenviable, thankless job that he shouldered as First Mate. And in all that time, he had felt no increase in strength from Varc¨ªs. Where was the power going? Why did he sit by his alchemy pipes, distilling scales and meat and claws into raw mana, while his own soul stayed at the same murky depths as before? Lluc had never been able to sense how powerful Varc¨ªs was before, whether Gold or Electrum or even the legendary Mythril, but that had been the most powerful sea-drake in the Ilera Sea. Surely he should feel something different. But he hadn''t, and he didn''t, and still Varc¨ªs consumed. His plan seemed more dangerous, now. But he had spent six days preparing for this, and he wouldn''t back down now. He couldn''t. Lluc Cardena Ferr¨¦ would not disappear. An awful silence stretched between them as Lluc entered the room, Varc¨ªs still focused on his alchemy. He felt no stirrings of wards or protections, much like he''d never felt them¡ªbut he didn''t believe for a second that Varc¨ªs didn''t guard his room. So the fact that he, a Gold, couldn''t feel them, wormed at his confidence like a knife to the gut. There was simply no way to trust your own instincts around the Dread Pirate. Exactly as the man liked it. He could be a bastard like that. "Ah, Lluc," Varc¨ªs said, voice deep and calm. He smiled with all the serenity of a slit wrist. "I would hope," he said, slowly, casually, unhurried. "That there is a good reason for your absence." Or like that as well. Lluc nodded, hands behind his back in a partial bow. It kept the paleness of his palms out of sight. "Of course. Your plan was a success, but as I was preparing to complete it, I realized you had set yourself up for something far greater." That was the way to talk to the Dread Pirate, of course. Assume all faults were your own and any brilliance was his. Varc¨ªs raised an eyebrow. "Claiming the core would grant you power and prestige, but so did killing the sea-drake," he said, very carefully not looking at the scales distilling in the golden pipes. "And constantly poking the dragon''s nest for more attackers isn''t sustainable. So I thought, how would you make it so this core wouldn''t be only a single boost, but something that could increase forever?" There it was. The script he''d been practicing ever since he''d seen the greed in Gon?al''s eyes. "And then I remembered," Lluc said, fighting the urge to bite his nails into his palms. "High Lord Thiago''s dungeon." Varc¨ªs tilted his head to the side. It was the dungeon closest to them, on the edge of the Le¨®ro Kingdom''s territory; not an ancient dungeon, one formed through a three-moon eclipse, claimed by a Gold adventurer who had started the Thiago High Family line. But she had died some years back, and her son, Aitor Thiago, had taken it over. And done his damnedest to drive the thing into the ground. "It should be an old, proud dungeon, full of unique creatures and rich mana; and under Aiyalera Thiago, it was. But under Aitor, he hasn''t been managing it, languishing on the riches he earns from being its High Lord. The dungeon has grown stale, its creatures no longer evolving, and the monsters found within are those that can be found elsewhere. Aitor has shoveled restrictions on any adventurers going in, not allowing them to kill too powerful of creatures, not allowing them to take too much out, and under pain of death and torture, not even allowing them past the twelfth floor for fear of someone taking the core. It''s hardly a dungeon at all." He let that hang in the air for a moment. "And adventurers by the thousands go every year." "They come to a dungeon where the monsters are basic, where the prizes are lesser, where restrictions disallow them from anything but scrapped finds and mana. If they so much as think about claiming the core, they''re killed where they stand. And still they go there. Aitor Thiago collects his weight in gold every few days from the taxes his Adventuring Guild claims over those venturing into the dungeon, and he''s doing that for a dungeon that''s not worth the ground it''s dug into." This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there. Calaratan taxes were paid by pirates, who could have months where they made like kings and months where they made like paupers. There was no way to guarantee the money coming in, nor the rare creatures or artefacts. But an Adventuring Guild could be better. Could be more. Could be his. Varc¨ªs had a hint of a smile now, his void-black eyes swirling like eddying pools. It was a smile entirely at Lluc''s expense. "Are you proposing I should become a High Lord?" That was a terrifying prospect. Any version of the Le¨®ro Kingdom that had Varc¨ªs at the head would crush Aiqith beneath its heel. "No, sir," Lluc said. Here it was. His lynchpin argument, the reason he thought he had a chance at all, his saving grace of potential. "I''m proposing that you open an Adventuring Guild and allow adventurers to attempt to claim the core." Varc¨ªs paused. Lluc held his breath. He was suggesting blasphemy here, of course. Not a single dungeon had ever allowed anyone to challenge the core since they had been claimed, since that would threaten to dethrone the High Family and quite thoroughly remove any of the reason to have a dungeon, but Lluc needed this. He couldn''t have Varc¨ªs just take the core and remove any chance he had of growing more powerful. This had to work. "There has never been another dungeon like this," he said. "Adventurers normally challenge them for money, power, or fame; but for a chance to start a High Family, they''d do anything. The taxes you could set would be astronomical, and people would pay them. From what I saw when I ventured inside, it''s already evolving monsters and creating floors vastly different to what is present around here. That''s not including what you could charge for teleportation rituals, guides, maps; even on its own, this dungeon would be a gold mine. But with allowing adventurers to try and claim the core, to become a High Lord themselves, there would be no limit to who would come. Calarata would only be a starting point; Le¨®ro would come here, then the Wandering Empire, Ter Asla, Athabakhanu¡ªanyone who hears of the potential." And, of course, creating such an open and welcoming dungeon meant that Calarata''s sheltered existence would become fleeting. They had existed off of maps for so long, being such a lawless place, and the Dread Pirate had promised to protect them from the Le¨®ro Kingdom. That was what the taxes were for. But owning a dungeon meant that many of the lesser sort of rules that Le¨®ro demanded could become suggestions. Mere requests. To come to Calaratan and invade the dungeon meant following Calaratan rules. Would the Calaratans who paid their taxes and wanted their anonymity to stay be pissed? Probably. Lluc didn''t give two shits. If they wanted to say anything about it, they were welcome to come to him or Varc¨ªs, and neither of those parties would be at all interested in what they had to say. "There''d be no chance that people would be allowed to reach the core, of course," Lluc hastened to add. "No need to risk your golden egg. But they wouldn''t be informed of that, and those that figured it out can be silenced easily enough." He would know. He''d done quite a bit of that silencing himself since rising to the position of First Mate. "To set up an Adventuring Guild without that rule means setting yourself apart from every other controlled dungeon in Aiqith," Lluc pressed, trying his damnedest to keep his voice steady and confident. "Adventurers would pour in by the thousands, and with the siren''s call of going deeper, that means less of them just scavenging the first few floors and then leaving. That means you wouldn''t have to worry about feeding the dungeon, keeping it full of mana, and it can continue to develop new floors and creatures without¨C" Varc¨ªs held up a single finger. Lluc''s words dried to ash in his throat. The Dread Pirate tilted his head to the side, bird-like. His eyes were pools of void. "The adventurers would feed it," he murmured, something connecting behind his gaze. "Strengthen its connection with the other worlds." His eyes flicked back up. "Would it grow more powerful?" Ah. Lluc swallowed. What was the right answer here? Their original plan had been to fatten the dungeon up before Varc¨ªs took it, but that had been so its more powerful creatures were evolving when Varc¨ªs merrily strolled through and claimed the core. Not a plan for the future, merely a solution to a temporary problem. So Lluc didn''t know what he wanted now. Did he want it to be strong, or was he concerned about that? Ice crept down his spine. "Presumably," Lluc hedged. "Dungeons only grow stronger with more mana." Varc¨ªs looked back to his alchemy set, where a drop of water heated by purple fire flashed landed on a scale with a hiss. He watched it, head still tilted, settling his gold-tipped fingers over his borwood desk. There was something oddly¡­ curious in his gaze, as if a new solution to a problem he had puzzled over for centuries had presented itself, and he didn''t know if this would be any more effective. But he was curious. Interested. "Stronger than what being the king of a pirate city can manage?" He hummed, more to himself. "Fed by more than taxes?" Lluc was damn near ready to sprint from the room and beg apologies for even daring to bring up a competitor when he saw Varc¨ªs'' face. The man didn''t look threatened, nor challenged, nor worried¡ªhe looked hungry. Like he wanted the dungeon to grow stronger. That was not what Lluc expected. He fumbled for anything to say. "Yes, I believe it would grow stronger," he managed, as if he hadn''t heard what Varc¨ªs had said. "And it would be pushed more than dungeons that have their core protected; but of course, if it ever got too powerful, or someone did end up claiming the core, I have no doubt you could stop them." Varc¨ªs'' eyes snapped to him. And there it was. His final argument. Leaving the core explicitly open to being captured was playing with fire; it would invite every unwashed, untested Bronze with a rusty dagger to their name, but it would also draw Golds from far-off lands who were interested in claiming the power that came with the title, or even the mythical unclaimed Electrums and Mythrils who hadn''t sworn to a country yet. Before, when it had been contained only within Calarata, Lluc had known everyone with enough power to truly make a challenge and thus had expressly not invited them on his little campaign. Theoretically, an Adventuring Guild could disallow anyone too powerful from invading, but that was setting boundaries that would limit people willing to risk their lives and their payment for a chance at stardom. And for all that Lluc would say that the core was open to be captured, the truth was he would never allow it. But to Varc¨ªs, he would simply say that surely the man would be strong enough to stop it. What would be a powerful dungeon, or an adventurer with a core under their control, be against the famed Dread Pirate? Why, Lluc had nary a thought that they would even be a flea under his heel. No one knew how powerful Varc¨ªs was. Their original plan had involved Lluc weakening the dungeon so Varc¨ªs could claim the core, but he didn''t know how much that was for an actual threat or merely convenience. He had consumed a sea-drake''s power, taken over the entirety of a pirate city full of backstabbers, controlled mana and creatures beyond understanding. To lesser eyes, he looked like a god. If he said now that he didn''t know if he could defeat an overpowered dungeon or stop someone who had claimed the core, he would be undermining his own power. Varc¨ªs stared at him. Lluc felt the full weight of the Lord of Calarata, the Dread Pirate, the Keeper of the Underlings, settle on his shoulders. Void-black eyes rippled. Maybe Varc¨ªs saw what he was doing, that Lluc was challenging him to dare say that he wasn''t strong enough for the plan to work. Maybe Lluc would get smited down before he managed to say another word. Maybe all of his planning, all of his years as the First Mate would mean nothing for this one final scheme. But maybe it would mean something more. In the far corners of the room, the shadows trembled. "The taxes will go to me," Varc¨ªs said finally, and his voice rang with the decree of the untouchable power that had kept him in command of Calarata for so long. "Mana and creatures, not gold. Take what you need from the Crew''s coffers to start it. Take more than you need and I''ll gut you myself." Something flashed across the room, the shudder of his mana extending outwards, and he idly adjusted the collar of his sweeping coat. "Set up near the entrance, as close as you can. Extend the docks to meet it. You''ll make weekly reports on its strength, how it is growing, and send me updated maps the second anything changes. If it gets a single new bug to make, I will know." He said it like a fact, because it damn well was with how Lluc would obey it, but he didn''t know why. Why did its strength matter so much if he wasn''t just going to claim the core? "Keep it contained to Calarata for the first while as you stumble your way through leading, but then expand to Le¨®ro and beyond. Declare yourself Guildmaster, but to the public it is still my Adventuring Guild." A dagger-thin smile. "I''m sure you''ll have enough time to manage it." Lluc very, very carefully didn''t react. "Of those you''ve gotten an oath-bond from, only keep a few. The hunter, Callick, will be unnecessary. Ealdhere will be easiest to control. Use Gon?al as the liaison to the Silent Market, and he will obey better than attempting to keep him only in the Guild." Lluc swallowed. Of course he knew about them. Was there anything in Calarata that he didn''t? But he hadn''t mentioned Lluc''s true plan. Or had he? In giving Lluc the position of Guildmaster, was he testing his loyalty as First Mate, seeing if he would try to strike out for power on his own? Or did he truly believe that Lluc was serving him and only him with this scheme? Gods. There was no way to know. There was never a way to know, not here. But that didn''t matter. Not now. Lluc leaned into a bow, like this was all Varc¨ªs'' plan from the beginning, like he was in awe of the man''s genius. Like he was his normal, spineless self that was only happy to serve. "Thank you, sir," he said. "It will be done." Varc¨ªs didn''t nod¡ªwhy would he, when there was never any doubt that his will would be carried out by his army of loyal backstabbers¡ªand turned back to his alchemy set, but his eyes were distracted. He kept drumming his gold-tipped fingers on his borwood desk, humming something tuneless under his breath, mind clearly elsewhere. Lluc decided to take the dismissal for what it was and carefully bowed out of the room. Varc¨ªs didn''t react. The borwood door clicked shut behind him, quartz-lights flicking back to life as he entered the waiting room; immediately he exhaled, air-attuned mana sparking over his fingers. Gods. He''d done it. He''d done it. The Guildmaster he would become; to Varc¨ªs, busy as he was with all the hidden projects and gatherings and deals no one knew about, it would look like Lluc was merely getting more taxes for him. Never in gold, since Varc¨ªs only kept enough gold to pay for his lifestyle and cast the rest into the Dread Crew''s coffers, but in creatures and artefacts. The things he had always collected. Maybe the reason he had decided to rule a pirate city, where such things were traded and gathered, rather than go to Le¨®ro, where they would pay him a king''s ransom but in gold to serve as one of their enforcers. Lluc did not understand Varc¨ªs Bilaro. He wondered, sometimes, if anyone would. But that didn''t matter. Because tomorrow, he could gather stone and wood-mages, drag them down to the cove where they would begin construction. He would kill Callick¡ªbecause as much as this was his plan, he would still not disobey the Dread Pirate¡ªentrap Ealdhere into serving the Guild, and drag an agreement with the Silent Market out of Gon?al. For today, he was still the First Mate, loyal lapdog, mongrel pup, lesser being. But tomorrow? Lluc Cardena Ferr¨¦ would not disappear. Chapter 94 - New and Awoken This was going to take, in polite terms, fucking forever. I was swirling below the entrance to the Underlake, the wide tunnel that led out to the farther cove. All my previous floors had been fed by the mountain river, though given some amount of salt so that my mangroves would keep their resistance and I could welcome ocean creatures within. They still tended to die, but when I remade them, I was able to nudge their abilities here and there until they could survive. But this coral reef would be purely saltwater, fresh from the source, and that meant I needed to pull water from a different place. And. Ah. I was also somewhat concerned about draining the mountain river; I did my best to have an overflow, excess water going back into the river so I never flooded, using my mana to keep it fresh and aerated rather than rely on a constant cycle. But this coral reef floor was utterly massive, much larger than my previous aquatic floors by several orders of magnitude, as I didn''t want to rely on only a river. Maybe in the future I could find a way to easily purify saltwater and feed my future freshwater floors by the cove as well; I was a little less concerned about the ocean running out of water. But in order to fill my sixth floor, that meant I needed to open a further hole in my floor. I had bored a tunnel up around my other two floors, strengthening its walls with quartz and iron so they wouldn''t erode, and guided it on a twisting path up to the cove. Technically, I had secured my cove entrance so that I blocked all water from coming in, avoiding the salt for my more delicate creatures. But I could bore in that tiny gap between openings and bring the water down to my sixth. I''d kept the tunnel only about a foot in diameter, because I was absolutely not risking anything larger than a fish managing to make its way to my undefended floor, but that would also mean that it would take nigh-on centuries to fill. Alas. The struggles I must make for safety. My sixth floor was as finished as I was going to make it¡ªthere were only so many walls to smooth and sandbeds to adjust before I knew I was just being pedantic, wasting time with minute details. I wasn''t sure why I was wasting time, really; wasn''t I excited to finally have another aquatic floor? I was, truly. But I was also rather concerned about failing to live up to the unrealistic expectations I''d built up in my mind. When it was only stone, it was much easier to just imagine. I bared intangible fangs and flared my wings. No. I was no little hatchling still teething at the eggshell, hesitant to escape into the wider world; this was my floor, in my dungeon, and I would construct it as I liked. And with that, I bored the final stretch of tunnel free. Saltwater splashed down, making an odd sort of gurgle as the air bubbled outward; I raced alongside it with many points of awareness, very unwilling to let anything go wrong. I''d even littered several pockets of rubies throughout the tunnel, feeding them a breath of mana so that they heated the water that rushed over them. Coral reefs tended to have warm water, being so shallow and in direct sunlight, and since mine was deeper I doubted my quartz-lights could light it to the level I wanted. Thus, rubies. Although it was irritating to have to actively feed the rubies. I''d gotten quite used to letting jewels just sit in my halls, filling themselves with my ambient mana to be used as batteries for later, rather than actually using any of the mana they were surrounded by. Warm water came first. I''d find a more mana-efficient method later. But for now, I watched greedily as the first stream of water splashed into my sixth floor. Quartz-white sand stirred as crystalline blue waters poured through the first room, splashing over the various plateaus I''d scattered throughout the first room; barely a trickle, hardly evening stirring the sand. It had fifty feet to rise in this room alone, over two thousand feet long, and that was before the second room in all its enormity. Two hundred feet deep there, five hundred in the third room¨C I watched the tiny trickle of water splash into the room. Hrm. If it wasn''t full in a week, safety be damned, I was widening the tunnel. But for now I merely littered hundreds of points of awareness throughout the sixth floor, watching the progress so that it didn''t disturb anything. Saltwater could be more corrosive and while I was relatively assured in the strength of my granite, I was not going to risk it boring through one of the bases of my barrier reef as it poured through. In the end, however, I just had to wait for it to fill. I hated waiting. So upward I flew, darting back throughout my various floors; Nicau continued taking care of the kobolds alongside the healer who was steadily climbing her way towards evolution. It seemed like suddenly losing all previous healers as they evolved into shamans put quite the power on her shoulders, though she was still stepping up to the task. Nicau had found a new use for his blessing; by commanding injured kobolds to sleep, they would pass out nearly immediately as long as they weren''t fighting him. It looked like he could only command them to do things they could already do, such as stop, sleep, or move; not like he could just yell heal! at them and have their wounds magically disappear. Maybe one day. I had hope that his and Seros'' blessings would only improve over time. The rest of my creatures continued to evolve, some so close I could practically taste it; the kobolds in particular, glints of scales visible under the glow of mana. I was deeply excited to see where they ended up. The midnight cave bear as well was close, even the new horned serpent beneath starting to solidify; but not yet, unfortunately. Ah well. It wasn''t like I wasn''t waiting for all other sorts of things. But for now, I darted through my higher floors, peering in at my other creatures. My five silver kraits had evolved over the past day and now not so much floundered but swam through the Underlake, curling around the bloodline kelp and peering out at prey now open for them to consume. I would be giving them the option of coming down to the sixth floor; while proper sea snakes or moray eels would be better for a coral reef, they would find plenty of brilliant opportunities in the twisting paths of that floor, if the richer mana wasn''t reward enough. Doubtless some would stay in the Underlake, which I was fine with. They were monsters there, and served as inspiration for luminous constrictors on higher floors. But I wanted at least a few down there. I wasn''t much interested in silverheads, though. They had their place, but they were lazy, straightforward creatures who preferred brutish tactics that simply couldn''t be allowed in my delicate coral reef. Silvertooths maybe, when under the control of the royal silvertooth, but their base evolution wouldn''t be allowed. Besides, they were such a boring silver, and freshwater creatures to boot. This was a saltwater floor, thank you kindly. But speaking of freshwater creatures¡ªthere was one that I wanted to try. I was only partially a hypocrite. For up on my second floor, deep in the canals of the Drowned Forest, some of my oldest creatures hadn''t reached the point of evolution. They''d been trying, but while I had set them up as perfect traps, that didn''t guarantee the sort of consistent combat that evolution required. The lichenridge snapping turtles. They sat on the towers I''d sculpted for them, only their broad, moss-covered backs emerging from the water, mixed in with other fake stepping stones. A perfect trap, one that many invaders had fallen to already, but ultimately a stagnant one. They only fed on what happened to swim by their mouths. I wouldn''t remove them entirely, because it was such a wonderful trap, but for the largest, I would offer them a way down to the sixth floor. Coral reefs often had enormous sea turtles, proud and intelligent, serving as guardians for the surrounding kelp and coral. Lesser fools might have mentioned that they weren''t particularly combative creatures, built for defense and slower swimming, but anyone who had ever seen a proper sea turtle understood why I wanted them so badly. They were magnificent creatures, capable of growing older than stars, with a wisdom and mysticism beyond mortals. The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. Presumably not with one simple evolution, but in the far future, I could see the great heights they could reach. And I wanted it. So yes, I would be offering to bring them down to the sixth floor. They could live in the lagoon in the beginning, still mostly relying on air to breathe, but just like I believed the kobolds would soon abandon their primitive fire-drake pasts, the time spent in the water would quickly aid their evolution. Just as I imagined. Hopefully. As I had learned being the core of a dungeon, it was hard to plan for anything. But onward I flew through my dungeon, noting particular creatures that I would bring down; greater pigeons for the atoll, sturgeons if they wanted to venture below, mangroves to hold the sand together. All lovely creatures, truly; I darted through the Underlake once more, peering at the silverheads. Would I want them as bait, maybe? To feed the roughwater sharks? Most of the schools were smaller now, fenced in by silvertooths, sharks, and greater crabs, but perhaps I could overlook their more plain, basic features in return for the food source they would provide. Even the coral would need to be fed, as soon as I figured out what capturing coral meant for its food supply, and silverheads were numerous beasts. Maybe¨C That¡­ I paused. That wasn''t a silverhead. It certainly wanted me to think so, tucked merrily within a silverhead school like it belonged. But where the silverheads were some half foot long and relatively bulky, built for ramming, this little fake was much sleeker, nearly a foot long with wider fins. And it wasn''t quite silver. It was trying to be, and even as I watched, it cycled through several shades of grey-silver, its scales flickering through various colours. Confused by shadow, I thought; it kept trying to match the surrounding silverheads, but as the school swam through various rippled waves and algae-light, the little invader couldn''t keep up. There was a sort of intelligence in its eyes, though. Smart enough to know that its disguise wasn''t perfect, cycling through as many minute changes as it could manage, and it had adopted the lazy, unbothered swimming pattern of the silverheads around it instead of the faster movements its fins were made for. Still a fish, mind you, but certainly a step up above my other creatures. Which was worrying. I had no idea how long this thing had been in my dungeon; I had only noticed it because I was actively looking through my creatures for those I wanted to bring down a floor, so I was scanning everything on the third floor. If I had kept to my typical passive awareness, it might have been forever until I noticed it. Rhoborh''s boon was too blessedly useful for sensing invaders; and it wasn''t like I could exactly train my Underlake to spot invaders with the same level of accuracy. So if this fish had been a little more intelligent, a little more ambitious, it could have eaten its way through my Underlake before I had noticed. Which. Again. Worrying. I would be nipping this in the bud before I could promptly get even more worried. At the summoning cry of my mana, the silverhead school spun on the invader; on the multiple invaders, holy shit. Hidden within the near hundred silverheads, there were nearly five of this strange new fish tucked in the bunch; but without being dungeonborn, they couldn''t hear my commands, and thus didn''t know what I was telling the school they were hiding in to do. Which was to pummel them to death. The silverheads, always up for a little wanton violence, obliged. The invaders saw that things were going a little south for them and darted away with speed even I found surprising; but they were buried in the center of large schools and thus could only get so far away. One of them was slammed into from above, the silverhead''s plated skull making something cracked; two more came in from the sides, ganging up on every invader, and it wasn''t long before they were slain. Half a dozen silverheads also fell in the process, because they were uncoordinated bastards like that, but that was life in the dungeon. And what was life, was also death. I consumed their corpses greedily.
Prismatic Dartfish (Common) In massive schools, it changes colour to create dizzying, iridescent displays, scaring or confusing its predators. When that fails, it flees with speed granted by large fins.
Oho. I very much liked that first word; prismatic. That certainly matched my idea of an ever-changing paradise of psychedelic colours and sights. And for all they had disguised themselves with the silverheads, from poking through their schema I could tell that was more from a desire for a school, rather than some elaborate plan to trick me. They had found themselves without a school and just tried to join the first one they found. Just good luck they hadn''t found a silvertooth school first. That would have gotten them killed much quicker. But their schema. Saltwater, colourful, fast, schooling; everything I could have dreamed of, and it had fallen right into my dungeon without a care. I would still be sending Seros out to the wider cove to collect more creatures, because I didn''t want to build a coral reef held together with only a scant few species, but this would be a blessing. And oh, if I could train them to stay on certain colours, or create a rainbow effect flowing through the school¡­ Well. If any invaders made it to that floor, they''d simply find themselves mesmerized by my creatures and have no chance to fight back. Or at least they should. Humans had no taste. But for now, I curled happily around the schema and darted back to my sixth floor, over the water that was now several inches deep in the third room and steadily splashing upward. I would wait until it was full of water before adding creatures, the better to make a proper environment and check to make sure everything was working smoothly, but I could hardly wait. Soon, this floor would come together, and it would be a paradise above all others. - In darkness, he awoke. It was not a pleasant sort of waking; he shuddered to life with air that exploded through his lungs, mind jerking to life after what felt like days of being unconscious, limbs trembling under some unknown force. Everything ached and swelled and burned, both with fire and with light, even as his eyes snapped open and saw light fade away, drifting to settle within. Or. His eye. For as Akkyst awoke, he saw through only one. Memories came back slowly, hauntingly, unsure of themselves; he had been with the Magelords with the stone-wurm had come, led by the War Horde, one final attack against the shattered home of the goblins who had taken him in. He had fought alongside Bylk as stone crumbled and houses fell, had taken a hit that carved over his face, but had fought past that and dug his claws in. Had killed it. Had won. And now he had changed. He remembered the question, echoing deep within himself, asking for shadow or power or knowledge; remembered choosing knowledge, knowing that was the only true choice for him, and then disappearing under a great light. With a deep, pained rumble, he lifted his head and peered at his surroundings as best he could. It was still dark, he knew that, but for some reason it didn''t hide things from him like it once had, the world grey but still visible. He was surrounded by crumbled stone, looming out of shadows as twisted spires, mountains within mountains, high above and cloaked in rot. He could smell blood, dried and old, strong enough his nose stung. Something ached in his surroundings, old pain, and he felt something curl up within him as he looked over the ruins of the Magelord''s home. No one had been able to move him, it seemed, so he was still laying in the middle of the cavern; it let him see the houses broken apart, the hole bored through the wall, the corpse of the stone-wurn sprawled over the ground and rank with horrible stench. Bodies of goblins, both with the green skin of the War Horde and the blue with black stripes of the Magelords, littered throughout, though they had been dragged into two separate piles. No time for burial, cremation. He wondered how many were left. This had been his home too, for what short stint he had been here; he had protected the stone archways, had aided on hunting trips, had protected the stalking jaguar and bladehawk alike. Had worked with Bylk to protect the goblins from the encroaching patrols. And now it was destroyed. He hadn''t run away, but he hadn''t saved this home. It reminded him, in the way that whitecap mushrooms and moss beds and every mention of the Growth did, of his original home. Of the home he had once had, and that he had lost. The one he had not been to in a long time. And now it was him that had changed. Knowledge, in a way he hadn''t felt before; though he hadn''t tested it he could feel like talking would come easier to him now, more connections making in his mind. Something had irrevocably changed about him. Not everything, though. There had been no healing touch while he shifted, nothing to regrow his missing eye. Something had clearly tried, wiping blood from his fur and wrapping cloth over his gnarled ear, but it hadn''t been enough. Half blind, half deaf. But more. With a rumble that shook the stone around him, Akkyst dragged himself upright, standing on paws that were larger than before but were also more dexterous, claws longer, more defined. Glancing down, he could see that instead of earthen brown, his fur was now a deep silver, some distant glimmers of light reflecting off the tips. There were more changes, he knew, things that had altered and shifted and evolved as he slept; but he would explore them later. For now, he had to talk with Bylk, to understand what had happened, to know. And then. He had been away too long. It was time to return home. Chapter 95 - Silver-Wrought Akkyst stood with the slow, lumbering weight that said he really shouldn''t be. Every muscle remade, his fur scrapped of its brown and given a lustrous silver instead, larger and dexterous and more refined, in a way, a collection of mishmashed parts he hadn''t adjusted to yet. His thoughts flowed smoothly, picking up stray observations and stringing together connections in a way that felt natural but was eerily fast. Too¡­ coordinated. His body, on the other hand? Still very much unused to it. He stumbled up to his paws, vision bobbing and weaving as he adjusted to having only half of what he was used to, blurry on the edges and cut off on his left side. Hearing, too; he could feel the thump of his paws against stone, the scrap of the edges of his claws, but they weren''t nearly as loud as he thought they should be. As they ought to be. Everything echoed rather hollowly after that. But he hadn''t backed down before the stone-wurm so he didn''t now, staggering on legs that wanted to do everything but obey, enormous head shifting as he tried to take in all his surroundings. Movement, the rustle of a sound; Akkyst''s lips pulled back from his fangs in a throaty rumble, not yet a snarl¡ªbut prepared. For all he knew, the War Horde had been the victors after he''d passed out. But still, he turned as best he could toward the sound¡ªunsurprisingly, difficult to pinpoint with only one functional ear¡ªand began to lumber towards it. The rattle of voices, echoing over the empty stone, the language he''d worked so hard to decode now coming crisp and understood through him. Almost unfair, really. He''d put so much effort into it, and a simple change had unlocked whatever the rest of the information he needed? That was for a later time. For now, Akkyst rounded an enormous, shattered pillar collapsed against the ground with shards twisting in every direction and came face to face with goblins. Blue, black stripes, stone-like robes, jewels and bone earrings. The Magelords. As much as relief flooded through him, something heavy and dark lurked behind it; because for all that he recognized every face, there were far too many spaces between them. Maybe four dozen left, if he was being generous, some injured or limp or slump-eyed with exhaustion. They were piled around the shattered remains of a tent, huddled together under a few scavenged quartz-lights, bare bits of food between. Not much more, themselves. Barely a fraction of what they had been. And at the head of them all stood Bylk. Wrinkled, old, the jewels in his ears not yet regaining their shining light¡ªbut alive. His eyes met Akkyst''s, and true, honest relief poured through them; even if he had to look up even more to properly lock gazes. It seemed Akkyst had grown. "Bylk," he managed, and nearly marveled at the sound that came from his lips; still growling and rumbling in the way that goblins didn''t do, but the sounds were crisp and defined, easy to understand. Several other Magelords blinked wide eyes at the first word of his they''d understood. "Akkyst," the chief said, eyes wide. But then Bylk looked at him. He was an old thing, Akkyst knew, twisted and gnarled and wearied by age, ancient for all that goblins rarely had the lifespan to reach it. Most of the time he hid that fact with jokes and cackles and odd, wheezing sounds that were probably laughter, or he ached and moaned about body aches while still springing spryly around the home. But he was old, and at that moment, Akkyst saw it. Bylk''s eyes, framed by black stripes over his blue skin and the jewels dangling from his ears, were dark and deep, something hidden beneath their black surface. Discerning. Spending as long as he had slept and waking up with all these new changes, it would be impossible to ignore. Before, it had been easy enough to wave away other problems with him just being a lunar cave bear, a relatively unknown species around here, or lingering effects of the War Horde''s hospitality¡ªbut not now. "You''re not like us, are you?" Bylk finally said, ears drawing back. "Somethin'' else entirely, eh?" Akkyst rumbled, deep in his throat. There was no hiding it, not now. Not that he was particularly interested in it. He was not overly fond of secrets, much in the same way he disliked keeping knowledge to oneself; while it had only been common sense that kept him from telling the War Horde, both because he didn''t want to reveal he understood them and also because they didn''t exactly speak fondly of the Growth, the Magelords were different. Bylk was different. "The Growth." The goblins, near collectively, inhaled in an almost hiss. Which, fair. The Growth wasn''t exactly a supportive thing; most saw it as a parasite, worming through the depths of the mountains and claiming territory that lesser creatures couldn''t reclaim. To natives, it was little more than a powerful being encroaching on what had been theirs. But Akkyst remembered the gentleness that had shaped him, that had given him home and food, and knew it meant more. "Ah," Bylk said, at least one sliver of his normally unflappable self chipped free. Akkyst took an odd sense of pride in that. "Huh. Wasn''t expectin'' that, I''ll be certain. But can''t say it doesn''t make sense. Wondered why you were so mana dense and all that." Akkyst nodded. Lingering effects of his home, though he wished he knew more; he had fled from its halls when he was still young and unsure, unhungry for knowledge, content to let the world pass him by. It meant what information he knew about it was tragically limited. This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. "Suppose you''ll be headin'' back there," Bylk said, scratching at one of the jewels hanging from his ears. "Can''t say we won''t miss ya, but whatever new beast ya are will need more than this sack o'' bones." The goblins behind him wilted nearly as one, staring at Akkyst; he hadn''t been in their presence long and he''d thought that would count, that they would still be suspicious of his enormous size and blooming intelligence. Instead, they looked near heartbroken at the thought of him leaving. Something tightened in his chest. "Don''t forget us, eh?" Bylk said, eyes dark and tired and more than a little sad. "Remember us little guys when ya take over this whole damn mountain." It wasn''t a plan. It was barely even a thought, formed from the ever-present longing of moss beds and freshwater streams and whitecap mushrooms that the War Horde had tried so hard to squash out of him but hadn''t managed entirely. He hadn''t been home in so long he barely remembered what it was, just a vague collection of memories tainted and stained by nostalgia of easier times; maybe it wasn''t as nice as he remembered. Maybe it was gone, too. But in that moment, looking at Bylk, looking at the shattered cavern behind, the words poured out. "Come with me." Bylk blinked. The other goblins blinked as well. "A new home," Akkyst pushed, his mouth forming such complex sounds with almost ease, no longer limited to a scant few names and shakes of his head. Finally communicating. "One the War Horde doesn''t know. Free. Powerful." It was an insane offer, Akkyst knew. He''d been with them for weeks at most and now was asking them to uproot their life and follow him; but what life were they uprooting? Bare scattered portions left. The latest attack by the War Horde had decimated them. Bylk looked around his home, with the crumbled houses, the shattered rock, the corpses rotting and festering on the stone. They could rebuild, perhaps; though with their reduced numbers it would take a long while. As they had in the past, they could try again. But for all that they had rebuilt before, they had stayed in the same location. The same location where the War Horde knew where they were, where they were limited and trapped by an endless war of territorial disputes and vicious spats. He thought back to that old, troubled piece of stone that Bylk had treasured; covered in archaic writing, mossy edges, a crack splitting down the middle. The mystery of the Mage Lords, their ritual or engraving they had spent decades on until the War Horde had chewed them up and spat them out with only a broken stone to remember it by. Bylk spoke of the fools that had done the ritual with contempt, and Akkyst had learned that from him, but still he took great care of that piece of stone. Treasured it, almost. But in this home, he had never been able to complete it. They had survived two attacks. Would they survive a third? Watching Bylk, Akkyst thought that the goblin knew the answer was no. "You''ve been our savior so far," Bylk said eventually, voice heavy and weary. "Only helped when ya had no reason to. Given me no reason to distrust ya." The goblin looked over the shattered remains of his home. "If you''re goin'' to the Growth, I''ll follow." - She was clever and small and quick, but most importantly, hungry. There was no passage of time in these dark, twisting halls, but she had awoken only recently; her second awakening, for she remembered first opening her eyes in the fungal room of her birth, and closing her eyes curled around a stolen jewel and opening them in this new body. A rebirth. A reimagining. A new life. And she would not waste it. There had been others like her, small and furry and with grasping little hands and tails, but they would only be competition. They would take her jewels if she let them, much like they had in the past, like they always had before. She would not allow that. Rats would do as rats would do, but as the newest of the rats, shadow-sleek and silver-wrought, they would not take from her. So on she crept, slinking through the twisting canals of a floor deeper, staring up at all the lovely treasures piled high; but they were only plain treasures, in the end. The same gold and jewels and silver that she had found in the place of her first birth, nothing special, nothing new. She was new. Thus her empire, her hoard, needed to be new. And she would not find that in the simplicities of the higher places. There was a tunnel, deep and rich and bursting with mana, tucked beneath the wavering roots of the white-scarlet-blood thing; sly as a ghost, she slipped through its thorny grasp and into the stone below, disappearing from all she had ever known into the depths of her new home. As she skittered down, she felt something in the air change, growing heavier, almost dense. It pressed against her fur like the rock pond from her first birth, cool and wet, but as she struggled deeper, she felt the mana thicken, burning through her channels with a ferocity she had never felt before. What was this? Why had she only stayed in the first place of her birth, where the jewels rewarded her with little sparks, when she could venture down here and taste a feast? Onward she crawled, and greater and greater did the mana grow. Past the water-air, the tunnel widened and suddenly she was in a new world, one narrow and choked with green-plants, long and grasping; but they were lesser. Were not new enough. Were not treasure. So on she walked, through things that reached and grabbed at her, but she was small and clever and her teeth were well adept for nipping off anything that got too close. Things did not see her as well as they should have, shadows rippling over her silver form, and through the tunnels she skittered, following the deepening call of mana. New treasures gleamed, plants with gemstones cradled at their center, striped razors lining the walls and floors, larger creatures with arm-blades and spiraling eyes. But they weren''t enough. Not enough. Through the tunnels, endless and sprawling, sleeping curled up in whatever hollows she could find, gnawing bugs and drinking from pockets of water. The mana called to her, and she felt hungry beyond compare, beyond belief. She wanted more. So down, ever down, ever deeper, through tunnel and grass-green and spots of water, until she emerged into a massive cavern, false stone things and endless green. Serpents and other rats as well, but they were not her. Not new. So she crept on, slinking through shadow and stream. The last room was the largest. She stood in awe for a second; perhaps this was a treasure, and she could claim it? Wrap it up in her tail and take it for her own? Hm. Perhaps not. It was rather large. Flying things shrieked and swooped overhead as she skittered over narrow platforms and sprawling sections, ears pricked, eyes wide and drinking in all around her. Over valley, over passage, over things she didn''t know the words for; but still the mana called and she followed, ever deeper, ever beyond. Until at last she arrived at the final opening. The mana was the richest it had ever been, promising jewels and gems and silver beyond anything she had seen before¡ªand who was she to reject such a welcoming call? She darted forward. And there. A column, a slumbering beast awash in light, gold and silver and brilliance¨C But in the farthest corner, a small, delicate flower, white-petaled, gentle. And absolutely burning with mana, the likes she had never seen before. Something far-off, glimmering like stars, bright and tangible and brilliant. Stronger than anything she had ever seen. New. Yes, she decided right there, rising onto her back paws and staring at the flower. This would be her first treasure. Chapter 96 - New Companions This son of a bitch. Daughter of a bitch? Bastard? The point stood. This monster. The little shadowthief rat I''d wanted to keep my eye on for her curiosity and intelligence and cleverness had proven why sometimes I was more than okay having idiots for creations; because idiots tended to follow very simple, boring paths, the likes of which I could lay out and not worry about. Eat this plant. Avoid this predator. Consume mana. They didn''t tend to do things like this. Namely, the shadowthief rat, oh-so-smug and proud of herself, perched in my hoard room of the fifth floor, lithe little paws holding the remaints of a moonstar flower. My only moonstar flower. You know. The one that had taken forty-fucking-two points of mana to create. Becoming a dungeon had¡­ mellowed out my emotions somewhat; not in that I felt less emotions, but more that they were spread out, softened and muted by my amorphous consciousness. That was how I was able to balance all the tasks I had to do, bouncing through activities with only pieces and fractals of my emotional attention, handling it without consuming myself. This rat was about to make me as furious as a proper sea-drake. Honestly? I welcomed it. But unfortunately, the last time I''d gotten this pissed was when I''d destroyed several rooms of my Drowned Forest and brought invaders down on my head. I couldn''t make that risk again, not when I''d just weathered a fifty-person invasion and most of my creatures were slumbering happily away under evolution. So. Calm thoughts. Calm thoughts. I leveled a glare down at the little shadowthief rat. She''d slinked and slithered her way down to my fifth floor, dodging predators and grasping vines with curls of shadow, on her hunt for treasure; and treasure she''d found. In the split second that she''d found the Skylands'' hoard room, she''d seen the moonstar flower and immediately devoured it. Ate it right up. I hadn''t had a second to stop her, and even if I had, there was no creatures intelligent or fast enough in the room to grab her. The greater pigeons were just flapping around, swarming wasps and earthbreaker ants too small to make a difference, the baterwauls blind. Even the scorch hounds hadn''t sensed her in time. And of course, Seros had been sleeping. Not that he had done anything wrong. But now I simply had to sit and watch tha beautiful, luck-attuned, potentially god-formed mana flow through her channels, brilliant and bright and supposed to be belonging to other creatures. She churred, fluffing up, paws grasping at the air¡ªeven her insipid little mind could tell that this was something big. Something important. Her brashness, pride, and overwhelming arrogance lasted about ten seconds until I fell into her mind like a diving hunt. Go up, I hissed, barely restraining myself from scrapping her mind to shreds with the full force of my awareness. Go up. To the second floor. She squeaked and twitched, peering around wildly for a tunnel back up¡ªI slammed a mental map of the quickest route up, hammering home the point that she wanted to go there, and she wanted to go there fast, and she wanted to go there now. With a panicked little squeak, she flew like her tail was on fire. Served her right. I couldn''t believe she ate my moonstar flower. That was supposed to be for Seros, or maybe the empress serpent, or someone who would actually appreciate it. Would actually use it. Not a rat. Gods. This was infuriating. At least she was listening to me now; my mental map guided her up through the twisting tunnels of my various floors, relying on her shadow-attuned powers to escape predators as she skittered up. I pushed her a bit further up, going around the twisting Underlake and into the Drowned Forest, and to the farthest back room. I didn''t want to kill her. Partially because I had made a promise not to just immediately kill my creatures once they''d evolved, and partially because there wasn''t a chance I was wasting the moonstar flower, even if it hadn''t gone to my original choice. She would still be using that power, and I wanted to see it bloom. Metaphorical speaking. I wasn''t sure how well luck and shadows would blend together. But in order for that, I needed her in the care of someone I could communicate with more directly, since after her little rebellion, there wasn''t a chance I was Naming her. Would I allow her to live? Yes. Would I allow her anything more than that? Absolutely not. I had standards. Up and up she crawled, my points of awareness floating over her back, at least until the greater section of my attention was pulled elsewhere. Because it was time. Something I''d waited a long, long time for was finally reaching its conclusion. With a warbling hiss, the kobolds finally shed the glow of their evolution and opened new eyes. My fury and rage and wrath at the shadowthief rat hadn''t faded, to be very clear, but as I perched overhead my beautiful new reptiles, there was certainly a part of me that was content to forget for the moment. Not forgive. But temporarily, very short-term, brief little moment of forgetfulness. Because they were lovely. The kobold warriors woke up first, stretching scaly arms up and blinking at the world with wide, curious eyes. They had bloomed up from their mere four feet to nearly seven, losing the brutish hunch to their shoulders, straightening up with more confidence even in their first stumbling steps. Their horns, once short and thin, now spiraled over their head like a proper crest, their claws sharp and jagged, tail long and lashing. Their scales had darkened from pale red to a crimson-scarlet, almost blood, and with their ridged scales and hooded eyes, they looked something that could be considered intimidating. But not the same as the last time I''d seen this evolution. Hm. Fascinating. I flicked a few points of awareness down to the fourth floor, where Rihsu was training¡ªher deep maroon form slashed through the darkness, bulky and enormous, but not¡­ as bulky as these new kobolds. More lean, but that was balanced by her height, which leaned much more towards nine feet rather than seven. She also had webbing between her claws, slight but there, and her tail was longer, edged in fins. Proof of her loyalty to Seros, the seabound being that he was. Still remnants of her fire-drake ancestry, with her purple scales instead of a proper blue-green, but moving in the right direction. These kobold warriors weren''t that. More brutish, lumbering beasts, with igneous-rock horns and scarlet scales, not built for swimming. Not yet, at least. The lagoon awaited. But next to them, the kobold hunters awoke, six beautiful new creatures¡ªinstead of fumbling up to their digitigrade legs, they more immediately sprung upright, lithe and spry. They stayed smaller, perhaps five and a half feet, but they were sleek and lean; their scales had lost their ridges and instead were tightly overlapped, similar to a fish''s armour, their horns all spiraling back in twisting arrays like a tree''s roots, scales an almost dusky red. Their eyes, amber-gold, burned. Hunters, not warriors. Sly, clever little things. They would do fantastically in the lagoon. The twelve new kobolds warbled amongst each other, eyes wide and curious and excited; none of the immediate conflict I''d gotten used to, when creatures woke up bright and full of mana and ready to fight; these were packmates who were still packmates, even if their bodies had changed, and they stayed together. So they helped each other up to their claws and examined their new forms, chattering and hissing excitedly. And there were still more to see. Two kobolds, curled up in the back, came back to life. Several dozens points of awareness all but fell over them. The kobold shamans. Magic users. They stayed small, five feet tall, losing the hunch in their shoulders but without any of the added muscle and bulk others had gotten; their scales stayed roughly the same, perhaps a touch deeper red than normal. But instead of horns, they now had feathers. Waterfalling over their backs, thick ruby-red feathers sprouted from between their scales, fluffing and shifting as they experimented with new controls in their body. They looked capable of flaring, almost like a startled bird, and already other kobolds were running their claws through the feathers, crooning in delight. The two new shamans helped each other to their feet, wobbling a bit under their shifted musculators, but soon rebalanced. Their claws, with several small strands of feathers running over their forearm, twitched oddly, like they wanted to hold something. Like a staff. Oho. That would certainly be my first action once they moved down to the sixth floor. Their description had said that the kobold tribes would defend them with their lives; maybe that would extend to gathering them supplies. Considering these two shamans¡ªboth males, unfortunately¡ªwere healers, no doubt that would lead well to further protection. And there was one more. The other kobolds, seemingly sensing the shift, all backed up. Warriors, still adjusting to their new bulk, curled over to avoid the crowded ceiling of the cavern, and hunters wrapped their tails around their legs to avoid tripping others; the shamans were pushed to the center, well protected, as they waited. Because their leader was to awaken. Chieftess opened gold, gold eyes, and stood. The evolution to kobold chief had gripped her like a proper dragon. Eight feet tall, towering even over the kobold warriors, scales ridged and a deep, blood-red, darker near her claws and face. The edges were lined with gold, so that the light reflected every time she moved, and overhead her horns gleamed; she had lost the twisted, stubby messes that the other kobolds had, instead having only two, ones large and ringed and curling back away from her face. If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. More reminiscent of a proper dragon''s horns. Spines ran down her back, thick black studs already sharp and deadly; they curled up between her curling horns, down to the tip of her tail, and ended right over her eyes. The coal-black contrasted with her golden eyes like fire. All in all, she looked like a beast. Like a chieftess. It wasn''t a Name¡ªand it certainly wouldn''t be, as long as I had a choice in the matter, which I did¡ªbut I could see why Nicau called her that. She was deserving of the title. Chieftess warbled once, testing her new limbs, stretching out her claws, brushing the sharpened tips over her horns. Her eyes, gleaming, flashed through the darkness of the cavern. She looked upon the members of her tribe. Raising a claw above her head, she let out a barking shout, punctuated with a hiss. As one, the other kobolds fell into a kneel. Pledging fealty. I preened, just a little. Not quite a tyrant in the way of the horned¡ªor empress, I supposed¡ªserpent, but certainly not the type that would allow any challenges to her rule. A wonderful first step on her draconic journey. She would be a monster. But for now, she warbled and allowed them to stand, and the ice was broken; they came together and examined everyone''s new forms, marveling at the changes, posturing and bragging and raring to test things out. Awoken by the noise, other kobolds spilled out of the den, staring with wide eyes up at the new beasts in their midst. Perhaps that would get them to speed up their own evolution a touch. Not that I was impatient for it, or anything. Nicau woke up too, squeezing out of his little den and walking around the newest kobolds; he warbled and hissed to them with nothing but awe flooded through his thoughts, having to use scars and particular speaking habits to recognize kobolds with their intense changes. He served as a welcome introduction for these burgeoning kobolds, layering them with praise, guiding them out of the den to test themselves with an ease that I doubted he could have had even a month or so ago. He''d truly adjusted to life with the kobolds with a proficiency neither of us could have seen coming. Watching him run into Chieftess was the most entertaining, though. They both froze, Nicau''s eyes widening to fill up his entire face. She warbled, claws flexing, and made an odd, shuffling sound that came across almost like Ni-shou. Which. Adorable. Nicau squawked something, hands clapping and eyes wide, and then they were both chattering, wild and excited and cheerful. She fumbled a bit, trying to walk, and he set his shoulder against her side and helped her up; with both of them combined, they were able to walk out to the wider den, directing kobolds as the tribe slipped back into its old habits. Now that the majority of their members were no longer evolving, hunting parties would have to continue, more supplies would need to be gathered, room would need to be carved out¨C Rhoborh''s awareness pinged, in the back of my mana. A slight stirring, the whisper-faint smell of redwood forests, the distant brush of star-burn against my core. Ah. That was disappointing. I''d already made the lagoon with the intention of moving them down, but I''d hoped I could keep a few of the evolutions here to lead the smaller group; looked like that was not the case. Rhoborh wanted his floor as it was. I sent him a few fluttering apologies, outlining my plan to move them down as soon as the sixth floor filled with water. All that glorious head-bobbing and hand-waving that so curdled my soul, but was unfortunately necessary when dealing with deities. Perhaps I could become a deity one day; or at least gather a few loyal servants who could treat me like I treated Rhoborh. That''d certainly be pleasant. But that was for a later day. I''d been waiting until I wasn''t losing my last communicable member, but as time kept crawling on, the risk was getting too great. These newly-arrived kobolds would have to serve as my defense, led by the highly-empowered Chieftess, and I would keep them here on the second floor for the time being. If anything invaded, they would be the driving force to keep them out, at least until Seros and the others awoke. But before them? I needed answers. It was time for Nicau to return home. - Nicau stared. The rat stared back. It wasn''t¡­ it wasn''t a normal rat, as weird as it was to say¡ªabout the same size as the ones he was used to, but instead of a more earthen coloured coat, this one was a deep, reflective silver, sleek and glimmering in the quartz-light. Its tail twitched constantly, covered in little barbs, and it was currently sitting on its hind paws and staring at him. Staring quite intensely, really. "Hello?" He offered, just in case it was sentient. It squeaked. Alright. Was he. Um. Supposed to do something with this rat? No answer floated down from the heavens. He wasn''t really sure what he had been expecting, honestly. He had only just come back from offering food to the newly evolved kobolds¡ªthe ones that were now taller than him, that was lovely, it was a bit hard to relate them with the streetrat children of Calarata when they looked like they could snap him over their knee¡ªand helping them figure how to move and hunt again. And Chieftess! This evolution had done wonders for her; there was a warm intelligence burning behind her golden eyes now, plans and ideas and thoughts swarming within, and she''d managed a sound that was almost his name. His name! Nicau didn''t have any of the sounds kobolds used to talk so he''d been referred to with a placeholder, something that fit with the warbles and hisses and croaks that kobolds spoke with. Ni-shou. Not Nicau, but close. And now there was a rat. What was his life, really? The rat squeaked again, padding forward. He blinked once and turned on his mana-sight; she thrummed deeply with an odd, cold mana, ringing with the afterburn of the dungeon''s presence. Dungeonborn, then. So not an invader, or anything like that, but still nothing to explain why it was here. Watching him. He felt a bead of sweat roll down his spine. Something prickled in the back of his mind, ancient and grinding; the dungeon slipped into his thoughts without its normal grace, sitting heavy over his mind with something biting like teeth. Nicau winced. Watch her, the dungeon demanded, voice popping and thrashing in a way it had never had before. Still understandable, but angry. Take her with. Do not let her disobey. Wonderful. He was being put on babysitting duty. "Ah, o'' dungeon," Nicau hedged, shuffling his weight back and forth. "Of course. It would be my honour. Um. Where am I taking her?" The dungeon''s presence leaned in, swirling around the den. Kobolds everywhere froze as just a hair of its mana swept over them. To Calarata. Find answers. Ah. It was time, then. Nicau had known about it, had prepared himself for it, and still a strange feeling flooded through him. When he''d first been knocked out and sworn allegiance to the dungeon, he''d wanted nothing more than to go back, to escape this new reality and return to the comfort of his own; but then he remembered Lluc and the not so much promise but guarantee of his death if he were discovered. Calarata had closed its doors in the only way that a lawless place could; his anonymity was no longer something he could rely on. So going back was dangerous. But at the same time, he wanted it. Romei''s voice was quiet now, months since he''d last heard her, but still he knew what she would say. Do you want to be worth something? He was, now. Maybe not on the level of the Dread Crew, the Dread Pirate, or even some random adventurer from the lowest open-air tavern¡ªbut something. He was better now. "I will," he said, and was almost surprised to find he meant it. He would return to Calarata, he would find answers, and he would bring back more creatures for the dungeon to recreate. And he. Ah. Would bring this rat with him, apparently. Good, the dungeon said, low and rumbling. Some of its anger seemed to have faded by his immediate agreement, which was great, because Nicau had watched it create and control monsters and he liked having his limbs firmly attached to each other. Now. Fantastic. No time to prepare. Mostly. "Ah," Nicau offered, very hesitantly. "I might worry I would stand out, with my, ah. State of dress." Was that polite? Probably. The dungeon made a vague, growling sound that echoed with frustration, and their shared connection deepened; mana thrummed between, curling, and his awareness shifted back to something less tangible. Odd¡­ memories? Impressions? Recreations? Floated through his mind, various bits and pieces of clothing presumably taken from the souls of the humans the dungeon had killed¡ªand gods, wasn''t that a comforting thought¡ªfollowed by a quiet, sort of question mark. Which would he prefer? Well. His kneejerk reaction was just a simple tunic and trousers, maybe new boots, something to help him blend in to the other desperados of Calarata. But then he paused. Nicau was going to get answers and buy new creatures. People didn''t look twice at desperados, to be fair, but they also didn''t help them; didn''t offer information or assistance. Dressing like one wouldn''t mean he would get anything like what he needed. And he didn''t think there was a limit to what the dungeon could create. He poked through the shared memories, eyes closed and fingers twitching; he shuffled past all those of armours and defenses, which would make him look like he was spoiling for a fight or begging for a back alley brawl, neither of which he was particularly interested in. Not any foreign clothing either, considering he wanted to be a commodity but not one that people would ask questions about¡ªhe flashed through a few more extravagant get-ups, extended coats, tunic and shawls and even one suit-of-light he was positive he would''ve remembered if he had seen the invader wearing this¡ªbefore he stumbled across something. A deep, navy blue, likely dyed with shells or something else from the sea, with a leather-crisp surcoat draped over grey-pale trousers and undershirt. The man who had been wearing it had something like wind-attuned mana, and the surcoat flared dramatically behind him as he bounded through the second floor, half like a coat and half like a cape. High leather boots, belts, studded in pockets. That. He rather hesitantly pushed the thought back at the dungeon¡ªwas it too much? Too expensive? Not built for someone like him? The dungeon barely seemed to react. Just condensed its mana before him and started weaving the outfit into existence¡ªleather, first brown then layered in brilliant shades of blue, silver buttons with intricate patterns. The dungeon paused, mana shivering, and changed them away from an elk rearing to instead a dragon, curled around itself, even expanding the buttons size to make the image fit. Fair enough. The boots, heavy and high-rising, a studded belt, trousers and undershirt. After only a few minutes, they flumped onto his moss bed. Nicau reached forward, brushing his fingers over the outfit; the leather was stiff, unbroken in, the cotton beneath unstained and unbent; in almost a haze mind he changed into it, dumping his bloodstained things in a corner. A bit large for him, spilling over his shoulders and the boots clunking as he shifted his heels around, but nicer than anything he had ever owned before. Proper. Almost rich. He ran his fingers over the crisp leather, dipped his fingers in large pockets, notched the belt a few strands tighter. The surcoat flared around his calves, boots sinking into the moss of his little room. Over his moss bed, the dungeon''s mana condensed with a ripple of effort; several small piles of silver and gold coins thumped onto the green, carved with Le¨®ro''s design¡ªNicau didn''t remember the specific word for it, since most everyone just referred to them as golds, silvers, and coppers. No Calaratan currency; they just used Le¨®ro''s. Easier. A moment of pause, and then a few fingernail-sized diamonds landed next to them. It was more wealth than Nicau had ever seen in one place. And the dungeon had just created it for him. "Thank you, o'' dungeon," he said, and didn''t have to fake the sincerity in his voice. "I will bring you answers and creatures." There was a pleased little rumble in the back of his mind and their connection faded, the dungeon pulling away to focus on other tasks; Nicau kept his head bowed and hands clasped for a second longer, just in case it was still focusing on him. Then he reached out, and with a glee that spoke to the piracy in him, slipped all the coins and jewels into his pockets. Gods, he was begging to be robbed, and he still couldn''t wipe the grin from his face. Richer in dress and money than he had ever been, about to go betray his fellow humans for the sake of a rock in the mountain, and this was still one of the better days of his life. Chieftess could handle the kobolds for now. He''d be back later. "Okay," he said, more to fill the silence, and then looked to the rat. It¡ªshe, he remembered¡ªwas just staring at him, tail curling and paws tucked to her chest. Intelligence in her eyes, though not some overwhelming amount, and the dungeon''s lingering presence over her spoke to something special about her. Maybe not something positive, admittedly, but something. "Are you ready?" He asked, and then immediately felt foolish. It wasn''t like she could understand. But still she squeaked, padding over his hand; he extended his arm and she scampered right up it, tail curling around his shoulder as she perched next ot his neck, one hand in his hair for balance. Her fur was very soft. Nicau wanted to laugh, more than a little. How could he have ever pictured this when he''d caught that pigeon and brought it to the dungeon for even the briefest chance of life? Pigeon-catcher he''d been. Now he wore the best clothing he''d ever had before, pockets stuffed with gold and jewels, and a shadowthief rat sat on his shoulder. Maybe it wasn''t victory. Not yet. But as he prepared to venture back to Calarata, Nicau felt closer to that than anything else. Chapter 97 - Started Hunts Rihsu hissed against the shadows. They clung to her, heavy and pressing, the twisting weight that blended with her scales and twined around her claws. Hid prey from her, hid her from prey; they balanced, but they were still at odds, and she didn''t like them. She was finding that she didn''t like many things, now. Lord Seros was still slumbering a floor below her, awash in the changing light, that shining, glimmering, brilliant light¡ªnot that he needed to be changed, he was Lord Seros, but she knew that he wanted it. That he welcomed it. So she welcomed it too. The platemail bug slipped off her claws, hitting the ground with the crack of splitting shell; a boring hunt, something to test herself once she''d awoken. Without Lord Seros, she hadn''t been able to practice her swimming with him, and for all that her claws now pulled her through water and her tail adjusted how she swam, she still didn''t know how to do it. She was still trying, because she wouldn''t fall behind, but it was hard. Many things were hard. But it had been hard to rip the head off the turtle monster, and she had done that, so she would do this, too. She kicked at the bug, tail lashing at the walls. It hadn''t put up a fight, only curled up and tried to protect itself, but there was nothing against her claws. Still, there was a reason she hunted in the morning. She bared her fangs at the algae-whips, vines retreating away from her begrudgingly, and sat down, tugging the corpse into her lap. It was easy to shred away its chiton shell and search for the meat within. In the darkness, sitting across the width of the tunnel with her towering height, tail flicking, she ate her morning meal. Perhaps later she would go to the fifth floor, hunt some of the flying beasts¡ªif Lord Seros had no wings, she had no need of them either, but perhaps this changing light of his would grant him wings, in which case she needed them yesterday¡ªor up to the third, to swim through the murk and find a sturgeon for her claws. She ripped a leg off and crushed out the meat, power thrumming through her with its kill. But then she paused. She looked up, and there was something calling her, a little ping in the back of her mind, where normally only the call of her Lord Seros sat. Her eyes went up, peering past the darkness and the twisting curl of the vines. Past the tunnels of training. Something had changed. She couldn''t quite tell what¡ªfor all her senses had improved, this was on an entirely separate floor, and all she could do was point her muzzle up and warble at the ceiling. Something changed, something big¡ªthere was a lingering pressure in the back of her head, something with words. It said tribe. She didn''t have a tribe. Hadn''t had one since she''d seen Lord Seros, rising from the water, and knew what he was. But there was a tribe, she remembered, dozens of other scale-kin smaller than her and fiddling with the tools she''d been interested in until she learned that her own claws were tools enough. Somewhere up above, stuck on those powerless floors and scrounging for scraps. But something had changed. And within her, back to those Big Thoughts that had pushed her so far, she felt something. Curiosity. What had changed? What could they have unlocked? They did not have access to Lord Seros, sleeping as he was, and that meant that whatever they would be changing to would be lesser than her own change. Less meaningful. But for them to have changed at all. Well. Perhaps they had gotten their own Big Thoughts. Not dragon thoughts, but Big Thoughts. Those beyond what they had had before. She had not expected them to have Big Thoughts. She didn''t know if she wanted them to have Big Thoughts. Those had been hers and hers alone. Or were they? How long since she had gone up to the second floor? There were monsters and power on the fourth, water on the third, Lord Seros on the fifth; she had been entirely content to stay there with them, where things were more important. This was where she was strongest, where she would only grow stronger. That was what she needed to do. But if others were changing, were they growing stronger? Growing stronger than her? That was not supposed to happen. The fourth floor was training. The fifth floor was Lord Seros. But still, she turned her attention upward, and searched for a tunnel back to the second floor. It was time to see what was changing. - Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. Akkyst lumbered forward. It was slow, ponderous work; he was still growing used to his new body, and there was something odd in how his limbs moved now, all long and gangling, and his claws kept catching on stone when he expected them to be closer to his paws instead of extending out. Why were his claws so much longer? It didn''t make sense¡ªhe couldn''t pick up prey with them like the bladehawk''s talons, nor could he retract them like the stalking jaguar; they were just in his way, now. Irritating. But that was a question for when there was peace, and there wasn''t that now, so on he walked, surrounded by the survivors. They made for a shoddy group, really. Four dozen Magelords, some in slings to support broken bodies, some walking with splints, some nursing bruises and cuts and exhaustion; Bylk at the front, his jewels not even beginning to reclaim their mana, curled over and hissing with effort even as he walked on. Above the bladehawk flew¡ªhe''d been completely startled to see Akkyst awake, crest flaring up, but then he''d recovered back into that gruff persona of his almost immediately. It wasn''t like he could be surprised, no. He was very calm, in fact. The stalking jaguar had been more appreciative. She remembered how Akkyst had protected her, covered her in shadow, raged against the stone-wurm with everything he had and then some. She''d churred softly, bumped her nose against his, and now padded at his side, feather-tipped tail swishing through the scattered dust. They would stay by his side. He had promised to find them a way out, one day. To give them back to the jungle where the jaguar belonged, to bring the sky back for the bladehawk; but they were sticking with him. Choosing to travel to his home rather than find theirs. His heart was large enough to feel something warm at that. All of him was changed, though. Silver fur, dexterous paws, a gleaming awareness in the back of his mind¡ªthey hadn''t crossed any rivers or ponds so he could look at himself more fully, but his fur gleamed with some vague sort of light, guiding them through the mountain, and he knew his body was leaner. Still enormous, still broader than any other goblins he''d ever seen, but different. His musculature was different. Everything was different, it felt like. He didn''t know what to think about that. For so long he''d been in this body, content in what he knew, but now it had all changed, and he knew it was for the better. Whatever better could be. Sometimes this new brain of his threw together phrases and connections he wasn''t able to fully understand. When there was peace, he would try to understand. But there wasn''t peace, not in this mountain. Already he''d had to fight off a magma-salamander and boulder-beast, great cavernous fights that pushed his understanding of his new body to the limits; they kept huddled watch in passing nooks of stone, Bylk using his limited mana to map out the area as they walked on. Searching for the Growth. Not a particularly hard thing to find, to be honest. A gnawing power at the base of the mountain, ever crawling deeper, pulsing out in waves of endless mana¡ªalready Bylk had found the edge of the¡­ web, for lack of better words, and simply had to follow the trail of mana back to its source. They were still several days out, maybe longer, maybe closer. Hard to tell in a mountain. These mountains particularly. It had been a long, long time since he''d found comfort here, since the surrounding stone and stalactites and roaring rivers had brought him anything but fear¡ªfear since when he was young, stumbling through the darkness, fleeing from pain and only running into more. But now he was returning home. He didn''t know his home, not in the way he had before, not in how it had changed; and he had been gone a good long while. Perhaps it was no longer as comforting as it had been before. But the Magelords'' home was destroyed, and the War Horde ever hungered for more blood, so they had to leave. As few as their numbers were, even if most of them were trained mages, they didn''t have the power to just start a new home. They needed to find one to join. And Akkyst had protected them so far. It was the promise he had sworn, and he wouldn''t give it up now. He was there to protect them. He would always protect them, and before, he had been protecting them by cowering in corners and living in fear of the War Horde¡ªno longer. It was time to give them something that they could actually live in. Akkyst would make sure. - She awoke. It was a slow awakening, twisted, but as she breathed in, she inhaled with something inside her, not just leaves and branches and roots, and she knew things had changed. There had been the Before, where there was nothing, just a life, hunting for blood for sustenance. Then there had been the After, where she had discovered that she was she, had looked around her, hunting for not just blood but information. But this. This was more. This was the Beyond. She was more. Bark, surrounding her, dark and comforting. But she could feel the bark, both against herself, and also as the bark; she was the tree and she was this new part of the tree. They were together, they were one, they were separate, but they were new. She was in the bark, but she was also the bark surrounding her. But if she was in the bark, then there must be something outside of the bark, and though it was dark, she had eyes that could see what the outside was. No longer was she limited to only vague impressions of shapes and sizes by the information spread through the web of mana. This was more. She wanted to be outside. So she reached out, and knew she had limbs to reach out with, with something sharp on the tips, and there was movement, easy, shifting forward¡ªfour limbs, two on bottom and two on top, feeling oddly like those two-leg things that came through the dungeon. Less upright. Less tall. But similar. The bark bled away, freeing her from its comforting embrace, and she was in a new world. Wide, open, free¡ªit spread before her, sprawling, brilliant. There were¡ªthings were different, different¡­ appearances. Colours, her mind whispered to her, they were colours. Things were not limited by how they felt, whether rough or smooth or soft, but by colours, too. She watched them, watched the world beyond. There was bark behind her and she was bark, and they were one¡ªher Ancestral Tree, she knew. The source of her life and her love; she had to protect it, but also to feed it, and in her mouth, which she had now, she could feel something sharp. Something hungry. The world opened now. No longer was she limited by the grasping crawl of root and thorn, trapped within immobility and the difficulty of movement; there were limbs¡ªfeet¡ªthat could move and walk and learn. Sensory organs on her face. They picked up something, distant but present. Something wet. Something red. Blood. She was in the Beyond, now. She was more. It was time to hunt. Chapter 98 - A Queens Arrival The vampiric dryad was. Ah. Not exactly what I''d expected. I''d felt when she''d finished her evolution¡ªfeminine pronouns, judging from her thoughts as I dipped into her head¡ªand flew to the Drowned Forest with all haste, eager to see the ending of the evolution I''d poured so much care into. Most of my creatures had stayed roughly similar to their previous form, gaining size and bulk and magic, but with the same overall shape. But not this one¡ªthe jump from tree to dryad would be something worth seeing. And it certainly was. The vampiric mangrove¡ªthe Ancestral Tree, I could feel now, a gravitas pouring off its bark. Still a vampiric mangrove, though, funnily enough. The tree had grown with the evolution, taller and broader, but had stayed eerily similar. If I didn''t know it had evolved, I would simply assume it was a fantastically old specimen, nothing too special on its own. Maybe a defense mechanism? Look normal so pillagers didn''t scour through the forest looking for the one tree they needed to burn down? Or maybe it was because all of its energy went elsewhere. The where was very apparent as the bark around its trunk shriveled back, peeling open to release the beast inside. Because beast was a very apt description. She was humanoid, but as if someone had tried to draw a human after only hearing stories of them; upright on two long, gangling legs, joints crossed over each other like the limbs of a cat. Her arms dangled until they nearly brushed the dirt, four claws more akin to thorns on their tips. Bark instead of skin or scale, great, bristling plates of scarlet-crimson all interlocking over her body like a coat of armour, protecting a thin, jagged body. Not like the bulk of the kobold warriors or Rihsu, but more with the lean elegance of a kobold hunter. Not that she was, ah. Particularly elegant. She hissed as she emerged, a low, vicious sound. Her muzzle twitched, bark arching over pure white eyes, thorn-esque fangs peering from her mouth. No hair but a crown of thorns curled around her head, trailing down her back like spines. In her first moments of wakefulness, all I could feel from her thoughts was hunger¡ªa burning, reverent loyalty to her Ancestral Tree, and the desire to bring it sustenance. Namely, blood. Maybe the schema had been a little too generous in calling her a proper dryad. I knew there were variations out there, but most, if not all, the dryads I had encountered were mostly sapient, capable of living with other humanoid races with only the loyalty to their Ancestral Tree to keep them from fully integrating. This was, ah. Not that. But oh, what a monster she would be. She shook herself, thorns rustling like quills, and examined her new body; peered at her jagged claws, test the points of her fangs, took hesitant, unsteady steps on new legs. She wasn''t stupid, to be very clear; there was a certain intelligence in her thoughts, her life divided into three distinct categories of before, then Rhoborh''s boon, and now her evolution. Already she was taking note of her surroundings, figuring out colours and smells and sensations. It was just that most of her thoughts were dedicated to how she could utilize these new things to obtain blood. She''d fit right in with my dungeon. But not this floor, unfortunately. Rhoborh had already been looking in with the kobolds'' evolutions, redwood presence lingering over my halls, and with the dryad he was now looking firmly in. He wanted those gone yesterday. Think kind thoughts. It was a god, after all. I steadied myself. The sixth floor was nearing completion, the last of the water splashing through¡ªstill no creatures down there, since I''d kept the fill tunnel narrow to stop any precocious little beasties from making their way down when it would be far too easy to get access to my core, but already I was setting the seeds in my creatures'' heads. Thoughts about distant lands, crystal blue waters, the heaviness of the mana down there. And once it was full, I''d be moving many of them down. The kobolds for one¡ªI''d already carved out their den over the lagoon, and they were simply going to have to learn how to be sea-drake descendants if I was going to continue to give them respect¡ªand most of my aquatic creatures, at least those I could adapt to a saltwater environment. When Seros awoke and I could make proper use of his bulk, he''d help me move the vampiric dryad''s Ancestral Tree down. Maybe when the empress serpent awoke as well. I was a little concerned that the dryad, while intelligent, was not necessarily smart enough to know that me moving the tree wasn''t a threat against its existence. It made sense that she would care so much, though. Dryads lived only for their trees; while they could technically survive without one, it was a pained, vicious existence, and one they did not suffer lightly. Protection of their Ancestral Tree was almost paramount. For as long as the tree survived, the dryad could be reborn. And that was a beautiful, beautiful power. But for now I dipped into her mind, past the odd metaphors and open wonder at experiencing the world with sight instead of only touch. I gave her a vague impression of how to hunt, how to bite and claw things, and then pulled out. She''d figure out how to fight in the Drowned Forest, so long as she and the kobolds stayed separate, and then I''d move her down. She hissed, a sound that came across more like the rustle of leaves, blinking her pure white eyes in a random direction. Then she stalked away from her Ancestral Tree, claws bristling, and set about on her hunt. Lovely, lovely thing. Monstrous, sure, but monstrous in a direction I could influence. Could appreciate. She''d do wonderful things in my dungeon. And she wasn''t the only thing. A floor above, simmering under a glow that faded beneath his fur, the midnight cave bear awoke. I''d only just gotten over gushing about my vampiric dryad when suddenly I had a brand new target to appreciate. He pushed himself onto his paws, shaking off the last of his bleariness; he''d grown, from his more stunted size compared to his mate, into a proper beast, almost twelve feet long and eight tall. Gone was the muddy brown fur¡ªhe looked like someone had poured ink all over him, staining him black as shadows and with an odd, almost absorbing property to his fur. Like he wasn''t just made of shadows, but was actively producing them, dragging the light out of the air and leaving darkness in its wake. Clever thing, that. Nuvja''s boon curled around him like welcoming a lost family member home; I could taste the star-rot of her godly powers as the shadows thickened around his form, trailing cloying tendrils through his fur and flickering between his ears. Even his eyes had changed, losing the golden-brown from before and becoming just black, ringing by thin white. Still white teeth, still pink tongue¡ªbut everything else was that inky black. Midnight cave bear indeed. He rumbled, a low, pressing sound, and padded around the limits of his den. Still the dead body of his mate was there¡ªI hadn''t wanted to take it from him while he slept, considering how much work he''d put into dragging it into his den before slipping into evolution¡ªand he walked to it, crooning something soft. He nosed into her fur, avoiding the bloody hole in her head. Shadows poured from him, deep, dark things that whispered and flickered like living things, and drowned her. Her earthen-brown fur disappeared beneath their calling embrace, hiding her in the shadows, swirling around her like a waterfall¨C And then drifted away, returning back to his fur. But something had changed. What? I poured more points of awareness over the problem, staring at her corpse¡ªat her corpse, because she was dead, and nothing should have changed. But I couldn''t shake the thought that something had, that the swirl of shadows had been something larger, something unseen, happening. Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. But, ah. What? The midnight cave bear was a friend of shade and shadows, yeah, using them to cloak himself, and Nuvja''s shadows were moving things to help hide attacks and homes. But that was it. Nothing that could have influenced a corpse. Still, it felt like something had changed. Worrying. But it looked like that was the last thing the midnight cave bear had needed. He crooned once more, ears flattening, but turned away. Padded out of his den, taking in the Fungal Gardens with new and improved eyes, admiring the changes he had been too insipid to notice before. I preened a little. But then I guided him to the other den, where his three cubs¡ªor cubs, considering they were well on their way to growing out of the juvenile stage¡ªlaid sleeping. He''d take care of them for a while, let them readjust to his changed form. And then he would head down to the fourth floor. The Jungle Labyrinth was the perfect place for him to hone his shadow abilities, to be able to use them without Nuvja''s assistance, and the pitch black tunnels would make a proper monster out of him. I had high hopes. Watching over him for a second longer, blooming a set of whitecap mushrooms beneath his paws because I was still a hatchling at heart, I skipped back down a few floors. Chieftess was doing fine, hammering out her new role as the leader of the kobolds, but she''d received my message¡ªonce the sixth floor finished, she would be going down to it, and that meant she couldn''t lead the tribe in the Drowned Forest. So she needed a successor. And considering I would not be allowing Nicau to stay behind, he was right out. But the successor had already presented himself, funnily enough. A younger kobold, one barely out of his eggscale days, but with a toothy, biting intelligence and a ferocity that sat well on his crimson scales. He''d partaken in the invasion, part of Chieftess'' squad, but been too young to evolve¡ªbut he''d learned. Watched her. And now he was training to take the role. I doubt he''d be as powerful as Chieftess, because she was a success story all by her lonesome, but he''d take the reins of the kobolds that would remain on this floor well enough. Already he was leading hunts, directing others, figuring out how much food they needed to gather to feed everyone and setting up piles of weapons to sharpen and maintain. The kind of thing that my dungeon was best at¡ªtraining up little monsters filled with a fervent desire to grow stronger. One day he''d evolve, and then he''d train a successor of his own and move down floors. That was the lovely part of it all. I flew through the rest of my floors, ignoring the sixth with steadfast determination¡ªunfortunately, even if I watched, the water wasn''t filling any faster. The first two rooms were mostly full, only a couple feet left, but the five hundred foot depths of the third room was going to take longer. Irritatingly longer. I knew I had made it that deep in order to accommodate the growing fledgling sea serpent, but. Well. Would it have killed me to only make it three hundred feet deep? Life was often painful. But today was full of surprises, it turned out, and there arose something to take away the bite of that pain. Because deep in the Jungle Labyrinth, in the Stone Jungle at its core, something deep and ancient and powerful awoke. Before she even finished, the other serpents fled from the den, making the presumably correct decision that they didn''t want to be in her eyeline when she awoke¡ªeven the crowned cobra who''d worked so hard to make himself look like the leader abruptly decided to abandon said course of action, slithering outside amongst the rest. The horned serpent, who had finished evolving a day or so past and only made soft, clasping grasps for power since as she figured out her new abilities, sensed the danger first¡ªshe was one of the first to flee. The jeweltone serpents left a scattered trail of pure white scales in their wake. The empress serpent opened her eyes. Or. Her new ones. Because she now had four. She unfolded from her curled slumber on the bed of granite I''d spread out for her, uncoiling with all the casual ease of a predator¡ªshe''d lost her dark grey scales and was now almost blue, something deep and iridescent, black in the shadows. Four eyes, all a brilliant, burnished silver, peered at her surroundings, the back two flickering as she adjusted to her new field of vision. Instead of crystalline horns, a crown curled above her head, smooth and silver. Two main prongs, reaching back like a coil of vines. Glimmering with psychic energy, but now without the jagged tips her previous self had. No reason to pretend like they were of any evolutionary benefit to manifest in this form; they were purely for displaying her power. And oh, what power it was. There had been a¡­ flavour, I suppose, to her previous psychic abilities. Nothing like the star-rot of gods, nor the ink of shadow abilities; more like silk, something soft and tugging. She''d used that to bewitch others into following her, setting up a siren''s call that functioned much like how my mana urged creatures to descend to lower floors. There was none of the gentleness now. It billowed off her in waves, thick and cloying¡ªevery serpent on the floor, despite being rooms away, shivered. Their minds went blank. Even still waking as she was, adjusting to her new form, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that if she wanted to control them, there would be no hesitation. And she knew it. Uncoiling fully, she examined her new form; she''d stayed about the same length, twenty feet, not growing much in bulk or weight. Made sense; she wasn''t a physical hunter, not anymore. Her power came from a different place. And that place urged her to raise her head, crown of horns nearly scraping at the ceiling, and hiss. A summoning cry. Every serpent, halfway through their fleeing to a safe place, abruptly slithered back to the den. They piled in, nearly on top of each other in their rush to obey¡ªand it wasn''t even a display of her power, just the raw weight of her tyrannical presence. For all that most of them were evolved creatures and dangerous in their own way, they understood the power dynamic here. It wasn''t in their favour. So they came to her call, eyes lowered, crowned cobras keeping their hoods tucked to their sides and jeweltone serpents avoiding any flickering of their bare mana manipulation. They crowded around the den, low before her, waiting for judgment. Even the few luminous constrictors I''d put on guard duty, watching over the still-slumbering woman with naga ancestry, came to her call. I''d been stuck babysitting that damned Kriya for a week and a half now, feeding and watering her while keeping her unconscious. I''d love for the empress serpent to figure out what to do with her so I could move on with my life. She loomed over her subjects, crown flashing in the quartz-light. I felt her drag her psionic abilities over them, peering into their minds, tugging up memories of the week she''d been unconscious with a fumbling kind of precision¡ªnot quite the same as what she remembered having, but enough she was able to get the hang of it. Bits and pieces came to her as she figured out what had happened in the time they hadn''t had her explicit leadership. And in those memories, she saw both the birth of the new horned serpent and the crowned cobra that''d tried to claim leadership. Snakes couldn''t sweat, but they were both giving it their best effort. She slithered forward, a predator in a room of prey, and called them both before her. They went, the horned serpent still floundering under the weight of her new antlers, freshly evolved as she was. The crowned cobra had lost all the arrogance he''d so proudly displayed over the last week¡ªI imagined he was quite thoroughly regretting all the meals he''d languished on while forcing other serpents to bring him food. Tyranny was well-appreciated in my dungeon, but only if you didn''t get in the way of another tyrant first. The empress serpent leaned in, and her crown lit up in deep blue-silver, splashing light over the surrounding granite. Both of her targets went still. But she wasn''t taking control of them, not in the way I knew she could. She was just talking to them. The crowned cobra had made a horrible decision¡ªthe horned serpent had only just been born. She could still redeem herself with one simple action. The horned serpent didn''t hesitate. As soon as the empress serpent released her, she spun to the side and sunk her fangs into the crowned cobra''s neck. Still fighting like a luminous constrictor¡ªshe coiled around him as he thrashed, hissing, spitting venom wide and far; but she kept his head pinned, entwining around him with a desperate fervour to prove herself. The empress serpent watched, and there was a vague pride in her thoughts. Yes, this would be a worthy successor. Still fumbling and foolish, relying on physical might rather than the brilliant delicacy of psychic abilities, but she could be taught. Be trained. And as she was now demonstrating, she knew not to challenge her empress. What more could a tyrant appreciate? Slowly, the crowned cobra died, slumping in the horned serpent''s coils with a final, rasping hiss. She unfurled from around him, several scales sizzling with splatters of venom, but faced the empress serpent, bowing her head. Her horns flashed once with the beginnings of psychic powers. The empress serpent hissed. An acceptance. Then she spread her reach over the rest of her horde¡ªfor she had slept for a good many days, and there had been no food for her upon awakening; if they valued their lives, they should remedy that. The den emptied as fast as it had filled. I preened¡ªwas this what fatherhood felt like? Watching what had once been just a clever little snake under my care grow into a proper monster? And this was only her second evolution; what would her fifth be like? Oho. Glorious. She''d more than earned a Name. I had originally planned to wait until Seros had awoken¡ªand it was soon, so soon I could feel it aching through my core, already the light starting to settle into his scales and simmer beneath¡ªto see if he would take more of my ambient mana with his evolution, but I couldn''t any longer. She had done everything I could have wanted from her with evolutions alone¡ªwhat would she do with a Name? Everything. The answer was everything. Now only what to Name her. Nicau had, unfortunately, come pre-named, and I was polite enough not to give him a new one. He should really have thanked me on bended knee for that. But I was a sea-drake, and my followers would be named with the draconic tongue. I pondered this, staring at her¡ªbut in truth, I had already known what to do. I had, perhaps, always known, since she claimed her first follower and started her draconic rise through power. Queen, I Name you.
Veresai Blessing of the Oracle: all that is to be seen shall be seen.
Fucking fantastic. Chapter 99 - Gravitas Finally, finally, the water splashed up to the mark I''d left in the stone. One floor, three rooms, a week and a half of waiting¡ªbut the water had finally filled it all, and the sixth floor was complete. My beautiful coral reef. I swept overhead, every point of awareness aimed in and practically shivering with delight; it was exactly how I pictured, just as wonderful as I knew it could be. The water was a pale crystal-blue, lit up with hundreds of quartz-lights I''d scattered over the walls, the pure white sand gleaming like a second sky beneath. Mica-flecked limestone, brilliant, building into cragged stalactites overhead and all the brilliance that came with it. A paradise for the taking. And oh, what taking it would be. For a week I''d busied myself with meaningless little tasks, quaint distractions that came with running a dungeon. My creatures had grown and died and evolved, Nicau had disappeared from my walls to a wider world, new creatures had awoken. The empress serpent¡ªno, wait, Veresai. It was going to take me a while to adjust to her new Name; don''t get me wrong, I''d get it eventually, but she''d been merely serpent to me for so long. But now she slumbered, hopefully not nearly as long as her evolution but still adjusting to her new powers. Blessing of the oracle; it certainly sounded lovely. I couldn''t wait to see what she did with it. Well. What she did with it beyond eating in my mana regeneration. Wonderful little thing, that. I was such a fan. But that had all been leading to this. I filtered my control into the surrounding granite, narrowing the tunnel that connected to the outer sea; still a little open, because that circulation and added flow helped combat evaporation and keep the salinity from rising too high, but not wide enough for anything but truly meaningless creatures to sneak through. I would allow them to come into my Underlake, but certainly not my lowest floor. I liked at least some protection. And my floor would provide that. I swept around, my full mana bursting through me¡ªI''d been saving it and now it flowed from me, wild and free. I poured two dozen points into the second room, over the atoll, and let vampiric mangroves and cloudsire palms root into the sandy islands. The mangroves were the same as I remembered, though a little adjusted to be more prepared for salty water¡ªtall, twisting, covered in scarlet bark and pale white leaves. They shivered, branches uncoiling and blooming, grown immediately to some dozen feet or so as I fed them condensed mana. But the cloudsire palms were new. My previous guess had been, thankfully, correct¡ªI knew from their description that they produced mist from excess water, using it to cover surrounding plants and hide them from the sun. Namely, that meant they had other strategies for competition beyond growing unbearably tall like other palm trees, which you could probably see would be a problem in a dungeon. These would stay at a more manageable height. Very appreciated. They were thin, stick-straight things, amber-orange bark in overlapping shingles and emerald-green fronds puffing out on top. The room was some hundred feet tall, plenty for them to stretch upward without running into problems, and they rooted deep into the sandy soil and twined with the coral below. And that was another lovely aspect of being a dungeon. From their schema, I could tell that while they were salt tolerant, they were not necessarily built to sustain themselves on saltwater alone. But I, with all my brilliance, could alter them. Make them so that they were, in fact, quite willing to live in an atoll. I could be terribly clever like that. A few dozen of each tree later, already the sixth floor felt more alive, spots of colours against the blue-white. And that was only above; I dove under the water, through the plateau-reef and barrier-reef and forest-reef. Though they were lacking what made them reefs. It was time to fix that. So I tugged deep on another schema I hadn''t yet had the chance to use; already I''d made sure this environment was perfect, everything the right temperature and right salinity and right currents. Coral reefs were far too important for me to fuck up simple little things like that. I was a sea-drake¡ªI could certainly make this floor perfect. So I gathered mana¡ªalready down to two-thirds of my storage, apparently I''d made more trees than I''d originally planned for¡ªand, crouched over the first room, summoned my first piece of capturing coral. Huh. I''d bemoaned it a little when I''d selected it as my evolution option¡ªfor all that I needed coral, my previous two selections had been kobolds and cloudskipper wisps, which were, ah, a little more exotic than coral, especially considering I was literally on a coast. It''d felt like the gods were deciding for me, forcing me to pick the only option that would help, and then didn''t even have the decency to make it a good option. But watching it bloom over the sixth floor, I was starting to warm to it. Despite being only one schema, it had a variety of it that sang to my soul¡ªevery patch came out in a different texture, a different style, practically a different species. One came out in narrow tubes extending upward, catching the quartz-light; another in a wide fan, veins spidered throughout; a lump like living stone; twisting branches like the mangrove''s roots; rosettes with hesitant tendrils. Now. I was no coral expert. But I was pretty sure they were supposed to look similar to each other. Fascinating, really. I poured back through the schema as I worked¡ªit spreads and collects; anything it grows over is stored and kept safe inside, creating dizzying patches of reef where attunements run wild and spirits howl for freedom. Maybe that was what it meant by dizzying patches of reef? Or was each section I created attuning to a new¡­ dialect of coral? But it was growing over the same limestone and granite as its neighbors, and it hadn''t had any time to collect specific attunements or spirits. So. What? They were all the same colour, though. A pale, almost cream-white, bleached like bone. Old memories told me that was what dead coral looked like, but I knew this was alive, feeling its mana resonate with mine and watching it grow as I fed it more. It looked dead, but was still plenty alive, and all plenty different. Utterly fascinating. Did it collect colours as it attuned to its surroundings? Would I end up with the kaleidoscoping rainbow I''d hoped for, or would it all be one colour, just with thousands of shapes and styles? This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings. Life as a dungeon. There was always something new to surprise you. On and on I wove through my floor¡ªthe first room, with its plateau-reef that dropped off from fifty feet deep to a hundred, received great, interlocking piles of coral, woven throughout the granite cradles I''d shaped to support them. Again, not entirely accurate to proper coral reefs, but mine was better. No, I wasn''t biased. The second room needed more care¡ªin the lagoon, I sprinkled pockets of coral, scatter-reefs, shallow to keep under the mere ten feet of water but sprawling wide to take in as much quartz-light as possible. Places for smaller creatures to hide, for babies to be spawned and survive, for kobolds to hunt and get used to the water. But then, past that, in the three hundred feet deep area surrounding the atoll, well. To put it politely, I went buckwild. Enormous mounds, nearly scratching the surface of the water, rippling with fans and shy rosettes; deep, cavernous valleys, threaded with tubes and twisting fingers; sprawling pillars, full of nooks tucked away with carved dens and places to hide. A paradise. Such a paradise, in fact, that I ran out of mana before I could finish. Blasted regeneration rate. Don''t get me wrong, I loved Seros and Nicau and Veresai, but the mana they took from me was very, very unwelcome. I glared at the floor like it would finish itself for me. The third room, what would become a forest-reef with deep, trembling water and coral lining the sides, sat empty and waiting. But oh, even half complete, it was beautiful. Cream-white, spiraling over the five thousand foot long room, crystal-blue water splashing over in a slow and steady current. Cloudsire palms that were already exuding a pale mist, barely there, simmering on the edges of waves lapping at the sandy atoll, vampiric mangroves with their thorns searching for blood. I wasn''t done yet. There was still more coral to add, as soon as I had the mana to keep making it; but the sixth floor was well on its way to perfection, and it was time my creatures adjusted to its brilliance. So up I flew, to the tunnel connecting it to the fifth floor; with only a moment of hesitation, burrowing my mana into the granite barrier I''d made, I broke the wall down. My core was still on the fifth floor, ambient mana curling outward, but I could feel the reverberations echo through my dungeon; every creature, no matter how engaged, stilled. Lifted their heads, peering at their surroundings like the sixth floor was directly in front of them. They felt, soft and humming, the siren''s call of deeper promises. Of greater strength. No time to waste¡ªjust the last scraps of mana to my name, which was probably a bad idea and I should have just waited until I regenerated a bit more, I darted upright and bored into the stone. From the base of the Underlake, right under the sarco crocodile''s den, I carved a tunnel that wound around the Jungle Labyrinth and Skylands to emerge into a pocket in the first room of the sixth floor, a narrow little thing right near the entrance. A way for my creatures to make their way down, and I did, unfortunately, had to make it wider than I wanted for things like the fledgling sea serpent to venture below. I''d be narrowing that right back once he made his way down. Not a chance was I letting a merrow slip their way through while I was distracted. I hadn''t finished the tunnel for more than a few seconds before curiosity arose¡ªan armourback sturgeon who''d happened to be in the area crept closer, nosing at the tunnel with her shovel-shaped nose. I''d sprung up a barrier, a pocket of my awareness filtering the salt so it didn''t bleed through the brackish water, but the sturgeon was apparently too picky for that and turned away. Hmph. That was fine. I didn''t want her on my sixth floor anyway. Come down, I crooned, spreading tendrils through my creations'' minds; showing them the tunnels that connected below, the wide open water and cradled lagoon. Creatures answered my call; roughwater sharks forced their way through the tunnels, spiraling down through the murk with a sweep of their power tails. Lichenridge snapping turtles, so unused to moving, stretched muscles that hadn''t seen action in forever and made their way below. Several silver kraits inhaled for the long journey and slipped through the tunnels. Greater crabs, full grown now for all their numbers had been decimated, scuttled over sand to the tunnels. With a low, bellowing roar that exploded out in a wave of bubbles, the fledgling sea serpent coiled in on himself and shot below, twisting through the tunnels with nary a thought on the lesser prey traveling with him. I''d filled his head with the wonders of the third room of the sixth floor¡ªfor all it wasn''t, uh, actually filled with coral yet¡ªand he hungered for it, frills extended and eyes wide. This would be his territory, his hunting grounds. He exploded into the coral reef with a hiss. He wasn''t the only ones¡ªin the Skylands, a few greater pigeons tucked their wings and dove through the tunnel, spiraling out onto the new floor with wild, piercing shrieks. Scorch hounds looked almost interested until my mana reminded them that this was a water floor and curled back up. Bugs and other skittering little things made their way down. And above, tucked in the Drowned Forest, the kobolds made their decision. If reptiles could cry it would have been a teary goodbye, but given as they couldn''t, they just warbled at each other with hunched backs. So recently had the new kobolds evolved, showed off the strength that could be obtained¡ªand now they were leaving. Heading below. Heading below quickly, actually, so I could stop worrying about Rhoborh poking his godly head over my metaphorical shoulder as I worked. That redwood burn in the back of my awareness was not going to be missed when it left. Chieftess understood that. She hissed, a much more threatening sound now that she was nearing eight feet tall and had the strength to back it up, and her tribe snapped to attention. The evolved kobolds fell in beside her, two shamans protected in the middle, warriors taking up the back, hunters filling in the flanks. It was time to depart. She faced her tribe, shoulders broad, spines rustling over her back. To the younger kobold she''d chosen as her successor, she held out her staff; the crimson stick from a vampiric mangrove, carved over with the best symbols clumsy claws could make. Her symbol of power. She needed a new one, given this one barely came up to half her height, and so it would be passed down. He took it with hesitant claws, marveling at it like the most precious thing in the universe¡ªit was a piece of wood, he needed to raise his expectations¡ªand warbled at her. She warbled back. As one, the tribe clamored, loud and hooting and squawking¡ªsome sort of primitive bestowment ceremony, maybe? It would certainly help if they could scoot along with their sapience so I could actually understand their language. But the successor had taken his role, and it was time for Chieftess and her kobolds to move below. Hm. Maybe I should have told Nicau that before he left. He''d be in for a surprise when he got back. But that was a worry for a later me¡ªfor now, I spiraled overhead as the kobolds filed out of their den, out of the home they''d had for so long, and made their way to the back of the Drowned Forest. They were too large for the tunnels I''d carved past the Underlake, and besides, I wanted them to become sea-drake descendants. So they''d be swimming their way through the water on their way down. Served them right. Why they had to be born with the garish crimson scales of fire-drakes, I had no earthly idea. But fire-drakes were the last thing on my mind as something finally, finally, stirred. Tucked away in the Skylands, in a room filled with silver and carvings of ancient draconic runes, with moonstar flower buds and frivolous artefacts stolen from invaders, someone awoke. Seros. He was¨C Oh. He was brilliant. Lost were the pebbled scales and unshapely horns¡ªhe loomed now, raising his head off the silver floor. Iridescent scales, sea-green-blue-teal-turquoise, a rainbow caught over his form. Horns, two, curled to a perfect tip, gleaming with burnished silver and the faint hum of power. Frills, racing over his spine and limbs, spikes on their tips. Fangs, enormous, with the rumble of something in his chest. Twenty feet long, maybe longer, lithe and vicious and regal in ways he simply hadn''t been before. His thoughts rose through our connection, refined, elegant, clever. Elevated above. And I felt, curling at the edges of my awareness, the first taste of the power of a dragon¡ªthe bare, whispering feeling of gravitas. Of authority. Of power, claimed over life and Aiqith itself. Not yet manifested. Barely there. But growing. Draconic monitor, beast-to-be-born, legend awakening. Seros, dungeonborn, blessed by the depths. Welcome back, I said. Seros crooned. Chapter 100 - Remakings She was not the first. It was an odd realization, one that came with unfamiliarity and unease to her young mind¡ªbut as she swam through the murky water of her home, she saw evidence surrounding her. Breaks in the stone from a familiar tail, scores with the same width as her claws, scattered fangs grown old and discarded. Even her den, with gold-white light spilling over the stone and warming it for her convenience, was littered in remnants of someone else. Someone who had been like her¡ªreptilian, enormous, fanged, furious. Another sarco crocodile. But not her. The one who had come before her had been large and feared¡ªlesser beings fled from her shadow with the speed that spoke of familiarity, and she had to hunt rather than be challenged for the den she laid vicious dominance over at the back of the lake. It was her territory, but¨C She hadn''t been the one to claim it. There was something upsetting in the thought. It should have been a good thing; less work, instant respect, a beautiful den with ample sunning opportunities and glorious space. But it wasn''t hers. There had been no blood spent to earn it; she had not grown stronger in the fight, hadn''t learned more of her enemies. And with the sea serpent descending below, she was once more the most dangerous thing on this floor; the crude brute with his enormous jaws were no match for her speed in the water, and as long as she didn''t let him fall on her from above, she had nothing to fear from him. Not that she would ever fear him, nor the serpent, nor the Named beast. She was above, older than all, even though she was the youngest. There sung an old and ancient song beneath her scales, one few else resonated with¡ªwell, perhaps the jaw-beast. But he was undeserving of the title. She had been born into it, rather than being given it through change. Something whispered through her bones, something Old. She treasured that, clutched to it, tried to learn from the memories that weren''t just how to move and hunt. Something else was more powerful, more Old, and she wanted that. But there was no time to learn from it, not when she swam through her territory and saw those that didn''t see her. They looked at her, and they saw the one who had come before. She snarled. Bubbles exploded past her fangs, precious air lost¡ªher tail lashed and pushed her back to the surface, claws dragging her out of the water onto her sunning spot with the screech of rending stone. It was an insult. She was not him, whoever he had been; she was her, and comparisons were a deadly threat. She knew he had been larger, had been more advanced; if she measured less than their memories of him, would they think to challenge her? Claim her as weak? Her tail cracked into the stone hard enough to tremble through her den. She bellowed, a low, guttural sound, and her eyes burned. That song, ancient, enormous, Old, crooned beneath her scales. The promise that while she was bound to this world, she hadn''t always been, and all she had to do was reawaken that lost origin. The one who had come before her hadn''t done that, she knew. He had stayed here, ignored the Song, kept to fruitless brute strength and meaningless things that were already found here, that were already discovered. She knew that because the other creatures of this lake only watched her with wariness, with the lingering worry of being merely eaten. Not of being destroyed. Of being rewritten. Slow, gentle, the Song kept humming away in the back of her mind. They wanted something to fear? She''d give it to them. - When the mana-call came, he didn''t obey, because he certainly wasn''t the type to just listen to the mysterious voice, but for no reason other than his own desire, he did find his way down the tunnels suggested. Offered. He traveled down tunnels that he discovered by himself and were not at all given to him. His own way, thank you very much. The tunnels spiraled down as he swam through them, sharpened rocks held in his mouth in case he encountered someone else on the path, fins braced. Triggerfish he was, and very proud of it; stone-shooter, clever-eyes, undefeated. All titles he claimed. And when he darted past the last area and emerged into a new paradise, he knew those titles would take him very, very far here. It was a world apart from worlds; all he had ever known before was a twisted, sheltered place of murky water and amber-gold kelp, tucked away in shadowed water and the spiral of a hidden whirlpool. This was not that. He could see all the way to the far wall, everything blooming in crystal-blue and unblemished sand, twisting cream-white shapes spiraling through the water. It was difficult to pause while swimming but he managed it, and even his enormous brain needed a second to take in all the sights before him. A paradise, in all senses of the world. And it was all his. He swam forward with renewed determination. Multiple rooms, each more beautiful than the last; as he swam around, more cream-white things¡ªcoral, his subconscious crooned¡ªbloomed, brought to life by that mysterious voice, seeming to almost follow him as he swam through. He didn''t respect that voice, considering it had tried to instruct him to do something and he was not so lesser as to merely listen to it, but he did preen, regardless. Of course it would try to make things around him beautiful. He was beautiful. At least it could recognize that. More coral, in thousands of shapes, surrounded him as he ducked and swerved through his new home. The first room, with its sharp drop-off and flat reefs; the second, with its shallow, island-surrounded area and wildly variant areas; the third, with its open waters and coral-ladened towers. He pondered for a long while which to claim as his own; the first was pleasing, but too small; the third was large, but too empty. Thus the second. Would it be difficult to claim the entire room for himself? No doubt. But he was a miracle-shot, a coral-wielder, a magic-worker. So it was his. The other fish swimming through didn''t seem to understand. He spat rocks at them by the mouthful, chasing them back with flared gills and cresting lunges; but for every one he scared away, more came pouring through the same tunnels he had discovered, and they just kept coming. And inevitably, whenever he had to retreat to gather more stones to fire, more came through, and they were stupid enough not to flee when they saw him. Which meant he had to spend time to scare them off, which meant he had to gather more rocks, which meant more came. This was the absolute worst. He darted back, bumping into a twisting strand of coral to bump some off and pick up their scattered pieces¡ªthen paused, staring at it. At the coral, growing endlessly, covered in little ridges. They were spikes, much like he was used to; or like his memories told him he was used to. Sharp little things, the perfect size to fit into his mouth and fire at anything that so much as glanced at him the wrong way, or merely swam in his general direction. He wasn''t too picky. But. It was such work to find things to launch at his enemies; to pick them up in his mouth and hold them there, unable to eat, until a target presented itself. Such terrible, annoying work. He was a beast made for the hunt, for the kill¡ªit was below him to have to scavenge pieces of rock or scale to strike his enemies. Monster he was¡ªhe was only the second smallest creature in his new territory, there were small, darting things in many different colours that were smaller than him, he had checked¡ªand the enemies he had were many. Who wouldn''t want to be him, with glorious yellow-black-grey stripes and flawless aim? They were painfully jealous of his strength. As they well should be. But here, in this new territory, he saw things grow that came with spikes; stationary and dully coloured, yes, but with spikes. If he needed to, he could bite his own scales off and launch those as weapons, but they were flat, not built to pierce. Lesser weapons. If he came with his own spikes, would he not be more dangerous? He was already dangerous, to be clear. Incredibly, beautifully, wondrously dangerous. But perhaps he could be more. - There were differences in this world. She had experienced them; from the airy world filled with sand and plants where she had been born, to the watery, tugging world she lived in now. From the kindness she had found in her siblings, pushing each other forward as they spilled from their nest into the water, to the viciousness of monsters trying to tear her apart when her shell was still soft. From the gentle taste of algae and moss, to the warmth of blood spilling between her beak. As a turtle, born between two worlds, she had discovered their differences, and she knew them well. But now a new difference had come to her, and she didn''t know what to do. The voice had been there when she''d grown old enough to harden her beak and shell, instructing her in gentle, sibilant words to climb on one of the towers that had been shaped for her. To perch on the river''s edge and wait for those that would try to step over her, to set foot on her shell that poked above the canal''s surface, disguised and covered in moss and algae, to serve as a living trap for those foolish enough to fall for it. That had been her mission, and she had taken it; had snapped feet off, had dragged those that had been tricked beneath the water and feasted on their mana and bodies alike. But the voice said different things, now. It told her to move. To go below. The thought was odd. Below. She knew there was something below, because she had been here for long enough to feel as the mana curling around her had lessened, time after time, as something pulled it further down. So in a theoretical sense, she understood that there was something below. Multiple things, perhaps. More canals, maybe, or more sand; or something else entirely. She didn''t know. Just as she hadn''t known there would be a difference in the voice''s commands. Why had it switched? But it had switched, and when it had told her what to do before, that had granted her a home and food. So on legs long since atrophied, under a shell that sat heavy and weighing, she slipped off the tower that had been her life for so long. The water welcomed her, for all she fumbled through moving; she sank to the bottom, a chestful of air tucked away, and plodded along the sandy bottom. She saw others move with her, egg-mates and others coming off their own towers to move through the water. There was a map in the back of her mind, something soft and guiding, showing her where to go. Eels surrounded by silver-tipped fish watched her with wary eyes, but they weren''t large enough to challenge her, and they both understood this. She had fed a day ago, something large and wriggling, and wasn''t hungry now. The difference in the voice''s command was more important. So she moved on. Eventually, the canals faded away as she fell down, down, down, emerging into a¡­ a lake, she knew, though didn''t know how. More creatures, more questions, more mana, humming through her currents in renewed vigour. Was this what life was like, below? Then why had the voice commanded her to stay where she had? But still the voice instructed her, so she walked. Crabs, those larger than the ones she was used to, swarmed around her, but their claws couldn''t penetrate her shell and her beak scared them off before long. Enormous, lazy predators overhead swam by, their shadows cast over her path, but they didn''t bother her; perhaps their new instructions were different, too, for they traveled to the same tunnels as her. The same tunnels that brought her even further down, where mana crooned and sung and redoubled in power. Until finally, finally, she emerged into a new world. A world different. No pillars to perch on, no sedentary life, no waiting for prey to come to her. She understood immediately that if she were to stay here, that everything would be different; it would be one of action, one her body was not made for. But the mana that darted through her was humming in excitement, almost burning; she had been full for so long, she knew, with the vague impression of the word. The prey she killed had added up, piece by piece, until she understood that she had reached the barrier. And nothing had changed. It had stayed the same, because the voice had commanded her to stay, and so she had. But now that was different, and she wanted it to be, she realized. She was happy with this change, wanted it to change, wanted to be here. Perhaps she had always been ready, and had simply not found enough of a difference to care. The world had passed by her on that pillar, waiting for pressure on her shell or movement before her beak, and that had been life. Every day, melting together in a constant stream of laziness. But she had found differences, here. In a world tossed with crystal-blue and looming shadows and swimming prey. She had found somewhere that changed. And she would change to match. She had barely moved forward, entering this new territory with gleaming colours and currents and the deep, curling press of mana, before light exploded through her. - In the crowded corners of the Drowned Forest, in a world awash with creatures so unlike what could be found in the jungle above, something new sprouted. A quiet little thing, ambitious in the way all seeds were¡ªtossed far and wide by the thousands, with only hundreds ever finding soil appropriate, and then a scant dozen after that managing to take root. It was one of the lucky few who found such conditions and it welcomed them, thrived in them, took in water and nutrients until it managed to break past its shell and emerge from the soil. Lesser, still young, barely a handful of leaves protruding from its branches and roots thin and only beginning to worm into the surrounding dirt. A vampiric mangrove, tiny and inconsequential. There should have been nothing different. It was merely another tree, born in the manner that trees are born, small and fragile and pushing through the seed of their birth. Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit. Perhaps it was just bad luck. It couldn''t truly be said that there was intention in the universe; for all that gods towered overhead and the Underdark gnawed endlessly at the base of Aiqith, there was little that was properly controlled. The Otherworld overflowed with mana, the nameless world hosted deities, the Underdark consumed, Aiqith existed. That was simply the way of it. So there was nothing to point at, no heavyhanded web of fate that could be accused. Things that could explain it, perhaps¡ªthe rotting, ink-black schema sitting in the dungeon''s core, unwanted and unused, a threat that was not supposed to be. Absence carved into a creature''s shape. Perhaps a drop of it had spilled loose¡ªa spark of mana floating from some uncaring void¡ªan alignment of stars and moons that found some ancient scar from a war long since fought and reopened it¨C There were many things that it could have been from, and none to know for certain. Nothing to blame for what was responsible for its birth. But what happened was that the tree came to be, emerging shivering from the soil, and it was wrong. Scarlet bark, but only on the overside; deep blue-black beneath, something dark and twisted. Its leaves, though a pale white, were veined through with silver. Thorns littered its surface but they were smaller, less defined, less useful. Not the main hunting strategy. Perhaps that should have killed it; not the type evolved to survive in this world, where creatures had no mercy for something fumbling to get its metaphorical feet beneath it. Burrowing rats gnawed for fiber, kobolds harvested for fires and weapons, ironback toads squashed lesser plants beneath their bulk as they moved. There were numerous ways to die here. But it did not die, and it did not hunger like its brethren. Instead, it starved. - The world spiraled, shaking and trembling and close-tight-small; she thrashed against it, vicious, snarling soundlessly and raging against it. She had been free, had been so wonderfully, beautifully free, mana exploding through her as humans died by the dozens below¡ªand then there had been a piece of quartz, small, carved, useless. Mana, coiling around her in a way she didn''t recognize. She''d paused, curious, and then the mana had tightened, some chanting words filling the air, and the quartz had gotten closer¡ªshe''d tried to fight back, to go intangible, to drift away in clouds of mist¡ªit''d gotten closer¡ªand then¡ªand then¡ª Now she was trapped. Nothing happened, time passing endlessly, until it did¡ªthere was a brief, fleeting moment of freedom, a break in the prison. She fought anew, mist exploding from her form as she tasted air, tasted light, tasted mana¡ªand then the walls slammed back around her. Howling, vicious failure. But things were different. No longer was she pinned so far down; she was able to move, able to manifest, her wolf-esque form spiraling out into the mist she was made of. Mana boiled throughout her, reaching out and rebounding back¡ªstill trapped, still trapped¡ªbut not in the same place. She could see out, now. Thrashing, throwing herself from side to side, the invisible walls holding her back¡ªbut she could see past them. See a world so unlike what she had known before. Instead of tossing water, of brilliant blue waves and the cloud-whipped winds she so lovingly curated, there was¨C something else. Wood, her subconscious told her, but not the deep scarlet she had seen flashes of on higher floors; no, this was earthen brown. Walls, odd and straight, with none of the irregularity she was used to. Planned, organized. Not her home. She snarled, thrashing, mist coalescing as ears to flatten and a tail to lash¡ªbut it didn''t mean anything, because still the walls loomed around her, and still she was trapped. But there wasn''t just wood, with patches of stone and clumped little things she didn''t understand¡ªthere was a living thing before her. She had seen these before at least, tall, fleshy things that made her happy she had chosen the form she had¡ªhow could they stand on only two legs, with two useless at their sides rather than propelling them forward?¡ªand she growled anew. A human. It¡ªhe, maybe, she had vague recollections of things like this¡ªloomed before her, impossibly large; or maybe she was small, because as he reached out, his hands wrapped around the walls of her prison and lifted it up like it weighed nothing. She threw herself forward, snapping, howling, and her mist splashed off the invisible walls. He said something, and his voice echoed past the walls, trickling through in chittering little noises; but she was a being of pure mana. Humans couldn''t hide their secrets from her, and certainly not when she was pissed enough to care. Feisty thing, he had said. She bellowed more mist and scratched at the walls with useless claws. "You''re my saving grace," the human said, cupping her prison in his hands. There were odd things, almost like scales, over his face. His eyes flashed gold. "The Silent Market didn''t want this alliance, and certainly not with Lluc. That means it''s on me to maintain it." She didn''t understand. Howling, she clawed again over where his face would have been. His fleshy lips curled up. "Keep being powerful," he said, lower, almost whispering. "You''re my proof this dungeon is worth it." She didn''t care. This prison wouldn''t hold her¡ªthough she had lost the mana stream from her home, had lost the waters and tides she kicked up, this wasn''t forever. Soon she would escape, and she would be free, and she would learn¡ªfor too long had she merely ran her currents over the lake, content in the assignment and letting those of mortal flesh squabble below. But she hadn''t known that those mortals could capture her. And once she was free, because she would get free, she would never let herself be captured ever again. - They all fell to him, in time. In the Underlake¡ªa name he knew now, with his mind twice-changed, twice-born¡ªhe reigned. His school was the strongest, was the most numerous, and all others who tried to stand against him did not last particularly long doing so. For to be a silvertooth meant to need a school, and there was no school greater than the one led by a royal king. He swam forward, slow, vicious¡ªcreatures fled before him, from the sharks that had learned of his might to the crabs that couldn''t reach his great height, from the kraits that had settled into wary truce to the sturgeons that had only their scales to protect them. Few were willing to be around when he decided to challenge another silvertooth school, and today was one of those days. They had encroached on his territory, and that was not an insult a king would suffer. So his school swarmed around him, dozens, hundreds, and they moved through the Underlake like an approaching storm. The other school lurked in one of the tunnels, whirlpool keeping them tucked back, content in the new den they were so confident they''d be able to keep. Which they wouldn''t. He would be making sure of that. A king led the charge and he did so, darting forward with quick, clean swipes of his tail¡ªwith an army behind him, he was first, and there was a straggler from the opposing school out front. He bit the silvertooth in half and shook it, spreading the blood, and with a glee that only came from these wonderful hunts, called upon the frenzy for his school. As one, their eyes flashed red, and it became the proper massacre he wished. They fell upon the school and he with them¡ªblood boiled around them, frenzy lurching through them all, ripping them to shreds. He swept forward, jagged fangs cleaving into the side of a competitor¨C Then another silvertooth, wild and frantic, bashed into the side of his head. He spun back, ripped free, and there was a biting bolt of pain over his face¡ªa fang, torn loose. The silvertooth disappeared into a swarming mass of his army, already dead before the insult had even had time to land. He shook himself, fins flaring for control, and made to lunge back into the fight¨C He stopped. The silvertooth he''d been attacking wasn''t dead. Perhaps close to it, blood hazing off the thin cuts sliced over its side. But it wasn''t moving, and in those cuts, a piece of white flashed. His fang. It should have meant nothing. Just an injury that would speed up its death even if it got away, bleeding out from the puncture long before he slaughtered the rest of its school. While that was the first time he had ever lost a fang, he was confident in his ability to regrow them, even if he had to wait until he''d gathered enough power for another rebirth to heal him. Annoying, perhaps, but nothing more. And still the silvertooth hung there, shivering, and he felt something in his soul connect. Barely there. Nothing more than a shuddering, faint connection, an echo across long waters; but he could feel something like pain, the thought rather than the sensation, and there was a vague, lingering awareness of more. That he was still firmly in his body, but he could feel blood elsewhere, feel the thrum through veins that weren''t his own. Not feeling another body, but specifically the blood. Could feel blood leaking around his fang, even though it was not a part of him anymore. He was a royal silvertooth¡ªthe royal silvertooth¡ªand he had always paid more attention to that first word, the concept of royalty. But he wondered, now, why they were called silvertooths; why that was so important rather than referencing their blood-frenzy or their schooling pattern. Why was tooth the imperative word? Why was his prey stuck there, fang in its side, and why could he feel it? He watched the silvertooth. The rest of his school swept in, commanded to finish the fight, and did so¡ªbut they left alone the singular silvertooth before him. It was shivering, eyes flashing red-black-red, caught in the throes of a blood-frenzy but unable to express it. Still his fang sat in its side, and still it froze, and still he felt it. He knew he could control blood-frenzies, could summon or dispel them¡ªbut he hadn''t thought there was more. But now, watching the silvertooth swim haltingly forward, blood coagulating over its side but thrumming with life, he wondered what else he could do. - In the tangled world of thorned roots and murky canals, she swam. She was an old thing, older than those around her. That gave her leave to claim the largest territory of the canals, her serpentine body casting a shadow that others had learned to fear. She appreciated that, in the same way she appreciated the loyalty of her swarming fish or how she appreciated the beauty of her electricity forking out from her sides. It made for a world where she ruled. But it wasn''t the only world, for all it was hers. There was a world above this one, she knew, because things would come from it; would appear from nowhere, sinking through her territory when she knew damn well they hadn''t come from either entrance. No, there was something in the Above, hidden beyond the impassable barrier. At first, it had been nothing more than a moderate curiosity. A vague, lingering thought about what could be in that world, if there was better prey up there, or perhaps predators. There were precious few things that could resist her electricity in the water, not as her army grew and her range with them. It was a comfortable life in these canals, able to eat all that fit into her mouth and thrive as the monster she was. But the days passed, and the time wiled, and still she looked up. She wanted, in the part of her that knew how to want. Wanted to know what was up there and whether it was better or worse than what she had now. Whether or not she would survive the Above. Her electricity worked in the water like a dream, crackling from her sides over the heads of her loyal followers, spearing their target through. It was her greatest weapon and she loved it, now that she had figured out how to love, and she wouldn''t give that up. In the water, she was a predator, sleek and elegant; she had watched those that came from the Above and they were fumbling, uncoordinated, weak. They had no true understanding of how to move through the water. If she went to the Above, would she be as terrible? That could not be allowed; her brethren, siblings from eggs lost past, had died for lesser grievances. This world was not forgiving to those who could not adapt. And still she looked up. The Creator hummed to her, a soft, buzzing thought of going deeper¡ªbut the focus was on water. Every call was on some spiraling blue world not trapped in canals but wild and free, filled with colourless things and other creatures. The same as where she was now, in the ways that mattered. The same life that she had already won at. She was a swimming creature, one of water, one of lightning. This world was already hers, claimed and staked. Her powers were made for this sort of living, where already the answers were laid bare and she did not have to consider them. But perhaps she could swim, in the Above. Perhaps she did not have to give up her lethality. Perhaps there was a new world to be hers. - In the midst of waters¡ªwater, blue, liquid, ocean, sea¡ªit was made. Created. Awoken. Newly born¡ªto be born, had been born, was born¡ªand unknowing. It was one of hundreds, of thousands; clustered together, cream-white, surrounding in the pressing depths of water. Light, from above. It had no senses to see or taste or feel but it knew that there was light, because it knew it needed light, and it needed warmth, and there were both of those things. Thus it was alive. But that wasn''t the only thing it needed. It was empty. It was not wholly aware of the concept, but it knew this nonetheless; it was supposed to capture, and since it had not captured, it was empty. What did it mean to capture? To seize, to obtain, to take? It didn''t know¡ªit barely understood the idea of knowing¡ªbut it was a truth of the world that it was supposed to capture, and it had not, and it needed to. So, fumbling, unsure, no senses available, it reached out; learned movement, learned resistance, learned change. Moving was a slow, unsteady process, pushed and pulled by some outside force, but it wanted to move, so it did its best. There had to be something out there that it was looking to capture, that it was looking to contain, and thus it needed to be out there as well if it was going to find that. Around it, hundreds of others moved; they were the same, young and wary, but there was something out there to be obtained and thus they tried. Bound by something unforgiving, their base¡ªtheir roots, their stability, their core¡ªstuck in place with only small, delicate tendrils reaching out, but reach out they did. And in return came life. On one reaching pass, its tendrils brushed against something; just a brief flash, a taste, nothing more. But it was a taste of something deep and pressing, the life and absence of it; something had been living, like it, but then had died, and its death had brought something. And it had taken that something. That something settled within it, tasting of water and scales and brilliance; the cream-white that it knew it was changed, darkening to something it couldn''t see but knew was different. It felt that tiny, imperceptible thing it had captured settle within it; small, quiet, minimal. Its colour had changed and something within it had changed as well, becoming more, becoming deeper. A soul, it thought; something captured and welcomed and stolen. And it wondered, where it could not wonder, what it would be like to capture more; what would be needed to capture more; what would change if it captured more. Life and death. A balance. It wanted both. - He looked over the Forest that had been his home for so long. For his entire life, in truth. There was a spear in his claws, a strip of leather holding smoked meat over his back, and a soul filled with curiosity in his chest. It was time to leave. For so long had he been a part of the scale-kin tribe¡ªthe kobold tribe, he knew, for that was what the Great Voice called them, and it was not to be disobeyed¡ªbut that time had come and passed. He wanted more than what it could provide. And he wanted to leave behind what was there. The other kobolds stared at him, wondering. There was reason behind it¡ªhe was the firstborn, the three of them; Rihsu, Chieftess, and him. But here he was, still a kobold, still unevolved, still unpowerful. Why had he not risen to their same heights? They didn''t know, and thus they stared, and he could only handle that for so long. So when the evolved, the chosen, descended to the promises of blue waters and deeper mana, he would be leaving alongside them. Not with them, for water was not where he would end up¡ªfire burned in his chest, distant but yearning. He wanted that more than the placid blue the Great Voice urged him to pursue, because he was born for the fire, with his scarlet scales and smoke-grey horns. That was where he belonged. And if the kobold tribe was destined for the water, then it was time for him to leave. So he looked once more over the Forest, over his old home, and slipped into the tunnels. With his unevolved height, he could slink down passages carved for lesser beasts; he slithered through on his stomach, horns catching on the rock above, claws scratching through soil to drag himself forward. Time passed, air growing heavy and pressing around him until he emerged into larger tunnels, into a world choked by darkness and the weight of uniformity. But this was still cold, not what he was looking for, and he knew there were greater prizes. So on he went. His food disappeared and he hunted for new prey, chittering, thin things that leapt at him with jagged claws and warbling cries¡ªhis spear was worn, carved over with shoddy designs of fire and volcanoes and distant draconic wings, but it held, and he defeated them. There was minimal meat beneath their chitinous shells, but he ate it, and felt the mana that poured through him. Fiercer than before. He kept moving. The tunnels faded away into one enormous room, though smaller than the Forest he had come from, with odd, fake trees made only of stone and moss. There was a presence here, something singing in the back of his mind, but he kept his spear up and claws tensed and ran through without even pausing to stop. Whatever was hunting for him didn''t have a chance to react until he was through. But past the tunnels was something new. A new world blossomed before him. It was impossibly large, the cavern so high overhead, and there was smoke in the air¡ªplants that exhaled grey clouds, entwining with stalactites like fangs, filled with the clamorous dissonance of thousands of flying creatures. He had seen them before, had slain the shrieking thing when it first entered the Forest, but this was more. Was different. He hadn''t seen these before. And beneath that were islands, almost in the way that the canals made islands by surrounding them in water, but instead there was air. A long, long way to fall instead of water to catch. No water. He liked it already. But he was not alone in liking it, because beyond the flying creatures overhead, there was something else present, running over the islands and to the far wall he could only see as a vague, fuzzy outline¡ªsomething that, however, saw him, and was coming closer. He tensed. A monster. It came to nearly his height, crouched on four legs¡ªauburn-red fur, so unlike scales, with bristling black-grey horns that could have mirrored his own. Smoke poured from its mouth with every exhale. Its eyes burned like sparks. A beast. A beast of fire. It stalked closer, claws scratching on the stone, eyes narrowed and locked onto him. A hungry thing, it looked like, and it moved in a hunt for sustenance. He didn''t know if its fangs could penetrate his scales or if he was even good food¡ªhe hoped not¡ªbut it was clearly willing to try. He was new to this land, to these Islands, but that didn''t matter as they stood there, watching each other. "Hello," he warbled, low and soothing. The monster snarled back, black fur over its spine raising, tail lashing behind. More smoke dripped from its jaws. And for the first time in a long, long while, since he had first thought of his plan with the rat to take down the invader, something sparked inside of him. He had been searching for a creature to work with; not in the manner from before, where he had merely thrown the rodents into combat and used them as distraction for his own attacks. No, he wanted companionship, a partnership; something where they worked together. And, as always, he wanted fire. The fire of his ancestry, of his hidden, distant past¡ªflames that reflected on his scarlet scales, on his grey-black horns. This was a beast of fire. You, he decided. You and I will become a team. Chapter 101 - Avoidance One of my eldest kobolds had made his way down to the Skylands. I perched overhead, a couple points of awareness swiveling in; he had been a conundrum, never quite as strong as Rihsu, never quite as leaderly as Chieftess, but powerful in his own right. But then he had abandoned his tribe and struck off on his own, which. Was certainly a choice? He hadn''t even evolved yet. But down he had gone, and I could respect that. Going solo meant he could move faster, beating the other kobolds who were still making their way through the tunnels of the Jungle Labyrinth¡ªwhich was interesting for other reasons, considering in a few hours they would be crossing paths with Rihsu, who was coming up to meet them¡ªand so was well on his way down. I didn''t think he''d be jumping down another floor, though. He was watching the scorch hound in front of him with a determination I''d never seen in him before. What was it with my kobolds and finding odd, wild missions to swear themselves toward? He was crouched before the scorch hound, one clawed hand extended, warbling something soft and crooned. The scorch hound was an intelligent beast, for all it¡ªshe, I noted¡ªwas an unevolved mammal, and she watched him with wary eyes as he tried to cajole her closer. He wasn''t even using food, the fool. She was a hungry thing, as with all of her pack. The Skylands weren''t built for her; while the size was right, and her long-legged gait carried her far and fast over the interconnected islands, there wasn''t enough prey for her size. That unfortunately familiar prickle of guilt settled in my core. I''d put her and her pack there because I''d wanted to use the schema, even knowing that I was going to switch the Skylands to a more storm-based floor, but it wasn''t built for her. Wasn''t set up so that she could hunt and thrive. But did I want to focus on helping her now, or just rush towards starting the fire-themed seventh floor? Being a dungeon core carried its own share of problems. I turned away from them for now, some vague reminder in the back of my mind to help them later, and turned back to what was more immediately interesting; the sixth floor. The sixth floor that was already filling up with a beautiful cast of characters, actually. Now that I had finished filling in the third room with coral, every new bit of mana I had to spare went towards creating prismatic dartfish; small, slender little things that changed colour in a riveting, rippling wave. Blue-orange-green-maroon-azure, spiraling throughout¡ªwith the plain cream-white of the coral below, I''d been needing some colour, and they were absolutely delivering. Mesmerizing in all the best ways. Not dangerous, really, given they were about a foot long and cowards at heart, but beautiful. I''d give them that. Certainly some of the prettier elements of my new floor. I mentally nudged one of the larger schools into more of a purple-violet-indigo effect and set them loose. They weren''t the last, though. With the coral in place, cream-white, I''d also thrown up a few curtains of bloodline kelp and green algae¡ªnot a lot, mind, because it was already so present on my others floors and I didn''t want this to become a boring copy of what had come before, but enough to serve as food for those that couldn''t nibble at the coral or dartfish. I''d provide some help for those that made the insipid little choice to stay vegetarians, the fools. Other creatures poured down, summoned by my mana''s siren call¡ªSeros had, with great delicacy and posturing, successfully moved my core down to the sixth floor, into a hollow I''d carved right over the den I''d made for the fledgling sea serpent. It hurt, in a weary sort of way, to leave my hoard room in the Skylands behind¡ªI''d worked for those artefacts, dammit¡ªbut I knew it had to be done. My coral needed to be fed with mana, and my dungeon functioned best when my core was on the lowest floor. And. Well. I was still keeping a very, very close eye over my hoard room, with the silver-covered walls awash in draconic runes to a god that no longer watched over me, to stolen¡ªwon¡ªswords and rings and staffs, to the delicate little patch of moonstar flowers that had grown two more buds, though they weren''t yet blooming. It was still my love and my beauty, but I had to descend deeper. Eventually, I''d appoint a proper guardian for it. Someone who wouldn''t move down when they evolved, so hopefully someone I could get the deity who became the Patron of said floor to appreciate them. That was why I didn''t make hoard rooms on every floor. It was actively the worst to say goodbye. I soothed that old draconic fury by peering back to my sixth floor. Of course the sea serpent was among the most ferocious of the new territory¡ªa proper beast in every sense of the word, coiling through the forest-reef of the third floor. He was still a fledgling, still young, but already he was a monster. No murky water to hide in so he swam deep and low, twining around the base of the great pillars of coral with his burnished silver frills extended and jaws wide. Near thirty feet long, sea-green scales catching every beam of quartz-light, golden eyes like lanterns in the deep water. Gods. What a glorious beast. I couldn''t wait until he shed the title of fledgling. Other interesting characters as well; a triggerfish who was doing his damnedest to make the entire second room his territory and failing miserably; a trio of roughwater sharks, swollen fat and strong with mana; a mated pair of greater crabs scuttling through the lagoon in search of a nest for eggs; a greater pigeon with wings spread wide and scarlet over her talons taking roost in a cloudsire palm. All wonderful little monsters. Including one lichenridge turtle from the Drowned Forest. She was an old thing, one of the originals from when I''d made the trap way back when¡ªbut she''d lived a stationary life on those pillars I''d made for her. It was odd to see her moving, honestly, but she''d followed my siren''s call and plodded her way through sandy canals and the murk of the Underlake to go to this deeper land. And no sooner had she emerged onto the floor, eyes blown wide in the face of her new home, before golden letters flitted their way across my awareness. I, who had definitely not been awaiting this message with gleeful anticipation, sank into my core to read it.
Your creature, a Lichenridge Turtle, is undergoing evolution! Please select your desired path. Reefback Turtle (Rare): Far above mere algae and moss, this creature welcomes all to root over their great shell. Swimming close to the sunlight, they house an army of loyal defenders as they support an ecosystem, creating new and fascinating strands of life. Snapjaw Turtle (Uncommon): From a beak of stone comes a beak of iron. There is little alive that can escape their feared bite, and most lose their tenuous hold on life if they attempt it. Slow and ponderous, they lurk in murky waters and claim all who stray too low. Discus Turtle (Uncommon): Only defense no longer, this creature grows jagged scales over their shell and large flippers to propel it forward¡ªone strike of their blade-esque back incapacitates if it doesn''t kill, and they are free to eat at their leisure.
Oho. Fascinating. Interestingly, though they weren''t outright labeled as it, I saw that only two of her proffered evolutions seemed in the sea turtle family¡ªthe reefback and discus. The snapjaw seemed more in line with her previous hunting strategy, though I absolutely adored the concept of such a ferocious bite. And reefback; it paired well with the lichen already growing over her back, but I wondered how well that would pair with the evolution. Coral, for all it looked like a plant, was a living thing, and my particular brand of it had a soul I hadn''t seen before. Would it be a mutualistic or parasitic relationship? And how did that play into creating new strands of life? The discus turtle¡ªI had a vague recollection that was a¡­ game for humans, involving throwing a sharpened circle for some inane reason¡ªwould be a fascinating beast to watch on my sixth floor. There was plenty of room and depth to build up speed, and most of my aquatic creatures, with the exception of Seros, kraits, and the sea serpent, tended to be on the slower side. Hm. I loved all the options, but choosing was always something that came with a level of annoyance. There was no way to guarantee that future lichenridge turtles would evolve with these same options, so there always lurked the threat that I''d never seen them again. Which. Unpleasant thought. What if I wanted all of them, thank you very much? One of my points of awareness twitched. There came a soft, whispered little hiss. A flicker of movement. A roughwater shark, some poor bastard who''d had the misfortune of swimming near Mayalle''s whirlpool, caught a harpoon through the skull. Ah, hells. Some combination of kelp-rope and water-attuned mana yanked the harpoon out of the shark''s corpse, spilling scarlet clouds through the water; it raced back to the cove entrance where, with a blistering fury, I could see shapes beyond. Merrow. Fucking merrow. They swam forward, emerging through the murk of the tunneled entrance; their finned tails cast flickering shadows, dressed in dried strands of kelp holding pouches and weapons and jewels, their white-ringed eyes broad and searching. With them came the deep, water-dark smell of the open ocean, currents tossed from alignment and waves lashing at the air¡ªseven of them, seven miserable, wretched little merrow sneaking their way into my Underlake. There was a certain relief, though. Nicau hadn''t reported back on the state of affairs in Calarata, and unless he had been captured¡ªwhich he better not be, I hadn''t given up mana regeneration just for his fumbling mortal self to fall prey to Lluc again¡ªhe hadn''t gotten back to me with a speed that suggested the pirates were gearing up for another mass invasion. Merrow, though? Handleable. Especially with only seven of them¡ªthough all rich with the flavour that spoke to their Silver-ranked mana¡ªand with my newfound strength. This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. A pity the sea serpent had already descended to the sixth floor, though. The seven of them fanned out, still tucked with the entrance for all Mayalle''s whirlpool was starting to tug them lovingly into the open water; three mages and four warriors, spaced with the familiarity that spoke of previous combat together. The one in the lead, a tall, muscled thing with twin harpoons just burning with water-attuned mana, swam forward, gaze fixed into my Underlake. She looked, to put it lightly, pissed. "We are here for Abarossa''s staff," the merrow snapped, her white-ringed eyes impossibly wide in the gloom of the Underlake. I couldn''t be positive if she was addressing her team or me. The message was received either way, though. That staff was starting to become an annoyingly repetitive issue. I didn''t know the entire politics of the merrow city¡ªArroyo, I believed it was? It had been a while since I''d consumed the souls of a merrow and some of their memories were getting fuzzy¡ªbut I was pretty sure there were Thirteen Priests of Arroyo, connected to the thirteen deities that¡­ led? sponsored? the merrow population. And the one who had made the brilliant, wonderful, much appreciated choice to blow a hole in my Underlake had been the Thirteenth Priestess, the youngest of the group, the most hungry to establish her rule. What better way to prove herself than by claiming a dungeon core? Well. I''d had several thoughts about that, and thusly stopped her. But in the process, I''d dissolved her staff to learn the diamond schema, and apparently the rest of the merrow had problems with that. I peered back into my core, tugging up the memory of the staff¡ªI could recreate it, I knew, but that deep, dungeon-dark part of me knew it wouldn''t be the same. There were some enchantments on the staff, some faint star-burn of a divine presence, that I couldn''t make. But I wanted to. Much like the necrotic ring and the rune-covered staff I had in my hoard room, I had a fine eye for enchantments, but no way to make them. Even if I recreated things with all the runes in place, there was no mana there, no blessings. How did I make those abilities? I wanted them. And maybe, if I figured it out, I could create a new Thirteenth Staff, and these bloody merrow would get off my godsdamn back. But that was not the case now. Seven of them, all Silver-ranked. When their apparent declaration went unanswered¡ªwhat, was I going to bring Veresai up here just to speak into their insipid little minds? It wasn''t like they could understand me anyway¡ªthey took that as an invitation and swept forward as one. A webbed fist summoned a wall of water to halt a triggerfish''s stone barrage, twin harpoons slashed through an approaching greater crab, an armourback sturgeon blocked a trident-strike with her scaled head; we were testing each other, sticking metaphorical claws into the fight without any blood behind it. They clearly knew what I was and Mayalle''s whirlpool kept them from retreating without having to turn their backs, so onward they charged. Two water-attuned mages and one with something deeper, flickering coin-gold over his webbed fingers, though I couldn''t see exactly what he was doing. Tridents, spears, harpoons fended off the endless barrage of roughwater sharks, proving once more why they were idiotic enough to have never reached the point of evolution as their corpses drifted to the sandy floor. A silver krait, still small and flashing in the quartz-light overhead, darted forward; she flew past the water shield and nipped her fangs into the back merrow''s tail. She wasn''t as agile as her predecessor and this merrow saw her do it, the numbing properties of her venom meaning nothing when her prey saw her inject it. A pity. Slightly less a pity as I absorbed the schema from her corpse after the merrow tore her head off, but still annoying. I tucked the knowledge of needle-thin fangs and dissolving venom away, but depending on how much mana it cost, I would absolutely be making a few for my sixth floor. Luminous constrictors could be such cowards. Even with all the information I''d shared, only a handful had made the jump to swim in the Underlake. Bastards. Did they not understand the beauty and power that came with being aquatic? This particular silver krait hadn''t necessarily shown that, given she was dead, but the merrow she''d bitten would die soon from her venom, and that was at least worth something. First kill, though it hadn''t happened yet. The merrow slid into the bloodline kelp forest, swallowed by amber-gold strands and flotation sacks; my points of awareness curled around them, watching curiously. They weren''t enough of a threat for me to call Seros nor re-widen the tunnel leading from the sixth floor for the sea serpent to come back, which was great, because there was not a godsdamn chance I was letting the merrow skip merrily past my Jungle Labyrinth and right into the floor housing my core. That was not so much a disaster as a massacre. Something I, decidedly, did not want. The bitten merrow had already started to slow down, tail jerking instead of flicking smoothly; but he''d noticed the bite and thus diagnosed himself correctly, the bastard. Fumbling at his sides, he pulled a piece of rose quartz¡ªof course¡ªoff the kelp-strands wrapped around his body and pressed it to the wound, coiling ropes of venom tugging themselves out. The absolute bastard. Didn''t matter much as a trio of roughwater sharks came through in a surprise charge and took neat advantage of his distraction. The raid-frenzy kept them hungry and vicious even as they vivisected him, the merrow spinning around; but in the crowded depths of the bloodline kelp forest, they couldn''t see exactly what was happening, and their once-neat coordination shattered. Beautiful. Two of the mages banded together, warriors slipping away as more and more bodies moved through the kelp; one with a trident got separated, spinning with high, rhythmic clicks from her tongue, some sort of underwater summoning cry. She certainly summoned something. The royal silvertooth¡ªhe''d been acting strange recently, bashing his face instead stone to try and knock fangs out, or something¡ªswept forward, all red eyes and streamlined fins; with a flick of his tail he activated the blood-frenzy for his school, and it was truly over for that lone merrow before she''d even had a chance to react. More creatures came to the call of blood and sensation of my interest; they swept in as the merrow started to fall apart, clearly unprepared for the close quarters that the bloodline kelp forest forced. The sarco awoke from her sunning rock, slipping into the water with a beastly crash and immediately shooting forward; her eyes latched onto one mage drifted away from his team, at the edge of the kelp. He did his little magic routine again, that mystery attunement, and his gaze snapped to the back of the Underlake, where the tunnel would extend down a floor. Her thoughts coated themselves in hunger. I had other ideas, though. Hold, I murmured. Kill the others. Let that one pass. Was it a stupid thing to do? Most assuredly. But I had made this strategy what felt like years ago, and I was determined to see if it worked. The sarco hissed, bubbles filtering through her fangs. She was a vicious thing, moreso than her predecessor; while he had been angry and snapping, he had been ultimately content. She fought like she had something to prove. Which was something I could get behind. But still she listened to me, pulling away from the green-scaled merrow; her gaze landed on the water mage who had led the charge, tail thrashing, and the little fool had all of a second to understand she was the new target before the sarco charged. That merrow with the coin-gold magic slunk forward, seemingly convinced his stealth was simply so great I hadn''t noticed him, abandoning the rest of his team¡ªmaybe they hadn''t been as close as I''d thought¡ªand broke free from the kelp, darting through the rest of the floor with as much haste as he could get from his sea-foam green tail. A few greater crabs snapped at him, armourback sturgeons watching warily, but the majority of the action was still back in the bloodline kelp and his path was relatively clear. I was also helping with that. Three merrows left, two¡ªone of the warriors got stabbed with her own trident as a mimic jellyfish''s stinging tendrils caused her to fumble, ouch¡ªbut he swam onward without hesitation. Up through the winding path until he arrived at the end of the Underlake, to the water-dark den at the top where the sarco rested. Where the tunnel to a deeper floor sat. Whatever attunement he had was clearly something guiding, because without hesitation he swam upward, breaching the surface of the water with a whistling gasp¡ªhis eyes, white-ringed and flashing, arrowed onto the tunnel. I got the steadfast enjoyment of watching him visibly swallow. What, did he think I limited myself to only aquatic floors? I was hardly so one-dimensional. But I gave him credit; he swam forward, bracing his forearms on the stone, and hauled himself up. And up. His tail lashed at the air, water droplets scattered like falling stars, as he pulled himself out of the Underlake. But instead of landing on the stone in an ungainly pile of limbs not made for terrestrial movement, he instead climbed into the air and started swimming. Um. Was that. Could all merrow do that? The fuck? It was an inelegant, uncoordinated mess of movement; mana so thick and bright it actively buzzed floated around him, all of his concentration clearly poured into the technique, but that beautiful dry environment I''d shaped meant nothing as he levitated above it. I already knew merrow could breathe air so that didn''t surprise me, but everything else certainly did. You know, I''d really thought my merrow problems were over with the Jungle Labyrinth. Add one non-aquatic floor and stump all merfolk from ever making their way down. In much the same way that sufficiently-powerful adventurers could use mana to augment their breathing and thus could go through my Underlake without drowning, it looked like I wouldn''t be able to so easily avoid my problems. But I wanted to. This was beyond infuriating. Points of awareness by the hundreds swarmed over him, analyzing the technique as best I could¡ªit looked like he simply diffused his own mana, filling the air with as much of it as he could summon, and then used that to support him. Extremely high cost and difficult to master, but he didn''t need to master it to move. Even the basics were enough. The godsdamn bastard. Who did he think he was? It made sense I hadn''t seen it before, though. These were the first Silver-ranked merrow I''d seen, and this absolutely wasn''t on the level of Bronze. Maybe someone ranked Gold could do it as easily as adventurers could hold their breath, though I doubted it ever wouldn''t be a draining tactic. But still he floated in the air, fists clenched and rippling with coin-gold mana, and with a slow flick of his tail, he started to drift forward. Just a shame that all of his attention was dedicated to levitation, because my Jungle Labyrinth was not so forgiving. He made it several hundred feet, the pressing darkness seemingly unaffecting him¡ªthey were used to dark waters, that made sense¡ªbefore he reached a patch that was heavily overgrown. Thornwhip algae coated the walls, shivering, and sensed prey. And for all he could use his mana to levitate himself, he couldn''t switch from that to defend himself fast enough. An arm lashed around his back, ridged blades tearing at his scales; he made an odd, warbling bark of surprise, mana spilling from his lips, and lost his focus. He fell to the ground, razorleaf lichen shredding his tail, and his hoarse shout caught even the shardunner spiders'' attention. Didn''t matter much as the thornwhip algae enveloped him before they could even begin to get off their iron-shaped webs. The algae was a vicious, hungry thing, choking the life out of him with its jagged whips; he fought back with great spiraling blasts of mana, scorching the green with something like the sun''s radiance, but for every arm he rotted away there were dozens to take its place. More and more blood spilled, blooming over the tunnel, and I perched overhead with grim satisfaction as he slumped more and more until he stopped moving entirely. Fantastic. Terrifying, because I''d thought he never would have made it this far, but he''d still been stopped. A point to think of, though. I''d been blindsided when adventurers had used mana to hold their breath and traverse through my Underlake; I had, rather na?vely, thought that the water would stop them altogether. Such cheap tricks wouldn''t keep proficient adventurers out, and neither would terrestrial floors keep merrow out. But frankly, if they were that limited in their movement, I still wasn''t too scared of them. I dissolved his corpse into motes of brilliant gold, consuming; oh, it had been a sunlight-attunement to his mana? I''d never seen that before, but he used it for sight and warmth. Useful in an aquatic setting, it seemed. The other six merrow were dead as well, though they''d taken down dozens of my creatures with them. They''d tried to flee right at the end, understanding they were a touch out of their depth, but Mayalle''s lovely whirlpool had rather removed that option. Glorious thing, that. Another successful invasion. Wonderful. More mana for me, plenty to create some silver kraits for the sixth floor and more prismatic dartfish, and I had once more proven the might of my floors. And I still had to pick that snapping turtle evolution. All in all, I was rather pleased with today. Chapter 102 - Long Way Down In the end, however, I had to make a decision for the turtle''s evolution. And my decision was made by one single thought¡ªnew and fascinating strands of life. Now, as a dungeon core, I had a certain level of pride in my ability to create life. To weave together strands of mana until creatures emerged on the other side; one of my finer features, if I happened to say so myself. Even as a sea-drake, I had been limited to my form alone, no others around me. Not that I''d needed others, mind. I had been plenty strong. But now I filled my halls with creatures beyond counting, and some little schema was telling me it had powers in a similar vein. I doubted it was true creation, or even anything similar, but rather an¡­ adaptation, in a way? Creatures that lived on the reefback turtle''s shell could be adapted to live there, to provide defense and offense, to live in harmony. Maybe they would be minor changes, like switching colours to better match the reefback turtle''s palette? Or full changes, in a symbiotic relationship like the moss and lichen from before? Who knew. But it was a fascinating question¡ªand thusly I curled around the lichenridge turtle, guiding her slow, fumbling movements through the water to the lagoon, where she could curl up and avoid larger predators. In the depths, some ten feet deep, she looked like a boulder beneath the crystal blue waters. There I selected reefback turtle. She disappeared under a pale glow, her thoughts softening out in a vague idea of change and the impression of rolling blue seas with white sands. What a little delight¡ªshe knew exactly what her new home held for her. Her schema spoke of carrying full ecosystems on her back, swimming close to sunlight¡ªor quartz-light, in my case¡ªto give them nourishment. And. I wasn''t one to particularly hedge my bets, since there was always a chance to be proven wrong and that was simply not allowed to occur, but still, the thought lingered. Because carrying ecosystems on your back was many, many steps away, but still did I know of the world-holding turtles, enormous beings almost beyond comprehension, with full islands or even continents adrift through the sea by their mighty power. Were they around today? Unlikely. Even in the aftermath of the Dead War, where much of what was known had been destroyed and the new countries were young, squabbling things fighting over the scraps of empires crushed under the weight of the War, it was difficult for whole islands to come and go without being noticed. And I, as the greatest sea-drake, would certainly have noticed if some turtle thinking itself a landmass had meandered onto my territory. But they had existed, and that meant, much like the terror-beast that fed on dragons of ages past, I could recreate them. I curled a few more points of awareness around the evolving turtle and slipped back to the rest of my floors. More creatures kept spilling into my lovely coral reefs; prismatic dartfish in glimmering, billowing clouds, but also as young fry, lurking in the lagoon and terrified of all shadows. Roughwater sharks, far too brutish to ever survive long enough to evolve in the Underlake, now prowled overhead with an elegance to their movements that hadn''t been there before. Greater crabs, ungainly in new waters, scuttled over capturing coral reefs with pincers outstretched. Lovely, lovely, lovely. I hadn''t yet decided on a name for them¡ªanytime I tried, I ended up with something that only described one of the rooms, rather than them all. A curious problem. It could be interesting work, be a dungeon core. Little difficulties like that. But soon there would be new creatures on this floor, as shown by the parade happening up in the midst of the Jungle Labyrinth. All two dozen freshly evolved kobolds had finally made it past the Underlake, even with their terrible swimming abilities. Red scales and all, they were undoubtedly fire-drake descendants, the fools. It had been almost painful watching them flounder through the Underlake. How hard could it possibly be to figure out swimming? But still they had made it, shaking themselves as water sprayed off their scales, the shamans making annoyed warbles as their crown of feathers were soaked through. I hoped they''d get used to that, considering the lagoon was incredibly full of water. And that wasn''t all, because as the dozen and a half kobolds picked themselves up and made plans to continue delving deeper, something else emerged from the Jungle Labyrinth. Tall, lean, with violet scales and twisting horns, Rihsu peered through the darkness. Ever the leader, Chieftess marched to the front of her group, ready to engage whatever threat was coming to attack her people, before she seemingly recognized who was in front of her. Chieftess and Rihsu stared at each other. Rihsu was the larger of the two, lean and powerful with deep maroon scales, but the Chieftess was more lizard-esque, with blood-red scales, charcoal spines down her back, and eyes gold like an arrow''s fletching. Both were far different from the squalling little kobolds that had first come to existence in my halls. I poked into both their heads, examining their thoughts. Which were particularly flavourful, in a way. Chieftess knew Rihsu, admired her strength, but she had evolved as well¡ªthey were on more even footing, and she didn''t know what to expect from Rihsu now. With her tribe, though much reduced in number, behind her, she was prepared to fight if it came to that. Rihsu, on the other hand, was mostly confused. She had noticed something changing, which was why she had come to these higher floors, and here she had found the shift. She was no longer the strongest of the kobolds. And she was not particularly pleased at that fact. Her eyes narrowed to slits, the webbing between her claws flexing as she brought them up to her sides; Chieftess stiffened as Rihsu uncoiled, ready to attack, ready to prove herself¨C Not happening. My mana burned and coiled between them, lashing out in great billowing waves; a tangible air barrier snapped into existence between the lot, a horrible, inefficient use of mana, but it did the job. Rihsu snarled as her claws bounced off, the air straining to hold her back. As much as I loved watching my creatures fight and grow stronger, I wouldn''t be having these two go off and murder each other. Chieftess needed to lead her tribe and Seros needed Rihsu as a follower. And, more importantly, I had a task for her. I poked my way into her skull, extending tendrils of mana; it should be simple enough to tell her my instructions, to get this all wrapped up¨C Hm. I pushed a little harder. Nothing happened. It had been such a pleasant day I''d almost forgotten that Rihsu had sworn herself away from me. I could still read her thoughts, somewhat, but even now I couldn''t tell nearly as much as I could from Chieftess. Just a lingering sense as opposed to proper thoughts. And I couldn''t instruct her. Why had I allowed her to live, again? But it was, at least, not an unsolvable problem. I reached deep through my soul, through the Otherworld connection that sang endlessly with a crooning tune, and summoned my eldest Named creature. After only a minute, Seros emerged from the tunnels. He arose like a beast of old, droplets shimmering over his scales, frills extended and eyes burning through the dark. I, quite neatly, had overlaid the previous interaction in his head so he knew what he was coming into, and his gaze was fixed on Rihsu. His claws tore deep into the limestone as he arrived, and mist steamed off his scales¡ªoh, was that hydrokinesis? Was he purposely creating mist to look more impressive? He was more draconic by the day¡ªand even Chieftess averted her eyes. She needs to guide them down, I whispered through our connection. It wasn''t technically true¡ªChieftess could find her own way to the sixth floor, but I preferred this. Rihsu could help train the other kobold warriors and they could teach her more about tools and strategy. It wasn''t looking to be an alliance, judging by Rihsu''s reaction to the other kobolds, but it could at least be a truce. Seros nodded, striding forward until he was closer. He towered over them both, horns arched primly in. He extended the frills trailing down his neck and something¨C something moved in the halls, something deep and old, blanketing the air around them like a physical presence. Rihsu dropped to a bow, head lowered, tail going perfectly still. She hardly dared breathe. Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit. I, with only a small amount of smugness, sprawled overhead with all my points of awareness. Even if she wouldn''t listen to me, on account of swearing her soul to another, the one she had sworn to was still listening to me. Though it took a bit of roundabout communication, my orders would still go through. Seros was a kinder being than I had been as a dragon, though. After a moment, he let up on his gravitas, the pressure disappearing from Rihsu''s back, her tail beginning to move again even as she kept her head lowered. A dragon''s presence was a fickle thing. Dragon-fear was known and feared, and it wasn''t based on nothing; it was a true, physical power that seized at the heart and tore at the confidence. Then there was dragon-awe, a speechless wonder beyond clouds and stars; dragon-courage, where the weak became mighty and the mighty became gods; dragon-fury, in which cities burned and coastlines crumbled; and a whole other slew of emotions that were so powerful they could only be called draconic. That was due to gravitas. Dragons carried a certain¡­ weight around the world with them. Something heavy and ancient, older than the being that commanded it; and here, Seros had found what small scrap he could summon in this form. Not for everyone, hardly even a prickle, but for Rihsu, his sworn follower, she felt it. So now she bowed in apology and awe. Message received. Seros stepped back, giving her room to function, and Rihsu clambered back onto her claws. She warbled something low in her throat, horns raised high and proud, but she would obey Seros¡ªand me, though she didn''t know it. Chieftess stepped forward, claws curling like she wanted to hold a staff but had none, and inclined her head. A leader to a warrior. Rihsu''s forked tongue lashed behind her lips, but she turned on her heel and started the long march down to the sixth floor, to the lagoon that would be the kobolds new home. Not Rihsu''s home, if her little display today hadn''t made it abundantly clear she had no interest in rejoining her old tribe, but for Chieftess and her followers. A little rivalry would be good for them. Rihsu hadn''t been pushed in a while, and I was curious how she would respond to this. But for now, she led them down, cutting through the endless identical tunnels with the confidence that training her for weeks had granted her. She knew the way, and though these kobolds would likely never have a reason to rise above the sixth floor, they would at least have a chance at making it through themselves. Maybe. I had worked very hard on making the Jungle Labyrinth as confusing as possible. If they could at least struggle a little, that would be very appreciated for my ego. But with Seros here, there was one more task I had for him. His thoughts drifted towards curiosity as I instructed him to head up to the Drowned Forest, but he slipped into the Underlake with nary a splash. The armoured jawfish snapped at him but he directed the currents to spiral up, emerging into the canals and poking his head up, swimming through with brief lashes of his finned tail to propel him forth with a speed none of my other creatures could manage. He pulled himself onto shore in the first room of the second floor, shaking water droplets off his scales, and turned to face the creature that had come charging the instant she had felt someone approaching her Ancestral Tree. All jagged claws and slavering fangs and pure white eyes, the vampiric dryad crept through the halls of my Drowned Forest. Already she had encountered a kobold hunting party, and alongside her crimson-bark protection over her skin, several scales had been stuck there like some kind of grisly trophy. She had slain the kobolds then dragged the corpses back to her Ancestral Tree, letting them bleed over the roots, and consuming only the last drops for herself. Not a terribly effective system, considering she was doing all the work and needed more sustenance, but her thoughts were full of only feverish devotion and I doubt I could have convinced her otherwise. The Tree got the majority. And now I had to convince her to let me move said Tree. Which. She was a sentient race, there was no doubt about that, but she lacked the certain¡­ elegance that led to sapience. On her way, certainly, but not there yet. Which made reasoning with her particularly irritating. Safe, I crooned, again, like I could just keep doing it and eventually it''d get through her idiotic skull. Here, unsafe. Need distance from opening. Her pure white eyes flicked to the entrance of the floor¡ªthe entrance in which her Ancestral Tree sat, a whole whopping one floor from where adventurers could enter. She, the dryad, could live and die without consequence; but if the Tree was attacked, they both went down. So, for all that the Drowned Forest was the perfect hunting grounds, the Tree could no longer be there. And besides, the dryad was free to travel however she wished. I just needed to move the Tree. Move down, I said. More prey beneath. More blood. She snarled wordlessly at the nearest wall, like I was just crouched behind it like some gremlin. Very rude. Seros stepped forward, tail flicking from side to side as his frills extended. His lanturn-esque eyes burned beneath the quartz-light. He rumbled something that echoed through his chest¡ªsomething convincing, or at least what he thought was¡ªand inclined his head down. My little diplomat. There was a reason I had Named him. The back-and-forth went on for a while, the dryad hissing objections that mostly boiled down to I don''t want you near my Tree and Seros arguing that they had a vested interest in keeping her Tree alive, me poking my own opinion in to show her brilliant images of the lagoon and the other trees growing throughout the atole. A paradise. Then I hammered home all the various tunnels that she could use to go to other floors, and have access to ample amounts of blood. She hissed, claws flexing, but eventually nodded. Begrudgingly. Frustratingly. With ample amounts of anger. Such a wonderful creature. That stubbornness would carry her far, just so long as I didn''t have to keep fighting it. Seros rumbled, then walked closer to her Tree. She hovered beside him, fangs drooling sap, every thought like a lightning bolt of watching him. Not a single branch would be bent by Seros or she would kill him. Well, she could certainly try, but a draconic monitor would not be felled so easily. My mana sunk into the limestone, loosening it in sprays of dirt and silt; the vampiric mangrove shuddered as its roots were pried free, leaves shaking, and Seros shuffled closer until he was right beneath it. The tree wasn''t too tall, only twenty feet or so and identical to a regular vampiric mangrove¡ªlikely a hidden method to protect it in its dryadic infancy, to keep pillagers from finding it before it could properly defend itself¡ªwith a thin trunk and not too much weight to it. Which was why my plan would work. I was, admittedly, a little apologetic¡ªSeros had just started to come into his own as a proper beast of the world, a tangible presence on Aiqith, and I was making him do manual labour like some common beast of burden. Not, ah, particularly draconic. But it was important. So on I urged him, singing through our soul''s shared connection, and with bared fangs and talons that dug through the stone, Seros managed to haul the bulk of the Tree onto his back. The dryad chittered angrily on the sidelines. It wasn''t elegant nor sightful; he had settled the trunk over the spines on his back, which meant the pure white leaves stuck out over his head like an elderly bird''s crest and thorned roots dragged alongside his tail, kicking up spurs of dirt. Seros, for his part, bore it silently¡ªat least on the outside. His soul sang a song of irritation loud enough I was surprised the dryad couldn''t hear it. But he understood the importance, so, hefting the trunk over his back and every frill trembling with the effort, Seros started to trudge his way down. My mana¡ªalmost half full, I''d been saving for this particular event¡ªate into the surrounding limestone and made a tunnel for him, carving away until it was wide enough for him to pass through. Immediately afterward, I regrew the limestone and added some jagged stalactites for good measure; it was not to be an open pathway. Just for Seros to make it through with his precious burden. Well, Seros and the vampiric dryad, who stalked at his heels like a winterwolf. Her fangs stayed bared, dripping sap like saliva, but she understood the message I''d crammed into her skull and didn''t attack. Just loomed behind him like a vengeful ghost. A mite protective, her. Useful in every other circumstance except that which I had to challenge. One day I would have to move her Ancestral Tree again, considering the reefs were not necessarily made for her and this was not the prime hunting grounds for someone of her strength, but that would be in the far off future. And, I imagined, it would be the last time I was able to move her. Trees were, by their nature, rather stationary things, and it was only through my cradling mana that the Tree would be surviving this journey. If they kept evolving, it would soon reach a point where I could no longer move it while keeping them both alive. Seros lumbered past the Underlake, emerging into the choking tunnels of the fourth floor. He had to slither low on his haunches and I had to soothe the insipid mind of the thornwhip algae to not attack him or the dryad, but they made it through with only relatively few lost leaves and twisted thorns. The Skylands were much the same; every beast froze to watch the progression, even that faux beast-tamer kobold with the scorching hound he still hadn''t managed to convince onto his side, and Seros managed to raise his head proudly even with a full tree''s weight resting on it. The dryad, for her part, just hissed. Most creatures backed away after that. But then they emerged onto the sixth floor, with crystal waters and diamond sands, distant rooms echoing with the haunting cries of greater pigeons and the lash of waves kicked up by cloudskipper wisps. A hungry place, one with no lack of both food and those that desired it. Hm. That flowed nicely. Seros slipped into the water, his hydrokinesis keeping him and the Tree well above the surface as they glided through. The dryad snarled, pacing on the edge, before diving in herself; her crimson-plate bark armour protected her from getting too waterlogged, and she swam with awkward, slashing movements of her jagged limbs. Not an elegant creature, she, but an efficient one. With Seros'' mighty burden, she almost managed to beat him to the lagoon. The lagoon in which I''d raised a very special island. Right at the center of the atole, not in front of the kobold den but in the furthest section back of the second room, an island with nothing on it. A wide, sprawling island, built onto a coral reef like the rest of the atole, with room to grow and spread and conquer. It was this island that Seros hauled himself up on, claws sinking into the pure white sand. My mana reached out and collapsed a hole before him, intermixing soil alongside the sand, carving openings for water to run through the roots instead of choking it off in only land. Still a mangrove, even if the dryad had switched from whatever its other path would have been. So Seros rumbled, deep and low in his chest, and shifted to the side until the Tree fell, with a thump, into the hole. With shaking, shuddering branches, the Ancestral Tree sank into its new home. Perhaps it was my imagination, but the vampiric mangroves and cloudsire palms nearby seemed to react, a slight twitch of their branches in a breeze not strong enough to manifest it. There was no Rhoborh''s boon here, no symbiosis connecting them as one, but it felt similar to how a rabbit always knew if a fox was nearby. A predator unleashed in a room of prey. They didn''t have blood, but they had sap, and perhaps the dryad would find a taste for that as well. But either way, the Ancestral Tree took root in the Hungering Reef, and the dryad set out to hunt anew. Chapter 103 - Built Character Emerging from the caves was a little, though not a lot, like getting slapped in the face. Sunlight, actual sunlight, warm and golden streamed over him as Nicau stepped out of the cove entrance; the invasion had widened it so he no longer had to stoop to leave, nor crawl on his stomach like Romei all those months ago. Now he could just casually walk out. A casual walking out that was quickly waylaid, as he was not the only one there. Swallowing a cuss that would have melted stone, Nicau skittered over to the side, one hand keeping his surcoat wrapped around him and another helping the shadowthief rat keep her balance on his shoulder; she squeaked as he threw himself around the side of an enormous boulder, one knocked loose form the Al¨®mbra Mountains, and pressed himself flat to the other side. His breath whistled through his teeth. Why, in all gods, were there so many people here? He''d only gotten a glance before his more rational sense had deciphered he shouldn''t be seen and thus had fled before he could, but there had been dozens of people, none he recognized, wearing grey tunics pulled back and with mana sparking over their hands. He''d seen piles of wood and stone, stacked against the pebbled beach, and he could have sworn the docks from Calarata were connecting to this edge of the cove, a direct walkway to the dungeon''s entrance, which. Bad. It looked like he wouldn''t have to go very far to find answers, at least. Feeling very un-heroic, Nicau peeked over the top of the boulder; there were mages, wearing the grey-brown cloaks that spoke of construction; building something, then. The docks from the cove extended over the pebbled beach, reaching far against the cove, and he could see foundations of some building, large and sprawling, next to the mountain''s base proper. Something that was planned, worked on, and much too close to the dungeon. There had been fifty invaders, and then nothing since. It looked like he had found the what, but he needed the why. Nicau swallowed a little hesitantly. Suddenly, all his finery felt less like a disguise and more like a hindrance. If he marched all proud out into the opening, there was no direction he could have come except the jungle, which would bring questions; or the dungeon itself, which would bring even more questions. But he had to figure out what was happening here. And then meant he somehow had to get out in the open without being suspicious. Which. Nicau wasn''t a big fan of the odds there. He needed something to do, some task to make him look busy and like he belonged¨C There. In the shadows by the construction, a wisp of a girl crouched, eyes pale and focused. Maybe a pigeoncatcher, maybe an adventitious thief; but a streetrat, someone who had been watching the situation. Nicau, for all he was wearing the clothes of a noble, didn''t have a godsdamn clue how to talk to them. He''d blow his cover immediately. But a fellow streetrat? That was familiar territory. He waited with bated breath¡ªone of the construction mages flickered, the pile of wood he''d been growing shrinking back to its original size, and plethora of curses filled the air. The other mages turned to face him, barking their own complaints, and just enough of them turned away from the cavern entrance that Nicau slipped out from around the boulder and not-quite-fled over to the construction site. His coat flared around his calves, Calarata''s blazing sun catching on the high collar and wind trailing through his shirt. The impressive figure was somewhat ruined when he nearly tripped over his not-yet-broken-in boots, and Nicau''s lacking height didn''t exactly make for a bold silhouette; but compared to the streetrat crouched in the shadows, he must have looked intimidating indeed. Or, at least he guessed, judging by how her eyes widened when he walked towards her. She straightened, emerging from the shadows; her clothes were rags around her, shoulders curled in, eyes flighty and skin loved by the sun. Younger than him, maybe, with the gauntness that came from the streets; but clever. Sharp. She watched him with a wariness that spoke to survival. Nicau, who had perhaps not thought this out as well as he should have, came to a stop before her and fumbled, quite unelegantly, for something to say. "What are they making?" She stared at him. "Sir," she said, a touch hesitantly, and oh was that weird to hear addressing himself. "What''re you meanin''?" Fair question. Intensely fair question. Nicau busied himself with adjusting his collar. "The mages," he said, and tried to push some aristocratic tinge to his voice. Or at least deepen it to sound older, despite how he was practically the same height as the streetrat even in his boots. "They''re building something. What?" Her eyes had that caged dog look to them, wondering why he was asking and why he was asking her, but in Calarata it didn''t bode well to ignore questions of those more powerful than you, and Nicau certainly looked important. Maybe. He hoped. Her gaze flicked, a little slowly, to his shoulder. Or who was on his shoulder. Oh. He''d, uh, kind of forgotten she was there. The shadowthief rat was nothing if not a performer, though. She rose to her back paws, silvertine fur catching in the sunlight, and squeaked, a high, cheery little note. Her barbed tail curled neatly over her paws as she braced herself against Nicau''s head, peering at the streetrat with wide black eyes. A proper charmer. Nicau still wasn''t quite sure why the dungeon had made him bring the rat, but it was looking like she was a better actor than him. Maybe she would help him blend in better. "An Adventuring Guild, sir," she said, all soft and low with an underbite of awe. And it was deserved¡ªa Guild. Calarata had none, not even a Traveler''s Guild; they were synonymous with rules and regulations and all the fettering things Le¨®ro stood for. But they were also about adventures, and the prizes that came with that. "A Guild," Nicau echoed, more than a little off-balance. If they were making one¡ªand they were making one here¡ªthere was really only one thing they were making it for. The dungeon, it seemed, had been properly unearthed. "The Dread Crew''s doing?" There. Properly intelligent and not like he was able to panic. He was quite proud of himself. Her eyes sharpened, flicking over him¡ªright, if he knew of the Dread Crew, then he must have been from Calarata, and thus should know about the Adventuring Guild. But, ah. He didn''t. It was really quite inconvenient spending most of his time living in a dungeon. He''d never be sad that his life was spared, but it did cause many problems. "The Dread Pirate''s makin'' it," she said. "With First Mate Lluc being the Guildmaster. Only way anyone''s allowed in the dungeon now." Hm. Fascinating. Really great to hear her say dungeon so openly. Nicau loved that. So that was what the Guild was for, then. If these mages were hired by Lluc, that meant he was likely going to be around here often, and Nicau''s cover was a little closer to being blown. Several of the construction mages glanced at him, brows furrowed but because he was talking to the streetrat and dressed in such nice clothes, he doubted they suspected he had come from the dungeon. Hopefully. Maybe. Nicau had his Name and the mana that coiled through his voice, but he was only faking at being strong; he certainly wasn''t. If they wanted to attack him, it could go, to put it politely, very bad for him. So. Avoiding that was very much the plan. He tilted his head down¡ªterrible idea, he was already short, why was he doing this¡ªand fixed the mages with a curious sort of look, as if wondering why they were paying attention to him. As one, they turned back to their world. Thank the gods. He turned back to the streetrat, eyebrows raising in an expression he hoped was interested. "And what happens when it opens?" She dithered for a second. "Said we''ll be allowed to delve it." Her feet shifted. "''course, with taxes ''n all that. But we can go in and¨C" something longing took over her voice, drifting away in fantasy. "Said we can try for the core." Oh. Oh, Nicau didn''t like that. A Guild was bad enough¡ªfor all Nicau didn''t understand the finer details, he got the gist¡ªbut attempts on the core were worse. Infinitely worse. Really, truly, awfully worse. "Everyone''ll want it," he murmured. "Desperados, Dread Crew hopefuls, traveling adventurers¡ªthey''ll all make attempts." That was, perhaps, the worst-case scenario, but also a very likely one. Bad combo. "What ''bout you?" She asked, curiosity enough to break past whatever delicacy she was taking with treating him. "What are you?" And. Ah. An interesting question, that. He had a plethora of answers¡ªpigeoncatcher, thief, runaway, murderer, orphan, streetrat, wanderer, stowaway¡ªbut that wasn''t who he was, here. Now, with his deep blue surcoat and high leather boots, he wasn''t that. He was something else. And he got to decide what. Nicau was, amongst many things, not a great liar, but he didn''t have to be a liar for this. Not the full truth, because dungeonborn would bring up a lot of questions that would lead him back to Lluc, but a partial one. Something he could be proud of. Well. He was of Calarata¡ªborn to its grey-stone streets and high-rise buildings, to the open-air markets and waterfront taverns. They weren''t the Le¨®ro Kingdom, weren''t part of that collection of city-states with a crowning Citadel, all of their rules and regulations and taxes and tariffs. He wasn''t that, and Calarata wasn''t that, and when you were from Calarata, of Calarata, there was really only one thing to be. "Pirate," he said, and his grin didn''t feel fake, this time. A pirate. Perhaps he was. The shadowthief rat squeaked again, tail curling around his neck and little paws braced on his collar. Not a pirate''s parrot, but close enough. Certainly distinctive. He''d gotten the answers he needed¡ªat least in part¡ªbut his mission wasn''t done. And the longer he spent talking to one person, the more he risked slipping up in one way or another. No need to tell the streetrat his name, not with Lluc aware of his existence, but he wouldn''t mind her remembering him. Potential help in the future, if she stayed around the construction site or even made an attempt on the dungeon. His pockets jingled. Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. "A pittance for your help," he said, in what he thought was a rather magnanimous tone. Then he pulled a copper coin from his pocket and flipped it to her; nearly fucked the flip up, actually, but she snatched it out of the air regardless. As a pigeoncatcher, that money would have fed him for a week. And now he could afford to make himself seem valuable, seem important, by just tossing it away for free. She looked between him and the coin clutched in her hand, eyes wide, almost awestruck. Pity was not a common thing in Calarata, and receiving coin even less so¡ªa way that his story could spread, and with the curl of magic he displayed while talking, hopefully it would be more of an appreciative type, rather than the mug-him-in-the-back-alley type. Hopefully. But there wasn''t time to worry about such things. So Nicau nodded in what he hoped came across as an unbothered, lackadaisy man, and turned away from her, making for the center of Calarata. - The open-air markets were perhaps one of the most well-known elements of Calarata. Because sure, there were markets elsewhere¡ªhe could go to any city-state of Le¨®ro and find one, blistering beneath the sun, spend every copper he''d ever had and walk away with fat pockets and a full stomach. But that was in Le¨®ro, where they had hard limitations on what could be sold, and in what quantity, and what the price had to be, and how to organize it. In Calarata, there was no such thing. Nicau strolled past a stall with an open fire at the hearth, kebabs covered in sizzling vegetables and meat to his left, and on his right was a woman with a wide grin only half filled with teeth proudly showing off a collection of icetouch adders, hissing and snarling within the iron bars of their cages. A man with air-attuned mana flickering over his fingers levitated an array of jewels, quartz-bright and topaz glimmering, next to someone hawking all the elaborate enchantments her weapons had. In Le¨®ro, the vast majority would be illegal, and the other half would result in a quick trip to the executioners. In Calarata, they were normal. Nicau kept his hands and arms tucked very close to his sides¡ªCalarata tended to carry more than its fair share of pickpockets, even though there were no qualms against murdering whoever tried to take your hard-earned money¡ªand tried his very best to look like he belonged. He''d been here before, of course, wandering the edges and fantasizing over all he could purchase if he joined the Dread Crew, but never going in. Never having any sort of power. But now, with a deep blue coat and grey trousers and leather boots that clicked exceptionally nicely against the cobbled streets, Nicau looked like he belonged, and he was going to show it. He''d gathered information on the Adventuring Guild, enough to bring back to the dungeon, but the last time it had wanted more things for it to create, and it had given him all the money he could ever want to obtain them. Not too much, though. Nicau was slipping somewhat under the radar here; his clothing was extravagant but local, not foreign, and he was speaking with a proper Calaratan accent. So while people would look at him and see a pirate, that would change if he walked out surrounded by an entourage of a dozen magical creatures and weapons and plants, especially since he had to haul them all back to the dungeon without being seen. So he''d buy the best few he could find and focus on spreading a touch of reputation instead. Something that could build up so by the next time he came back, he could buy more without people looking at him twice. It was odd, really, how fast he''d adjusted to serving the dungeon. Nicau shook the thought from his head and marched forward. He spent two copper on a painfully expensive bowl, stuffed high with rice coloured black with squid ink and interlaced with various braised sea creatures. It was heavenly. He''d never be able to go back to the kobold''s barely cooked meat after this. His rat squeaked once, a little sadly. He gave her a bit of scallop. He wandered from table to table, running his fingers over enchanted cloth or bars caging exotic creatures. This was the free market, open to anyone who dragged in a stall; if he wanted the real treasures, he had to go to the Silent Market. He wouldn''t be pushing his luck today, though. That was a viper''s den and the silver and diamonds in his pocket weren''t enough to buy the truly rare treasures there. And that would get him noticed, which he didn''t want. So. Nicau paused over a wretched little stall, smeared with dirt and a thick, ripe scent of fresh-turned soil; a woman with wary eyes pushed forward her wares, housed in little pots made of thick paper wrapped around the base of plants. A novel idea that no doubt allowed her to pack up and run quickly. Most of them were already sold, empty pockets on the stall, and Nicau really didn''t know what the dungeon wanted¡ªit had just told him to collect more¡ªso he peered at the remaining five in turn with hesitance. One was bamboo, reaching tall with sheathed stems; another a flower, with petals that moved a touch too organically to be just a regular plant; a mushroom with a shaded cap and deep pockets over its gills. The dungeon already had mushrooms, right? And flowers? And various types of moss and trees? Gods, if only it had told him what it wanted. Nicau paused over a smaller plant, one with wide, flat leaves and little orange flowers near its stem; only half the time, though. The flowers looked like they ripened into fruits, some type of gourd, wide and lined with crimson stripes. Food, maybe? Or something more defensive? Either way, he hadn''t seen a gourd in the dungeon''s care, so that was his choice. The woman''s eyes lit up as he laid a gold coin on the stall, the engraved bird a little off but not enough to be noticeable. Absolutely more than the plant was worth, but he was here to make a bit of a reputation, and it wasn''t like the dungeon had given him enough copper coins to split into change. The streetrat part of Nicau''s soul wept at giving so much, but the pirate character he was playing merely flashed a grin to the stall keeper and walked off with the plant. Being rich was surprisingly fun. He wandered further; more weapons, more food, more exotic materials. A piece of carved marble with amethyst eyes was slipped into a pocket, glass blown into a delicate rose cradled with paper next to it. There was something intoxicating about walking around and being able to buy things¡ªhe spent perhaps more than he should on exotic snacks, on wolf haunch and fried swan skin and potatoes carved into elaborate ships. A paradise. One stall, run by a tall man with an ancestry that curled his nails into black claws and sharpened the edges of his teeth, caught his eye¡ªclearly sensing weakness, he was waved over with all haste and shouts and an excitement that bled into desperation. Someone who hadn''t gotten a sale in a while, then. Nicau walked over. It wasn''t like he had anything else to do. "Hello, good sir," the man said, all smiles and bows and overly showy bits of performance. Was this what it was like to have power? Nicau bathed in the feeling. "Anything you want, your wish is my command, the likes of my stall you won''t find anywhere else¨C" He did have quite the spread. A nightmarketer, it looked like, collector of exotic creature parts; his table was awash in scraps of far-off beasts, pelts and fangs and scales. Nicau, who did not exactly trust himself to try and sneak a living creature past the construction mages, couldn''t have found a better spread if he''d wanted to. Running his fingers over a gazelle''s jagged horn, he let his gaze and mind wander; nothing the dungeon had already, but also something that it wanted, and that fit its current floors and tastes and preferences. Again, if only it had told him what it wanted. There; a feather, curling and longer than his arm, done up in blues and greens and purples and looking wholly unable to fly, but very pretty. That seemed right up the dungeon''s preferences. Nicau flicked it up, rolling it around his fingers¡ªthe tip was sharpened, some type of quill¡ªand it swished nicely through the air. There was a brief urge to buy a hat to stick it in. "Have you any more?" The man frowned, glancing down at his stall like he''d forgotten what was there, but the seller''s spirit returned without hesitation. "Of course, any quill you desire, from the far reaches of the Wandering Empire I have one from a bird with the most beautiful orange plumage you cannot find anywhere¨C" "More of this bird," Nicau clarified, holding the feather up. "Any other parts of it." He remembered last time; the dungeon needed more than one bit of a thing to recreate it, which was why he''d brought the whole damned head of the hound back instead of only scraping off some fur or a horn. Which made it difficult, because people didn''t tend to sell whole animals, only the valuable parts. It was like this world wasn''t built for dungeons. Or, more likely, that dungeons weren''t expected to have human servants to go casually shopping at markets. Nicau wondered, sometimes, how his life had gotten to the point it had. The man wavered. "Ah, more of¡­ that bird in particular? Its feathers are beautiful, more than anything, but the rest is quite drab; only the feathers are worth anything, I assure you, I would never try to sell you anything less than the most worthy¨C" That was a no, then. Nicau kept the feather anyway, because there was never a way to predict what could come from the next time he went shopping, and continued perusing. The man visibly leaned forward, pouring over his wares like they held the secrets to the universes. "Now, if you want something larger than a feather, there''s nothing I can recommend more than the stormtongue ape, its hide protects from lightning strikes; ah! Or the mossbadger! This gentle creature houses full lives on its back, you''ll never find fur with more spirit behind it¨C" Nicau hummed some vague interest, poking through the table. Most of it was creature parts, but there were a couple other relics, daggers and mystical amulets, the type that the seller was likely to try and convince him they cured the weeping disease alongside growing him a full beard and improving his luck. Something stood out to him. A pelt, like many others on the table, but it wasn''t alone¡ªthis pelt was more formed, with the thin, knobbly parts that spoke to the tail and legs. Including claws on the tips. Was that enough? Who knew. But it was a better chance than anything else on this table. Nicau picked it up; it was soft and impossibly fluffy, a deep, silver-blue, lighter on the stomach and darkening over the back. Perhaps his height when fully extended, with pale claws like a dog''s, and the vague impression of a head with wide, pointed ears and empty eye sockets. Rough around the edges and missing its muzzle, because there was a reason this man was a regular nightmarketer and not serving the Silent Market, but the most complete specimen he''d seen. "Ah! A keen eye, good sir, wonderful find; that''s what I call a mist-fox, terribly clever beast, hunts at night and disguises itself in the gloom. Moonlight hunters, their coat gleams like nothing you''ve ever seen before, perfect for a scarf or coat, I can assure you only jealous eyes will follow once you put it on¨C" Fox. The dungeon didn''t have one of those, and from the spirits Nicau had seen floating around the forest he called home, there was certainly the presence of mist. A good enough find. "I''ll take it," he decided, folding it up with the iridescent feather. Enough he could tuck under his coat and slip past the construction mages. Hopefully. The man visibly beamed. "Of course, but a humble salesman am I, in fact I believe I''ll give you a discount for being so considering¨C" Nicau rather doubted he would be receiving any such thing "¨Cand it''ll only be seven silvers, a bargain, nothing you''ll find elsewhere¨C" Something shifted on his shoulder. Nicau''s smile grew a little fixed, keeping eye contact with the man even as his hand snaked up to grab at the rat that was now wriggling quite determinedly, her tail lashing at his back and whiskers twitching so fast they were practically summoning a breeze. She chittered at his hand and then took that as an open invitation, plopping herself onto his palm¡ªwhich, she was much larger than a normal rat, his untrained arm nearly buckled under her weight¡ªand then nosed forward, as if directing him to bring her down to the table. He did so, because what else was he supposed to do, and she hopped merrily off his hand and skittered over the stall. The man''s smile tightened. "Your¡­ rat seems to have noticed something," he said, light and cheery and utterly forced, because Nicau was dressed just right to be the type of pirate who would kill anyone for disrespecting his choice of companion. He said it like you''ve put a vermin on my table, but he didn''t say that out loud, which, great, because Nicau really, really did not want to worry about someone trying to kill the rat like she was a common pest. Some part of him doubted the dungeon would appreciate that. So he smiled back. "She''s clever, that way." The rat¡ªhe needed to give her a name¡ªnosed her way around the table, tail curling. She picked her way under pelts and twisting horns until she got to the edge of the stall, sticking her nose under the hanging tarp and disappearing beneath. The man''s smile thinned. But then she poked back out, and clutched in her prehensile tail was a scroll. Both of them blinked at it. It was an old thing, yellowed with age and torn on the edges, wrapped up and bound with a thin strip of leather curling around itself. Water damage on the outer side, looking all the world like it would fall apart if he sneezed in its general direction, but it held itself together as the shadowthief rat trotted back over to him and carefully set the scroll in Nicau''s extended hand. What. Was this why the dungeon had made him bring the rat? Shadowthief, he guessed, so she was probably good at sniffing out treasure; certainly made sense for ventures into Calarata. Maybe. He guessed. Nicau patted her a little awkwardly on the head and held up the scroll. The man, never one to miss an opportunity, clapped his hands together like it was a performed trick. "Clever indeed, good sir, you''ve trained her well past anything I could believe." He leaned forward conspiratorially. "And that little wonder is something I don''t show to just any old customer; picked up fresh off an excavation run. Rare beyond belief. Only those with true knowledge will know what treasure they''re holding." Nicau could read the translation between the lines. The man had absolutely no idea what it was, but because Nicau was showing interest in it, it was suddenly the most expensive thing on the table. Of course. He carefully undid the leather strap, almost holding his breath to avoid disturbing it, and rolled the first handspan open. Words, done in a faded grey ink, displayed themselves. Or what he thought were words. Now. Nicau couldn''t read¡ªor, he could a little, rough on the best of times¡ªbut that didn''t matter, because these were absolutely not Le¨®rian letters. They were more pictures, each almost the size of his palm, full of twisting lines and splattered indents. Something strange, and¨C His Name trembled in his chest. Draconic, dungeon, Old¡ªit didn''t matter. Something about this called to him. The shadowthief rat chittered, a little smugly, at him. Nicau picked up the mist-fox''s pelt and the feather, slipping them into his coat, and slapped three gold coins on the table. Still spreading his reputation, and all that, and by the way the man''s eyes flew wide open it was definitely noticed. The rat skittered up his offered arm, perching on his shoulder again, grooming her whiskers with a proud squeak. Nicau pulled open the edge of the scroll; his soul sang again, Name twisting oldly in his chest. He slipped it close. "A treasure indeed," he echoed. Chapter 104 - Claimed Epithet It was, admittedly, a little awkward. His surcoat was a beautiful thing and it was also a size or so too large, which was the only reason Nicau was able to shove the mist-wolf''s pelt, the iridescent feather, the gourd plant, and the mystic scroll underneath it. They clattered awkwardly against his chest, arms keeping the coat tight around them, and either made him look as broad as a warrior or with an impressive beer gut. So. Suffice to say, Nicau was having a great time. He''d figured out everything he could for the dungeon¡ªLluc, under order of the Dread Pirate, was constructing an Adventurer''s Guild directly outside the Al¨®mbra Mountains, and when it was open people would be allowed to try for the core. Everyone he talked to didn''t know why, considering that was antithetical to every other core out there¡ªthe owners didn''t want people trying to revoke their ownership, after all¡ªbut they were practically vibrating with excitement. Even the Silent Market, staple of Calarata, had its doors closed for the moment in anticipation and preparation. Nicau had done his best to smile and bob his head and pretend he didn''t have intricate knowledge of said dungeon, and considering he hadn''t been dragged before Varc¨ªs Bilaro in chains, he''d presumably done a decent enough job. Tough luck, being the emissary of a dungeon core. But now, with the sun slipping to the horizon and clouds pouring over the Al¨®mbra Mountains, he''d say he had done his task, and he was rather looking forward to sleeping on his nice, soft moss bed for a day. Maybe two. So he left the open market, buying one last fried dove skin for the road, and headed back for the docks. Hopefully, considering the darkness of night, he''d be able to slip past the construction mages without being noticed. Nicau idly juggled a few plans as he walked, boots clicking in a very satisfying manner on the stone, stomach pleasantly full and pride well-stoked from all the bowing and good-sir''s he''d received¡ªit was rather nice to be perceived as rich, it turned out. A lovely thing. The shadowthief rat squeaked something and scrambled off his shoulder; she skittered down his arm in a frankly rude way and plopped onto the street, tail lashing as she padded forward. Her black eyes gleamed as she got her little paws around one of the street''s cobbles, picking and shoving at the rock until it begrudgingly slid to the side. She nosed her way underneath, cheerily ignoring everyone else on the street, her silver fur blending it with the stone until she was little more than a mound in an uneven street. Nicau lost the battle with his urge to roll his eyes, but his lips quirked up regardless. Shadowthief was a very apt name; he''d had to pry her away from at least two dozen passersby with their gleaming jewelry and trinkets. At least this time she was taking from the street and not from someone that could fight back. So he just leaned against the back wall and crossed his arms, keeping his treasures pinned to his chest, and watched her. Calarata''s streets weren''t well-made but they were well-worn, and the stones were embedded deep in the ground. As someone only a foot long, she had to muscle most of her nonexistent mass into getting the thing up to find whatever shiny she''d seen before. Fascinating, honestly; considering Nicau didn''t think he''d be doing a whole lot more growing in the future, he could learn from this. Maybe he could¨C There was a touch, feather-soft, on his wrist; Nicau''s momentum, slight though it was, fell to the wayside. Someone had grabbed his arm. He was reminded, a little unwillingly, that this was Calarata¡ªa pirate town filled with people who were hungry for gold or prestige or blood. Things that Nicau, unfortunately, had in spades. He got a brief moment to remember that before he was unceremoniously dragged into a nearby alley and shoved up against a wall, stars popping behind his eyes as his head slammed into the brick. He cursed, iron in his mouth¡ªwhat the fuck¨C His newest apparent friend, a hunched, gaunt man wearing grey-black clothing and a hyena''s hunger, muscled him up against the back wall, bearing his teeth. In his free hand he had a knife, an honestly quality thing with a notched blade and carved hilt, long as his forearm and gleaming in the evening light. Nicau probably would have spent more time admiring it if the tip wasn''t pressed to his throat. "Gold," the man spat, eyes narrowed and flighty. "Hand it over if you want that coat to stay blue instead o'' red¡ªnot afraid to bleed you." Right. Pirates. Fuck. But he was a pirate himself, now. Nicau inhaled, air catching sharp and fluttering on his teeth; the ocean-deep pool of mana in his chest stretched at the motion, rising through his throat and coating his tongue; he knew, more than saw, that his eyes were now glowing. The man''s face lit up in blue-gold. "Stop," he said, and pushed the weight of his command alongside it. The man froze. A little clumsily, Nicau pushed him away, stumbling away from the brick wall. The knife had never touched him but he could feel its phantom touch on the hollow of his throat, the iron-sharp point threatening to spill his lifeblood over Calarata''s filthy streets. But that hadn''t happened, and it wouldn''t, because Nicau had power now. He didn''t know if he was at rank Bronze¡ªdidn''t know if he could be, honestly, considering a dungeon''s abilities felt not in the human world¡ªbut either way, he wasn''t the same as he had been before, when this mugger would have killed him. Hells, he hadn''t even used his previous power, that of seeing mana trails, in months. This voice was his ability now. Nicau stepped back, heart hammering in his chest; there was a thread in his chest, something thin and intangible connecting him with the mana. He poked at the feeling, frowning. It felt like as long as he kept feeding mana into the command, and the man with his weak, powdery mana couldn''t fight back, he would stay stopped for as long as Nicau could maintain it. Which, not that long considering he didn''t have the largest mana stores in existence, but certainly long enough. The man was staring at him behind his frozen eyes, fearful and wide¡ªwhich, fucking deserved. Nicau was short as shit and in a lordling''s clothing, but he wasn''t weak. Muggers needed to pick better targets. If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. But now, hm. What to do with said mugger. Nicau stared at him, which had sweat beading on the man''s brow¡ªprobably expecting death at a minimum for his slight, and his eyes flicked down to Nicau''s hands. Searching for a knife or sword, most likely. Not that Nicau did, uh. Particularly have a weapon capable of killing. But the man did. So Nicau reached out and plucked the man''s dagger from his stiff grip, running his thumb over the carved hilt; a bit long for him, elbow to palm, but it would do. Maybe back in the dungeon, he could dry a serpent''s skin and fashion it into some sort of sheath. Not his staff, bloodstained and cracked as it was, but perhaps something better. "I won''t take your life this time," he said, because for all he''d lost the vast majority of his morals in joining with a dungeon, he wasn''t quite at the stabbing-people-in-dark-alleys step of his journey yet. "But remember this. To challenge a¨C" He stopped. Pirate was on the tip of his tongue; an accurate phrase, bursting with potential that still made his soul sing, but there was already a certain pirate in Calarata. The Dread Pirate. Nicau wasn''t him, and he didn''t want to be; but he wanted a title for his own. And his mind slipped, quietly, to another phrase that existed on the Le¨®rian Peninsula; those who commanded a dungeon core. The High Lords. Now. Nicau was under absolutely no delusions that he was in charge of the dungeon¡ªgods, he''d had to barter for his own life with a pigeon¡ªbut to the outside world, they wouldn''t know the difference of being a High Lord or being dungeonborn. And, well¡ªthe dungeon had Named him. That was a connection well past what the common folk would understand. He wasn''t the Dread Pirate. He wasn''t a High Lord. But Nicau was a pigeoncatcher no longer, and he would make his own legacy. "The Pirate Lord will spare you," he said, summoning every drop of charisma and mockery and the distilled arrogance that came from power. "In servitude, you will spread my name; tell those of Calarata." An opportunity to make his job easier next time. "Those at the Adventuring Guild," Nicau said, and sharpened the mana that made up his command¡ªmaybe? He was a newborn fumbling around at controls, he had no idea what he was doing¡ªso it echoed through the man''s head. "Tell them of the Pirate Lord, and that he will speak to them once they are done. Prepare them." There. Was that dramatic enough? Probably? Maybe? Nicau was about to throw up and maybe pass out, so instead he tucked the dagger to his side and strode out of the alley. He took a sharp turn left, out of sight of the man, and immediately pressed his back to the wall with a hazy wheeze. What the fuck had he just done? Why the fuck had he done that? Weren''t an increasing number of his nightmares about Lluc discovering his connection with the dungeon and dragging him before Varc¨ªs Bilaro? Pirate Lord. Too big for my britches, Nicau thought with only some level of hysteria. He''d wandered around Calarata, buying trinkets and expensive food, and he''d fashioned himself as a wandering tyrant instead of a streetrat wearing a lordling''s clothing. It was high time he went back to the dungeon where he was surrounded by kobolds and things made sense. So. Time to go. The last of his mana drifted away and he felt the connection snap, the man free of his command; so he turned on his heel and made for the outer wall of Calarata, not-quite scampering towards the docks. Or, he would have, if someone had interrupted him. Someone small, padding up to his feet with her silvertine fur smoothed back and tail curling. The shadowthief rat. She chittered, pawing at his leg; he knelt and offered her his hand, which she gladly used to clamber up to her customary shoulder perch. In her wake, she left him a singular copper coin. What she''d found on the street, apparently. And missed the entire ordeal he''d gone through. "You''re very lucky," he told her. She squeaked proudly. - The Al¨®mbra Mountains cast a beautifully cool shadow over him. The construction mages had left for the night, protective seals engraved into the stone surrounding the dock and building foundations, and he''d been able to slink his way around the pebbled beach and back to the opening. It loomed before him, deep and welcoming. He wasn''t the Pirate Lord in the dungeon, but he was also slightly less afraid for his general health and life, so there were pros and cons. Pros and cons that were vastly outweighed by the thought of a comfortable, soft bed, so Nicau tucked his various treasures closer to his chest and gave one last look around. Calarata gleamed, white-gold buildings and flickering torchlight; still his home, no matter how it had fallen and he was elsewhere. And to his other side, the distant jungle¡ªstill unnamed by the dungeon, actually¡ªhid behind its avalanche border, distant trees poking over the top with great furled leaves and the distant hanging presence of fog. And it was only because he was looking to the jungle that he saw the red-gold shape emerging from its emerald canopy. A familiar red-gold shape. Nicau tightened his grip on his new dagger as the parrot, with its gold-tipped feathers, black eyes and beak, landed on a distant overcropping. Its talons scratched against the stone as it adjusted its position, crest flaring, and stared at him. He stared back. Not this again. "Hello," Nicau said, because his Communer blessing hadn''t worked last time but maybe it would now. The parrot tilted its head to the side and squawked. Just a wordless noise. But he remembered when it had repeated his sentences back to him with a clarity a bird shouldn''t have, and he''d seen too many wondrous and terrible things to trust it so easily. Perhaps he was imagining it, but he thought he could see mana sparking behind its eyes, something deep and pressing and almost¡­ Almost resonant, in a way, to the Name in his chest. He could kill it. The dungeon would probably want its corpse, and it would be one more mystery Nicau wouldn''t have to worry about biting him in the ass in the distant future. But he doubted he could, honestly. There was something otherworldly about the bird. It hadn''t accepted it last time, but anything under the sun was new again, so Nicau shifted so his shoulder without the shadowthief rat was angled forward, as open as he could make it. "Would you like to come with me?" The parrot flared its crest. "Come with," it agreed. Nicau blinked. What. It took off in a red-gold burst and landed neatly on his shoulder, wings brushing at his ears and talons catching on the fine leather of his surcoat; it didn''t weigh much, standing taller than his head, and it shifted until it settled into a more comfortable position. Its jagged claws curled around the meat of his shoulder. On his opposite side, the shadowthief rat squeaked, her eyes narrowed. Not a fan of her new companion, it seemed. Nicau happened to glance down and see his reflection in the cove''s water; still gaunt and thin, dressed in extravagant robes, with a rat on one shoulder and a parrot on the other. This was merely his life now. To the dungeon, then. Chapter 105 - Titled Anew It won''t work, I told her. As with the last three times I''d informed her of this fact, Veresai ignored me. She had awoken from her Naming new and improved; still twenty feet long, her blue scales even more iridescent, eyes gleaming with an inner light as if stars. Her blessing hummed through our shared connection; I couldn''t quite tell what it was yet, though I knew it was powerful. With Seros'' blessing of the depths it had initially expressed itself as hydrokinesis, even if I could feel something¡­ more lurking beneath the surface, though he hadn''t activated it. Nicau''s blessing of the communer seemed to have already been revealed, able to talk to and use mana to command other sapient creatures. All beautifully useful. Blessing of the oracle; all that is to be seen shall be seen. What did that mean? The mystery called to me. I couldn''t wait to figure it out. But I doubted I''d be figuring that out at the moment, because right now, my lovely Veresai was working on her new powers as an empress serpent¡ªher crown of horns gleamed a brilliant silver-blue, four eyes narrowed in concentration, as she coiled around the person at the back of her den. Kriya, the naga-ancestry invader who, for some unforsaken reason, I had been keeping alive. Water dripped into her mouth, food for sustenance, soothing mana to keep her in the bounds of sleep¡ªall things I had been doing with the assumption that Veresai wanted to do something with her. But. I''d hoped she had wanted to do something successful with the captured human, instead of, well. This. Veresai was attempting to control Kriya''s mind. In her wake, other serpents were shaking off her tests¡ªshe could slip into the minds of her followers, seeing through their eyes and issuing commands, and they would obey in a variety of levels depending on their own ability to resist her and their level of fealty. This had resulted in her killing a few serpents who were apparently only faking their devotion to her, which promptly had the rest offering extra food for her choosing. Fancy thing, been a tyrant. But now she was attempting the same thing on Kriya, and I didn''t have to be a genius¡ªthough I was¡ªto tell her it wasn''t going to work. For all she had scarlet scales crawling over her skin, visible fangs, and a flared hood instead of hair, she was still a human. She had sworn no loyalty to Veresai, had no serpentine mind to fall under the complete thrall, and had no reason to listen to the enormous crowned serpent who had captured her. So. It won''t work, I said again. Veresai''s four eyes narrowed further. They were practically burning, spilling blue-silver light over the surrounding stone, and Kriya twitched again¡ªnot waking up, because I was doing my absolute damnedest to keep her down, but still stirring from the psionic mana pouring through her mind. If Veresai wasn''t careful, she''d wake up, and then we''d both have a problem. Unfortunately, she''d never learned the meaning of that word, and onward she pressed. Gods above, this snake was going to be the second death of me. Funny that she was acting up only after I''d given her some of my Otherworld mana and thus couldn''t afford to smite her for the offense. Irritating. Veresai eventually leaned back, uncoiling from her chosen target and curling her horns back. She fixed her glowing stare on a random section of wall, where it just so happened a point of awareness lurked. Her frustration filtered through our shared connection. Want, she said, in the fumbling, unconscious way that lesser beings had to communicate with me. New to join. Strong. If I had lungs to sigh, I would have. Yes, objectively Kriya would be an incredible boon; for all that I had the ability to heal my creatures, I could only do so once invaders had left my halls and thus weren''t sucking up all my mana for their own stupid spells, and the heat of battle was when heals were most necessary. Having someone on the front lines who could heal would revolutionize battles, especially considering the increasing numbers of the ones approaching me. But I couldn''t just kidnap random invaders and force them to work for me. Dungeons would be undefeatable in that regard, or they''d be too easily defeatable; there was a reason that even with Nicau''s loyalty, I hadn''t shown him where my core was kept. The heart of men was too fickle. Even if I was thinking of bringing him down to the sixth floor to stay with the evolved kobold tribe. That was a thought for later. She hissed, a low, vicious sound that had many serpents trying to rest in other corners of the den flinching. Yes, she was aware Kriya was human, but she had scales. Surely that made her serpentine. So did the kobolds and the spined lizard she''d killed instantly for daring to enter her floor, I reminded with only a touch of superiority. Veresai''s horns flashed. Want, she thought petulantly, and the briefest flash of Nicau raced over our connection. Mine. Excuse me? I''d worked in order to get a human. Ample amount of threats and rewards, and now he served me; did she want her own human just because I had one? What? Kriya was technically starting out as more useful than Nicau as a healer¡ªbut that was before I had made Nicau powerful. He was mine, he was dungeonborn, he was Named; because of me. And now she wanted to do the same thing. Absolutely not. I wasn''t the biggest fan of humans and that was before they had killed me¡ªNicau was only allowed because he was a simpering little loyalist who knew how to play his cards right and had served me from the beginning. Kriya had actively invaded my halls and tried to subjugate me. She would not be joining my dungeon as a permanent resident if I had anything to say about it, which I did. No, I snapped, pushing all my determination and will through our shared connection. Learn from. But you will not keep. Veresai hissed, snapping at the air with curved fangs. But I had made her, and a tantrum would not scare me back on my decisions. She would be allowed to learn from Kriya, to puzzle out healing magic and the naga ancestry as best she could, and then she would be killing her; I would not allow a weakness so close to my core. No, that was asking for destruction. She stared at the point of awareness for a long time¡ªwhich, a little confusing, how had she known where it was? Maybe an element of her blessing of the oracle?¡ªbefore eventually turning her head to the side with a frustrated hiss. Accepting my command, though not happy about it. Fantastic. I didn''t care. It was good for the tyrant to be reminded she wasn''t the largest threat around here. Veresai slithered out of the back corner of the den, her influence spilling forth in great billowing waves; her eyes flashed as her body stilled, mind flying elsewhere as she raced through the minds of all her connected servants. It was a marvelous thing to watch¡ªthough she was still slow and fumbling through the process, so long as a serpent had sworn to her in some sort of mystical thing I didn''t fully understand, she could dip into their mind and control them directly, no more room for disobeying when she had previously been limited to simply commanding them with no psionic element behind it. Although. Hm. Maybe the part where she could actively peer through their eyes was from her blessing of the oracle; it didn''t match the description of the empress serpent when she''d evolved. Certainly a very useful power for controlling her territory. Her horde of serpents shivered as her control swept through them, plucking at the threads until she located her target; a tall, ancient by my standards crowned cobra, one of the eldest of her army. He raised his head, hood flaring around his neck and head curled primely in; at her summoning cry, he slithered through the Stone Jungle at the center of the Labyrinth until he arrived at the den, hesitant and cautious. He''d been out hunting when she had interrupted him, and now he was arriving back without food, which was a dangerous thing. From the thoughts echoing through Veresai''s connection with me, he had seen many other snakes die for such an offense. But this time, she merely called him to her side, his own fifteen feet nearly matching hers but not in power. He kept his head lowered as she led him to Kriya''s side, horns glowing as she curled her presence through his mind. He would be the one to learn from the healer, to study her, and once he had gathered all he could, to kill her. Hopefully that would decide his evolution. Not quite what I would have done¡ªthere was a luminous constrictor that had more of an inclination towards healing than this brute¡ªbut Veresai had, apparently, merely picked the most powerful of her followers to follow this route. Understandable, if not the most intelligent choice. I''d be curious where this would go. He seemed hesitant himself, accepting her mission instantly but then spending a good long moment just staring at Kriya''s unconscious body. How was he supposed to learn from a silent, unmoving body? Well, not my problem, and certainly not Veresai''s. She left the room with her crown of horns held high. The crowned cobra kept staring at Kriya. His forked tongue flickered out. I left a few points of awareness, mostly for the entertainment, and threw the bulk of my focus elsewhere. Racing up, I spiraled through the bulk of my floors¡ªguided the jeweled jumper towards the passageway that would lead him to a hunting mantis as a worthy prey, he was so close to evolving it was actively infuriating; grew a blanket of whitecap mushrooms for the lunar cave bear adolescents; added a few silver kraits to the Hungering Reefs; checked on the reefback turtle''s evolution; generally busied myself with the various goings-on that came with being a dungeon core. It was a complicated life, especially when there was something overhead that kept trembling at the stone; not nearly enough for any of my creatures to notice, but for as advanced a perception as I had, I could feel the tremors spreading down. A group maybe, or one large creature¡ªbut something was stirring in the Al¨®mbra Mountains, and I wasn''t particularly a fan. But what I was a fan of was the footsteps rumbling at my cove entrance. I stiffened, points of awareness flying up, but whoever it was wasn''t trying to be subtle, and I could feel a connection in my Otherworld mana that had been strained revitalize. Something returning that had been lost. Or, more accurately, returning from a mission I had sent him on and had been very impatiently awaiting his arrival. Nicau returned to my dungeon. Immediately, our connection restrengthened as he entered my halls, that missing piece slotting back in as I immediately sank back into his mind and our connection. He was still in his new clothing, that blue-stained leather coat and prim boots, looking all the world like a more proper adventurer. Though he wasn''t, he served me, and he certainly wasn''t some oil-slicked brat sniffing for gold. The dragons I''d carved onto his buttons were for that. Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. Though he wasn''t exactly as I''d left him. In his hand he clutched a dagger, something bright and gleaming, though a touch too long for his stunted height. Hm. I hadn''t considered he needed a weapon¡ªall my creations came with claws or fangs or talons¡ªbut I supposed I had to work more on thinking of him as a human. A proper scabbard, maybe, a few hidden daggers; most of my knowledge about pirates came from how to kill them, so I could try to outfit Nicau against that. Maybe. If I remembered. But that wasn''t all of the changes. While he still had the shadowthief rat perched on his shoulder¡ªthere was a brief internal battle as I struggled between annoyance that she''d survived and the reminder that I wanted to see the effects of eating a moonstar flower¡ªthere was someone else alongside him. A parrot. A beautiful, stunning parrot, with scarlet wings edged with gold, white-black beak, and clever, fierce eyes. It perched on Nicau''s shoulder like it quite belonged there, which it didn''t, and I likely would have assumed he had merely picked it up in Calarata as a schema for me if I didn''t remember this parrot. Or, more accurately, if I didn''t have someone else''s memory of this parrot. Because Nicau had encountered it before, and that had been when it had guided him out of the jungle and back to me. So. Concerning, that. With all the subtlety I was made of, I woke a few of my creatures¡ªthe midnight cave bear, still lingering on this floor despite all my layered suggestions he go to the Jungle Labyrinth, pricked his ears and peered out from his den. Seros, far below and swimming through the Hungering Reef on hunt for a roughwater shark despite my minor pleading that he let them evolve, glanced up and lashed his tail. Kobolds a floor below paused in sharpening their spears. Nicau, blind little human that he was, didn''t notice. Just stumbled in, arms limp at his sides and eyes half-lidded. "Hello," he said, then stiffened. "O'' mighty dungeon. I, ah, return. Bearing gifts." A bit stilted, but I welcomed it regardless. My mana poured forth, surrounding them¡ªrooting into the entrance in case I needed to do something drastic, considering the parrot¡ªand opening our connection. His mind jolted, that instinctual reaction to mental stimuli, but then he was peering upward with his thoughts smoothing out. The parrot? He winced, just a hair. "It, ah. Wanted to come with me." Right. That made sense. I poked my way through him; nothing to heal, no bite of infection to smooth out or cuts to stitch together, and, more importantly, nothing messing with his head. Though I rather doubted the parrot was some enchanter or siren-spirit, I didn''t exactly want to risk it. But no. Nicau was under no influence. The parrot, as if sensing my searching eyes, squawked; a distinctly ear-splitting sound that had Nicau wincing. Its feathers ruffled as it stared into the darkness of the first floor, crest flaring, until it apparently chose a point to stare at. Its beak clacked. And something moved within it. Mana, moving in whorls around its beak and eyes, something sharp and bright and tinged ruby-red; I could see channels, the typical patterns of a creature, but it was full near bursting, impossibly bright and burning. And, at its heart, an ember sat; large and swollen with a mana so dense it was practically alive. Not a normal bird. It looked at the first floor, crest flared, and squawked. "Hello." Right. Talking. I hated this. I extended a tendril of mana with what would have been wariness if I was a lesser being, but was merely intelligent caution for me, prodding at the parrot''s mind. No easy way to properly reach inside, considering it wasn''t dungeonborn, but I was able to make a thorn of progress. Learning from Veresai had done me wonders. Hello. "Voice," it said, which was not something Nicau had said, and judging by how the boy stiffened, he knew that, too. Wonderful. I loved enigmas; they made my life so easy. Not normal, I said, echoing with the force it took to communicate to this creature; its mana absorbed mine when I tried to push too far in, but I had to be close in order to talk, and what I ended up with was the mental equivalent of shouting over a ravine. Clumsy, inelegant, and presumably loud enough the echoes were spilling around to the surrounding creatures. Brilliant. Why are you here? It bobbed its head, wings flaring at the tips and nearly bashing Nicau in the head. "Here," it repeated, talons tightening on the leather of the surcoat. "Here. Join Voice. Mission." Now, I was quite positive neither I nor Nicau had said any of those words in its presence, which meant it had either heard them before, or was intelligent enough to know them outright. But it wanted to join me. Now, most creatures joined me in a messy sort of dead variety, wherein I would happily clean up their corpse and make them anew¡ªI had the feeling that wasn''t what the bird wanted. Which was understandable, but it also seemed like it thought I could easily make it become dungeonborn, which. How did it know the intricacies of dungeons? Or think it knew the intricacies of dungeons? Because other than Naming it¡ªwhich I was not doing, I''d known it for all of a second and I had much more interesting creatures to Name¡ªthere were only my experiments with removing a creature''s personal mana and replacing it with my own unless they died, which had been the most common outcome. So. Apparently, this little parrot had survived an encounter with another dungeon long enough to know that a dungeon could claim creatures, and then had come to me. Which. Two options here, neither of which was good. There was either another dungeon kicking around here, which even the thought sent fire down my territorial side¡ªI was still gearing up to kick Calarata out, I would certainly not tolerate a whole other dungeon encroaching on my land¡ªor the knowledge of dungeons had spread that birds were able to know it; admittedly, birds with the strangest mana pattern I''d ever seen, but still birds. Worrying. It cocked its head to the side. Squawked. I leveled the best glare I could while being entirely intangible and invisible. Well, if it wanted to join me, I was inclined to allow it. In truth, that would put it much closer to me, make way for a variety of increasingly dangerous ways in which it could attack me, give it access to my core, let it function as a spy¨C But, well. It was rather beautiful. And in much the same way that I trusted Nicau now that he had my mana and only my mana within him, I trusted the dungeonborn far more than any others. Keeping an eye on it was only another bonus. And if it betrayed me? For all that its swirling mana hid many secrets, it couldn''t hide its strength; whatever ember of mana sat in its heart was not for using, and the red-gold-grey whorls around its beak and eyes were nothing compared to my more powerful creatures. With one command, it would not be long before it was killed. Hells, I could create a greater pigeon right now and kill it even if it flew. So. If I wanted answers, I would be welcoming it into my dungeon, which was going to be a great time. I pushed a magnanimous tone into my voice, which was somewhat lessened by the fact I was still essentially screaming across a void in order to be heard. You will join, I said. Do not fight. Because, ah. I''d tried doing this before. Tried many times, actually, on various grasshoppers across my first floor. Who had contributed to my experiments with their deaths. Often of the exploding variety. But now I had a creature who was intelligent enough to know what I was doing and fully cooperate; and if its mana didn''t fight against mine, and it wasn''t too powerful, then presumably I could empty it of its own mana and fill it with my own. Without killing it. The parrot squawked its agreement, and I did a dungeon core''s equivalent of a cold sweat as I reached out. My mana diffused into a miasma around the bird, spooking it into poofing out in an explosion of feathers; but in a remarkable feat of will, it fought back its fight-or-flight response into a mere reproachful croak, fixing its glare at the nearest wall with a look of derision. I ignored that. See if it wanted to try taking over an entire living creature''s mana. I pried a sliver of mana, barely even half a point, into the parrot''s head; in an almost water-like fashion, I poured my way within its very core, nesting amongst the spirals of mana coiled within. Delicacy, I had to be delicate¡ªsome part of me doubted that Nicau would appreciate if the parrot perched on his shoulder happened to explode. Almost immediately, problems¡ªthat ember of power within the parrot. I immediately rebounded hard off it, ricocheting back fast enough I almost fell out of the bird entirely; alright, message received. That was not the parrot''s mana, and I was not to touch it. The mystery burned at me. For what possible reason would a living creature carry another being''s mana, unable to use or access it, and why this creature? Why this parrot? And why had it come to me? I was a dangerously curious being, and this parrot called to every sense of mine. Later. So instead I inched my way around, smoothing my passage with points upon points of mana, wasting many in my journey to be a slow and insidious infestation; I copied the spiraling whorls around its eyes and beaks, the jagged outlines of its feathers, the curls of its talons. Over and over, stitch by stitch, within the parrot I constructed a false second, mana coiling over in the same pattern as the one beyond. If anyone with a sufficiently advanced mana-sight were to look over, they would see what appeared to be two parrots living within each other. An odd sight, if I were to guess. That was what my time with the grasshoppers had taught me; it wasn''t enough to merely shove my mana into a creature; mana moved in specific pathways, in channels, and removing the mana broke those, which killed the creature. So I had to create my own, and they had to be identical as the previous, and then all at once, so the creature didn''t have to handle having double channels, I had to force them out. So. Difficult, to put it lightly. I crept my way on, adding flares and curls as I noticed them; the parrot was starting to shift uncomfortably as my mana increased, thrumming harder and harder, and my time limit crawled steadily to a close. That ember in its heart shivered. But eventually, I had done all I could, and if I waited any longer I risked ruining it entirely¡ªso, my points of awareness all flying in, I grabbed a hold of my mana channels and pushed. There was a cracking sound¡ªNicau yelped as mana exploded against his shoulder in a popping, hissing mess of near-fire¡ªand a brief, heartstopping moment later, all of the parrot''s natural mana was thrown free and replaced with mine. It squawked, trembling, heart beating like a drum, mana frozen and shaking¡ªand then, with a low, quiet hum, started to flow. To beat again. A success. I sagged in place, relief flooding through me. Finally, finally I''d done it right, and on a creature that genuinely mattered; already I was slotting the knowledge away for when I would need to use it next. Useful information. And then something deep within me changed.
Congratulations! Due to your actions in reawakening lost things to fulfill your duty in Aiqith, you have earned a new title!
Welcomer The new and the returning¡ªa dungeon''s duty is to strengthen all those who enter its halls. You can change all willing creatures to become dungeonborn.
Oh. Oh! Well, that was certainly an appreciated addition. It''d been so long since I''d gotten a title I''d almost forgotten it was possible¡ªbut now I felt it settle into place, great burning golden runes carving themselves along my core, understanding and power and brilliance coiling around me like the warmth of sunlight. Extremely welcome. I cradled the new title like a hatchling. Mine, now. I could feel the parrot now, a brief connection in the manner of all my other creatures, and I could feel its thoughts. Her thoughts, actually; she was a clever thing, shaken by the experience but already pondering her new connection, testing the flex and pull of her mana. Weak, but she would recover soon. There was a strength in her that had been tested. ¡­been tested a lot, actually. She was much older than I thought she would be; while parrots were long-lived, they were more likely to die around a pirate city. She was positively ancient by those standards. And she knew exactly what the ember in her chest was, but could not tell me. What. Even as I scratched and burrowed for the thoughts and memories associated with it, much like how my mana had bounced off, I simply could not understand what was about those. Something dark and oil-slick kept me from understanding¡ªfrom even looking¡ªat the ember of mana. The parrot squawked, a little sadly. From her thoughts, she wanted me to know, but couldn''t. It was her burden to bear. She was a bird. What secret could she possibly have that was too important for a dungeon core to know? Mysteries. How I simply loved them. But for all that it irked me, there was something to take the bite away¡ªI swung my attention back to the wider world, points of awareness swiveling in. Nicau was waiting, a touch awkwardly. He clearly knew something had happened, considering the mana that was still singing the corners of his hair, but he didn''t know what. Well. Not the time for him to worry about that. It was instead time for me to learn just what had been happening in the outer world. Chapter 106 - Lost World As wonderful and delicious and frankly distracting it was to know that Nicau was holding several schemas under his surcoat, that was not the main reason I had sent him out into the wider world¡ªand I had questions I needed answered. Unfortunate, very pressing questions that may or may not determine my existence, so to put it politely, I was rather invested in the answer. Tell me, I said, pushing a point or two of mana through our connection. Of what learned. Blegh. This human tongue¡ªViejabran was the name, I thought¡ªwas still hopelessly clunky to speak with. My true eloquent potential was in the draconic word. Which Nicau, for all his decent abilities, did not speak. Or at least didn''t know how to speak it to me. If I could find this many faults with Nicau, there was no chance I was keeping Kriya. What had Veresai been thinking? Nicau blinked, peering at the surrounding darkness like I was just waiting out of sight. "Of course," he said, with proper reverence as was expected. "I, ah, cannot bring great news, but it is news. They''re." He licked his lips. "They''re building an Adventuring Guild for you." Ah. Yeah, I''d been preparing for that answer, but it was still the worst thing he could''ve said. Adventuring Guilds didn''t fuck around. As a sea-drake, I had been the target of a few quests, little insipid brats who thought to clear me out of whatever cove I had chosen as my hunting grounds for a few decades or so. Of course, they hadn''t been able to do anything, because I was a sea-drake, but they''d certainly tried. And continued trying, after I''d eaten all their first attempts. And though they were, at most, a biting-fly compared to a proper assault, they had been persistent and vicious enough that inevitably, I found some excuse or another to change the location of my hunting grounds. Adventuring Guilds had no lack of weak idiots and powerful idiots in equal number. In the right hands of a proper Guildmaster, they were dangerous threats. Especially when they had a target, rather than unspecific "adventure". Such as a dungeon. Fantastic. About what I''d expected, though. Even if I hadn''t wanted to admit it. There was no reason to have an invasion so large as my last one¡ªexcluding the merrow¡ªand then have weeks of silence. They''d be planning something. Nicau was still standing awkwardly there, sensing my attention was elsewhere and wisely not continuing his story until I prompted him; I dove into his more recent thoughts and pulled up images through his weak little eyes of a stone foundation, of construction mages, of an extended dock coming right up to my cove-facing entrance. Not completed yet, but well on its way. If the progress that they''d had from Nicau''s arrival to his departure, I predicted less than a week or two until the building was done and the Guild beginning its establishment. Which did not necessarily factor into my plans towards general survival, but I could work with this. For as long as invaders came to my halls, they would bring mana with them, and I was rather in need of it. Why, with enough invaders, I could build my fire-themed seventh floor and finally transition the Skylands back to what they were meant to be. Was this a touch of me ignoring the problem and looking only for how I would benefit from it? Perhaps. But I wouldn''t exactly succeed if I curled in a corner and bemoaned all the high-ranked invaders that would soon be knocking on my halls, so I counted this as the better option. Nicau straightened as my attention fell back on him, shuffling in place. The parrot squawked her displeasure at being moved. Of Calarata? I asked, rather than having to sift through all his horribly unsorted and unorganized and plainly terrible eyesight memories. Humans were so boring. "Busy," Nicau admitted. "They''ve heard of you¡ªof your mighty power¡ªand that the Guild will be allowing them to attack your core directly. Many, ah, are interested." Hm. I was uninterested in that. But unless I could speed up my plan to rip out the Dread Pirate''s heart and consume it in front of him, there was unfortunately little I could do to stop it. Challenging my core. It seemed that Lluc had some sort of plan for me, which was infuriating already to think that a mere human thought he could box me in with all these trappings and schemings, and worse to know that there was a budding point of genuine fear at the thought. Sea-drakes had precious few weaknesses. Dungeon cores had an enormous glaring one. I would never regret returning from death, not when faced with the alternative, but I did wish that I would have merely stayed a dragon rather than this new form. Let them try, I said, because I certainly wasn''t going to show concern in front of Nicau. They will fail. What else you gather? Nicau straightened, some pride spilling into his pose. He''d kept his arms wrapped awkwardly around his midsection but now he pulled his surcoat open, the leather creasing at his shoulders as prizes tumbled from his grip. Several beautiful prizes; an animal''s pelt, a wilted plant, a glorious feather, a little statue, a translucent flower, a water-stained scroll. If I could have, I would''ve swooned. "And I claimed these," he said, chest puffed out. "Not too much, as to draw attention, but I, ah. Thought these were the best." I certainly wouldn''t tell him that¡ªno need to inflate the little brat''s ego¡ªbut I did push an energizing point of mana through our connection. A prodding to keep him serving me, if the powerful blessing from his Name didn''t already do so. At my nudging thought, he knelt and spread everything out, from the glossy silver-blue fur to the gleaming flower to the¨C To the scroll. Hm. It was old, weather-beaten, something that had made many journeys around the sun and perhaps regretted the high number, but still holding itself together. Wrinkled parchment, yellowed on the edges, and¡­ thicker than I was used to. I leaned in closer. Because it wasn''t made of parchment in the traditional sense; it was tanned animal hide, of some beast I didn''t know, drawn taut and treated against rot. Not an unknown method of writing, but one that had considerably faded out of practice after the discovery of river-reed parchment and conjured paper. Finding it was decidedly unlikely. On Nicau''s shoulder, the shadowthief rat primly cleaned her whiskers, tail curling around her paws. There was a certain element of smugness in her thoughts. She had been the one to find it, then; perhaps her moonstar flower abilities. Or luck. Or whatever she had stolen from what I had been planning on giving Seros. If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. But still. Something was wrong. The scroll, I asked, points of awareness flitting around its closed skin. What is on it? Nicau shuffled a bit, one hand raising to rub at the back of his neck. Mana splashed uncomfortably in his chest. "I, ah." He adjusted his coat. "Can''t read." Of course this was the human I ended up with. I stared at him with some reproach. Fix that, I declared. He could not have wilted in on himself more if he tried. I would deal with that last, then. No need in letting Nicau watch me puzzle out some mystery without solving it immediately. Actually, no need in forcing him to watch me at all; I would give him the rest he rather needed, judging by his thoughts, in return for all the schemas. You have done well, I told him, pushing a point or two of mana through our connection. Rest¡ªnew den lies beneath. The Hungering Reef. Nicau bobbed a hasty bow¡ªalmost displacing the parrot and shadowthief rat, the fool¡ªand headed for the back entrance. I split off a few points of awareness to bob after him, for I doubted he would just magically find his way down to the sixth floor. Maybe I would need to carve a special path for him; if I continued to send him up to Calarata, I couldn''t have him spending so long traipsing through my halls only to go all the way back down when he was done. It might make sense for him to stay in the Drowned Forest? But that was dangerous, and he worked well with Chieftess. Difficulties. I''d leave it up to him for the moment; he could take the long way down, enjoy the sites. Give the parrot a tour, actually, since I imagined she''d either stay with him or flit around the Skylands. She would fit well there. Well. Probably. Welcoming a creature didn''t give me their schema, so I didn''t actually¡­ know what the parrot was. No concept of her name or abilities. Worries for a later day. I dove into the pile of treasures like a hungry beast. The pelt first; long and sprawling, with wicked little claws on the tip and thick, luxurious fur; I carved through it, dissolving motes of golden light, and purred as the information sank through me.
Mist-Fox (Rare) With silver pelt and soul, they move through moorlands unhindered and untested. Hiding themselves in cloaks of mist, they leave strange images and shapes in their wake to serve as distractions for greater predators.
Oh! Immediately my mind was full of slinking beings, moonlight wrought into a vulpine form; from their schema I could find that they were clever hunters, forging not-quite illusions to distract prey and predators alike. Fascinating. I didn''t have a particular floor in mind for them yet; the Jungle Labyrinth was too dark for clouds of mist, and the Hungering Reef too open. The Skylands, perhaps. If I filled it with a swarm of cloudskipper wisps, they would pair together. A pain, then, at the thought of the wisp I had lost. Her and the original lunar cave bear; more and more the invaders stole from me. I hated it. I tucked the schema away and dove into the next; the small, wilted plant that was already well on its way to dying after being deprived of light and water when tucked in Nicau''s coat. I merely helped it along its way.
Funnel Gourd (Common) With a hard shell and wide-ringed top, they collect and store things in their center, often serving as mana-rich rewards for creatures able to open them. When dried, they serve as excellent bottles due to their almost-impenetrable outer shell.
Interesting. It reminded me of sea-cups; algae that formed cavernous tubes that pointed into currents, swirling all sorts of interesting things into their maws. Smaller, of course, due to being limited by terrestrial trappings; but still plenty useful. The plant was, admittedly, even more of a boon due to its appearance¡ªit had wide, heavily serrated leaves, bright green and lined with silver, all cradling twisting vines and heavy fruit. The gourds were small now, but I could see them at their prime through the schema¡ªsagging, wide-rimmed, with deep crimson stripes over an orange base. Thoroughly delightful. I could already imagine them stringing through the Jungle Labyrinth, gathering anything that came near them¡ªmaybe even mana?¡ªand the Hungering Reef, for the kobolds to use in their creation. And that wasn''t it; one more living being stood for me to learn; a twisting, iridescent feather, lit up in blue-green-purple, delicate and lacing together on the edges. Soft, I could see, but exceptionally long and flashy. Precisely what I desired in my dungeon. I devoured. And¨C I watched the golden motes swirl around before spiraling to my core. The knowledge of how to make a feather flooded through me. But just the feather. My mana heaved in a mockery of a sigh. Nicau did his best, I''m sure. But his best didn''t let me create whatever creature this beautiful feather belonged to. A single talon, perhaps a beak, even just some skin; but he''d only gotten me the feather. A patient creature I was not. Even with the excitement of the mist-fox and funnel gourd, this irked me. At least he''d brought me other things, even if they were only materials. I dissolved the rest of his prizes with prejudice. Marble¡ªwhite-grey, similar to limestone, but with a sturdiness and gleam that I simply couldn''t find elsewhere. Likely not a material I would use to create whole halls, but already I was mentally tearing down my previous pillar used to house my core and replacing it with this. Much more prestigious. And now I could stud amethysts over its surface; I wasn''t positive what attunement this jewel had yet, but it was remarkably pretty, with jagged edges and gradient spikes. The purple was exceptionally pleasing. Glass as well; I had the merrow''s sand-blades, but that was unwieldy and extraordinarily expensive in mana to make. This was much more useful. For what, I wasn''t sure, but doubtless I would find a use. Treasures, lovely, lovely treasures, all of which I could and would use. Mist-foxes as clever hunters, funnel gourds for crafting and consumption, marble for elaborate sculptures, amethysts for the mage ratkin, glass for the shardweaver spiders¡ªand the feather for, ah, something¡ªand brilliant plans already shone through me. Nicau had delivered what I''d asked for. Fucking fantastic. Today had been a series of ups and downs¡ªnew title, but new mystery. New schemas, but new Adventuring Guild. But despite that, I was pleased. Which meant it was time to dive into the final treasure of the pile. The scroll sat there. I poured a few points into the air and directed a blast of wind to pry the scroll open, rolling it out along the moss underneath; the leather band wavered and slipped to the side, the yellowed skin curling and twisting but opening up. Not long, hardly more than an arm''s length, covered in drawings some three inches in diameter, all in old, faded ink. Something old. Something I knew. Runes. And these were not a child''s imagination of runes, the dwarven script or amulets from the distant Wandering Empire; these were true runes, ancient things that called upon mana from beyond Aiqith. Cast down from deities above. There was no nebulous myth surrounding their creation; they were simply not created on Aiqith. This was known. My understanding was shaky. I had my own that I carved around my hoard room on the fifth floor; protections passed down from the draconic god to his kin. They did not apply to me any longer, but they were comforting. They were also all I knew. But much like I was now able to understand Viejabran, becoming a dungeon core had opened my mind to other languages. Even those that no longer existed. And from the collection of runes, words came to be. Last World, Lost World. World beyond time and shadow; beyond Above and Below. World Forgotten, World Forsaken. World beyond fall and flight; beyond Gods and Guards. It approaches. Ere now, the Breaking of the Old World. And beneath it, a single rune. I could not translate this one. A line with a half-circle above, as if a setting sun; and below it, spreading cracks uncontained. I did not know what it meant. But within me, shivering to life, with double maw and black skin and ravaging, starving hunger, something did. Chapter 107 - A Deal to Honour "A week left," Ealdhere said. "Hard to believe, isn''t it? It feels as though it has been both years and minutes." The sapling, perhaps unsurprisingly, didn''t respond. It was growing well, arranged in a new window; he had searched and found a mostly appropriate pot, one wide and sprawling with holes he had plugged up so the water would stay within it. He would need to design a proper one for this wonderful plant, one with a carved inner channel so he could stimulate a proper blend of sandy soil and open canals; but that was for later. For now, the unknown mangrove grew, delicate white leaves unfurling and crimson trunk rising. Growing unbelievably well, perhaps fed by some strand of mana still from the dungeon; there had been a week where it had almost seemed to¡­ shrink in on itself, dormant and unmoving, and then an explosion of growth afterward. From the length of his arm it was nearly four feet tall now, growing broader with threading branches, thorns unfurling from its scarlet bark. An utterly fascinating plant. His only true companion, now. He didn''t know what had come of all his other possessions, nor any of the others who had come out of that dungeon alive¡ªnow it was just him and the mangrove. Ealdhere sighed, sitting in the chair by the window. The wood was a new thing, freshly made and lacquered, and he did appreciate it. At least this new room had some form of comfort, though all of it was unfamiliar. A pretty place while he was in¡ªwell, he wasn''t in captivity, not under the laws he knew, but he didn''t know any other term to describe it. He''d been freed from the cavern, from the poor boy''s corpse and the towering Dread Crew members, taken back to quarters in some fine building expanse high on Calarata''s hill. Given food, warm water, a bed to lay down¡ªhe''d taken it with relief, of course. Still was Neus'' splayed body, crimson spreading from her mossy hair, behind his eyes, and any moment away from the memories were welcome. But then he''d woken up, and wondered where he was, and realized he didn''t know what had happened. The building was a well-furnished one, with tall ceilings and marble floors and gleaming windows inlaid with gold dust so the sunlight caught them like a wildfire. His room was warm and soft and comforting, and the food was delicious, and the amenities even beyond that of the Darlington Manor back in dear Abhal¨®n, and then Ealdhere had been more distracted by exploring the mighty keep than wondering. There had been servants, but they were skittish, keeping their head down and scurrying like shadows so that he wouldn''t see them. Curious. Less curious, when he discovered he had been housed in an outpost of the Dread Crew. Several things had begun to make sense, then. Ealdhere had never been one for the politicking of his house, of the fussing around in great sprawling petticoats and simpering expressions and giving someone one too few sugar cubes alongside tea in order to publicly humiliate them at a social gathering. But as the third son, he had still had to know it, and he could understand double entendre better than most. So when Lluc had returned to the outpost and told him of the great honour of becoming the Adventuring Guild''s Scholar, Ealdhere had understood. He''d understood quite a lot, really. While he wouldn''t be killed, he would not be returning to Abhal¨®n. So he''d been taken from that room at the outpost and to this new building, broad and squat and situated on a dock overlooking the cove. A quick tour, full of a broad welcoming room with many seats, a nascent healing room, many side storage rooms, and two rooms for him; one bedroom, with much less amenities than his last but still good, and another. One with desks and shelves and spaces for an alchemist''s set, as well as Viejabran lettering over the door. The Scholar of the Adventuring Guild. His new role. In all wonder, it could have been a dream¡ªhe would be paid well here, given all the luxuries he could want, and best of all; free reign to research and marvel at flora and fauna maybe never seen before. When he had left Abhal¨®n, this had been the life he wanted. He''d gotten it, and now it was bitter. Ealdhere sighed, rubbing at his face. His red hair hung unkempt and untied before his eyes; it had almost wilted, growing less bright. He was in Calaratan clothes, no more of his dyed cloaks and elaborate tunics. His feather-filled hat had survived, but he had discarded it himself; he couldn''t bear anything that had gone into the dungeon. His poor family would hardly recognize him. "I''m not meant for this world, I''m afraid," he said. The sapling''s many leaves caught the sunlight; it didn''t need it, he knew, with its pure white leaves and its propriety to feed on something other than the sun. He didn''t know what yet, but he''d been substituting it with pure mana in slivers of quartz embedded into the surrounding soil. But he''d have time to figure it out, wouldn''t he? Scholar of the Adventuring Guild indeed. "But, well, there''s nothing else for it." He looked to the sapling, at a new leaf on its highest branch he''d noticed opening from bud this morning. "You and I will be of a new sort, here¡ªI''ll find you a name and me a purpose, and we will survive this." The sapling shivered. Ealdhere reached back to his desk, where rolls of parchment sat; he''d been drafting maps of the first floor, piecing together his own memories and knowledge of the habits of the creatures he''d seen there. In a week, when adventurers could begin delving under careful watch of Guildmaster Lluc, he could assemble more proper maps. And guides, for the creatures found there; and identification, for those that weren''t known; and strategies, for the floors and their dangers; and uses, for materials pulled from its caverns. Ealdhere would not leave Calarata, he knew; Lluc hadn''t had to threaten him. He knew he was trapped here. And still, looking at all the maps and half-finished drawings of ar?entkapuloj and blankkapaj fungoj, he felt a familiar stir of excitement in his stomach. "Well, no sense in complaining," he said to the unnamed mangrove. "It won''t fix nor change anything, and we''ve discoveries to make." Perhaps it was his imagination, but he thought the sapling shifted, leaning a little closer to him. Ealdhere smiled; a slight thing, but for the first time in weeks. He took up his quill, dipped it in his inkwell, and began to draw again. - "Never," the man hissed, just as venomous and frothing as the first eleven times he''d delivered this monologue. "Never in all our years have we allied with another¡ªthe Silent Market is not some frettering fool to dance to another''s command¨C" Gon?al, as he''d since learned over the years, stayed quiet and let the words rush over him. Miquel was a tall, waspish man, silver threaded around temples that often blushed red with the force of his shouting. Not one that lived up to the Silent Market''s epithet, though you wouldn''t know that when you were a trader looking to buy; sly and clever he could be, twisting prices higher and higher until you left half-way convinced you''d bought yourself one of the divine treasures needed to start your journey towards becoming a god. You hadn''t, of course, because the Silent Market hadn''t had treasures on that scale in years, and both Gon?al and Miquel knew that. They hadn''t since their founder died. An elf already old and ancient, arrived on a cockleshell boat to a Calarata uncaring of laws and regulations, banished from far-off Ter Asla for crimes he didn''t name but were easy to guess. Old Master Ker?t?. There had, perhaps, never been a more proficient collector in the world. Not a nightmarketer, for he didn''t bother going around and fighting things himself; instead they came to him, and he kept and polished and hoarded them to gleaming perfection. First lesser things, to satiate his curiosity; but immortals have forever to grow more curious, and soon mere commodities weren''t enough. He wanted more. And more he got. And when Ter Asla rejected his ways, he went in search of somewhere that would care less, and he found it, and more he continued to collect. Gon?al wasn''t from the Old World, but he was close, and as a young, stumbling boy with scales on his face and claws on his hands, he had been just another prize for Ker?t? to take and display. He wasn''t even the first humanoid, let alone sapient; he had joined glistening halls of others who no longer had freedom. But Gon?al had been quiet, and clever, and willing to learn, and over time Ker?t? had made use of his innate analysis skill to make him a nightmarketer. Still a treasure, still a piece of his hoard, but with some give to his chains. And then, as if from nowhere, Ker?t? had fallen sick. Fallen dreadfully, irreversibly sick, the kind that lingered and hurt. He had spent much of his collection searching far and wide for a cure. He hadn''t found one. Gon?al had made sure. Hundreds of years of life, fallen in a gasping, frothing mess of poison he hadn''t known existed. The end of an elf. And now the Silent Market was this. "We took you in," Miquel snapped. "After your master''s death, when you had nothing¡ªtook you in and gave you a purpose, gave you a job, and now you go gallivanting off with¨C with Lluc Cardena Ferr¨¦ like he''s some commoner hiring you for a useless mission¨C" Telling, that he was only daring to say something like that in the safety of the Silent Market''s headquarters. Gon?al said nothing, because he knew this song and dance, especially when it had been going on for weeks. It had been his life on the line¡ªdeath or becoming the Silent Market''s liaison to the dungeon''s Adventuring Guild. Not much of a question, and Miquel could shout all he wanted, but Gon?al would not be trotting merrily up to Lluc and asking for death instead of alliance. He''d gotten much too far in life to fall to this. This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. And the dungeon would be good for them. The Silent Market was one of Calarata''s most prized things, their legacy spreading far and wide; and that was because they used to have Ker?t?''s arm guiding their collection. Easy to find treasures when you had the expertise of an elf who had spent hundreds of years doing nothing else. But then Ker?t? had died, and suddenly the Silent Market was led by silver-haired men who had a greater love of infighting than searching, and their stores were running dry. Too much pride to take in anyone who wasn''t already a part of their cabal, and too much face to save to hire lesser adventurers to build their treasuries. Though to the outside world they were just as fierce as ever, that was no longer the case. Piece by piece, they were making their way through Ker?t?''s collection, selling a new one right when the mystique around the Silent Market fell, every time that people began to speak of them as common nightmarketers instead of finders of unbelievable treasures. And it worked, because Ker?t? had wonders above wonders, but, well. There was only so much he had in his collection. They were selling at a much faster rate than they could collect, and their storage was drying out. Soon, they wouldn''t have anything, and the Silent Market would crumble under its own reputation. With a dungeon, especially a dungeon that had made the bony-fanged beast of the Old World, they could fill their coffers with wonders unclaimed and pick right back up where Ker?t? had left them. The wolf-wisp enclosed in quartz around Gon?al''s neck was proof enough. As if sensing his thoughts, Miquel''s rant thundered to the next point he had been building towards. "And the disrespect to need alliance for a dungeon¡ªwe will, of course, be delving it, claiming all its prizes, but for Lluc to say we need a liaison, then surely he will be demanding greater taxes. Maybe even limiting what we can take out of it. If he thinks he has any power over us, then he''ll force concessions out of us¨C concessions he wouldn''t have been able to make if you hadn''t sworn to him like a traitorous fool¨C" And Gon?al blinked. Miquel was staring at him, red-faced and furious, and he¨C Without meaning to, Gon?al''s eyes picked up that faint itch, his analysis mana spilling forth in faint luminosity; the world lit up in brilliant colours, eddies and whorls of mana, and data raced over his mind. Things like the scuffs in the larch-wood that made up the doorframe, the imperfections caused by age and weathering over the edge of the desk, the flawless gold in Miquel''s cloak-brooch. The things that allowed him to perfectly discern the price of whatever he had just captured. And the thing that allowed him to see that Miquel''s heartbeat raced, that sweat beaded over his brow, that his eyes flicked from side to side. He was nervous. Not necessarily of Gon?al, because he had worked long and hard to make himself seem relatively unassuming, never the type of man that could have done anything to Old Master Ker?t?. But nervous of what he would do. Gon?al had gone right from childhood to Ker?t?, and once he had escaped the endless collection halls and started learning, the things he found went to his master''s market. And upon Ker?t?''s death, he had started to work directly for them. That was some ten, fifteen years where they had access to him; him, the youngest nightmarketer to join their cabal, a man on the ground to do the gathering that their aging selves couldn''t. And now, through no action of theirs, Gon?al suddenly had another master. Miquel was worried he would leave them. Gon?al had no intention of leaving. For all the Silent Market was an undead, crumbling thing, the public didn''t know that, and the prestige that came from its name was well beyond anything he could have at any other nightmarketer''s group. And, well. Ker?t? had taken him. So Gon?al would take everything he''d ever had and make it his. No, he would not be leaving the Silent Market. But Miquel didn''t know that. Something bright and alert and altogether vicious curled through his stomach, in the part of him that echoed with things unknown and Old. Something alive. "Is that all?" He asked. Miquel puffed up with self-righteous fury again, but Gon?al stood from his chair with slow precision; his ancestry made him tall and he towered above this man, all brawn and scales and power. Silver-ranked he was, and that was mostly his analysis mana¡ªhis strength in the field came from his ancestry alone. Claws tapped, dagger sharp, on his sides. Against Miquel, who hadn''t seen the field in decades, there was no competition. "If that is all," Gon?al said, measuring his words. "Then I must go. I have a meeting with the Scholar of the Adventuring Guild to discuss when I will be allowed to delve." He did not, in fact, have a meeting. But Baron Ealdhere Darlington was the type of fellow who could be easily convinced to work with Gon?al, especially considering he had no one else in his boat. It would be easy for Gon?al to fake friendship and earn brighter deals from him. And to the Silent Market, it would give him both a great power in the dungeon and standing elsewhere. Enough status that they couldn''t risk just assassinating him, and enough they would truly fear he was leaving them. And the more scared they were, the more power he had over them. Gon?al brushed his hands over the necklace he wore, heavy on his throat; a bite of mana surged through his fingers, the wisp within raging as always. A symbol of what the dungeon had already given him. Miquel''s eyes snapped to it. On his heartbeat raced. His lecture did not continue. Gon?al smiled, fangs biting at the air, and swept from the room. - The night curled around him, late summer heat and the buzz of distant biting-flies. Calarata''s white stone, still ash-dusted with storm-symbols, tiled roofs sloping down in cascading waves to the pebbled shore far below. Over the beach, a night-dark dock snaked through its wavering coast, arms extending outward like fangs. Along the wood, boots clicking their heels against the salt-sprayed lacquer, Lluc Cardena Ferr¨¦ strode. In his crow-wing coat, he was near invisible, aided by the air-attuned mana that wavered and hissed around him until he was little more than indiscernible shadow. No trace of him would linger in this place, not with the task he was carrying out. In the day, he spread his name as the Guildmaster, overseeing construction and building reputation. People looked at him and instead of casting their eyes down as they did in the presence of any of the Dread Crew, they now watched him with hunger, with curiosity; they wanted to claim the core. They watched him. Lluc looked to the velveted horizon, teeth set. A week left. To Varc¨ªs, it had been business as normal; gathering construction mages, building the Guild, hiring those loyal to the Dread Pirate who would serve in positions. Ealdhere had settled in as the new Scholar, Gon?al had agreed to be liaison, Callick had died a necessary and bloody death. All as planned. And at night, over dark waters, he walked to the end of the dock and stared over the cove. The Al¨®mbra Mountains wrapped around her, towering things of white-red, green lacing up their mighty backs. On one side, the jungle; on the other, the cliffs. From behind those cliffs, sails grey and ragged, prow slicing through the water, a ship small and unassuming crept from the shadows. No lanterns reflected off the drifting waves, no mana-call to announce their presence; on they slithered, quiet as snakes, towards the dock. Towards where Lluc waited. A hand emerged from the stern, mana flashing over the nails; a coil of rope, magically awoken, sprung from the prow and lashed itself to the dock, tugging the rest of the ship after. More ropes, guided by invisible hands, pulled it closer, drawing the sails high upon the mast, scrubbing any trace of suspicion from the ship until it appeared as if it had been at the dock for days. With how many others cluttered against the wood, it would go wholly unnoticed; small enough not to need to be moored out in the cove, no labels, no engraved showings of wealth. Something to be looked at and forgotten. Lluc would know. That was what he had purchased it for. Varc¨ªs was a clever man, one beyond reckoning; but he did not deal in gold. He took his taxes in rare creatures and artefacts, to do what he would with them; the gold he tossed in the Dread Crew''s coffers after paying for his lifestyle. Explicit numbers were not his forte. And to him, the amount Lluc had used to pay for the Adventuring Guild was what it should be. It would line up perfectly; because he didn''t know about the sleepless nights where Lluc did the construction himself, where he bought half the workers and threatened the rest into servitude. He didn''t know about that, because if he did, Lluc would be dead, and he wasn''t. Thus it had gone unnoticed. And the money had gone elsewhere. A ramp was pushed forth from the rail, clattering down and latching in place with another coil of enchanted rope. And from the unassuming, quiet little ship, three dozen men took step onto the dock before Lluc. He examined them, mana spiraling out to conceal them all. Tall, broad, the look of laborers about them; hair a blend of darker browns, eyes pinched at the corners, brows thick and pronounced. Similar to those of Calarata, enough to blend in. The Wandering Empire was just that; both wandering, and an empire. All those in their path had the option to either join or flee, and those that fled needed to find lives elsewhere. For someone who offered protection, there was little they wouldn''t do, and they could be trusted to be loyal. And Lluc needed those loyal. In slow fashion, they spread out before him, filling the dock as it creaked and groaned beneath. Some of them marveled at distant Calarata, at her white walls and gleaming torch-lights; some shrugged off their heavy patterned robes. They would need to get clothes more commonly found around Calarata if they wanted to blend in. But for now, they looked at him, and Lluc smiled. For two weeks had he waited for them, and now they had only a week left to establish themselves; but it would be enough. It had to be. Lluc Cardena Ferr¨¦ would not disappear. "Welcome," he said, with a curl of mana to his voice that hummed between them. A flashy show of power, to emphasize that while some of them were Golds, they were not nearly as high-ranked Gold as him, and he would win if they were to battle. A necessary lesson when you were hiring those explicitly to betray others. "To Calarata." The men muttered amongst themselves in their native language; something thick and garbled, heavy in constants. ¨¹chlaghan, he thought; not that it really mattered. They would be speaking Viejabran now. They already knew the deal, but there was no harm in re-enforcing it. "You will be serving me," Lluc said. "Delving into the dungeon, building a reputation, and spreading my name. Do not reveal that you know me or that this is your mission. You will be teaching the people of Calarata to follow me instead of the Dread Pirate." The words almost tasted sweet. He could imagine it even now; it would be a slow and insidious thing, piece by piece. But Varc¨ªs didn''t care about the common people, only about the taxes they paid him and the sea-drakes he killed before them to make his points. He wouldn''t notice three dozen new arrivals, speaking only of the Guildmaster Lluc and not of him. But those words would echo, and build up into a storm; and one day Varc¨ªs would look over Calarata, and realize it wasn''t his. Lluc didn''t count himself a fool. Varc¨ªs was more powerful than him, and would likely always be; but Lluc could make himself invaluable in other ways, and in a city that thrived on being free of the Le¨®ro Kingdom, they cared about who was their leader. Varc¨ªs was a shadowy enigma who could only be trusted to be powerful and unpredictable. But Lluc could be more. One man stepped forward, with a cropped beard and black eyes. He was tall, and the mana within him swirled with the strength of a Gold. "I am Ghasavalk," he said in laborious Viejabran, heavily accented and slow. "Leader of these men. We will honour our deal." Lluc wrinkled his nose. They''d blend in as well as birds amongst fish. "Go by Calaratan names," he said. "People listen more to those they think are native." Ghasavalk inclined his head, a bit of a smile curling his lips. "Subtle as a hunting-cat we will be," he agreed, and his men echoed behind him, heads deepening into a bow. "Power and glory will be brought to your name." Well, they could be flatterers where it counted. Lluc had put in the work to make the deal good for them; gold enough for a comfortable life, three buildings in separate corners of Calarata for them to space themselves out in, detailed plans of what to do. This deal would free them from a life of constantly running from the Wandering Empire, and they damn well knew it. Ghasavalk looked at him, and there was a hint of curiosity in his eyes, something mana-bright that sparked within. "Do you fear discovery?" He asked, accent hanging over the words. "I have heard of the Dread Pirate, even in far ¨¹chlagh. Is this plan worth what could fall?" Lluc had stood before Varc¨ªs'' borwood desk, had seen the sea-drake fall, had looked into void-black eyes and felt power. He knew Varc¨ªs, knew his strength, knew the cost of failure. And he knew the glory of success. So he smiled, and mana dripped from his teeth. "I am not the kind of man that dies." Chapter 108 - Plain Normality Now, there was a certain type of spirit that became a dungeon core. Those spirits had to be immensely powerful in order to anchor their soul to the world, often well and above their peers; they had to have authority, able to grasp at the very strings that made up Aiqith and refuse to let go; they had to have knowledge, to be aware of the innate magic that was needed to rip one''s own soul out as their body perished. But above all else, they had to be smart. I was, of course, very smart. Brilliantly, wonderfully smart. And every possible thought that my crystalline form had was firing. The schema that sat heavy in my core had spent the last months staying still and pretty, which was perfect, because I did not like it and I did not want it moving. The gods hadn''t even wanted to give me the schema, had only relented when I''d argued that I needed to know what it was so I could defeat others who attacked me; they hadn''t wanted me to create one. I hadn''t wanted me to create one. They were the antithesis of creation, to everything my halls stood for. The pitch-shark. Its schema shouldn''t be aware. Shouldn''t be anything more than a tool for me to use. Shouldn''t know what that rune was. Well. For all I was terribly clever, I was also terribly curious. I reached out, hesitant, to the scroll; pulling out a curl of mana, I pushed it through the outline of the rune, tracing over top of it. The half-circle rising sun¡ªor setting?¡ªthe line splitting it, the cracks beneath. A final jagged line¨C Something lurched. Waters deep, waters endless; swimming through the Darkness Between the Stars¨C I jerked back. The thought¡ªthe idea, the memory¡ªsunk back beneath the surface, sluggish, wisping away as if I''d never had it. But if I stayed still, mana frozen around me, I could almost imagine that I had a body again, one dark and sinuous, swimming through water¡ªthrough air? through something emptier?¡ªin an all-encompassing need to devour something, something bright, something scorching and impossible before me¨C And then it was gone. Gods, what was that thing? My mana shuffled a little hesitantly around me. That rune was¡­ something. I didn''t have words to describe it, not as a sea-drake and not as a dungeon core, but it was something, and it scratched at my thoughts like a living thing. Runes were old, yes; frightfully old, passed down from the gods in the nameless world, unmade by anything on Aiqith. They had power, direct connections to mana beyond these shores. A whole other suite of elaborate metaphors that I could wax poetics about until the moon fractured and the oceans fell, but. They weren''t this. Runes summoned power, inlaid protections, called upon gods. Not whatever that had been. Nicau''s memory said that the man selling the scroll had said he picked it up from a recent excavation¡ªand had thought, judging by his desperation to sell and lack of a nightmarketer cabal behind him, that he was a local. So there wasn''t far he could go beyond the walls of Calarata for excavating something. So where the hells had he gotten this scroll? It was made of dried animal skin I didn''t recognize and with runes spelling out a lovely little poem that spoke of something that had happened well before known memory. That wasn''t normal¡ªof course, nothing about this situation was¡ªand there was a biting sort of frustration as the pieces didn''t magically fall into place. If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it. That wasn''t my only sensation, though. Because, far in the back of my awareness, there came a prickle of something deep and bright. Some like star-burn. A god''s awareness. They had sensed me playing around with the rune, and I got the strangest little idea that they did not appreciate that. It wasn''t anything specific¡ªnot the redwood smell of Rhoborh, the gnashing stone-teeth of Mayalle, the iron-rot of Nuvja''s darkness¡ªjust a taste of divinity. The distant awareness of dozens, maybe more, different gods focusing in. The roughest outline of a single rune was drawing all this attention. The star-burn deepened. I made a split-second decision¡ªI reached out in a cloud of mana and dissolved the scroll, eating into the stretched animal''s hide and dissolving it into golden motes of light that flickered gently through my floor, eventually reaching my core. Gone, only the disturbed green algae beneath as any sign that it had ever existed. With it gone, I had disintegrated everything Nicau had brought back from Calarata, and once more my dungeon was full of only dungeonborn things. Normal. Nothing unnatural. Look at me, I was practically shouting. Getting rid of the evidence, no more rune, all gone, see? Nothing to worry about here. The star-burn hummed, a final push, and drifted away. I exhaled an unfortunately intangible breath of air. Well. That decided things for me. I wasn''t the weak-scaled type to roll over and show my stomach at the first sign of disapproval, but the gods weren''t exactly ones I felt comfortable ignoring. That hadn''t been an order per s¨¦¡ªprobably better for it, because if it had been an explicit order I absolutely would have disobeyed it on the principle of the thing¡ªbut it had been a very strong suggestion. I still remembered the message, so long ago¡ªtelling me I should have received an Otherworld schema right when I''d first come to awareness. But the gods hadn''t given me that, and they''d left me to flounder and nearly get captured immediately. It was only after I offered them pretty floors to claim as their territory that they had started paying me mind. Not particularly fond of that, I was. But I was less fond of them smiting me in an overloaded bolt of incredible divine power, so I bristled my mana, waving it around the Fungal Gardens like I was cleaning the air, and set about busying myself. Normal, classic tasks that I had been doing before Nicau dropped these lovely things into my halls. Speaking of, I swam down through my various rooms, sinking a few points of mana into the third floor. I bored a tunnel for Nicau, closing it behind him as he fumbled through the stone; I wouldn''t make him ruin his nice new clothes this time by swimming through, even if I very much needed a more permanent plan for him to constantly travel from the Hungering Reef to Calarata. Irritating. Everything about today was irritating. Even the newest schemas and title sitting pretty in my core weren''t enough to shake the feeling that something was wrong. But if I got caught up in that, I couldn''t prepare for the Adventurer''s Guild that was assembling itself merrily outside my door; and if I started researching it, then the gods would notice, and I had the worrying little thought that they would not necessarily appreciate that. They had barely let me keep the pitch-shark''s schema, and this rune was intrinsically tied to it; or, if not it, then where it had come from. Where it had come from before. No, they wanted me as a docile little dungeon, creating new creatures and bringing mana to an Aiqith that was deprived of my abilities. Messing around with anything from the Abyss was not the plan. Was not anywhere near the plan. So I would play along. I continued guiding Nicau lower into my halls, towards the wave-lapped beach where his new sleeping den sat¡ªalmost ironically, the new leader of the unevolved kobold tribe up in the Drowned Forest had been too in awe of Chieftess to take over her room and thus had taken over Nicau''s as the next best¡ªand smoothing over the worst of his exhaustion. I gathered together my mana and prepared to fall upon my Hungering Reef, finishing it as best I could; to aid in the fledgling sea serpent coiling through the third room, the billowing clouds of prismatic dartfish, the almost-finished evolving reefback turtle. Going about my regular life, reacting to the week or two timeline that Nicau had given me before the Adventurer''s Guild was completed. Normal. Everything was normal, of course. But in the back of my core, hidden beneath the running concentration that was necessary to maintain my dungeon, I carved a memory of the shape of the rune. Not a full thought, not anything that could manifest, to draw attention of either the gods nor the twin-mawed beast in my core; just a blip. Hardly even a flicker. The rune I would remember, and when I knew more, when I was more comfortable, when the gods were more trusting or perhaps unable to look at me, then I would try. Then I would experiment. Because the rune meant something. I knew that. But I could wait. And I would. And one day, I would discover what it did. Chapter 109 - New Homes Well. It would certainly be easier to pretend that everything was normal and I had never even seen a rune when lovely little gifts like this kept presenting themselves. Deep in my sixth floor, tucked in an alcove with capturing coral swirling up the scatter-reef to support a shallow bed, a gleaming silver-white light began to fade away, wisping away in great tendrils of faux fire¡ªand a new creature opened her brilliant eyes. The reefback turtle. From five feet in diameter, she''d bloomed out to over eight, losing the stiff peak of her shell to a more sloping, smooth thing, the most brilliant emerald green you''d ever seen. Claws poked from the tips of her finned flippers, no longer made for terrestrial living, and her beak gleamed with a silver bite. Most interesting, the scutes of her shell were¡­ separate, almost. Though they were overall smooth and sloping into each other, there was a definitive gap between each one, and already I could imagine the various plants her schema spoke of rooting between them, creating a sprawling paradise over her back. Alongside the new and fascinating strands of life I was ever so excited for. Lovely questions like this were why I was so invested in my dungeon. So I watched her stand, the waters of the lagoon splashing overhead. But where she had before been floundering and forced to walk across the bottom, now there was an understanding in her eyes as she looked at the currents around her. She knew what they were and how to work with them. She kicked off, her flippers stirring up swirls of pure white sand, and breached the surface of the lagoon. Immediately, my quartz-light dappled over her back, sending the emerald scutes gleaming, and her chest swelled like a bellows as she inhaled. No plants on her back yet, and indeed where she had evolved, there were twisted brown stems of the lichen she''d left behind; but new ones would come soon, I knew. And I couldn''t wait. Still a touch awkward in the way all evolving creatures were, she started to circle around the lagoon, flippers cutting rhythmically through the water as she learned how to keep enough air in her lungs to make sure she was floating at the top. The salinity helped buoy her, of course, but there was always going to be a learning curve for a four hundred pound creature learning how to swim when she''d only ever walked before. She''d figure it out. I darted after her with a bouncing point of awareness, perched above her head so I could marvel at the Hungering Reefs like she did; the pure white beaches catching the quartz-light like a reflection of the sun itself, the tossing crystal blue waves, the towering cloudsire palms and vampiric mangroves. As she traveled, I gathered points of mana and kicked up more wonders for her; more schools of prismatic dartfish, spiraling between red to silver to deep indigo; silver kraits twining through the colourless fans of capturing coral; greater crabs snapping and scuttling over the barrier-reefs. A paradise beyond all others. No, I wasn''t biased. I split away to let her figure things out by herself and spiraled out to the wider floor, nosing into every crack and cranny¡ªobjectively, I should have been focusing on the Jungle Labyrinth and Skylands to finish them up, to let them claim their godly boon and become a greater threat for the invaders I knew were coming, but, well. Coral reefs. How could I be expected to focus on anything else? Especially as it was about to get more crowded here. Because, after a long, harrowed journey made worse by Rihsu''s stubborn refusal to take any easy outs like she was testing if Chieftess and the other kobolds could withstand the struggle¡ªthey did, of course¡ªand the kobold tribe''s inability to do anything even vaguely resembling swimming, they had made it. Food stores depleted, gone from all the world they had ever known¡ªbut now they were here in the Hungering Reefs. I crouched overhead. Their mouths fell open, golden eyes going wide; even the first room of this floor was the size of the entirety of the Drowned Forest, and that was without the entrance in the back they could see. They had never known such freedom, such gleaming excellence within a world to conquer. Just, you know. As soon as they figured out how to get there. Because while they were currently standing on a dazzling beach some several hundred feet across, everything else was water. Sure, in the second room they''d have their atoll, with its cavernous den and ample supply of wood for the taking, but that was it. They would need to figure out how to venture into the brilliance of water. As if to show them all they were missing, Rihsu hardly waited a second before diving in¡ªher deep maroon scales melded with the blue of the water as her finned tail lashed, propelling her forward with an arrow''s speed. Droplets kicked high and sparkled in a truly picturesque scene as she darted around the beach, webbed claws pulling her in a twisting, snaking pattern before she slowed, popping her head out to stare directly at Chieftess. Hells if that wasn''t a fantastic challenge. Chieftess narrowed her own amber-gold pair in response, forked tongue flicking out. The rest of her kobolds spread out behind her, eyeing the water with trepidation; they''d made it through the Underlake with a great deal of struggling and bitching and waterlogged supplies, and didn''t look eager to complete it again. Bloody fire-drake descendants. A plague across Aiqith. Rihsu briefly disappeared under the water, tail kicking up a spray of water; all her time with Seros had trained her well and when she emerged a second later, there was one half of a prismatic dartfish between her fangs, blood billowing around her. She, almost delicately, swallowed the rest of the fish. Chieftess'' eyes narrowed. She warbled a command, tail lashing at the backs of her legs. Three of the kobold hunters came forward, the most lithe of the group, and padded into the water¡ªnot diving like Rihsu had done, but creeping forward until they stood on the very edge of the barrier-reef, the water splashing up to their waists. It was cooler than the Underlake, due to being fed directly by the cove, but with all the mana and quartz-light around it was still plenty warm for the coldblooded creatures. One of the kobold hunters inhaled, hissing something that might have been a prayer, and then slipped into the water. He was a floundering, incapable thing, which both made me smug and irritated, and Rihsu churred something mocking as she swam around him. The other two followed in, but without webbing on their claws or tail, their paddling only carried them with awkward little strokes. But when they didn''t immediately die, although some roughwater sharks were eyeing their struggling forms with interest, Chieftess barked another command and the rest of the kobolds joined them in the water. The shamans were surrounded on all sides by warriors, protection and support, which they needed as their heavy feathers grew waterlogged and weighed them even more down. Chieftess'' tail lashed as she dove in, her large form spiraling in awkward strokes as she pushed herself up to the surface, glaring at Rihsu as best she could past the splashing water. Rihsu, for her part, just dove back underneath and started swimming to the second room. The other kobolds followed her, me bobbing overhead on dozens of points of awareness because there wasn''t a chance I was missing this¡ªactually, side thought, I sent a quick command to Seros and another wandering soul in the Jungle Labyrinth¡ªand sent a soothing pulse of mana to the other creatures in the floor to keep them docile. While I wouldn''t be pampering these kobolds, not when they hadn''t earned it, I did want them to at least reach their new home before they started dying. Two thousand feet they swam across, clinging to the far walls if they ever needed a break¡ªeven in their newly evolved forms, they were creatures of land, and swimming was an entirely new form of exhaustion¡ªas Rihsu swam unbothered before them. Slowly, the room narrowed into the chokepoint I''d made, only twenty feet across; the evolved kobold tribe floundered their way through and then were promptly slapped in the face with the glory of the second room. Dozens of colours with the prismatic dartfish, gleaming swathes of coral, diamond-bright islands of sand. I''d seen it a hundred times¡ªhells, I''d made it¡ªand still my mana purred with delight. A glory above glories. Chieftess'' eyes, when she was able to hold herself stable for long enough, immediately snapped to the lagoon. With renewed determination, she led her tribe over to it, the shamans still protected and warriors doing their best to look intimidating on the outskirts. They weren''t, to be very clear, but at least they tried. I tightened my hold on the roughwater sharks and distracted the fledgling sea serpent with a school of soon-to-die silverheads in the third room. They needed at least a chance to lose their fire-drake ancestry before they were killed. This room was much larger than the last and it wasn''t like the kobolds had regained any stamina, so once again they hugged to the walls as they clambered across, marveling at the new wonder they found themselves in. Chieftess led the charge, good leader as she was, and her claws left shallow grooves in the limestone as she hauled herself along. Powerful thing, in truth. She and Rihsu were the same height, Rihsu having more strength and Chieftess more intelligence. Interesting foils to each other, especially as Rihsu was likely to evolve again soon. But finally, after long enough some of the kobolds were sagging in the water, Chieftess got her claws into the sand of the atoll and hauled herself up. She stood and shook, water droplets flying off, and then helped the rest of her tribe up; any supplies they''d brought were well and truly ruined now if the Underlake hadn''t already done so, but that was fine. They would need to figure out waterproof methods here. Their new home. The entrance to the den was in the back, tall and ringed with stalactites; twin mangroves stood on either side, framing it with their scarlet bark and thorns, and a cluster of quartz-light gleamed overhead. An immediate step up from their Drowned Forest lodgings in more than just size. I couldn''t wait to see them explore it. Oh! Actually¡ªI dug into my core for an untouched schema, one perfect for the mangroves scattered around the edges of the atoll and before the entrance. Another prize within the thorned branches of the mangrove, a treat to make them all the more tempting. The funnel gourd. With a curl of mana, vines burst between the pure white leaves, twisting things of bright green with serrated leaves; I twined them over the entire mangrove structure, blending plants together until they were all knotted around each other, grounding roots creeping down the thorned trunk to dig into the sandy soil. Another one I had to change to be more salt tolerant, but it''d be fine. They''d adapt or they''d die. Another point of mana pushed into them and they swelled, pushing out delicate yellow flowers that quickly ripened to fruit; the gourds bloomed wide and heavy, orange base lined with crimson stripes, weighing down the vines so they hung at the perfect appetizing height. Where the stem met the gourd proper, an opening emerged, widening as the flesh beneath dried until a cavernous maw lined the top of the gourd, dark within. Almost like a pitcher plant, but as a hard-shelled gourd. Fascinating. With the obvious influx of my mana, the kobolds all stared at the entrance, huddled close together. Rihsu didn''t emerge from the water, swimming around the edge of the barrier-reef, carefully avoiding the spreading roots of the mangroves. Chieftess hissed something, claws flicking, before throwing back her shoulders and marching into the den. Awe filled her. As it should. I had never been one much for dens, considering I was far too large for one as a sea-drake and my hoard looked best when natural sunlight struck through the water to gleam against its silver and artefacts, but this was as good as I could make it. A sprawling first room, broadening out from a narrow entrance to force a chokepoint if needed, with freshwater streams trickling to shallow pools and divots in the ground for fires. Although fires would be limited, if I had to guess¡ªwhile I had filled the atoll with mangroves and palms, that was still less than had been in the Drowned Forest, and available branches were more likely to be waterlogged and unusable. Hm. Maybe I should plant some rubies for the kobold shamans to experiment with. But past the first room arched two halls; in one was a row of individual dens, beds softened with green algae and pale algae-light, ending in a much larger room for the kobolds that still preferred to sleep in an enormous pile, wrapped around each other for security and comfort. Of course, separate from the others were two much larger rooms with their own freshwater streams and sprawling beds. Chieftess and Nicau deserved better than the commoners. The other hall led to a series of storage chambers, as cold and dry as I could make them, stony shelves extending outward and algae-lined holes beneath. Most for food, of course, but also a few for treasures¡ªif they were going to be proper kobolds that served dragons, they needed to begin collecting things for their hoard. Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon. Or. My hoard? Technically, they would be taking things that were already mine and putting them in another corner that was also mine. It could be a confusing world, at times. From the information in their schema and what I''d learned from them so far, this was exactly what they needed, built both for their current strength and all they needed to grow. And as Chieftess wandered in, amber-gold eyes wide, I knew she recognized that. Knew what lovely thing I was allowing her to use. The other kobolds piled in, and all their evolved maturity tumbled off as they skittered around like excitable hatchlings, marveling at how they could have individual rooms if they wanted, drinking the freshwater, rolling in the green algae beds. They would need food soon, as well as organization and planning, but for now, Chieftess let her tribe play around with their new home. They would be a driving force in this floor, I knew. While my other creatures filled the majority and the fledgling sea serpent was the powerhouse when Seros wasn''t here, it would be the kobolds that would shape the floor. Their hunting patrols, their traps, their coordination¡ªas annoyed as I was that the gods protected sapient schemas from me, I could understand why. They were devastatingly powerful. Which was why I had collected my own, and now they would dominate the Hungering Reefs. Alongside the other arrival. In the entrance, Seros emerged onto the beach, tail swishing to kick up a swirl of sand. Rihsu had been stubborn and led the other kobolds through complicated routes¡ªSeros moved with a haste and speed befitting the first of my Named. By the time the tribe entered the atoll, Seros had already brought Nicau to the sixth floor. Nicau, who was staring with open-mouthed awe over the Hungering Reefs, exhaustion melting away in face of this wonder of wonders; as he should. I''d worked too hard for the little human not to be starstruck. My ego well stroked, I peppered him with points of awareness, including one for the sheer purpose of glaring at the shadowthief rat on his shoulder. The parrot, after a disapproving squawk at the sand Seros kicked up¡ªdid she not fear death? Seros could sneeze and kill her¡ªwas shifting her wings, preparing to take off into this new floor. She was a touch smaller than the greater pigeons but with better maneuverability, and she looked like she would be sticking with Nicau for most of the time. A high chance she''d survive, then. For all that Chieftess'' evolution had prepared her for managing her tribe in such a different environment, Nicau would be a welcome addition to things. He could teach them to swim and hunt, alongside traps more designed for sandy shores. And he could¨C Hm. One problem. While I was fine with letting the kobolds figure out how to get to the atoll on their own, Nicau looked exhausted enough I wasn''t positive he would survive it¡ªand he had a rat and parrot on his shoulder. Not ideal swimming conditions. Sometimes my floors could be a touch too efficient. I stared at him, mana coiling around in anticipation. His Communer blessing would do nothing for this, and neither of his two companions had anything for it; and, well. I needed him at that atoll, and I had too much of my Otherworld mana attached to him to just risk the chance of him drowning before he got there. Nicau sensed my attention on him, stiffening as he looked around¡ªbags were heavy under his eyes, coat limp around his shoulders. A weak breeze could put him six feet under. So. To Seros, I pushed through our connection, echoing it to Seros as well. Ride to the den. Nicau, if it were possible, stiffened even more. Two very conflicting things warred within him, visible even without our soul''s connection¡ªdid he want to obey me, or did he want to get on the back of a dragon? Draconic monitor. Semantics. For his part, Seros didn''t look much more pleased at the idea¡ªfirst the vampiric dryad''s Ancestral Tree, now a human¡ªbut I sent a few more flurried thoughts about the importance of it. He sighed, a deep rumble that echoed through his chest like a growl, and twisted his neck to look at Nicau. Who gulped. There was a pained acceptance in Seros'' thoughts, alongside something that bordered on a command. I needed to find a different way for Nicau to traverse the floors easily that did not require Seros to play as guide or steed. I fervently agreed. "Ah, o'' dungeon," Nicau began, visibly curling in on himself. "Surely, I could, ah, rest here? For tonight? I wouldn''t want to. To inconvenience you." Staying is an inconvenience, I told him. Nicau wilted. With the look of one on his way to the gallows, he faced Seros, shoulders hunched in and head bowed. "Mighty dragon," he said, hardly more than a murmur. "If I were¨C would you allow¨C" Seros'' lantern-esque eyes flashed. Around the beach, water trembled, hydrokinesis tugging up strands of mist and kicking up white-capped waves¡ªbut then he rumbled, low in his throat, and turned. Nicau meekly padded forward. The shadowthief rat hooked her little claws into the collar of his coat, looking rightly terrified at the situation, while the parrot hardly seemed to understand what was wrong about it all. With slow, hesitant movements, Nicau set one boot on Seros'' haunch and clambered on top. For all Seros was twenty-five feet long, he was also rather lithe, and no part of him was made to be ridden. Nicau ended up in an awkward half-crouch to avoid Seros'' silver spines from jabbing somewhere unpleasant, looking thoroughly miserably about his situation, keeping his hands tucked close to his chest so he didn''t have to touch Seros more than necessary. From our connection, I could tell that Seros was pleased by his fear, even if he rather wished this scenario had never happened at all. But with that, Seros slipped into the water, waves dying down and a current surging beneath his claws to carry them quickly. He lashed his tail only instead of using his limbs to keep Nicau steady, head held forward so he didn''t gore the boy''s face on his horns¡ªconscientious like that. Confusing, actually, since I didn''t know where he''d gotten it from¡ªI certainly wouldn''t have cared when I was a sea-drake. Nicau was lucky Seros was who he was. The draconic monitor swam quickly, dipping through the first room and emerging into the second; Nicau''s mouth fell upon anew as he beheld the wonder of this room, all the trees and atoll and lagoon, then fell further when he saw the distant red forms of the kobolds and understood that this was where he now resided. The second room only. He would not be going to the third room, where my core was¡ªfor all he was sworn to me, I was not about to trust a human so lightly. Seros darted through the water, mist scattering off his scales and the path smooth as ice before him; kobolds on the beach froze, warbling something, more poking their head from the den. They all watched the approach with wide eyes. Rihsu, still swimming, froze so badly she dipped below the water. Well. If it hadn''t already been high, Nicau''s reputation amongst the kobolds had likely exploded¡ªthough they hadn''t sworn to Seros like Rihsu, they still saw him as draconic, only a few steps below me as their Voice. So for Nicau to come in riding him¨C He hadn''t earned this. Seros barely restrained his urge to drag Nicau to the bottom of the Reef. Instead, he dug his claws into the sand and climbed out, tail flicking and head curling to stare at all of the kobolds. They obediently lowered their gaze, even Chieftess. Nicau made a sorry little squeak as he all but threw himself off Seros, the parrot squawking with annoyance in his ear. He hopped a few steps away, turning back and bowing deeply to Seros, eyes closed. "Thank you, mighty Seros." For his part, Seros just rumbled, eyes narrowed. Nicau got the hint and backed away, entering the cluster of kobolds. They warbled at him and he warbled back, smiling tiredly at their excitement. Chieftess strode forward after another glance to Seros, bumping her forehead against his¡ªNicau winced from the impact with her scales¡ªand hissing a list of questions that he responded to with their patentedly garbled language that was still right on the cusp of evolving into something understandable. I could have poked into Nicau''s thoughts and decoded things, but, well. They were kobolds. It wasn''t going to be that interesting. Their plans, however, were¡ªNicau being here meant they could move forward with their full strength, especially as Nicau explained how he knew about living near the water''s edge. I dipped into Chieftess'' head out of vague curiosity. Already, she was beginning to make plans¡ªfinding dead branches on the mangroves to harvest, cataloging which creatures here they could eat, figuring out how to hunt in the lagoon. From poking deeper, I could see other thoughts¡ªfinding a new staff for herself after she''d given the last one to the new leader of the kobold tribe back in the Drowned Forest, finding a way to begin training the shamans in magic, maybe getting them chunks of capturing coral, exploring the first and third rooms for potential smaller dens as offposts. She was taking to this vastly expanded space with all the determination from her evolution, and frankly, I couldn''t wait to see what she did. Especially as she''d have to be swimming for most of it. Soon those garish red scales would disappear between gleaming blue-green, and that would be a plenty good reward for all the work I''d put into making them strong. But for now, the kobolds settled into their new home, marveling at the wonders and making their plans. Everything would change, but they would thrive here, and be comfortable enough to grow. Hm. A little too comfortable, actually. As much as my dungeon was a paradise, it wasn''t a mere swim through the shallows. I nudged my connection with Seros, sending him an image of the fledgling sea serpent snapping his way through the silverhead school, gnawing at the bit for a fight; Seros perked up, slipping back into the water. And, with a brush of his burgeoning gravitas, Rihsu immediately swam after him. Though they''d lost their original sparring partner of the sarco, the sea serpent was a more than good alternative. In a surge of hydrokinesis-aided currents, both of them disappeared from the second room into the third¡ªhardly a heartbeat later, something broke with a thundering crash, waves whipping high and thrashing as the sea serpent eagerly engaged his new foes. The kobold tribe all stiffened, flashing wary eyes towards the far walls. Even Chieftess tightened her claws. My points of awareness pranced between them with a smug curl of mana. For all the lagoon was safer, it wasn''t safe. Nothing in my halls was. It would do them well to remember that. Chieftess seemed to sense Nicau''s exhaustion and chittered something at him, gesturing back into the den. He nodded, and then warbled something, pointing to the parrot and rat. Clearing them off the menu, judging by the other kobolds'' disappointed barks. Typical. At least he was obeying my order to keep them alive. There was a distant roar as the sea serpent broke through the surface of the water, snapping and snarling as Rihsu battered her claws against his side before his tail lashed her away. As one, the kobolds shivered. I settled in, my mana curling around me with a pleased purr. Life was good. - He stared at the stone before him. It loomed apart from everything surrounding it, a gleam of silver-white amidst the grey; it had none of the age and wear, no notches or scars carved through its surface. Smooth and shining. Unnatural. Created. After so long, after so achingly, painfully long that his memories had been reduced to mere fractures of nostalgia and easier times, Akkyst was home. And there were others with him. The journey had worn at them all; blood matted through his fur, burns from a magma-salamander lacing up his side, something deep within his back leg that ached when he rested too much weight on it. They''d lost two more Magelords, one to the injury-heat that took her despite all the mana Bylk could spare for healing, another to a boulder-beast hidden in the shadows of a rock shelf. Weary and weak, food stores near empty, far from home with nothing resembling protection. But the jewels hanging from Bylk''s ears were refilling with mana, bright and shining, and the air around them was changing; something heavy and calling surrounding them past the pressing darkness. More and more creatures Akkyst had to fight, all headed in the same direction¡ªsomething was summoning them in the deep, filling them with a hunger regular mountains didn''t provide. Something powerful. The Growth. Here, close as they were, he could almost feel it; a buzz scrapping the edges of his thoughts, a song deep within that answered in tune to a melody he couldn''t quite hear. There was powerful magic here, well beyond what he remembered, though he had been young and unknowing then¡ªbut judging by how the Magelords whispered amongst themselves, eyes wide, and even Bylk marveled at the stone before them, it was more than they had expected. The Growth was a parasite, eating through the mountains and consuming territory that couldn''t be reclaimed¡ªbut it was also a wellspring, providing power found nowhere else. Both at once, contradictory as it was. And it was also free. The War Horde knew about it, but they avoided it, at least during the time Akkyst had been enslaved to them. The Magelords would escape their looming shadow here, wouldn''t have to worry about rebuilding their home only for it to fall again; could have life again. Akkyst as well. Beyond that door was his home, with its whitecap mushrooms and soft algae beds and fresh water. In comparison to the War Horde, a paradise¡ªin comparison to the Magelords, something distant, almost forgotten. He only knew it through what he hadn''t had¡ªno war, no struggles, no pain. But also no knowledge. For all that his thoughts ran smooth and fast through his head, he didn''t think he knew enough to decide whether that bargain had been worth it. He swiveled his head, fixing his one eye on Bylk¡ªthe goblin was staring up at the stone, blue-black skin reflecting the light from Akkyst''s fur dimly. His ears were drawn back, gems clinking against each other, eyes shrewd. Four dozen in number, and a sorry lot overall. Beyond the stone, there was a power fierce enough to rattle in his chest. "The Growth, eh?" Bylk finally said, gravelly voice echoing in the sprawling cavern. The drip of water off distant stalactites filled the space between his words. "Any hope it''ll be as acceptin'' as you?" There was weariness in his face as he spoke. They''d run so long, his people fractured and splintered to the remains they had now¡ªin essence, this was their last choice. If it failed, they had no other way out. Akkyst regarded the stone. If it had changed, then so had he; it might not have the same peace and tranquility he remembered, but he was not the same bear that required such comforts. If it came to a fight to give the Magelords the home they deserved, then he would do it. The stalking jaguar and bladehawk at his side, Bylk''s spells empowered by the mana heavy in the air¡ªthey were not defenseless. "Home," he declared, rumbling low in his throat. The light off his silver fur redoubled¡ªthough he didn''t know how he did it, sometimes it just happened, it was very irritating that he had chosen knowledge upon his evolution but somehow ended up with even less knowledge about himself in the process¡ªas he shook himself, rising back to his full towering height. "Home for us all." Bylk nodded. Behind him, the Magelords gathered, light springing to the tips of their fingers as they readied themselves. The jaguar swished her feather-tipped tail, ears flicking forward; the bladehawk hopped with a quick flap of his wings to land on Akkyst''s broad back, beak clacking together. Akkyst shook his head, the torn flap of his ruined ear and the blackness where vision had once been; he faced the stone and the cavernous maw he knew was around the corner, where their salvation was. It was time to return home. Chapter 110 - Lost, Returning Akkyst exhaled once, chest shaking like a bellows. There was no going back, after this; the next step he would take would bring him to a land he hadn''t seen in far too long. The last time he had been here, he had been running, bawling, doing anything to escape the pain of cuts and wounds on his untested body. He hadn''t found peace but the biting of spears and fangs and darker things in the mountain, from the War Horde and their patrols to the terminal fear with the Magelords. Bylk and the Magelords were hidden around the corner, far enough that they couldn''t be seen from the entrance; the bladehawk and stalking jaguar were with them, defensive positions for any of the numerous creatures that were summoned to the Growth''s power. But it would be Akkyst going in alone. And there was no time to second guess, no time to wonder if there was another way out of the mountains; so he growled low in his throat and marched into the yawning maw of the entrance. There was a second wall before him, a second entrance curving off to the right; threaded spiderwebs coiled overhead, bulbous red-black bodies skittering overtop. There was no light but Akkyst¡ªfor reasons he still didn''t know¡ªcast his own silvery glow on his surroundings, showing him the algae beneath his paws and the entrance deeper into the cavern to his right. No time to waste. This had to be their home. Akkyst reentered the Growth and looked over a place he had only seen in memories. There was a long moment there, at the top of the sloping hill, where he just looked over it; something soft building in his chest. It wasn''t like he remembered it¡ªmuch larger than before, with twining pathways and stalactites looming low overhead; he saw the same rippling pattern of algae, threaded through with streams of water, but massively expanded over the entire floor. Jewels gleamed in the corner, shadows thick and heavy around, and there was even an odd white bone structure that sprawled before him, an enormous serpent coiling around to rest its dead fangs near the entrance. That certainly hadn''t been there before. But in the back, from the glow his fur gave off and the darkness his eye didn''t care about, he could see the dens he had once lived in, the gentle rock pond lapping at the back wall and the tunnel beyond, and the¨C And the glint of the whitecaps. His stomach rumbled. But no. He was a diplomat now. He had to get the Growth to agree to house both him and all he had brought, and only then would he eat the whitecaps. Only then. It was hard to convince himself of this course of action. He padded forward, claws rooting in alongside the algae, a rat squeaking from somewhere deeper within. He''d been there for a minute and no one had come to see; although he remembered the attack, how the Growth hadn''t noticed the invaders until they were already inside. Maybe he had to do something to get its attention. Something like eating a whitecap¨C Akkyst shook his head. After a moment, he stepped forward and lightly bumped his head against a side wall¡ªand lightly for him meant the impact rippled outward with a groan of rock. As polite a knock as he could manage. He didn''t have long to wait. All at once, he could feel the floor awaken; the shadows in the far corners stirred like living things, lengthening and deepening until he couldn''t see the dens in the far back even with his enhanced eyesight. The rock pond splashed with action, the rumble of something hidden from him. Akkyst''s lips peeled back from his fangs. But then something feather-soft danced around him, and there was a deep and curling snap as pieces of himself he hadn''t even realized were missing came back; connections remade and pathways reopened, as mana hummed through him in brilliant and roaring fashion. Akkyst inhaled and felt mana in the breath, burning around him; he was back. He was back. And something else knew it, as the back of his mind seemingly opened, a doorway carved alongside his thoughts. He felt something peek its way in, gentle and familiar, the voice of the commands he had heard so long ago. The Growth itself. Bear? Something whispered in his mind. Only, not quite¡ªthe meaning was bear, but there was an odd twist to the feeling that let Akkyst know it meant him specifically, rather than bear overall. A nominal difference he wouldn''t have been able to pick out before he had changed in the wake of the stone-wurm. Right. The Growth didn''t know his new name. But it remembered him. Akkyst nodded. The mana redoubled, pouring over his back like the mountain-water; it swirled around him in effortless pops and crackles as if a burning fire, the glow off his fur redoubling through no influence of his own. Whitecaps bloomed around him, fresh water breaking through the stone to pool at his paws, every jewel reflecting a shared glow¡ªalive! alive! alive! the mana seemed to crow, again and again, as it echoed around him. Akkyst felt something warm within him. It was easy to forget that it hadn''t just been him gone from his home; his home hadn''t seen him in an awfully long time. This was a reunion for them both. He also, ah, remembered the Growth being more composed than this? A stray curl of mana coiled through his fur, fluffing it up, and another rushed through his legs as the algae around them grew high enough to intertwine with his claws. Maybe not. He felt something warm pool in the hollow socket of his eye, twining around the wreckage of his ruined ear; but it only managed to make the areas itch. Nothing to regrow. The gesture was appreciated, though. Maybe if he had changed here, chosen knowledge and was overtaken by the light in a place full of mana he would have been healed; but that hadn''t happened. Many things hadn''t happened on his journey, and he couldn''t do anything to change that. With the knowledge he had earned, Akkyst was finding there were many things unchangeable in this universe. What mattered was what he did with them. And for all that he was coming back to this land to find peace the mountains never had, he wasn''t doing it for just himself; he was here to change what he could for others. And that meant being different. "Hello," he said, the goblin''s tongue spilling from him in harsh consonants and the growl from himself. The mana froze. It reached back out to him in hesitant little tendrils that slipped over his mind and poked their way inside, twining and delicate. Instead of the more amorphous thoughts and emotions, actual communication poured through to him, with a low, stone-deep echo past each word. You speak? It wasn''t fully legible, not in the way he talked with Bylk¡ªthey were both communicating, but there was a¡­ gap between them, almost. Akkyst spoke aloud in the goblin tongue, and the Growth responded with emotions and intuitions and things that felt like words but weren''t. Could he learn that language, too? Already he was beginning to understand it more, to scrape through his own memories and realize that the Growth had always talked like this, he just hadn''t understood it. The more he learned, the more he wanted. "I am Akkyst," he said, tilting his head down; it was odd, talking to the air, nothing visible before him. He almost wanted Bylk back. There was an odd flutter of mana, the feeling of something brushing through his fur. That means runt, the Growth said, with a touch of confusion. Oh. It did, didn''t it? Akkyst remembered the first time he''d been called that, huddled against a stone wall in the pressing darkness with goblins butting spears against his side. He hadn''t understood it at the time, but that had been what the War Horde called him. Bylk hadn''t ever brought attention to it, because that was likely a mite rude to call someone that when he was an enormous bear helping defend your people, and it had been so long since he''d thought about the original meaning. Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. Akkyst: runt of the litter, weak, untrained. He had been that, once. No longer. "It is mine," he said, because it turned out that his changes had made him even more poetic. "I am Akkyst." There was a funny little prickle of pride at how the Growth''s mana seemed to surge at that, rushing over his fur again; it was surprised by him. Bawling little baby no longer, it seemed. Akkyst was better now. You have evolved, the Growth declared, mana flickering around him. A pulse raced over his back and he saw the light from his fur redouble, splashing around the first floor like light through water. Huh, evolved. That was a good way to phrase how he''d changed after the stone-wurm, though he still didn''t know all of the differences. His silver fur, his dexterous claws, the knowledge running through his mind. He nodded. Something like¡­ well, not pride, since it hadn''t done anything, but certainly excitement echoed through the Growth''s presence. You are stronger, it purred, curling around him. Welcome back. I have missed you. Oh. A part of that was desiring more strength for its halls, he knew¡ªbut he couldn''t ignore how it had surrounded him when he first came in, gleeful that he was still alive, rejoicing in his life. He represented a boon, a new power to live within it again; but he was also something lost returning home. It truly had missed him; he could hear it in its voice, in its mana. There was something deeply comforting in that fact. Both in that it made him feel loved, and also because he could use it. Akkyst didn''t take a step forward, though the mana was trying to tug him deeper in; he made a show of shifting weight between his paws, thoroughly terrifying a rat trying to slink around him to get at something on the far wall. It squeaked pitifully and disappeared back beneath a shadow. "I''m not alone," he said, a touch hesitantly. For all he knew his own strength, even just this glance at the much-changed floor he had lived in showed that the Growth had changed in his absence. He remembered the lizard-beast and the crimson spider and the swarming fish, all of which he trusted himself to defeat if the need came; but what if it had gotten stronger foes? Could he defend Bylk and the others if they were attacked? The Growth paused, spiraling around him; he felt a whisper of its presence shift towards the mirrored entrances, trying to peer into the darkness. Very interesting to know that it couldn''t see outside. Who? It asked, a curious note in its voice. An interesting question. For all he''d had weeks of pressing darkness as they stumbled through the mountains to plan this, Akkyst still didn''t really know how to open the door to those that came with him. The Magelords were few, four dozen at most, and two other creatures; but they weren''t from the Growth, and Akkyst remembered killing things for it to recreate. He would not be doing that this time to his friends. But he would not be leaving without achieving this new home for them. So he lowered his enormous head, twisting about to glance at the entrance with his remaining eye as if weighing the options. He could feel the mana in his head, skimming his thoughts, and he switched to a sort of contemplation, a wondering if bargaining was worth it; and then pulled up memories not of who his companions were, but what they meant to him. Of the battles he''d fought for them, of the moments they''d shared. What he would not give up. "My friends. We fight together." The Growth''s mana coiled around him. Good, because Akkyst rather thought if he was any more obvious, it would kick him out on the principle of the thing. You are welcome here, it finally said, another burst removing the curl of exhaustion from his legs. You and all you bring. A pause. No humans. Akkyst huffed, just an exhalation that rumbled through his chest. Yes, he was quite okay with that. The only humans he had ever encountered were the ones that had attacked him; he held no love for that species. Nor for the War Horde, nor the mining goblins that had abandoned the Magelords to their pursual, though he hadn''t met them. With knowledge came opinions, he was finding, and he had many of them. And now he had opened the door for his friends. This was, perhaps, a little foolish to expect a parasitical being encroaching on an entire mountain range to keep its promise to him, but Akkyst remembered fields of whitecaps grown for him to eat, the Growth''s desperation to keep him out of harm''s way when the invaders came. While it would not maybe be happy, he had to believe that it wouldn''t kill them. And if it tried, well. Akkyst was far from defenseless. So he walked back to the entrance, shoving his bulk through the opening as mana swirled, worried, around him¡ªnot that he was planning on just leaving. This would be their new home. From the shadows around the corner, the jaguar''s eyes flashed, her ivory fangs bared. She blinked when she saw it was just him, ears pricking forward and feathered tail swishing over the stone; she gave a curious churr, and in the bare bits of her language he had learned, he knew she was asking what had happened. Bylk as well tilted his head to the side, jewels clattering off of each other as they filled with more mana than Akkyst had seen within them in weeks. Even from being in the presence of the Growth, they were stronger for it. "Come," he said, and widened his stance; the bladehawk took off from the stalagmite he''d been perched on¡ªthe remaining Magelord children sulked as their favoured entertainment left them¡ªand landed on his back, talons curling around the fur. The jaguar took her preferred position at his side, Bylk mirroring her; the other Magelords filled in behind. A properly opposing force. In particular, Bylk''s jaw was set, colourless light perched on the tips of his fingers. Ready for anything, then. If the worst came to be, Akkyst would cover them long enough to get out, where it appeared they''d be safe¡ªif the Growth couldn''t look outside, it likely couldn''t go outside, and then they would be free to run. To run somewhere. "Never thought I''d end up here," Bylk said, voice gravely like an avalanche. "A proper ol'' Growth, and me lookin'' to go in. That''s the stuff ya hear in stories more than life." Yeah, Akkyst could agree. But life was life, and this was theirs, so he marched back into the Growth with his head held high. Its mana poured back over him the second he came in, melding back with his own channels and power; he could almost feel it pause curiously over the others, jumping down the line as they entered. It languished particularly long over the jaguar, enough that her hackles rose and her feathered tail fluffed up; the bladehawk snapped irritably at the air as something ruffled through his crest, and. And then it came to Bylk, and Akkyst felt the mana change. He tensed, ready for combat, for rejection¨C But instead, what he felt was distaste. Akkyst felt the faintest urge to be offended on Bylk''s behalf. The goblin wasn''t exactly dreamy in appearance, old and weatherworn as he was, but he didn''t deserve that kind of reaction. If anything, his deep blue skin with the twisted black markings looked far better than the pale green of the War Horde. He hadn''t remembered the Growth being so picky. "Magelords," he settled on, since even with his improved talking he didn''t think he could suddenly start spinning elaborate sentences on how they casted magic. "They are powerful." Mana curled around him, still swiveled in to the goblins. Mages, it said dubiously. Thankfully, Bylk wasn''t exactly the type to bend under such disapproval; he merely raised a wrinkled eyebrow, his white shock of hair pushed back, and raised a hand. With a snap of his fingers, a curl of flame appeared over his palm, hissing and spitting in the darkness. "Mages we are, Growth," Bylk said, voice rasping and interlaced with iron. "And yes, powerful." Akkyst might have suggested a little more subservience, but, well. Bylk was the Chieftain of the Magelords; if he started bowing his head to everyone he came across, he''d lose the power and respect he''d fought for. But still. Maybe not when facing the Growth. For its part, the Growth''s mana did perk up with interest, swirling around the fire in Bylk''s hand; at a muffled command, the other goblins displayed their own preferred elements, from swirling balls of air to the crackle of lightning. Little things, hardly more than a whisper; but within the Growth, they could afford to be dramatic. Already their mana stores were being refilled, the jewels in Bylk''s ears not losing any glow. The Growth prowled overhead, its mana almost seeming to look down upon them with the weight of the mountain. It was still a bit displeased with the goblins, Akkyst knew, though he couldn''t guess why¡ªunless the War Horde had attacked, giving it unfavourable opinions of goblins overall. That thought sent ice down his spine, but even if it were true, they didn''t have any other options. This had to be their new home. I will allow it, the Growth finally decided on, though it didn''t sound particularly enthused about the idea. They are your¡­ friends. They can stay. Akkyst let out a breath he wasn''t aware he had been holding. Acceptance. Unenthusiastic, but acceptance. They could make a home here¡ªhe gave a near imperceptible nod, and watched Bylk''s shoulders fall. True relief filled his black eyes. "Thank you," he rasped, and tilted his head in as much of a bow as the Growth was going to get out of him. "We won''t forget this." The Growth''s mana condensed in what was probably smugness. Well. Akkyst was learning a whole lot more about his creator than he remembered from his previous time here. But there was a swirl of something almost hesitant, a brush of indecision that broke past the uppity derision for goblins or the pride of new things to fill its halls. Pulling back from everyone else, it landed on just him, feather-soft but curious. Akkyst tilted his head to the side, blinking out at the darkness. Something was happening, and he wasn''t the only one to feel it; Bylk had stiffened, a reddish gleam on the tips of his fingers. But then the Growth dipped into his head, pushing his name at him with a lilt to the end of the phrase. There was a lingering hesitance of whether he truly liked it, whether it fit him. An odd question, to be fair. Not exactly the welcome-home sort. But for all that he was now Akkyst, he hadn''t been an akkyst in a very long time. It was his more than it was the War Horde''s; his word instead of theirs. It was him. He nodded. Excitement, both his and from the mana in his head, thrummed through him. Welcome home, the Growth murmured. And he was. Chapter 111 - Welcomed Souls He was back. He was. Back. He was back? I continued to stare at him. Look, I know I was normally more eloquent, but the situation was beyond eloquence. My juvenile lunar cave bear¡ªjuvenile no longer, lunar cave bear no longer, what had happened to him¡ªhad just strolled through my mountain entrance without so much as a warning, slotting back into the shadows he''d come from like he''d never left. Much changed, of course¡ªhe''d lost an eye and an ear, the injuries healed over in scabby, patchy twists of skin and fur, and he''d blossomed into a new height and strength that none of my other bears had even gotten close to. But he wasn''t like them in other ways, a base form no longer. Instead of deep brown fur, he was quicksilver, splashes of light off the edges of his fur. An intelligence in his thoughts I knew hadn''t been there before. He''d evolved. But for all that he was still dungeonborn, that the second I''d noticed him already my mana had returned to his channels and his heart now beat alongside my core once more, I didn''t, ah. Know what he was. That was irritating. Unless I Named him, I wouldn''t know exactly what he had evolved into until he evolved again, which wasn''t likely to happen anytime soon. An interesting little problem that certainly hadn''t seemed like a problem when I hadn''t expanded far enough for it to be a problem. Although he already came with a name chosen. Akkyst. Runt of the litter, in the goblin tongue that my Otherworld mana translated for me, a demeaning and cruel name that didn''t exactly inspire confidence, but he seemed to like it. That did not, however, make me think kindly of the goblins he had come in with. Had they been the ones to name him runt? How friendly were they? Though they were interesting, too. Ugly as all hells, with their boughed legs, snaggle-toothed faces, hair protruding from places that shouldn''t have hair. From vague memories that were soured by how disgusting goblins tasted, I could see that at least these were different from the yellowed scavengers that lived in the salt plains near the, hm, was it southern bend of the Illera Sea? Being on the leeward side of the mountain range there to limit rain and keep it choked in salt? I hadn''t been there in decades. And, well, I never would be again, so at least I didn''t have to see the wretched little goblins that lived there. These had deep blue skin, laced through with black like a tiger''s stripes, and they had magic¡ªif I used the human-based system, I would guess they were wizards, not specializing in any given element or attunement. I''d seen Bylk¡ªugh, Bylk, even their language was hideous¡ªsummon different kinds of magic to his fingers. Even if they called themselves the Magelords. That was confusing. But for now, I swirled overhead as four dozen of them trickled into my first floor, curious and wary. Their clothing was soft and almost seemed woven together from mushrooms, which, fascinating, and their horizontally-protruding ears were heavy with bits of bones and jewels. I''d already promised that they could stay, so I would be allowing that, and I sang a siren''s call to keep creatures from actively attacking them as they entered. Although already the rats were looking at their jewels with interest bordering on desperation. Their little societies had mined their way throughout the entirety of the first floor, creating gleaming hoards, and they were still starving for more. The goblins would have to move on quickly. Move on where. See, when I had only been dealing with mushrooms and cave algae, this hadn''t been a problem. But this looked like it would be the call I needed to push forward¡ªbecause while I was only familiar with the yellowed salt plain goblins, I knew the generalities of what they needed, which was similar to the kobolds insofar as dens, fresh water, and room to expand. And considering these were mountain goblins, probably not in the Stone Labyrinth or Hungering Reefs, which meant the Skylands would be the best place for them, which meant it was finally, finally time to complete it. And now I hadn''t been failing to properly manage my floors, but instead strategically delaying until I could realize the final part of the puzzle. Clever was I. But if I were to be welcoming them, then I would need to welcome them fully¡ªand I had just the thing for that. Bylk looked up, black eyes gleaming in the dark. He was the strongest magic wielder here, I could sense, although that probably had to do with the age that clung tightly to his skin rather than anything too particularly exotic. So he sensed when I slipped into his mind, pushing through in the awkward manner I did when dealing with an outside creature. Though I couldn''t peer into his thoughts like dungeonborn creatures, I could sense diligence and organization; older than I thought, then. A creature weathered by time and experienced. Even with his appearance, his joining would be a boon. Become here, I said, mana echoing through the words. Of mana mine. Akkyst is. Join. Ugh. Even more disjointed than the human tongue; this was a rotten little language that I did not enjoy speaking. Bylk wavered. Which was annoying but understandable, in the irritating way that I didn''t necessarily want to understand these squabbling little goblins¡ªbut for all magic uses, their mana was a very important thing that they wanted to protect. Replacing it was a scary topic. But I had a title given by the gods that said I was good at this, so he should really be happy I was offering at all. And either way, look at Akkyst¡ªhe was made of my mana and doing just fine. "Not a trap, is it?" He asked finally, gravely voice echoing in the sprawling first floor. "I won''t be leadin'' my people into a slaughter." His people? That was cute. He thought he was the chieftain. Not in my dungeon¡ªthat right belonged to Akkyst, now, because he was certainly the only one I thought was important enough out of this group. A bear leading the goblins. But I would allow him an answer. Because while it would be nice to confirm it, I thought I already knew¡ªI wouldn''t get a schema from their deaths. Too sapient for that, and the gods would set their grubby little fingers all over my potential to collect goblins. No, even if they died, I wouldn''t be receiving anything other than mana¡ªand they were so starved that the only mana I would get would be my own. I gained more from their life than their death. I kill not what is mine, I said, using all bright and twisting mana that I knew sounded massively powerful when it echoed through a mortal''s mind. Bylk didn''t look that enthused, for some reason. His gaze flicked to Akkyst. But they were just four dozen, in the depths of a mountain range that was decidedly unforgiving. Akkyst was, for some reason, loyal to the goblins and would likely follow them out if they decided to leave, but even one admittedly powerful bear would not save them in the madness of these mountains. So. I perched overhead like a particularly smug cat as Bylk nodded. Fantastic. He apparently spoke for all of those in the Magelords¡ªa truly tacky name, but I supposed I would use it¡ªand they all stepped forward, the young grouped in the center. I felt the golden letters written over my core surge to life, something bright and bold and filled with power¡ªthe Welcomer was I, and they would be welcomed. Curls of mana poured through the mix, emptying my stores almost instantly; they snaked their way into each person, and while I still had to be precise, now there was the guiding hand of both experience and a proper title, and it was easy to tug the mana to form the swirls and spirals of their natural mana channels. The goblins stiffened, excess crackling around their hands and a buzz to the air, some of the children welling up with tears. But it was fastest and simpler and with a snap, I forced out their natural mana and filled it with mine. Light exploded through my first floor, wind kicked up and smaller creatures fleeing from the blast of mana. And I felt, with the echo of four dozen thoughts, all of them connect to myself and my core and my dungeon¡ªbecoming mine. Becoming dungeonborn. Bylk staggered back, eyes wide; the jewels on his ears redoubled in glow as the mana flowing through him was suddenly his, rather than stolen from me, and worked all the smoother as a result¡ªthe younger Magelords without an iron grasp on their powers yelped as lightning crackled around their fingers or air gained a biting cold. And that was just what they could do accidentally. Bylk coughed, a wet sound, and blinked at his surroundings; I could see mana crawling over his eyes, some form of vision enhancement, and he shut it off with a wince. "Damn," he muttered, probably not expecting me to hear it. "No kiddin'' Akkyst''s as strong as he is." I preened. The other Magelrods eventually got a hold on the new influx of mana, staring at their hands with wide eyes, and it was almost enough for me to forgive their appearance. Akkyst offered rumbled encouragement and gentle instruction, and from the way they interacted, I was starting to think it hadn''t been them that gave him his name. I wouldn''t know the full story unless I asked, since I wanted it from his mouth rather than his thoughts, but there was a true companionship there. Something more than just strangers encountering each other in the mountain caverns. Akkyst had brought them to me. That had to mean something. And, well. For all goblins were the majority, they weren''t the only. Perched on Akkyst''s back, there stood a marvelous creature¡ªa bladehawk, gleaned from Akkyst''s memories¡ªresplendent with iron-red feathers and serrated beak. It¡ªhe¡ªhad his golden talons gripped in Akkyst''s fur with a familiarity that spoke to how long they had been doing this, because he had wings¡ªa flying creature trapped in these mountains. No wonder he hadn''t been able to fly and had to rely on Akkyst to move him. Oh, I couldn''t wait until he saw the Skylands. For all I had the greater pigeons, baterwauls, and swarming wasps, I wanted a true predator of the skies, and by the gleam in his black eyes, he would deliver. And he wasn''t the only predator. Because by Akkyst''s side stood something truly wonderful. The stalking jaguar. She had all the elegance of a dragon, the lithe muscles and clever eyes, and all the colour I so loved. Once she saw my lower floors, she would find the water necessary to get rid of that dust choking her form, and already I could see the potential in her emerald fur. On the tip of her tail were iridescent blue feathers, low and sweeping, paired with the black rosettes racing over her sides. Her golden eyes were large and clever, pointed ears swept back, ivory fangs bared with a rumble in her throat. If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. I had, perhaps, never wanted a creature more. Them, I asked, peering back into Akkyst''s mind. No use trying to scream into their mind when I could just ask Akkyst¡ªI doubted either of them would have a sapient language to make communicating complicated processes easier. Will they join? The bear blinked¡ªwinked, maybe, he was down an eye¡ªand shifted his weight, peering at the jaguar. She churred back, tail swishing over the ground. Gods, just imagine her in the Jungle Labyrinth, stalking through the darkness, silent and endless. The bladehawk clacked his beak together, crest flaring. Akkyst hesitated. I poked into his thoughts¡ªoh, he wanted freedom for them. I wouldn''t dig deeper but I saw memories of horrid caverns, bars across the door, ribs poking through fur and the dry, shallow pants of a dying creature. They had come together from some dark and savage place, and he wanted them to have freedom. My dungeon was a kind of freedom, but I wasn''t positive he would see it as that. You left, I said, as comfortingly as I could. Mine but you left; they are the same. Only good. I didn''t necessarily want them to leave, but dungeonborn creatures could go off and live like normal beings; the advantage was only for when they were within my halls. Akkyst churred something in a kind of concerning copy of the jaguar''s vocalizations, rumbling to the bladehawk; I couldn''t understand their language nor focus on their thoughts, so all I could do was wait impatiently and push a few thoughts of how lovely and glorious all my floors were for Akkyst to tell them. And eventually, the bladehawk was first; Akkyst parroted my lavished praise of the Skylands and he squawked, bobbing his head. I sank my mana into him like a downpour of rain, snaking through his channels and the glimmer of power on the edges of his wings. I took a moment to admire the system¡ªsomething about launching feathers, fascinating¡ªbefore I replaced it with my own. The bladehawk squawked, startled, and I could hear it echoed in his thoughts; he had a gruff, irritated internal process, something that matched the slouch of his wings and bite of his voice, but there was a gentleness beneath. Even now, he was thinking of the Magelord children. In comparison, the stalking jaguar was more hesitant, still glaring out at the surrounding darkness like she could see me. I followed the conversation as best I could from Akkysts side and listened to him repeat that becoming dungeonborn was not like being trapped here, not like the before when they had been trapped. But eventually, through much convincing that Akkyst was dungeonborn and he had left, she agreed. I took my time with her, focusing on not startling her like the bladehawk; a slow, insidious process that I was becoming quite skilled at, adding a gleam of mana over her eyes and the tips of her claws for some skill I couldn''t figure out, and then replaced it. She still snapped at the air with a wary hiss, but it was as good as I could do it. Her thoughts were defined and clever, matching her abilities, and she noticed things that I frankly didn''t think her eyes could see, from correctly piercing out the creeping vine that wasn''t stone and the reflection of the rock pond in the far back. She called herself one of the old hunters, which was equally interesting, and I could already tell how powerful she would be here. Oh, how powerful they would all be. My core echoed with the dozens of new souls that had joined me, and the potential simmered right beneath the surface; a new apex predator for the Skylands and Jungle Labyrinth; new mages for the mage ratkin to learn from; an immensely powerful bear with an intelligence few of my creatures matched. Considering I knew Calarata''s Adventuring Guild would be opening soon, any strength would be appreciated. But this strength wouldn''t be remaining here, not on this floor that already had Nuvja looking in despite my many repeated consolations that this was literally the only room I had to welcome new creatures, no they wouldn''t be messing up her floor, give me a second¡ªso I turned to the side, moving in an obvious lurch of mana to get everyone''s attention. And with that, I carved through the limestone, careful to avoid any burrowing rat dens, and swept an inviting point of mana inside. Akkyst hesitated, the light off his silver fur redoubling¡ªwhat did that mean¡ªbefore striding forward, leading the charge. What a little leader. I couldn''t wait to hear what had happened outside of my halls. And where Akkyst went, the rest followed. The jaguar slipped in after him, her thoughts curious, the bladehawk hunching over even though I''d made the tunnel tall enough. Bylk took up the back, the children tucked in the middle, and into the darkness they went. I used a point of awareness to glare at the stone-backed toad who was thinking of taking the easy way down instead of fighting his way through the Drowned Forest before closing up the tunnel behind them. Down, down, down I led them, boring through the stone and regrowing it in their wake¡ªit seemed this was all I did anymore. Ferry creatures around my floors. I really, really needed to find a solution for this¡ªuntil after what felt like hours, I prodded through the tunnel to the Skylands, smoothing out the slope with a last point. And then I let them behold the Skylands. Enormous compared to anything they''d ever seen before, the ceiling high and jagged, the islands sprawling, the walls layered in rust-red veins of iron. Quartz-light made everything glow and the wind kicked up on their entrance, dozens of swooping greater pigeons and the shriek of baterwauls; scorch hounds running over the top with mottled scorpions slinking beneath the cover. Actually, also the dull red of the kobold still on his mission to tame the scorch hound, treating a scratch over his lower scales from his last attempt. But beauty beyond beauties, and it was now theirs to live in. The bladehawk in particular stared over the freedom, eyes wide; hardly a second passed before he threw himself off of Akkyst''s back, taking to the sky with a screech of triumph. His iron-red feathers stood stark against the limestone, greater pigeons fleeing from his path as he truly stretched his wings for likely the first time in forever. A floor below, there was a flash of red as the parrot darted through the Hungering Reef, a piece of funnel gourd clasped in her talons; I loved watching her, all her elegance in the air and brilliance of her colour, but it wasn''t the same. I wanted an aerial predator. And as the bladehawk shrieked, a powerful, echoing sound, I knew I had one. The stalking jaguar looked around, tail swishing and ears flicking forward. Equally intrigued, but this wasn''t her territory, not the one that Akkyst had spoken to her of. I dipped into her mind, a gentle presence, and guided her gaze the other way up the tunnel I''d bored them into. She looked that way, whiskers twitching. Then turned to Akkyst, churred a promise that she would be coming back¡ªand likely bringing food with her, it looked like she was the main hunter of this group¡ªbut she needed to explore. Fascinating. Loyal to Akkyst, but still a more individual soul. Akkyst rumbled an agreement, a promise to find a den for her here if she wanted it, and then she disappeared up the tunnel. I sent a few points of awareness after her, since she was entering Veresai''s territory and there could be problems from that. But for now, my focus was on everyone else. Akkyst stood forward, ivory fangs exposed as his mouth fell open; the goblins were similarly awed, eyes wide, thoughts full of wonder. As they should. This was a paradise the likes of which they''d never seen and would never see unless they went to another floor of mine. I dipped into Bylk''s head, as the one who had previously been the leader. Already the analysis was taking over, thoughts spiraling around as he sought to see where his people would fit into this land. "This could be it," Bylk said, awestruck, all his previous bravado stripped away in face of this. "Dens, grow fields, research¡ªthis can be our home." He imagined digging into the cliff face, building dens in the protection, and then using grey-tinged mana to create stone bridges all the way around. Living beneath the islands, out of visibility of those entering, able to throw things off the side of the islands and landing in their gathering fields. Cutting beneath the darkness to grow mushrooms, to gather supplies; a housing chamber for an old, cracked piece of stone that he felt an odd mixture of love and weariness when he thought about it. But nearly all of his thoughts revolved around using stone-attuned mana to alter the stone, to guide it like water until it obeyed them. They were going to. Hm. They would be modifying my dungeon. My dungeon. See, this was why I preferred sapient species that had their origins in my creation rather than just wandering in.. My kobolds wouldn''t even consider changing anything I had shaped. I no longer felt worried about emptying my mana in order to convert them to being dungeonborn. They could build their own homes and I wouldn''t be helping. I scattered several points of awareness and left them to it. Still on the peak of the first island stood Akkyst, staring out over his new home, thoughts shining with wonder. Though the Skylands were bright, the glow off his silver fur seemed¡­ different, in a way, still visible even though it should have been overpowered. His thoughts raced with how to live here, what boons it would bring, the peace his friends could finally have. I considered him. He''d brought me these creatures, and he''d come home. Newly strong and empowered, and I already knew he would grow all the stronger. He was a powerhouse the likes of which I''d never seen before, not in my own halls. The last time I had seen him, he had fled from my halls from the first injury of his life. This was not the same bear who had run. He had a name, but there was a part of me, the part of me that had felt such an aching, desperate relief upon seeing him I''d almost felt mortal again, that wanted to give him a Name. ¡­and it would let me figure out what he had evolved into. So I moved forward, surrounding him in a soothing cloud of mana. Peering back at my core, I still had plenty of regeneration to spare for this, and I already knew that whatever blessing he would receive would be incredible. But then I paused. I''d, well. I''d never really done this before¡ªit was such an honour to even have me pay attention to them, so there had never even been the thought that they wouldn''t accept it. Why would they? It was more power, more prestige, more potential. And still. I was becoming disgustingly soft. So I slipped my way back into Akkyst''s mind, twining around his thoughts even as he helped guide his little tribe of goblins. Something I want to give, I said, still in that irritating half-talk of learning this new language. Accept? He rumbled a curious note. I filled his mind with endless thoughts of the powers of Names, of Otherworld mana, of blessings and strength and glorious, wonderful potential. I''d never had to encourage someone to be Named and I languished in it now, a brilliant and glorious thing. Akkyst paused, his one eye narrowing. Not an angry narrow, but a more contemplative one; I could feel his thoughts running around, deciding and puzzling and wondering. He''d truly come so far since his juvenile days, when he''d thought only whether it was worth the effort to stand up to eat whitecap mushrooms or if he should wait until he was hungrier. When he was young, bawling from the first pain he''d ever felt. He was that no longer. "What happens?" He asked, once I suitably impressed on him how powerful a Name made him. That gave me pause¡ªI dredged back through my old memories, from Seros back when I had broken my dungeon to defend from a single invader, from Nicau when he had made a deal for his life, from Veresai when she had awoken from her evolutionary light. Sleep, I said. For a time. Then awake strong. The response was immediate. "Not now." What. Maybe he didn''t understand. I pushed more thoughts of Seros'' hydrokinesis, Nicau''s language, Veresai''s sight. Akkyst shook his head. This little upstart. See. This was why they shouldn''t leave my dungeon. He''d forgotten what power I could bestow. "Not forever," he rumbled, perhaps correctly sensing my mood. "When we are settled. Then." Well. I sunk a few points of mana into him, little more than a rejuvenating warmth through his system; a pointed reminder of my power and what he was rejecting. But I could read his thoughts. He was a stubborn thing, and the evolution had seemingly only made him even moreso. No, he wouldn''t let himself be put out of commission until he was sure that all of his Magelords were safe. I could respect that. Another foil to Veresai''s brand of loyalty, in a similar vein to Chieftess; he protected his own instead of leaving only the strongest to survive. So. I could respect it. I just also hated it. The blessing he got from this had better be the most powerful thing I''d ever seen, or I would have to seriously start considering whether this all was worth it. Later, I said, untangling my connection from his mind. Akkyst rumbled a wordless agreement with a tinge of subservience¡ªa step in the right direction¡ªand turned back to Bylk, ready to coordinate where they would be building. Only on the walls, beneath the islands, across the ground¡ªas well as how to handle building bridges that could support both lightweight goblins and an enormous bear¡ªand where to cultivate mushrooms. I would, of course, be watching overhead with all focus. They wouldn''t be doing anything I explicitly disapproved of, and if they pleased me, I could be persuaded to smooth over their designs, add freshwater springs or start mushroom crops. Maybe. It would depend. And then, once they had settled, I would be gaining my fourth Named creature. Chapter 112 - Poison-Bright It was done. Lluc Cardena Ferr¨¦ stood before the Adventuring Guild, and knew it was done. Flagstone walls loomed high over the pebbled beach, wood struts binding it all together and a terracotta roof curling over the edges¡ªall the weight of Calaratan architecture, with asymmetry and bold, dynamic shapes that rooms were forced to fit inside rather than being the initial base. This was Calarata''s Adventuring Guild, not Le¨®ro''s inelegance, brutish styles, and its white-stone walls and gleaming curves wouldn''t be out of place as a centerpiece. Already, a crowd gathered and swarmed, baying in excitement; only a fraction were actual adventurers, others merely coming to see the thing that had gathered mysteries in its gravitational pull. The construction had been fast and with only secrets to smooth its path; they understood the basics, nothing more. Still gathered on the dock, since they wouldn''t risk his ire to come too close to the building before it opened, but they gathered, a horde of watching eyes and moving mouths. Lluc, in his crow-tail coat and a swirl of mana to keep him from eyes, looked back, and felt something settle in his chest. It was Varc¨ªs'' hand that had commanded this, but it was him that had built it, and it was him that was Guildmaster. With that, he turned, nudging open the door and strolling in¡ªdispelling his camouflage at the last second, so the crowd would see movement, but not understand it. The noise redoubled as he clicked the wood closed. The entrance hall was large and sprawling, something to fill the hungry beasts that adventurers were, and there stood a desk for him¡ªnot like Varc¨ªs'' borwood desk, because he valued his life and that accursed wood would never be worth it, but impressive in its own right. Morning sunlight snaked through the windows, over the freshly lacquered wood, over the best that gold could buy in Calarata. He hummed, raising a hand¡ªwith a click of his fingers, a curl of mana shot into the building, snaking under the various doors and alerting all those inside. From the guards stationed at each entrance point, the guides studying feverishly to have a chance to be useful, to the one at the end of the extended hall. At the viper''s bite of Lluc''s mana, that door opened, and the Scholar of the Adventuring Guild crept out. Baron Ealdhere Darlington¡ªa pompous name for what had been a pompous man, but Calarata had rather scraped those more annoying edges off his personality¡ªshut the door quietly behind him, fingers speckled in ink and sleeves bunched around his elbows. There were bags under his eyes, heavy things weary with exhaustion, and his red hair could hardly be called that, sun-faded for all he hadn''t actually been outside. Probably for the best. His white skin already made him stick out like a sore thumb¡ªthe red was even more blatant. Best he looked less like a commodity stuck in the Adventuring Guild. He was, but that wasn''t the point. "Darlington," Lluc said, and the man''s eyes snapped to him. "Oh," he said, voice nearly lost in the bleariness. "First Mate¡ªah, my apologies, I thought I would be ready." He shifted, tugging his sleeves back down, adjusting the cut of his new clothes. Calaratan clothes, but with the odd style that Scholars wore¡ªLluc didn''t know and didn''t care, but apparently the open-faced robes helped for writing, and there were several pouches strung over his chest for him to gather samples. Not that he could. Ealdhere looked thin enough to crumple with a stray gust of wind, and he was Unranked beyond. "We open today, then?" We. An incorrect phrase. Lluc nodded regardless. Ealdhere exhaled, a nervous, flighty little thing. "I will be ready," he said, looking like the opposite was true. "I''m¨C ah, I apologize for the question, but what will I be doing?" A pause. "Not that I''m not grateful for the opportunity, but I wish to do it with my best." You could hardly tell he had been a royal. His words, while shaky, were with the confidence of someone who knew what to ask when it was required. "Analyzing things that come from the dungeon," Lluc said, gruff, because the damn fool should know what a Scholar did. He knew Abhal¨®n had a dungeon, had multiple, and this little Unranked man should have poked his nose into at least one with all the guards his money could afford. He''d certainly felt confident enough in his skills to try for Calarata''s dungeon. "Figuring out what they are, how they can be defeated, what they can be used for. You earn your keep by what you discover." Earn the comfort of his keep, more accurately, because Ealdhere was little more than a prisoner here, and if he performed terribly he would not be losing this role but merely the amenities that came with it. Calarata had precious few that could fill the role of Scholar, and even fewer that would be willing to chain themselves to an Adventuring Guild and all the dangers that came with it. Not that Lluc necessarily needed people willing, but it did make it easier. "Of course, of course," Ealdhere said, like he''d known that all along. Maybe he had. Lluc didn''t fear his strength¡ªhe could sneeze and kill this man¡ªbut there was a reason he was keeping him locked inside the Guild. No reason to let a brain with more diligence than the many rats around Calarata loose. "I''ll, ah, finish getting ready. The guides should have my current diagrams." Drawings of stone-backed toads, luminous constrictors, cave spiders; points about their weaknesses and uses of their bodies, the most basic of the dungeon''s creatures. Lluc would sell those, and for a pittance compared to what he would sell for the diagrams Ealdhere was still working on, those of the strange, white-scarlet mangroves and the beasts lurking in the depths of the third floor. An Adventuring Guild had ample opportunities to make money from their chosen adventurers. One in Calarata had even more opportunities. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. Lluc nodded at him, which Ealdhere took as an opening to slip back into his room, the plaque above it like a reminder, and disappeared. Fitting. He wouldn''t be seen by the public unless they were paying him for specific analysis, which would be rare, because Lluc was uninterested in him having any sort of open doors for the foreseeable future. His fault, really, for coming to Calarata. This wasn''t the place for those that wanted to scamper loose and free, not when you had value. Lluc''s mana swept through the Guild, through all the fine wooden trappings and flagstone paths; to the deep, dark rooms buried beneath the beach for storage, with rune-covered walls for holding in living creatures; to the ritual rooms, made of pure amplification materials; to the healer''s rooms that would require a weight in gold just to get through the door. Weeks it had been, and weeks had concluded; now it was time for it to take flight. And what glorious flight it would be. There was a knock on the door¡ªa faux politeness, because before Lluc could even walk over, it clicked open, and Varc¨ªs Bilaro walked in. Lluc stiffened, an animal caught in the grass when a predator arrived. He had protective wards out the ass around the building. He should have known Varc¨ªs was approaching. He didn''t. "Lluc," Varc¨ªs said, warm, a greeting between friends, and strode inside. They were not friends. Lluc bowed, a deep, pressing thing, and moved backwards, clearing the space between them; he had thought the entrance room to the Guild was large but now it seemed cramped, walls creeping in with immovable indifference. He swallowed. Varc¨ªs strode inside, heels clicking on the stone. He was in orange today, the long, flowing coat pinched tight at his waist and wrists, limbs free to move, laced in gold and black beneath. One ring over his gold-tipped fingers, a sea-green scale set in the metal. Black hair pulled back into a loose tail at the nape of his neck, head tilted to the side in apparent curiosity. He looked like a noble. He was the most dangerous man in Calarata. "Sir," Lluc said, hands clasped behind his back. He didn''t know anything else to say. Varc¨ªs hummed, a light, ambiguous sound. "I''m surprised at you, Lluc," he said, light, eyes trailing over the building. The words were said without inflection, barely a cause for concern¡ªexcept Lluc was very concerned, and there was a rising sickness in his chest, something that pulled feverish sweat down his back and pulsed oddly in his fingers. "With all the gold you took, I thought it would be bigger." The amounts lined up. He knew they lined up. He''d lost sweat and sleep and safety to make sure they lined up. "It''s sturdy, sir," Lluc said. "I wanted it built to last." Varc¨ªs nodded, blas¨¦, and tapped the flagstone wall with one gold-tipped finger. The stone trembled all the way down to the foundation. "Sturdy," he repeated. It was sturdy. It would weather a hurricane. He had designed it for that. Lluc nodded, because there was no other response, and stayed in that horrible half-bowed half-upright position he seemed so often to take around this man. It was easy to plan against Varc¨ªs in the shadows, to make plans with distant displaced mercenaries, to spread his name, to gather gold and funds and lesser, crawling things. It was very different to do that before the man, to search for the strength of his soul despite knowing he wouldn''t find anything, to quail beneath his void-black gaze and know, with bone-deep understanding, that he was rebelling against the Dread Pirate, and what that entailed. Lluc Cardena Ferr¨¦ would not disappear. But if Varc¨ªs ever discovered what he was doing, he would wish he had disappeared, instead. "To the gates, then," Varc¨ªs said, still smiling, still uncaring. His eyes flicked back to the door, where Ealdhere was hiding, to the guides in the far room. Everyone was waiting for when the doors would open, when Calarata would gain access to the treasure beneath their surface, when the inaccessible would become the destination. Lluc nodded. The door swept open with a curl of shadow, something intangible that shouldn''t have worked, and Varc¨ªs strode through¡ªhe was smiling, and in the morning light, his gold-tipped fingers gleamed like the sun. The crowd, so distant, huddled on the dock, erupted in a hazy roar. Lluc followed him, his own mana spiraling out; he harshened the sunlight into a circle around them, lighting up like the moment before an eclipse, for all he stayed behind Varc¨ªs. Calarata howled anew. They were looking, watching, wondering, and Lluc could almost fool himself into thinking they were looking at him; at least until Varc¨ªs raised a single hand, and the hundreds of people fell still. The last of their conversation died and was ground underfoot, buried beneath the avalanche of the Dread Pirate. "Good people of Calarata," Varc¨ªs said, voice low, casual, nonplussed. He so rarely spoke before them and they were whisper-silent, hanging on his every word. "I am Varc¨ªs Bilaro, and I come with a gift." Only ever Varc¨ªs Bilaro¡ªno mother''s last name, only his father''s. And he was the Dread Pirate; if anyone should know their lineage, it was him. So he had erased half of his history and made himself anew. It was a choice. Varc¨ªs was made of choices. Lluc didn''t know any of them. "The Adventuring Guild of Calarata is open," he said, bright, and there was a bite to his words that fit alongside a wolf''s fangs and the impersonal, uncaring destruction of a plague. "Test your might, grow your strength. Le¨®ro has no say here. The only rules are mine." His smile widened. "And I have never been fond of rules." Good going, Lluc thought, a little weakly. Now they would be baying for any power they could scrape from the dungeon, and they would die for it, because Varc¨ªs did have rules, and he cared very strongly for them. The crowd murmured something, soft and sibilant. He could see the twist to their expressions, even from here; that poison in their gut they couldn''t place, the raw bite of something that wasn''t power, wasn''t anything that could be sensed, but was felt nonetheless. Varc¨ªs had a presence. He always had. But people were here, and they were listening. Within them was Ghasavalk, accent still thick and garbled, but in Calaratan dress and mannerisms. His men were spread out, preparing to begin delving into the dungeon, to carve a name for themselves when they had previously been little more than ghosts. To carve a name for themselves and for Lluc, to smooth over an appreciation for the First Mate, for the Guildmaster. A rebellion. "Don''t lose your face now," Varc¨ªs said, and though he sounded the same, Lluc knew these words wouldn''t extend past the two of them. The world had always bent its knee to cater to Varc¨ªs'' commands. "The Guildmaster must always be ready, shouldn''t he?" Ready? Ready for what? What did he know? "Sir," Lluc said, a little helplessly. He hated this. He hated everything, hated this facsimile of power, hated knowing he was Guildmaster and that didn''t matter, not to Varc¨ªs, not to the Dread Pirate. "You''re a hunting dog," Varc¨ªs said, still smiling, still facing the crowd. There was nothing human in his void-black eyes. "Bite me, and I''ll take your teeth." Lluc swallowed. There was bile, oil-slick, in his throat. "Of course, sir." Chapter 113 - Scholarly Collecting I perched over Akkyst like a particularly displeased cloud. It had taken him some time, but he''d migrated down to the base floor of the Skylands, far beneath the islands; he and the rest of his little Magelords, scurrying around as they planned out where their dens would go. Overhead, the scorch hounds and mottled scorpions still stalked and hunted but they were cautious about it now, that lingering wariness about what was happening to their home. Bad luck for them, really, considering that I would be massively changing their home in the near future. They''d prefer the seventh floor, once I made that. It would be much better for them in the long run. Not that their insipid little minds could understand that. The beast-tamer kobold was with them, scarlet scales standing out like a sore thumb in white-grey floor; he''d gathered an armada of little scars and scratches over his shoulders, the result of living on a floor filled with creatures with a proclivity towards diving. The bladehawk hadn''t attacked him yet, but just hearing the piercing shriek was enough to make everyone on the floor flinch. He was a right little monster. I loved him. Akkyst had done very well to survive and bring them all here, even if he hadn''t let me Name him yet. Even now, his silver fur was constantly glowing, shedding light that was notably different from my quartz-light, something separate and unique. His mind raced with an organization and composure most of my other creatures couldn''t begin to stack up to. It was very nice having someone I could talk to, though, even if I didn''t do it often; the goblin''s language was even more guttural and unformed than Viejabran, the human tongue. My communication in it could be called lacking at best, which was not something I would suffer willingly. No, I much preferred talking to Seros. He already had a draconic lilt to his thoughts, that deep, gravitas-bearing rumble; he was well on his way to his next evolution, even if I wouldn''t kid myself into thinking it was around the corner. Still soon, though. And I couldn''t wait to see how draconic he would come. Or, maybe I could wait, because there was a panicking stone-backed toad in the Fungal Gardens telling me I had more important things to worry about. Points of awareness flickered in by the thousand as I jumped the bulk of my attention back up, swarming in like an approaching storm; in the Nuvja-laced darkness of the first floor, I peered around, and was met with a very uncomfortable sight. That little stone-backed toad who had raised the alarm, now dead on the ground. Invaders. I bared unfortunately intangible fangs. It was time, then. There were three of them, and already there was a¡­ bite to their expressions, that innate wariness of knowing the threat in the room was larger than you. My mana bristled with annoyance. Hells, they knew I was a dungeon¡ªprobably knew most of my first floor creatures, if Nicau''s stuttering explanation of an Adventuring Guild was correct. Shit. The tallest man leaned back, shaking off the end of his mace; the toad''s corpse sloughed off with a disappointing splat. He was a large man all around, shoulders curled in to dodge the lower stalactites, but his brutish face was bland and open. Soft. He looked like he could crush his two companion''s skulls with his bare hands, but instead he hung near the back of the group, looming overhead and silent. The woman was a fierce, bitter sort of thing I could tell even from my first glance at her; brows drawn low, caramel hair tugged into a braid so tight her skin was pulled back with it, teeth set and glimmering. Her lips burned fire-bright. In comparison, the last man moved with the swagger that said he thought he was the leader of the group, even if he certainly didn''t look it. Twin swords gleamed in his hands, the curved style of Le¨®ro, and there was a socket missing on his right hand, even if he still had five fingers there. An extra one, maybe? Cut off some time ago? Fascinating. I didn''t know humans could have more than ten fingers. My creatures scattered from the attack, disappearing with nary a rustle of algae and distant croaks of alarm; Nuvja''s shadows hung thick and heavy through the air, hiding them in the crooks and narrows of the Fungal Gardens until they had all but disappeared. But Nuvja''s shadow pulled back from the jewels and gold, and I saw the greed in their eyes; saw the wonder, as they marveled as the terraced waterfall of green algae, at the enormous snake skeleton curling around the stalagmites; saw the confidence, as the stone-backed toad fell dead to the ground. I mentally scaled their threat level back a bit. They knew I was a dungeon, but if they were confident on only my first floor, maybe they weren''t the danger I thought they were. The woman and taller man were both Silver, though younger Silvers, and the final was a Bronze. A Bronze that was currently marching forward without a care, hunting for the closest piece of gold and beautifully unaware of the luminous constrictor coiling overhead, her underbelly poised to blind him. There was a low, quiet thunk of mana¡ªsomething sensory, maybe? Not that I could tell, because once again, I could feel myself having to pull back; to keep my points of awareness passive and empty, nothing to tip off the invaders that I was watching them. Very irritating. One day I''d get that floor blessing from the god of magic, whoever that was, and my vindication would be incredible. "Bil," the tall man said, in a quiet, unassuming sort of voice that didn''t belong to his appearance. "Keep focused, please." The man¡ªBil, I guessed, a rather plain, unintriguing name¡ªrolled his eyes instead but did raise his swords, keeping their blades forward and angled downward. There was a certain lurch to his movements, a hazy, blissful delirium. He looked drunk. He was invading me, and he was drunk. Hells be damned, I was going to kill him. They stalked forward, moving in quiet, hesitant little movements as the majesty of my first floor befell them. I did appreciate that, even as I swept my mana through the floors below, stirring around my creatures. Still moving slow and stealthily, to avoid alerting any of the invaders, but making sure my creatures were ready. The kobold tribe on the second floor, with a new leader and a desire to prove themselves, perked up; the electric eels in the canals swimming with agitated excitement. Many floors below, the jeweled jumper stilled, halfway through consuming the desiccated husk of a platemail bug. He''d been absolutely pissed that he hadn''t been involved in the massive invasion, and now even the thought of one above seemed to awaken him. But with all three of them focused, my creatures slipped further to the sides; not yet consumed with the raid-frenzy, content to wait for an opening. This was a floor of ambushes, a place to lull invaders into a false sense of security; I wanted them lapsed and confused. I also wanted them to talk, and it seemed like the Bronze with his overblown confidence would fulfill that part beautifully. "Now," Bil announced, swords sweeping forward with his arms. From their hidden dens, shadowthief rats watched the gleam of the metal with clever little eyes. "As the leader of this group, I think we should¨C" "We''re not a group, dumbass," the woman barked. Smoke trickled from her nostrils. "We just said that so they''d let us through first." She spat something, and I could have sworn it hit the ground with the hiss of burning through the algae there. "Godsdamn Guildmaster. All his shit about havin'' no rules and then we havta pay out the ass in cuts just to be the first group through." The tallest man bobbed his head, hands still clasped politely before him as long as you ignored the bloodstained mace between them. "Anything we bring out will barely be worth it," he agreed, and there was a flicker of some frustration in his eyes. "But we are first. Our plan was to report back what we learned, no?" I watched Bil visibly wilt. "Damn right," the woman growled. Her eyes flicked from side to side even as her shoulders bristled. "We''re here to get a leg up on the fuckers outside. Sell what we learn to the Scholar an'' such. Not heroes, here." "Obera speaks the truth," the tall man said mildly. Everything he did seemed mild. Except murdering my creatures. "You do know me," Bil protested, looking like a lost child at not having people intrinsically recognize his mighty power. As a Bronze. Reaching for the stars, there. "I''m Ten-Fingered Bil, best of Calarata¡ªyou asked me to join your little group¨C" "We asked you to join to cover the costs of bein'' first in the dungeon," Obera snapped. "Nothin'' to do with you." Never one to bend under the pressure of absolutely no one believing in him, Bil straightened, using one sword in a wild swing to accent his point. "But we will become a group after we claim the core." Obera had a harsh, strangling sort of laugh. More smoke poured from her mouth. "Go off and be a dipshit," she snapped, and made an expression that suggested she would grab him by the collar if he wasn''t taller than her. "If you''re goin'' for the core, I''m not followin''." Yes, go along, I pushed, mana hovering overhead like a snake poised to strike. It would be a great idea to go for the core. You''d love it. Nothing would go wrong. Bil wavered. Somewhere in his thick skull he realized that maybe this was too good to be true, that maybe there was a reason his two other companions wouldn''t be willing to follow him further in. You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story. "We have all of today!" He cried, trying again with even more pompous curls to his voice. "The Adventuring Guild only allows one group per day, but we can stay in here as long as we like; it''s just that there will be another group tomorrow. This is the best possible chance we could have to claim it!" His hazy, red-ringed eyes flashed¡ªa truly brilliant, wonderful idea had just come to him, and I watched him swell with pride before he''d even said it. "Of course, if you''re too much of a coward to go deeper, I will happily claim the core myself." There was a pause. "Sure," Obera said flatly. "Have fun. Rordan?" "I am uninterested," Rordan said politely. Bil could have been a puddle on the ground, for how defeated he looked. But drunken confidence didn''t come without persistence and he sneered at them, twisting his lip and drawing his swords back to his side. "Very well," he snapped, dragging himself upright with visible effort. "Don''t come crawling back to me when I emerge a new High Lord." "I won''t," Obera said. Rordan inclined his head. Bil gathered his swords about him and stalked off¡ªa flash of a blade killed a burrowing rat leaping for the shiny glint of metal on his waist, scarlet blood splashing over the green algae. Obera and Rordan watched him go, lazy awareness. There was a squawking panic as he crossed the rock pond, skittering through in some desperate attempt to avoid too much damage from the silverheads slamming into his legs, and then he disappeared down the back tunnel. I followed him with a truly impressive number of points of awareness. There wasn''t a chance I was missing this. Obera scoffed at the darkness, embers dripping from her lips. "Good riddance," she snapped. "Let''s start studyin''." Ah yes, they seemed exactly the type to be studious. Whatever information about my halls they were about to bring out was going to be incredible. Not that I would be allowing them to do that. What Bil said was very concerning to me¡ªdaily raids? At least it wasn''t endless, and I could be relatively safe in assuming that most parties didn''t function in groups of fifty like before, but constant raids would soften me to the point I would worry about my creatures. On the other hand, that was a beautiful, steady influx of mana and training abilities for my creatures. And judging by Obera and Rordan¡ªmaybe not Bil¡ªthey didn''t seem too inclined to wipe my first floor empty and just leave, so I still had a chance for this. If they depleted my floor too much, I would be wiping them out. Not that I wanted anyone invading me, but if they pushed too hard, or even pushed a little bit, I would be murdering them with prejudice. Bil crept through the darkness of the tunnel as Obera and Rordan moved deeper into the Fungal Gardens, inspecting everything; they had sacks hanging over their armour that they tucked samples of green algae and whitecap mushrooms in. They stared for a long time at the largest lacecap of the floor, the one that had deep-set bile dripping down its gills and the desiccated corpses of burrowing rats scattered around. But I had, perhaps, played my hand a bit too much and set several luminous serpents around that to make it look less inviting to invaders, and they decided to harvest a different lacecap instead. Bastards. Deep below, Bil emerged into the Drowned Forest, and was appropriately stopped short. As he damn well should. His insipid little mind couldn''t even comprehend such a thriving mangrove forest far below the earth. Already, in the far back, the kobold tribe was stirring, creatures from beneath rising up. Bil seemed a touch less confident without his group, swinging his swords by his sides with unsteady caution. He¨C "Fuck!" Obera howled, skittering back¡ªmy points of awareness spiraled in as she spat out an exhalation of fire, scorching through the darkness of the room. Opposite her, emerging from the darkness of the den she had tried to walk past, came one of the juvenile lunar cave bears¡ªexcept they were juvenile no longer, fully grown, lean and dangerous. There were three of them, tucked in the half dozen dens I''d scattered around the end of the Fungal Gardens, now that their father had finally made the journey down to the Jungle Labyrinth. So now they were big, and they were hungry, and they were strong. "Go, go, go!" Obera barked, clutching her arm to her side; blood seeped deep and scarlet through her fingers, eyes wild and white-ringed. Rordan roared, his own eyes alight with battle-frenzy¡ªrude, that was for my creatures, not humans¡ªand he swept forward, cracking his fist against the bear''s muzzle. It¡ªshe¡ªhowled back, fighting against this berserker of a man, all his politeness fled in face of battle. He hefted his mace and swung, the spiked metal cleaving through the air; but she was clever and fell back, losing only fur to the blow. They stared at each other, furious. Obera spat another wall of fire, her own lips scorching under the heat; the bear snarled and fell back, eyes glinting red-scarlet. She was powerful, viciously so, but these were two Silvers; she wouldn''t survive a fight with them. And maybe that had something to do with the knowledge I''d crammed into her head from the last time one of my lunar cave bears had tried to fight a Silver, and how Akkyst had only just made it back. So, snarling, she slipped back into the darkness of her den, and was swallowed by Nuvja''s shadow until she was gone. Not that it made her opponents any more comfortable. Rordan snorted, swinging his mace back over his shoulder; his enormous bulk seemed more alive when he fought, the muscles bulging through the thin leather gear he wore. There was something expensive in his clothing, but it was worn and weathered by age; wherever he had come from, he hadn''t been there in a while. "C''mon," Obera hissed, watching their surroundings with wary eyes. "That Scholar said we''d pay less in taxes if we got him more info on those fuckin'' trees; just havta make it to them. Then we go back." Rordan rumbled, some of the battle-frenzy leaving his eyes. The politeness came back, neatly clasping his mace in both hands, shaking off the bit of blood with careful movements. He was almost painfully large. I hated him. Not as much as I hated how they were apparently on the hunt for my vampire mangrove. Whoever this Scholar was, he was far too knowledgeable about my dungeon for my tastes. Either one of the five foolish souls who had survived the fifty person raid, or there was a further breach in my intelligence I didn''t know about. Neither option was good. They did, unfortunately, get over my rock pond easily; Obera breathed massive tongues of fire over the surface to scare away the silverheads, and then they trotted through right as rain. The lunar cave bears watched them go with glassy black eyes, ivory fangs glinting past Nuvja''s shadows. Prepared to try and catch them off guard if they made their way back, but not to lose their lives in the endeavor. And then two more souls emerged into my Drowned Forest, my fury only rising as they came closer and closer. Still five floors after this one, but I didn''t like them getting anywhere close to me, especially Silvers. They stared around at the gentle lapping waters and the billowing moss hills, eyebrows raising. "Huh," Obera said, low and cautious. "Scholar said there was one in the first room." Ah. The old Ancestral Tree. No, she had left for far bluer pastures. But they marched through, leaping over one exposed curl of the canal, and came into the second room; much larger than the first, with some dozen vampiric mangroves scattered around the water''s edge. Almost immediately, strengthened by Rhoborh''s blessing, all of them shifted; thorned branches wielding closer. A little too obvious, as both invaders'' eyes snapped to the motion. "Keep your fuckin'' distance," Obera barked, though I wasn''t sure who she was actually talking to. "Or I''ll burn all you shits down, hear me?" Ugh. Fire users. Always so boring and uncreative. And these were mangroves, growing straight out of canals; if there were any tree that would survive fire, it would be these. In the distance, huddled under the shadows of the thorned roots, I saw creatures move; the quiet, gentle shifts of something hungry. An ironback toad, pulled away from guarding a burrowing rat den, a luminous serpent slinking through the knot of roots. Obera stalked to the closest tree, hackles raised and fists out. "Grab it," she murmured, glaring at the tree. A little too aware of it. I wanted her to be confused. Rordan sank further into his berserker rage¡ªeven then, I saw him wince as he reached out and wrapped his fist around one of the mangrove''s branches. I saw it move, saw the thorns dig deep into his flesh; and then, with a gut-wrenching crack, he wrenched it off the tree. All at once, everything exploded. Rhoborh''s blessing was for more than simple alarms, it sent emotions, sent thoughts, sent feelings. And the mangroves were considered untouchable, the beastly powers of the Drowned Forest; for one of them to be injured, that meant things were bad, and everything on the floor reacted accordingly. Obera and Rordan both froze as some electric understanding washed over them; I wasn''t mortal and couldn''t feel things as they did, but I could sense the gnawing hatred in the air, the way each of the other mangroves swiveled in their direction, the hunger and fury and viciousness. Silvers they were, but exposed and unsuited to this floor; it was a danger they could not afford. Did not want. In another world, they would be consumed in the greed, in the desire for my core or for greater pressures. But Obera and Rordan were tempered by something I didn''t know, the guiding force of the Adventuring Guild¡ªand as one, they looked at each other, blood pouring from Rordan''s hand. "Run!" Obera barked, and they fled. My mana dove over them like a tidal wave, filled with all the fury and pain I felt¡ªbut they were back into the first room, back into the tunnel. Obera puffed embers to light their way and Rordan''s free hand cracked the mace against the wall, the tremors scaring away lesser creatures in a power against their prey minds. And then they raced through my first floor, Rordan''s mace lashing out to keep the bears at bay, Obera spitting tongues of fire at anything that got near, and they shot through the cove entrance before the creeping vine had even had half the time needed to cover it. And then I was left in the quiet, and I was seething. Bloody fucking cowards. They''d just left me. No, Bil would not be surviving this, and I didn''t give two shits if he knew I was coming for him. My mana awoke, great looping spirals of fury and the raid-frenzy¡ªmy creatures answered the call with a howling roar. Bil stiffened; even with his stupid Bronze sensibilities, he could sense the approaching danger. He''d made it halfway through the floor mostly by being scared and sticking to the shadows, avoiding all trees and creatures and too present shadows. But that didn''t matter when my floor-wide alarm went off, shrieking for vengeance, and everyone answered. Including one in particular. This electric eel was enormous by my standards, old and powerful in the way few creatures got to be before they either died or evolved; her school of electric silverheads was nearing two dozen and she was a beast herself, sinuous and powerful. But her thoughts weren''t just of strength, of conquering the water; she wanted something more. Something above. And I noticed that now, as she answered my raid-frenzy by sticking her face out of the water. The eel. The fully aquatic eel. The one that could only breathe in the water. Out in the air. What. I felt her gasp, struggling for air, her skin drying out; but with her head out of the water and the pores along her side exposed, she launched a crackle of lightning directly into Bil''s face. With a popping, crackling cry by vocal chords too ruined to produce a proper sound, he fell back. And then his mistakes came back to haunt him, as every creature he''d avoided but that hadn''t avoided him came charging in; ironback toads and burrowing rats and shadowthief rats all hungry for blood and for treasure. Still stunned as he was, there was nothing he could do to stop them. I devoured his soul greedily. Served him right. The electric eel shivered as mana exploded through her, bright and untempered; and then she was bright and untempered, the light of evolution bursting over her scales and thoroughly frightening away her school of electric silverheads. Well, at least I was getting something out of this. Chapter 114 - Storm Call I stared at the cove entrance for a long time after the bastards escaped. My creeping vine wriggled around almost sadly, still slowly slithering over the entrance to hide it from the world. A bit late, unfortunately, considering that these invaders hadn''t been in for very long at all. Now that I was back to floating ephemeral overhead, points of awareness spiraling around, I could see just how little time had passed¡ªSeros had barely unwrapped from around my core and Veresai had only just started looking through the many eyes of her serpent horde. They''d ran in, killed a few creatures, collected their corpses, grabbed a branch from my vampiric mangrove, and fled. Cowards. And the one who hadn''t been a coward was now being feasted on by many a hungry creature. I perched overhead, eddying whirlpools of mana coiling around as I tugged his¡ªBil, ugh¡ªsoul out of his body and let it pass through me on its way to the world beyond; knowledge and memories and information flooded through me, everything to bring me understanding of the outside world. Somewhat. Well. He was useless. Most, if not all, of his memories were fuzzy and stained, washed together in streaks of colour and the bright, indomitable conviction that he was, really, the best swordsman in all of Calarata. My initial guess had been right. He was drunk. He was always drunk. He was very fond of being drunk. Dragons didn''t get drunk, had no reason to, and I was not particularly enjoying being able to experience that sensation. I spat out the last of his memories with a rippling hiss of mana. The Drowned Forest echoed hollowly around me. I curled in around my core, shutting off most of my outer awareness to concentrate, even if I bitched and cursed the whole way. Now I had to¡­ scrounge around for scraps of information off what they said; piece together little bits of what those invaders said when they dared delve my halls. A common thief. Thankfully they had, in proper fashion, talked loudly and freely with seemingly no concept of an idea that I could be listening. I thought again, of the apparent High Lord Thiago''s dungeon. They had spoken of how different we were, and spoken of it at all; not understanding how there could be consequences for them saying things. Was that dungeon not sentient? Were they completely incapable of knowing what I was? Hm. There was an internal war between wanting to be known and wanting to be mysterious. Both, if I could have it. But that was interesting; my interactions with dungeons before had been extremely minimal, considering few of them were aquatic, but I did vaguely remember them spawning from three-moon eclipses or ley lines, which likely meant a godly hand was involved. I was in no way similar. Mine and mine alone. The invaders didn''t know that. Thoughts for later; I poured back over what their conversations had been, imagining the curl of smoke from the woman''s¡ªObera, I thought¡ªmouth and the deep timbre of Rordan''s voice. They had mentioned they were the first group, implying more, and that there would be invaders once a day. That was¡­ not ideal, not in any sense of the word, but far from the worst; if these two morons would be setting the tone, it was that I couldn''t rely on invasions going like they had in the past, when they had snuck their way in and died in neat, manageable waves. No, now there would be constant waves, one group allowed in per day¡ªalthough presumably, if a group decided to, well, sleep in my dungeon, I could have multiple groups. I''d love to see that happen. That kind of brilliant idiocy would be wonderful to witness¡ªand it looked like it would be smaller groups, not the fifty person party from before. Although I wondered why these three had to pretend to be a group, when it was clear that only Rordan and Obera were actually in a group. Was there stipulations on the size of groups? Or only for the first ones through? And what was that bastardry about selling my secrets to this so-called Scholar? Bil''s soul had a vague memory of the man, if I could get past the lurching movement and hazy vision; a flash of pale skin and red hair and an open coat. He was familiar, in the way all humans were familiar; I knew that they differentiated themselves off faces and hairs and other things like that, but they were just humans to me. Not a single scale pattern variant or horn style or wingspread to tell them apart. Useless. But the man. I did remember the man, I thought. Something about the way he dressed, or the nervous, awkward energy he had even in memory¡ªa previous invader, maybe. I''d have to think more on it. Either way, the concept of Scholar was another of those warring thoughts. I was, of course, very pleased at the idea of someone marveling over me and my wonders, standing in awe of my creative genius; but in order to do said marveling, they would have to collect pieces of me to study, which I was rather wholeheartedly against. The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. But however much I was against it didn''t stop them, as shown by the vampiric mangrove branch they''d managed to squirrel out of my halls. That was the most concerning. Being known for reawakening lost things was not necessarily what I wanted to be free knowledge, not that I had much of a choice. I didn''t have much of a choice in any of this, infuriatingly enough; all I could do was prepare my halls and creatures, then wait for the next invader to come in. Hopefully I could figure out a system over the next few days while I kept my halls rumbling on and healed all those who needed healing. A terribly irritating, anxious process. Well. I did have something to distract myself. And that something was the beautiful glowing light overtaking my Drowned Forest, from deep beneath the smoking corpse of Bil. The electric eel. She was a cantankerous thing, unsatisfied with her current position; one of the older eels, bitten and made vicious by age. Immediately after launching her attack, she''d fallen back into the water, gasping for air and letting the soothing canals dampen her dried skin. Her school of electric silverheads had scattered, utterly baffled by her actions, but they''d come back eventually; this was the first electric eel of mine that would be evolving, and they wouldn''t want to lose their position serving her. And considering that Rhoborh had really reached his limit on changes allowed to his floor, they''d also likely be going down a floor. I peered into the light of her evolution with glee.
Your creature, an Electric Eel, is undergoing evolution! Please select your desired path. Iridescent Eel (Uncommon): Learning from its reptilian brethren, this creature launches a scintillating display of light from its sides, luring in all that quickly fall prey to its electrified bite. Chargescale Eel (Uncommon): Master of canals, master of schools; though its electric silverheads are loyal, it demands more, and now grows electric scales. By shedding them in strategic locations around its territory, it can always boost its own power whenever needed. Storm Eel (Rare): No longer content with electricity, this creature climbs to the sky to harness lightning. Swimming through air and coiling around clouds, it hunts in the streaking, violent manner befitting its shocking aura.
Oho. Fantastic. Iridescent immediately stood out to me¡ªit seemed to be inspired by both the luminous constrictors and perhaps a touch of Veresai, although I didn''t see an explicit mention of psionic powers rather than merely pretty lights. But in the gloom of the Underlake, I could see the explosion of light to draw everything in, and an electrified bite to kill them¡ªstill something very few aquatic beings could defend against. Chargescale was also fascinating; the concept of abandoning her electric silverheads for traps scattered around her territory, able to be launched off at a moment''s notice. I didn''t think she was particularly smart now, but maybe this evolution would awaken that. But the final one. In the electric eel''s mind, though muddled and sleepy with evolution, she was still thinking of the above, the amorphous existence beyond the water that she had never experienced. Well, now she had¡ªand I didn''t think it was a coincidence that the first time she poked her head above the water, she had evolved. This was what she was interested in. She wanted to fly. And it just so happened that I had a floor that needed a change. The Skylands; I had the skies filled with glorious flying beasts and birds, from the scarlet feathers of the parrot to the rust-red of the bladehawk, to golden carapaces of the swarming wasps to the feathery antennae of the eye-blight butterflies. But that was above; if the goblins were going to live below, I didn''t want them exposed, so that any invader could look down and see their dens free for the looting. So my plan was to fill it with cloudskipper wisps, maybe cloudsire palms; anything to fill the air with the mist and the haze and the grey necessary to hide the danger below. And if, perhaps, in those clouds something were to be hunting¡ªwell. Well, I liked that idea very much. I selected storm eel. The light overtook her, floating gently down to the canal floor; I layered a few spiraled nets of points of awareness around her, as well as a pointed call to her school of electric silverheads. Unlikely they would follow her after evolution, but they could certainly protect her in the meantime. Well, maybe they could¡ªI had a glorious image of an eel spiraling through the clouds, followed by dozens of points for her lightning to fork off of¡ªbut that would take another evolution. If they really wanted to stay with her, then they would figure out how to evolve and join her. The choice was up to them. But with her evolution, I had little doubt more would follow, and I wanted them. Skies filled with tumultuous, lightning-wielding monsters; a paradise for me, one of many hells for my invaders. There was certainly a lot to do here, made more pressing by the fact I now had a consistent, ever-infuriating timer in the back of my core to keep track of. One day was really not a long time when you think about it. Which I was. A lot. And, well. Sitting in my core curled a new strand of mana, only the Bronze of Bil, but that was mana, fresh and potent. And I had been needing potency. Akkyst, the bastard, was still helping his goblins build their new home; but all of their progress was constantly hampered by the hundreds of other creatures on that floor, some that belonged, some that didn''t. I''d managed to keep them separate by having the goblins stay beneath the island, since I was a touch concerned on how the singular kobold there would interact with them, but that couldn''t last forever¡ªand I didn''t want it to. I wanted brilliance, and that mishmashed collection of ill-thought-out plans wasn''t it. But it could become it. So I gathered up Bil''s mana and the sparks from the Otherworld, leaving fifteen points because I was never allowing myself to go empty ever again, and I dove through the Hungering Reef; past all the glorious creatures and the ravenous maw of the nearly-not-fledgling sea serpent, past Seros curled around my core, and I paused before the stone behind. More invaders would come tomorrow, and more after, and more after; and they would learn more about me due to this Scholar, and they would keep coming, and I wasn''t a secret any longer. But I had always worked best under pressure. It was time to begin my seventh floor. Chapter 115 - Molten Beginnings With all the delicacy of an avalanche, I bored into the rockface. All around me, the mountain rumbled warily as I carved deeper into its flesh, twining the tunnel down to give myself some fifty, hundred feet of depth from the floor above¡ªnot a chance I would risk a collapse of my lovely paradise above¡ªbefore emerging onto the plane I wanted the floor to be. I had been planning this thing ever since seeing how dysfunctional the Skylands were, too many concepts crammed together with no thoughts for cohesion, and my mana was bright and sharp with glee as I wove together what I''d imagined. This would be as stark of contrast to the previous floor as I could get, a claw to the gut of anyone who thought they could merely continue down after braving my pure white sands and glistening waters. Even if the merrow could telekinetically hover their way past my floors in a way I was rather terrified of, this would be what stopped them; even the Jungle Labyrinth was heady with humidity, moisture pooling in oases and trickling down the walls, the Skylands would soon be flooded with clouds and the rumble of approaching storms, and the Hungering Reefs had all they could ever want. The seventh floor would have none of that. It would be as close as I would allow myself to get to the preferred habitat of the idiotic fire-drakes. Not exact, because I wouldn''t let it be, but significantly more habitable than my previous floors. More adapted to the actual creatures I had, of course, mainly the scorch hounds and bounding deer. I wanted this to be an open plain intercut with furrows lacing through in an intricate spider''s web. In truth, the seventh floor would be rather similar to the Drowned Forest, with one notable difference. Instead of watery canals, they would be fire. A spark in the deep darkness, the choking press of smoke and soot; scattered rubies at the base of carved furrows, any pressure enough to set them off, layered around coal deposits and other flammable schemas I''d collected that would burn for as long as I let them. Great belching plumes of velvet-dark shadow with a hellish thrum of fire-red. Not my preferred appearance, of course. But I could imagine it even now; a vast cavern with a variable landscape, stone jutting up and out to break sightlines, fire burning deep in furrows forking out like lightning. Scattered dens like foxholes throughout, pockets for foliage sturdy enough to survive this harsh environment, stalking predators with paths lit by amber flame. For now, at least. One day I would make it even worse. But not now, unfortunately. I didn''t, ah, really have the ability to make lava. Or, rather, I could¡ªoverloading stone with fire-attuned mana melted it down and quickly, and I''d created several pockets in preparation for this floor. They''d sat there, gurgling, impossibly hot and glowing like the sun¡ªand then, over time, they''d cooled. See. It took a lot of mana to make lava, and considering my dungeon was not set at the ambient temperature necessary to keep stone molten, it would just harden. And I absolutely did not have the capacity to just keep making lava constantly. So. It would have to be fire for now. That was fine. I could wait. Eventually. Lacking lava didn''t mean I was cutting corners on any other part of the design, though. In sharp difference to, ah, every single one of my previous floors, I wasn''t using limestone at all. Back when I was making the Hungering Reef, I''d gnawed my way into a new schema¡ªbasalt, a deep grey-black stone that formed strangely geometric patterns. The darkness contrasted heartily with the blue-gold paradise of the floor above, and it was already a volcanic stone; thus it worked perfectly with the dreary atmosphere I wanted, only broken by the fiery plumes of the furrows where, one day, lava would flow. Oh, what a glorious floor this would be. As long as I made it so. Learning from all the mistakes I''d made with the original Fungal Gardens, I was very aware of how invaders would see this place. I wanted it to be all one room, to give the high-energy creatures that would inhabit it plenty of space to grow and sprawl, to make them fight for territories rather than claiming easily-divisible rooms. But if it was only one room, then came the problem of sightlines. If invaders could take one step in and see all the way to where my core would sit on the other side, then there was all sorts of horrible, wretched shit they could do to get right there, and that was something I did not want. Therefore, I had two solutions. The first was easy. It had worked wonders for the Jungle Labyrinth, and even more now¡ªbasalt was naturally a dark grey, flecked with glimmering minerals, and it swallowed light as well as anything. Light that I would not be providing. The only glow would be from the fire and eventual lava, tucked away in the furrows, deep below eye level of invaders and casting everything in the understanding that there was more in the shadows they couldn''t see. If the light only came from below, with walls of the furrows on all sides, the illumination would be drastically limited. So even if it was a flat plane with my core on the other side, they wouldn''t be able to see more than fifty, maybe a hundred feet in front of them, and what they could see would be choked with smoke. This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. And that was if it was a flat plane, which it was assuredly not. Basalt had an odd habit, forming hexagonal chunks if it was allowed to cool like drying mud, and as a dungeon, I could skip the tediousness of that and go right to the finished production; which I was plenty prepared to do. An interlocking grid of columns snaking around the room, extending up the walls and mirrored overhead. Every column would be of a slightly different height than those surrounding it, creating an uneven mess of a floor¡ªand some sections I would raise into fifty foot mounds, cresting over top like hills, and others I would drop into what I would one day fill with lava to make lurking pools of impossible danger. For my creatures, they would have to learn to be spry and nimble, racing over a surface that never worked with them¡ªbut the scorch hounds had come from the jungle, choked with vines and roots, and the bounding deer would live up to their name. Scorpions already moved too slowly to care and kobolds were adaptable. Maybe even the goblins, if those with fire-attuned mana wanted a place to train. The roof was low, adding to the claustrophobia of pressing darkness, and flying creatures wouldn''t have much space here anyway. Only if they were able to adapt to my creation. But for invaders, it would be a nightmare. Inconsistent steps in a land choked with darkness, surrounded by the skitter of claws on stone as scorch hound packs circled in for the kill, always the threat of falling into fire, always unknowing of where to go. All the danger of getting lost in the Jungle Labyrinth, but now with openness that allowed for predators to attack from every direction and disappear before they could be struck in return. One of my better ideas, if I thought so myself. Now. Time to actually make it. Gathering my mana once again, I returned to digging. - No matter how many times I did it, there was nothing as irritating as how long it took me to carve out a full floor. Continuing my theme, this one was going to be enormous, so at least it was justified; but surely, a mere ten thousand feet shouldn''t take as long as it was. I was barely a fifth of the way through just carving the space, not even starting the process of painstakingly raising hexagonal sections of basalt to scatter over the ground and ceiling, and already new invaders were poking their fat, stupid heads into my dungeon. Absolute assholes. Four of them this time, just as wary as the group before. Completely knowledgeable about the fact I was a dungeon. Fantastic. It was hard to be cavalier about any of this. One of them was enormous, a sprawling hulk of a person with grey-green skin, horns¡ªno, tusks¡ªcurling out of his mouth. The woman next to him was the same, though significantly less brawny, her tusks coming to a more jagged point. He had axes, she had a spear, and both looked unfortunately prepared for me. Orcs, I thought, one of those races mostly found inland¡ªI''d never encountered them much before, but I''d heard they tasted terrible. In contrast, the other two members were human, much shorter, and so low a Silver rank I was honestly surprised they''d gotten the raise. One with long, flowing hair with hooks woven into the end of the braids, the other''s gauntleted fists studded with sparking jewels. Stronger than the last party, bright and full with mana. Mana that I was rather interested in, considering that carving my way through an entire mountain was a rather costly process. Just so long as I could obtain it. I''d never failed before, and I wasn''t looking to start now. The taller orc thundered forward, shirtless chest rippling with scar tissue¡ªNuvja''s shadows pulled back to catch the gleam of his enormous axe, alerting all my creatures perhaps too dumb to notice the threat. Not the patient type. The other orc rolled her eyes and padded after him, spear-headed staff tapping on the ground as mana coiled at the top. Not too chatty, unfortunately. Determined, though. One invading party a day. I''d hoped, with the part of me that refused to listen to anything a human thought or said, that maybe yesterday''s group had been lying¡ªthat I would still have time to recover after each invasion, to keep my head and allow my creatures to spring back. It did not look like that was the case. Well. I hadn''t raised a horde for no reason. Go, I murmured, my mana sinking infesting teeth into the minds of my creatures on the upper floors. Quiet, insidious; nothing to alert the invaders that I was sentient, that I was attacking against them. For all they knew I was a dungeon, they didn''t know more, and I was looking to keep it that way. Defend. As one, they stirred, flashing vicious claws and burgeoning sparks of mana; these invaders were all Silver, which was concerning, but I had six complete floors filled with monsters, and I wasn''t overly afeared. And, well¡ªif there was going to be invasions every single day, I couldn''t focus on them constantly, not if I wanted to get anything done. Points of awareness following them from the moment they arrived, of course, because I wasn''t an idiot, but not much of my consciousness. If they made it past the Underlake, only then would I devote my attention to them. But I had more important things to focus on. I turned back to the growing seventh floor, to the deep basalt caverns and the gloom soon to be filled with fire. Far above, the invaders crossed the halfway point in the Fungal Gardens, the lunar cave bears awakening from their slumber and the rock pond thrashing with silverheads, but they were distant; a distraction in face of the world I wanted to create. I could see it even now, the spiral of mana conjuring beautiful images. Fire-tongue flowers belching smoke to choke the air; scorch hounds slinking around hexagonal pillars with their ember-eyes aglow; bounding deer clattering around as blinding distractions; mottled scorpions invisible in the quiet of their hunt. With renewed determination, I continued to dig. I wouldn''t ever love fire; but for my creatures, I could learn to appreciate it. Chapter 116 - Ashen Hells In what was both surprising and not, the invasion party made it decently far before things started to fall apart. The taller orc was some kind of berserker, red in his eyes and axes awash with hemolymph and blood, and injuries knit themselves together in his stupid, brutish face as he charged. Infuriating. Made even more infuriating by the other orc, with her spear-tipped staff, casting billowing clouds of green-yellow that sped up healing for all members of their party. The one with hooks braided through his hair was a close-range nightmare, the one wielding gauntleted fists sent lightning crackling through my creatures, and the absolute bastards passed through the Drowned Forest without too much difficulty. Was this the strength of all Silver invasions? Exceptionally irritating. They''d killed a good number of my creatures before the others had gotten the hint and pulled back; not something my halls were used to, though something they would have to learn, if these bloody daily raids would keep up. Maybe I would have to set aside areas for them, unattached to the main floors, for them to breed and recuperate in relative peace. Questions for a later day, since I didn''t have much to worry about now. The group was having a touch less luck in the Underlake. The brawler couldn''t use her lightning in the water, and for all the berserker could heal his injuries, it didn''t matter if he couldn''t strike back. They could all do the mana-trick to hold their breath longer, but fighting underwater was a slow and fumbling process for these floundering terrestrial beings, and that was before the sarco crocodile caught scent of the situation. There was a ripple of something¡­ odd, though. Some power within her, that burning desire to prove she was something more, and it flared as she went for the killing stroke on the smaller orc; a wave of mana I couldn''t place as she clove head from shoulders. Fascinating. Not one to be outdone, the armoured jawfish had emerged from the shadowed depths of the bloodline kelp forest, and the last three members of the party had found themselves in a dance they didn''t know the steps to. A messy, violent death, even as the one with braided hair tried to flee right at the end. Then, as they were wont to do, the armoured jawfish and sarco crocodile started to fight directly after, because their pissing contest never ended. The Underlake trembled in wake of their brawl. My creatures could be so kind, really. The royal silvertooth with his horde of fang-embedded thralls hadn''t even had a chance to fight, and judging by his furious thoughts as he stalked around the edges of their fight, he''d wanted to. He''d get his chance if he was faster. That was on him. But bright, delicious mana flooded through me, another healing aspect to send to the poor crowned cobra trying to learn from Kriya''s unconscious body, and more useless souls with information from Calarata. I poked through them with idle curiosity; not much new, another layout of the Adventuring Guild and a flash of the red-haired man I was sure I had seen before. Probably. Whoever he was, he wasn''t interesting enough to remember, so that was really on him. The mana was a welcome reward for the distraction, and I turned back to my seventh floor with deliberation. I had finally, finally, finished carving out the base of the room, a ten thousand foot sprawl that curled back and forth in an odd, irregular habit. The ceiling was low and crushing, as little as fifty feet to a hundred at its peak, and everything was made of the same deep, hexagonal basalt pillars in a variety of heights. Deep furrows interwoven through the madness, surrounded by hills and valleys, laced through with stuttering, uneven steps and falls. In short, a prison of interlocking columns and inky darkness. It had taken every drop of mana I''d had, which sent me to the pathetic depths of waiting by the river entrance to my second floor to catch every new silverhead that got tossed my merry way so I could direct my creatures to kill it instantly just for the mana it held, but it was finally carved out, and I couldn''t be more proud. Already I could taste the potential in the air, see the distant fiery plumes and hear the scratch of claws on stone. I had even carved myself a basalt pillar for my core, rather than the silver-flecked limestone I normally used. This was an unprecedented level of cohesion to this floor I had never experienced before. The next part was even easier, insofar as a lack of thought; I darted around to the various furrows throughout the floor and filled them with coal. I''d collected this schema some time ago, carving out veins of it alongside the iron and copper the mountain had offered me, but I hadn''t had much use for it before now. It was an ugly, crumbling thing with ancient histories within that I couldn''t access, made up of the desiccated remains of flora and fauna enough changed that I couldn''t get a schema from. Horrible. It did, however, burn. And thus. I took around half of the mana I''d gotten from the invasion and inlaid seven furrows with coal, layering deep veins in the depths of the basins, carved over their surroundings like scars. They were scattered randomly and not all of the places, since I didn''t want to empty myself of mana all at once, but it would be plenty to understand just how this place would work. I paused beforehand. A simple exhalation of non-tangible breath, the pride rumbling deep in the golden runes carved over my core. And then, with a spark of fire-attuned mana, I lit all of the seven furrows at once. There was a wheeze and a cough and a boom, something deep and powerful, as they caught¡ªit was slow burning as I''d designed it to be, rock interlaced through the coal, veins with thin exposure to the air and extended further down; I wanted it to be sparse lighting at best, the memory of flame instead of a wildfire, and for the smoke to be most pressing. And oh did it deliver. From deep in the furrows, black clouds billowed; they were heavy and choking, spiraling through the air and drowning out any of the light the fire brought. I didn''t have sensory organs like mortal creatures, but I could approximate things with my points of awareness, and what I was receiving was decidedly unpleasant. Glorious. If the Hungering Reefs were a paradise, this was a stinking cesspit, and I couldn''t be prouder. It did, unfortunately, have to be habitable; so after taking a moment longer to appreciate the towers of black smoke in that already dark room, I dove it closer to the hexagonal mounds littered around the floor. See, I was going to be doing a very clever, mean-spirited little thing¡ªno actual water on this floor. The ambient heat with all the burning furrows meant what was there would turn to steam, painful and scorching, and invaders would have no relief from the sweltering pain. It was a very fun interaction, darkness and fire, two that could go together but often not in the vast creation I wielded. Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. But, well. My creatures did need to survive. So the only water they would have would be from algae. Green algae, the first ever schema I had taken within myself, so long ago when an underground monitor''s den had felt like a paradise; it was, perhaps, the thing I was most familiar with, even as my creatures had wildly expanded and grown and changed. I had multiple modifications of it, being so simple and blas¨¦ that I could manipulate it with my mana for much greater lengths before it started to absorb my power rather than change with it. I had the variants in my first three floors, where it exuded gentle green light; what I''d had in the Jungle Labyrinth before it''d evolved, where its spores glowed in faint, trickling specks; and ever an overall change, becoming a more emerald green than the paler shade it had been before. Was I getting nostalgic over an amorphous clump of flora? Hells, maybe becoming a dungeon core was the worst thing that could have happened to me. But either way, my plan was simple and beautiful for it; in the clumps beneath basalt pillars and hills, I would grow fields of green algae, housing sapphires deep in their nestled cores. It didn''t happen much in the Fungal Gardens, due to being so far from my core, but if I kept jewels on the lower floors and let them absorb my ambient mana, they would eventually begin to expel excess as whatever they were attuned to. It was a slow, inconsistent thing, which meant I wouldn''t be able to fill a furrow with rubies and let that produce the lava for me¡ªthough I''d tried¡ªbut it would, in theory, be able to produce a steady enough trickle of water to keep the algae damp and growing. Not much, barely enough to pool, but it would keep my creatures fed and watered. And if that failed, I would make an oasis somewhere in the center of the room, fed by a tunnel from the river overhead, and then they could all kill each other in territorial disputes trying to claim that vital resource. I was fine with either, really. So in the darkness, I let little fields of green bloom, tucking them away in the shadows and the depths of pockets in the pillars. It immediately shriveled, which, rude, but I poured the mana equivalent of holding its hand as I guided its adaptation to survive in this smoke and darkness choked world. It ended up stringier, a little more sparse and weak than the variants above, but that was fine. I would make sure it would survive. Most of the creatures I would be adding here would be carnivores, with one notable exception; the bounding deer. They weren''t particularly suited to this environment, but they could change, and I had means of providing them the food that would counteract their harsh environment. Still I remembered the visible ribs of the scorch hounds above, the hunger that clawed deep along their marrow and put desperation in their eyes. I had made them in a world that could not feed them. I would not make that same mistake again. So the bounding deer would be the basis of the food chain here, large, meaty creatures with plenty to provide from a single kill, and as they would be the only one consuming the algae here, I would easily be able to adjust to their population for how much to plant. It would work. And then the scorch hounds and mottled scorpions and kobolds could go apeshit for all I cared, so long as they stayed alive. I tossed around a couple patches of whitecap mushrooms mostly as an experiment, since for all the room was dark enough for them to grow, I didn''t know if the deer would eat them. Maybe. Their pale, ghostly bodies in the black looked wondrous, though. And there was one more plant I wanted to add¡ªI would be removing them from the Skylands as soon as I established this land, but they were, admittedly, more difficult to transfer than creatures, so for now I just wove more from mana. Fire-tongue flowers, shrub-vines with charcoal green leaves, rooting around for the thin and wavering pockets of dirt I''d scattered alongside the basalt. With a bit of coaxing, scarlet flowers edged in black bloomed outward. Almost immediately, they caught fire, smoke trickling outward to carry their seeds up to the massive clouds overhead. Lovely. Such a fascinating plant, with a defense the likes of which I''d never seen before, and it would fit perfectly in with my floor. More food for the bounding deer, as well. And speaking of. The scorch hounds and mottled scorpions would be migrating down, as soon as I carved a tunnel for them, but there was one creature I could put in now. One that I had never seen, actually, which was odd¡ªrarely did a schema enter my core that I didn''t use immediately. And that was what had led me to the situation. So it was only now, in a land with plenty of room and greenery tucked in the corners, would I create them. ¡­some of them. See, the funny thing about creating an entire floor was that it tended to leave you a little light on mana. I had, roughly, seventeen points to my name, which was. Ah. Not a lot. But I could, presumably, start the basis of one herd, four or five to start exploring the seventh floor and show me what changes I would need to make. With all my concerns soothed by ambition, I gathered almost all of my mana and woven it into living flesh. Their antlers emerged first, twisting, knotted things of ivory-white; then then body, sleek, covered in grey-brown fur with white on the underbelly, perked ears with black edges, wide, eyes¨C The bounding deer, some eight-nine feet tall, opened its eyes. Its hooves sparked and skittered over the basalt, tail flicking, branched antlers bobbing and weaving as it tilted its head¡ªthen, in the far distance, some pocket of coal rumbled and belched another cloud of smoke. The deer disappeared. I stared at the space. Now, that was a touch of hyperbole, but I¨C well. The fucker was fast. But my points of awareness were faster, so I caught up with it; even in the darkness, eyes wide and pupils wider, it threw itself over the harsh environment like it had been born there. Which it had. Its¡ªhis¡ªleaps seemed almost attuned to the sky, carrying him in massive bounds as he threw himself away from the perceived danger, unaware of where he was going but only away. Well, if I had wanted the scorch hounds to expend all the energy they had, these were certainly going to give them a run. Eventually, he calmed down, slowing to a mere trot. His head stayed swiveling, peering with cautious eyes at what elements of his environment he could see, but already in the adaptive mana of my dungeon I could see him begin to see better, to change to match this darkened cavern. His antlers gleamed. Fascinating. Moving quickly to catch him before he spooked, I wove three more bounding deer¡ªall I could afford, considering their size¡ªand dropped them directly behind him. He did, of course, immediately sprint away, but this time they were all terrified, and the three new members of his herd ran with him. Innate instincts I didn''t care to dig deeper into took over and suddenly they were scared together. A family. How cute. I would never understand prey animals. But for now, they ran around the seventh floor, exploring as best they could in the deep and the dark; it would take them time and likely multiple generations before the smoke could be called hospitable, and already I knew I would have to add more hidden greenery to support their lanky size, but they were here, and they were alive. And, two floors above, my points of awareness focused in on the scorch hounds. Soon they would be here. There were perhaps two dozen, shrunken from the three that had been there before, and still their ribs protruded and they watched the Magelord goblins below with hungry eyes. The female still had the beast-tamer¡ªattempted beast-tamer, really¡ªkobold at her side, though it looked like she''d stopped trying to kill him, if the healed scratches over his scales said anything. It likely had more to do with it being a waste of effort than any real amiability on her side. The kobold was making progress, though. I could see it in his thoughts¡ªhe wanted to work with her, to be a team. I wondered what he''d think of the seventh floor. Come down, I wanted to croon, come to your new paradise¡ªbut the empty hollow where mana usually sat was heavy in my soul, and I couldn''t create more out of nothing. Damn. Soon, though. I had no concept of the outside world, no sun or tides to notice, but I could tell that it had been close to a day; new invaders would be coming soon, and with them, mana. Enough for me to carve a tunnel for the scorch hounds and mottled scorpions. Gods. When had I gone to waiting for invaders? Life could be strange, at times. But life could be strange or normal or boring or incredible, and all I could do was experience it¡ªso I bunkered down, watching my cove entrance, and prepared for the mana needed to complete my seventh floor. Chapter 117 - Pools Abound Hm. That¨C I was, by nature, a rather suspicious being, one formed from death and consequence; I knew the shadowed edges of things seemingly sunlight-bright and how poison could taste the sweetest. Many things had tried to kill me as a sea-drake, and few had been able to match my strength¡ªso they resorted to the trickery and the darkness and the guile. They had never succeeded, to be very clear, but still the threat lingered. Many times had I woken from a decade of healing slumber to be faced with something that seemed too good to be true, and it often was. I ate those that tried it. I was not one to suffer deception. But my current form had a regrettable lack of teeth, and so I was limited to merely watching as a gluttonous, hulking beast dragged itself into my dungeon. It was large, and made all the larger by the light emanating from its sinewed skin. A deep burnt-orange skin, and a deeper glow, something fierce and scorching. Scorching enough that the green algae around its body was curling and drying from the heat. A being of fire. And that led me back to my previous suspicion, to the hunger that gnawed at my sensibilities; because I had only just been carving out the final trenches for my seventh floor, the deep furrows where I had inlaid coal to burn as a substitute for actual lava. I had been prepared to wait as long as it took for me to either figure out a way to safely produce lava or find a way to reverse-evolve a cloudskipper wisp to try and get one of the fire elementals. Suffice to say, I had been prepared to wait as long as necessary. But now I stared at the creature before me, and I hesitated. Because I remembered, with a lingering kind of frustration, what schema choices had been presented to me upon my last evolution¡ªhow nearly everything had been those I hadn''t chosen before, those I had rejected. Something that whatever god guided my powers knew I didn''t want. In the end, the only true option I''d had to pick had been the capturing coral. I had been pushed to pick that coral; and I would have anyway, considering it was exactly what I wanted, but there was still the confusion on why it had been presented to me. Why it was the only true choice from a list. The creature before me felt similarly guided. It heaved itself further into the Fungal Gardens, moving with the slow lethargy of a creature not used to moving; it was quadrupedal, low to the ground, dragging a tail nearly the same width as its body behind it and with a heavy, boxy head. Similar to the sarco crocodile in build, honestly, though a mere five feet in length and without scales. Instead, it had a stretched, porous skin, from which dripped fucking magma. Again. You can see why I was suspicious. I hadn''t encountered them often under the sea, as there were frightful few species from the line who adapted to my watery depths, but I knew the generalities¡ªsome kind of salamander, its orange skin speckled with black dots like cooled stone, craggy armour splashing up around its feet. No claws, as was unfortunately common, and its enormous maw looked similarly toothless, or at least no fangs large enough to care about. It didn''t seem to matter, though. There wasn''t much defense that could be more effective than apparently being covered in lava. In slow, methodical precision, in lumpy droplets that immediately started to harden upon meeting the air, it¡­ bled? exuded? produced? magma with a viciousness. They weren''t impossibly hot, not the white of scalding stone, but a deep, sluggish red. So. It was a good thing that it was a salamander, rather than a lizard, otherwise this would be far too close to fire-drakes for my tastes¡ªbut because it wasn''t, I wanted it. Badly. Down below, I had been halfway through carving out another vein of coal as my mana trickled back to full, the bounding deer herd already increased to eight and the darkness of the seventh floor absolute, but now¡ªnow it was looking like I didn''t have to do that. That I could do something more. And with that, I dug my points of awareness into the Fungal Gardens, sunk them deep into the marrow of my creatures, and angled my guiding probe into the trio in the far back, curled in their dens. They were juveniles no longer, which was wonderful, and the lunar cave bears were the distinguished apex predators of this floor. Even now, the shadowthief rats hissed and flinched from the glow off the salamander''s skin, burrowing rats fleeing for their dens, stone-backed toads freezing up in hopes of not being noticed, luminous constrictors stayed coiled and tense around their stalagmites. This was not their fight. But it was for the bears. Go, I urged, a silent voice overhead. They were twice-bitten with the raids they hadn''t been able to take part in, too weak to fight the Silvers, and they took to this challenge with hunger bared. The eldest of the trio staked out of her darkened den, fur bristling, lips pulled back from ivory fangs. The salamander, which I was beginning to realize wasn''t very smart, because of course, hardly seemed to notice the new threat in its path. Just kept plodding on, endless, algae and mushrooms burning away in its wake. There were hardened rivulets of stone, prints where its feet had landed, a curving furrow where its tail dragged behind it. If just one of these was doing this much ambient damage to my floor, I couldn''t imagine what they did inside the mountain proper, with full populations of them. Or, more accurately, what they''d do to my seventh floor. For all I was still¡­ displeased at how the goblins were sticking their bulging noses into the Skylands and changing things to fit their needs, I would be slightly more lenient for these salamanders. It didn''t seem like they had much of a choice, besides. Either way, they would be joining me. The Fungal Gardens awoke, in hesitant, crawling figures, the deep and the scuttling and the strong, and my main help marched forward. She would be the one to take this down. With a roar, the eldest lunar cave bear threw herself forward and slammed her claws into the beast''s head. And immediately bounced back. Though I had no true sense for it, I could feel how the air filled with the stench of burning hair, the raw sizzle of cooking flesh¡ªthe mere presence of this salamander burned and scorched and completely negated all attacks against it. She howled, thrashing, and in blind ferocity attacked again¡ªher claws sunk into its sinewy skin but cracked and charred from the heat. She fell backward with a whine. Her other siblings charged forward, eager to prove themselves, and on the salamander marched¡ªthey hissed and bellowed but all they earned for their rage were more burns, more injuries. The salamander bled thick, molten blood, its black eyes narrowing in, but it hardly seemed to notice. Or even to care. And then I got the uncommon privilege of watching one of my creatures have a thought for once. In the front, her fur smoldering and skin burned, the eldest lunar cave bear paused; she looked at the creature and its relentless charge, slow and pottering as it was, and looked closer. Looked in such a manner that forced her to step closer, even as the air wavered and her breaths came hot and heavy¡ªand to notice that there was no retaliation. None at all. This salamander was hardly even a creature, it seemed¡ªmore a force of nature, no thought paid to the outside world. It marched on, content in its magma-protection, seemingly unable to comprehend that any harm could be done to it. If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. Well. It wasn''t that incorrect, considering my bears had bounced off it in fruitless attacks¡ªbut it wasn''t impervious. And she had, with the three brain cells to her head, figured something out. She was watching the algae by its feet, the fragile fauna that hissed and curled up; but only parts of it. The thallus clinging to the streams of water survived. The parts with water survived. A genius my bear was. Fire could not beat water. A basic law of the universe. And it just so happened that in the back of my Fungal Gardens, a rock pond stood, swarming with silverheads and jagged stalactites; her gaze flicked to it even as her siblings continued to fight their useless fight. I waited with bated breath as she seemingly put together this impossible concept. Fire¡­ water? On the salamander marched, unceasing, the drive of the unbothered; and she plodded beside it, glaring at its form as it scorched its way over my Fungal Gardens. I bristled my unfortunately few points of mana in its direction, already regrowing the green algae and whitecap mushrooms so the ecosystem wouldn''t suffer in its wake. The other bears seemed to realize she had a plan and pulled back, nursing injuries and bruised egos. Not content to let her take the glory, but it wasn''t like they knew what to do. Their minds were only full of hunger and battle. Nothing more. But it happened that, once it had marched its way to the back, something actually made it stop in the way three enormous cave bears hadn''t¡ªit turned its dull black eyes downward as water lapped at its clawless toes. Through sluggish determination, I watched it puzzle this new obstacle on its way towards the mana it so clearly desired. And in that moment of waiting, the eldest bear threw herself forward, ignoring the squelch of cooking flesh, hooked her claws under its enormous tail, and hurled it forward. WIth a low, warbling cry that sounded entirely alien, the salamander collapsed forward, its enormous bulk moved, and hit the water with a scream of mist. Steam exploded upward, drowning the Fungal Gardens, searing the bear''s skin even as she stumbled back. Silverheads fled in mindless panic, their little paradise upended, as the corpse of a salamander sunk through their midst. The corpse. Because the mere second it had touched water, the cold had raced through its system, blood solidifying, and it had died. A little worrying. But I had more important things to worry about, such as dissolving its body and immediately consuming its schema. I did so with gusto.
Magma Salamander (Rare) A beast of fire and flame, it lives deep in the only caverns that will survive it. It ever-hunts for volcanic salvation, where it can submerge itself in true molten stone¡ªnone have ever emerged unchanged from this. It is not known what happens, only that something does.
Huh. Well, I could certainly expect they wouldn''t be able to find their way to a volcano any time soon, given how slow the thing had moved, but that was still an interesting question. Would they¡­ die upon encountering a volcano? That didn''t make any sense why they would seek it out, and laying eggs didn''t make sense either if the young would be born there and could immediately throw themselves back in. Fascinating. For all I was pissed about everything and anything involving my death, it was interesting to see so much more of the world¡ªas a sea-drake, I had never encountered anything like this creature, and now I had questions and mysteries abound. Sometimes I wondered if my new hoard was information, rather than creatures. But either way, the schema flooded through me, deep and endless. It was a stationary thing, laying content in pools of melted stone its own body heat generated, waiting until it was strong and old enough to go off in hunt for a volcano. Even it didnt know what would happen when it got to one, only that it had to. Which. A bit less interesting, if this schema was saying they would only ever leave my halls once they got strong enough, but I could make it work. I pushed soothing mana over the bear, her ivory claws solidifying and her missing fur reblooming over her body. She made a disgruntled huff, some bellows-deep rumble in her chest, and plodded back to her den. Full of mana, though. Her evolution wasn''t near, but it was getting closer. Lovely. I had more important things, though. My consciousness dove back to my seventh floor, to the basalt and the pillars; I had finished the room itself, although only seven furrows were lit with coal-fed fire. And right in the back, far from the wary, skittering herd of bounding deer, I sunk my awareness into a separate furrow. One shallower than the others, with no fire around it, content in the darkness. My first target. I grasped for the schema deep within my core and got to sculpting. It took seventeen¡ªseventeen¡ªpoints, but eventually the mana coalesced, a burning light in the darkness of the floor, and with a low, warbling cry, a magma salamander poured forth. The one shaped from my mana was smaller, only three, four feet long, still with the deep orange skin and cragged bits of stone forming around its underside, blinking dull black eyes at its surroundings. Now that I could connect with their heads, I could see that my previous prediction was far too generous. Its¡ªher¡ªthoughts were impossibly slow and vacant, mostly concerned with what was directly before her toothless maw. No food? No threat? No thoughts. An utter genius. Lovely. But she did eventually peer around and see the furrow before her, that depression deep in the basalt pillars; she dragged herself forward, sluggish tail carving lines through the stone, and sank into the middle. All around her, the stone began to melt, little droplets trickling downward. I watched overhead, growing outcroppings of basalt for her to melt. It would take time for her to grow herself a proper pool of lava, but soon she would be an ambush predator, sitting in the depths of her pond and waiting for any movement overhead. Something to perfectly match my floor. Already my mind started to race, imagining the floor filled with all these beautiful creatures, but then my points of awareness turned back to the fire already there. Well. In the, perhaps, two days I''d had it, I had grown rather fond of the coal fires. They belched thick black smoke constantly, something deep and choking, and for all the magma was the greater threat, I saw no harm in keeping a few furrows fed by coal. It would keep things from being too predictable, and keep the air blackened with soot and ash. All the more reason to make this floor a living nightmare. But everything else, all the furrows I hadn''t yet filled with coal, would become homes to this lovely new creature. ¡­and to provide a more lasting defense, just in case a water mage managed to make it through the floor. I was a touch leery of how easily even the rock pond had defeated one of them. That was not a weakness I was over-fond of. Still mostly salamanders, though. The aesthetics of lava pools with beasts hungering below was not something I would willingly give up. But, well. A new invasion would be coming soon, endless as the tide, but there were points of mana still in my core and I wanted to taste the potential; so I reached up and bored my way through rock once more, carving deep and endless through the stone. Basalt-limestone-granite melted away beneath my furrowed claws, my intangible hunger as I shaped a tunnel to wrap around the Hungering Reef and emerge in the far back of the Skylands. Immediately, every creature raised their head, sensing the new call¡ªmy core had not yet dropped to the flower floor, so the pull of mana wasn''t from there yet, but still the change was noticeable. I nudged Seros awake, his sleepy thoughts echoing through our connection, but for my other points of awareness, I darted through the Skylands and started to sing. Come, I called, open and yearning, the siren''s simpering words of promise and pleasure. This land is not for you. Come to where you will belong. As one, the pack of scorch hounds raised their weary heads, charcoal horns angled back and ember-eyes narrowed. Mottled scorpions whose carapaces did not blend in with the grey limestone clicked their pincers together, stings flicking. The beast-tamer kobold tilted his head to the side, tail lashing, claws curling together. Below them, the Magelords noticed it, Akkyst rearing onto his back paws with a mountain-deep rumble, but this call wasn''t for them. This was their home, or it would be¡ªbut there were other creatures that had long-deserved the comfort of a paradise. Or, well. Something for them. I wasn''t sure I could ever call the seventh floor a paradise. But it was theirs. And with the cautious trust I tended to warrant from my creatures, they came; in great, loping strides, or the scuttling of many legs, or the wary trot with spear raised, the survivors came to the tunnel. Down to the depths, to the shadows beneath; they traveled as quickly as they could, already their excitement rising as they felt the temperature increased, the mana hanging heavy around them. And, when they finally emerged into the seventh floor, I could have purred. Immediately I felt them sink into this place, truly become it in a way they simply hadn''t for the Skylands; the scorch hounds'' eyes lit up, the ember of their internal power now fed by a greater force, until the tips of their auburn fur seemed to glow and their horns trailed smoke from the tips. The blotched carapace of the scorpions all but disappeared in the smoke-choked sky, impossible to detect, only the flash of their stingers visible. Even the kobold exhaled a breath he didn''t appear to know he had been holding, his unfortunately scarlet scales reflecting the distant fires. They looked at home. And, in the far distance, bounding deer raced over plains unforgiving and magma salamanders rooted deeper into growing pools of lava. Now scorch hounds in one pack I was soon to be expanding into territorial groups, darted forward with high, piercing yips and the delirious joy of finding a home; mottled scorpions slunk off to overhangs and underlays to make their nests; the beast-tamer kobold grabbed his spear and made to find the scorch hound he had been working so hard to befriend. It wasn''t perfect, not yet. There was a long way to go before it was close to getting claimed. But oh, was it beautiful. Chapter 118 - Thunderfall So merry I was from watching the seventh floor coalesce that the newest adventurers hardly bothered me. An annoyance, to be sure, but a mild one; a chipped scale, some bone caught in my teeth. Hardly worth the effort of noticing. I did notice them, because I wasn''t an idiot, but it was a gentle perusal. A group of five, this time, with four Silvers and a skittish, nervous Bronze who did not particularly look like she was excited to be here, even as her mouth fell open in face of my glorious Fungal Gardens. At least some had the decency to be properly awestruck. The four behind her, various grim-faced humans, including a few with different features than I was used to on those from Calarata, didn''t look hardly so enthused. Their loss. My floor had successfully regrouped from the last magma-inclined invader, though wisps of steam still curled from the green algae and there was a distinct charred tinge to the air. Lunar cave bears, still nursing burnt fur for all I had healed the skin underneath, peered warily from the depths of their dens, Nuvja''s shadows curled about. I had plenty to do, and I trusted that these Silvers and their strange, sacrificial Bronze that, once again, did not look to be part of the team, would not make it particularly far. I peered at the invaders again. Would they mind dying? And quickly, please. But I was hardly so feckless with only some points to my name, so I leveled one last glare at their irritatingly armoured backs and then slipped down, piece by piece, until the bulk of my consciousness hovered over my newest area of refinement. The Skylands. For too long had they been a dumping ground for all things gathering dust in my core. No longer. All of the unfortunately fire-inclined creatures had traversed below, to the still unnamed seventh floor, and the Magelords were finishing up their final carvings of their newest dens. Already, the floor was nearing completion, ready to come together in one explosive finish¡ªone or two days of solid, steady work, and I would welcome a newly completed floor to my halls. Although, an odd question¡ªI was plenty ready to begin, but that did depend on if all my parts were equally inclined. I flashed a glance back to my core.
Dragonheart Core
Mana: 34.6 / 75 Mana Regeneration: +1.3 per hour
Patrons: Rhoborh, God of Symbiosis; Mayalle, Goddess of Whirlpools; Nuvja, Goddess of Shadows
Titles: Resurrector, Welcomer
Hm. Naming Akkyst would drop me back below the point-per-hour regeneration rate. Not¡­ exactly what I was hoping for, considering that meant I would be unable to Name any new creature until I got another evolution, which I had no way of knowing if it was soon or not. All my previous ones had come with some time between them, yes, but it hadn''t felt like my creatures, where they simply had to collect enough mana before they broke through their limits. Mine had always come after great victories. And considering I was working on a steady stream of invaders that hadn''t yet tested me past my third floor, I wasn''t seeing any monumental situations in my near future. Well. It had only been smaller groups of Silver or larger groups with at least one Bronze. An imminent threat was still very possible, but I was content to ignore it for the time being. Much better for focus if I pretended the problems didn''t exist. With that, I extended jagged claws of mana and dug into the meat of the Skylands. The first step was cleaning up, which served a lovely second purpose of scraping even more mana back to me¡ªthe fire-tongue flowers spidered all over the walls were the first to go, wilting into charcoal scraps and then white motes of light as I dissolved what was mine, those dead and dying; at my command, greater pigeons and swarming wasps flew to the walls, a temporary truce in face of my command, and tore more flowers off. Even some of the Magelord children, when they weren''t chasing the bladehawk with an infantile delight, threw a few blasts of attuned mana in the direction of the nearest flower. At least they were useful for something. In the time it took for the invaders to get halfway through the Drowned Forest, all the flowers had been removed and my mana had risen to over fifty points. They had apparently grown more dense than I''d originally thought. There was an idle thought about doing the same play as the jewels here, letting plants grow amok and collecting their mana when the time came nigh, but I discarded it. I could only get mana from dead things after all, and I couldn''t rely on all my plants dying the instant they were necessary to. Far more consistent to rely on gems. But with fifty points at my beck and call, I darted my main point of awareness up to the central island of the Skylands, surveying the land before me, enormous and sprawling. Already, the smoke was beginning to dissipate, opening sightlines and opportunities. Not necessarily what I wanted, considering the room was another of those direct pathways, for all the islands were a maze of interconnected bridges and precarious falls. There was still a way to see all the way to the core if you stood at the entrance. I didn''t want more darkness, though. That was coming later, and I wanted it to be all the more surprising when it was first encountered. This would be something else, something to hide the creatures flying overhead and the goblins below, to give the islands danger now that the scorch hounds were below. And it just so happened that I had the perfect schema for this. The cloudskipper wisps. A living, thrashing storm, parting in sections and choking in others, full of life teeming right above and below the surface; not so dense as to be impassable, considering I had many a flying creature that had to work their way around this, but enough that it would not be a simple flap of the wings to get over. Or flap of the feet? Some idiotic human metaphor. The wisps were, unfortunately, twenty points of mana apiece; but it was a cost I was willing to pay. Even the two darting around in the Underlake were enough to work with Mayalle''s boon, and the further two in the Drowned Forest gave the wind needed to move the vampiric mangrove''s branches. There was a reason it had taken an Otherworld schema to grant me an elemental. And besides, they would fit perfectly in my floor. Beneath the islands, I wanted the Magelords to remain hidden; to have peace and comfort in their stone-carved homes, beyond whatever hapless fools fell off the islands and landed squat in the middle of their plazas. A rude awakening. And only thick cloud cover would hide them, dense enough to keep from prying eyes but not enough that it would hurt their own visibility. And above, there would be wisping mist, gentle enough for my creatures to fly but harsh enough to hide the exit. Without the scorch hounds and fire-tongue flowers, it would only aid those living here. Even the bladehawk, with his rust-red feathers, would be a shining star in the grey murk, and the Magelords with their many attunements would be monsters. A pity that the stalking jaguar didn''t wish to stay on this floor, because I could picture her emerging from the grey with mist coiling off her feathered tail¡ªbut no. She was happier in the Jungle Labyrinth, already merrily feasting on a platemail bug''s corpse. That territory already suited her far better than the depths of the Al¨®mbra Mountains ever had. Soon, I would finish that floor too, and make her a true statement of it. But no matter how out of order it was, the Skylands came first. I did throw up another point of awareness to hover over her back, just to make sure she stayed out of danger¡ªher and Veresai were soon to butt heads, I knew, and there was also the¨C The¡­ jeweled jumper. He had been on this floor, right? I remembered thinking about keeping him away from the stalking jaguar as she explored her new territory, since she was exactly the kind of fast, lithe predator he preferred to hunt, but as I swept my points of awareness over the Jungle Labyrinth, I didn''t see him. Concerning. Well, if there were any of my creatures that I could rely on being completely unafraid and uncaring of danger beyond a love for my prey, it was him. Whatever new floor he found himself in, he wouldn''t be defenseless. I''d find him later. It was probably fine. And with that, I dipped back to the Magelords, as tacky as the name still was. They stiffened, still unused to having a separate power hold so much sway over their mind, but it was fine. They''d either get used to it or die. Not my problem. But with a heavy guiding hand, I pushed information of the new changes, so they could either get inside their dens or marvel at the wonders I would be creating. Not that they really had a choice in changing my mind, but enough that they would appreciate it. Having true sapience that hadn''t come from me was odd, in a way. Bylk squinted at some shadow he clearly thought I was in, hacking up something wet into his palm. Disgusting. But he did bob his head, turning back to the den he''d carved for himself with grey-lit fingers; it was similar to that of the kobolds, actually. A slabbed bed I had felt particularly weak two days ago on and covered in green algae, a pool for water, high shelves for food, and a platform in the back he stored an odd tablet on, something made of old, weathered stone with a crack down the center. He''d been particularly reverent around it, all of Akkyst''s memories similarly protective over it, so I''d elected not to touch it. He also hadn''t begged for assistance in solving whatever mystery it had, so he certainly wouldn''t be receiving any help until he did. But with the Magelords successfully prepared, including Akkyst standing tall in the midst, I gathered forty points of mana and released them in a swirl. Immediately, they coalesced into twin writhing balls of mist, cloud-grey, with bright, chittering thoughts and a tinkling laugh like distant coral-bells; hardly large at all, enough my previous self would barely have seen them, but immediately the power burned off them. Any stage of an elemental was a dangerous thing. And these were mine. Go, I urged, gentle. Find homes. Find paths. Find storms. Cloudskippers they were, but I could see an evolution past wisp in their future, and my hope was they would become something less passive than clouds. This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. Still I missed my wolf-wisp, with her fiery spirit and echoing barks. I had just gotten Akkyst back, raised him from the grave I''d dug in my mind for him, but I couldn''t be so sure for her. The thieving bastard who had taken her had been far too coordinated with his actions, one accustomed to stealing. Gods only knew what he''d done with her. No death would be enough for him. But still, these two were enough to start. They raced off, loud and excitable, and disappeared to the mist already kicked up in the paths. A complicated web they were already weaving, fumbling around new running paths and figuring out exactly how they wanted to do this, but they would figure it out. And oh, what a beauty it would be. I wanted to finish it, to declare it as the Skylands and let the gods above make their offers¡ªbut not yet. It had to be ready first; I had encountered far too many issues with gods getting pissy about changes made to their sacred floor. I would hold off until I was certain I was happy with it. I leveled a glance overhead. Ah, all the invaders made it out¡ªa pity. Maybe tomorrow''s group would be more pathetic. For now, I would simply have to wait. I hated waiting. - Two more invading groups poked their big fat noses into my halls with only three deaths to show for it before I finally had enough mana to bring it together. More dens for the Magelords, edges smoothed down and softened with green algae, even helping them come up with collection pools to gather water from the clouds overhead because I was apparently a spineless hatchling. More swarming wasps, eye-blight butterflies, and baterwauls to fight against the avian side of the war, considering the arrival of the bladehawk had truly swept things in their favour. More island outcroppings, making the available space far more narrow and rickety considering I didn''t have to worry about giving the scorch hounds enough room to run. One new cloudskipper wisp had joined their brethren, hardly sparing a moment to listen to me before darting off to race its own paths over the enormous land. I would need more soon, but I wouldn''t push it too fast with how expensive they were. I could see how they would develop already¡ªmaybe three, four more, to achieve the dense clouds below and the mist above. They were powerful creatures when they put their distractible mind to things. And, interestingly, enough time had passed it was not the only change¡ªfor three floors above, in the depths of the canal I''d carved for her, an evolved creature opened new eyes. The storm eel. Gone was the bulbous, stationary body; now she was near double the length, over twenty feet, thin and sinuous. Muscles coiled beneath her deep grey-blue skin, near imperceptible scales catching the dappled light with a glimmer. A dorsal fin trailed the length of her whole body, a matching one beneath, with edges that forked off in frills like lightning. Apropos. Her eyes were still black, still with pits around the edges of her face, but her mouth was now like a moray eel; harsh and jagged, protruding outward with jaws visible under her scales. Whatever bite she''d had before, it was now infinitely worse. All in all, an aerial predator the likes of which I couldn''t wait to see in action. Or maybe I could, because almost immediately, she started to suffocate. I hadn''t been aware that I could still have heart attacks, considering I was an entirely immaterial dungeon core, but whatever I was feeling was pretty close. Doing the mental equivalent of screaming in her ear, I shattered her panic and guided her up, past the roiling silt and dragging currents of the canals; her twin fins thrashed as she threw herself up, jaws agape¡ªhells, they were enormous¡ªas she struggled to breathe in what had previously been home. Then, with an explosion of water and a great warbling cry like some primordial beast, she burst from the canal and started to fly. It was an ungainly thing at first, every muscle and thought and ability fighting against itself to return to what was familiar and not this inane addition, but instinct took over, and soon she twined through the air, knotting in on herself with careless imprecision. Her two fins were flooded with air-attuned mana, heavy enough it must pull on her stores like a beast, but she hardly seemed to notice in face of this new wonder, slithering higher with a click of her jaws. Down, down, down, I urged, and guided her on; through the thin tunnel around the Underlake, through the forking passages of the Jungle Labyrinth with only one close call from a crowned cobra. The entire flight, I fed her points upon points of mana to aid in her flying, but with every floor we dropped it got better. Her flight relied on ambient mana it seemed, and pulled from her stores when it wasn''t enough¡ªnot too useful on my higher floors, but plenty to do on the fifth. And indeed, the moment she emerged into the Skylands, I felt more than saw the strain disappear from her spine, movements growing more fluid, more dangerous. She coiled around herself, frilled spines flicking in and out, the pits on her sides seeming to grow deeper. A new hunting ground. She hissed, and lightning crackled down her side. I was entirely intangible, but my purr rumbled through my dungeon. She launched herself into the nearest cloud, all the age she''d earned as an electric eel coming to head as she figured her new body out with a frankly terrifying ease¡ªwithin heartbeats she was snaking her way through the clouds and mist, testing the ease of which she could fly, and already searching for prey suitable for her newly-expanded mouth. A new competition in the war of flying things. Something told me no one would be a particular fan of her. But now, looking upon the madness and the chaos and the beauty of the Skylands, I felt something sink into place. More of her would hopefully evolve, and if her electric silverheads¡ªwho were currently swimming around her canal with as much confusion as their insipid minds could hold¡ªwould join her, she would be a monster. Here, in the cloud-choked land, she would be a nightmare. All of the floor would be. Positioning myself at the entrance, I looked over a world already beginning to grey out, blending in with the limestone of the walls and islands, only my other points of awareness able to sense the goblins below. The threats everywhere, the shrieking cacophony of the baterwauls, every possible place to fall below. There was still work to be done. But it wasn''t my work. It was that of my creatures, finding homes and territories and strategies to survive in this world, carving out an ecosystem in what had once been empty mountain, creating a life for themselves in the chaos and the midst of a paradise. Something that would have to come with time. No floor was ever truly done, for they were living things, and I liked them that way. I wouldn''t be one to just build empty hallways with traps and empty lights and starving beasts at the end. No, I was creating a world, a land for me and my own, and this one was full of fangs. The Skylands, endless and unknown, land of storms. Boom.
Congratulations! Your floor has attracted the attention of the gods. Some wish to become Patron of the Skylands. Please choose from the boons they present.
Oh. I settled into the feeling, the world slowing as a power high above looked in, the tingle in the back of my awareness. Star-burn. The rot of the gods. They were coming to me. And then, with gentle, caressing power, the top of my core split open; melted away as if it were never there, some intangible boundary for witless mortals to pretend they were alone. My consciousness drifted up, away and away and away, into that boundless black sky above, with stars that gleamed from every corner. Not as many as there had been for my first floor, which was a damn shame, but there were still a hundred there¡ªI flew up with all subservience and groveling and politeness that I was not particularly fond of doing, but I could taste the power of these gods like magma on the back of my fangs. Smiting was an option a touch too close for me to be comfortable around them. Three in my halls already, and now I searched for a fourth. With passive amusement, offers were extended down to me, images of power frozen in time; things that stunk of fired glass, of oldwood forests, of mountaintop ozone. They flashed by as I cycled through them; taigas, air currents, clover, stamped coins, more, more, more¨C The goddess of fireflies, trying once again with a kind of delirious persistence to offer me floating balls of light to guide unsuspecting invaders off of ledges. A goddex of avalanches promising to have my islands continuously collapse and rebuild, preventing any from crossing them. A god with a cold, impartial voice showing me how to turn my empty clouds into freezing arrays of ice. All of them were close. But there was something I was hunting for this time, a guiding hand behind my careful perusal of their offerings; because I had forsaken this floor to incorrect elements before, and I would not again. And there, in the back, with a crackling aura and the bite of centuries, I found it. Khasvar, the God of Lightning. He was my first truly powerful god. Nuvja was older than ancient, but she had been much dethroned; Rhoborh stood for a power that would never rise above lesser; even Mayalle was hardly a footnote in comparison to maelstroms. But lightning? Even now, I could feel his presence, an old, thrumming sensation deep within my core like danger incarnate. Something thin and jagged, knifing away at my awareness¡ªsilent, though. He was a mirrored god, with the goddess of thunder; so his powers were only ever quiet killers. Something I rather enjoyed. There was the most moderate of issues, being that he was old and powerful¡ªand thus, less inclined to give me a personalized offering. I remember Rhoborh with his redwood scent pouring over my mangrove roots to show how they would be interconnected, or Mayalle showing me a whirlpool to trap invaders within the Underlake; Khasvar, in comparison, merely showed me what would happen to any lightning on my floor. But oh, was it beautiful. He was transforming it. My ambient mana would no longer be an empty, passive thing to be collected and transformed; instead it would be as lightning and be lightning, both attuned and pure, all and every. Deep within the clouds, my ambient mana would coalesce into lightning, knifing through the storm to attack anything within the Skylands. And the lightning wasn''t even normal lightning¡ªit would be formed of both pure and electricity-attuned mana, functional for spells and attacks, able to be gathered by the Magelords while also attacking invaders. A land of storms indeed. There was an odd efficiency to his offering, and it was such a unique idea even if it wasn''t personalized¡ªthough I couldn''t be certain, I got the idea that I was not the first dungeon he had ever worked with. That somewhere out there in Aiqith, another dungeon had this exact same blessing for one of their floors. The thought was almost enough to make me reject it. But I wanted those storms. Khasvar peered down at me as I floated up to him, a careful little thing with my intangible wings tucked in close and my head lowered. He hummed, and it felt like ozone, the current racing overtop of my core¡ªpower above power I''d felt before. It felt like years ago I had thought about convincing the God of Magic himself to be the patron of my first floor. I couldn''t even imagine being in his presence. One day. I didn''t know when, nor what floor I could offer, but one day. Either him, or the God of Dragons, my original creator, for whom my runes were carved and my patterns formed. But not now. I faced Khasvar, examining his offer once more; he seemed to have barely looked at my floor beyond the fact it was a dungeon floor with clouds. Lovely. At least I could clear up one idea¡ªAkkyst won''t be staying on the floor forever, I said, quiet and meek and other shameful things. Khasvar''s presence ruffled, a kind of apathetic indifference¡ªmaybe I should go with someone who would actually care about me¡ªand once more the boon was extended. With a hesitance I did not normally feel, I imprinted my mana into the contract. Khasvar did the same. Mana swirled together, the bite of ozone, the knifing edge of distant storms, my own golden letters coming alongside. The next instant, I was hurtled back to Aiqith, tumbling back into my core as the world picked back up to speed and the haze faded¡ªSeros cronned through our connection, raising his head as he pulled back from hunting in the Hungering Reefs, Nicau pausing as he roasted the haunch of a burrowing rat, Veresai''s four eyes gleaming as mana curled through her horns. All my Named, my beloved. And before me, as my points of awareness spiraled back into focus, I watched the Skylands awaken. Whenever a floor was completed, the mana there solidified, becoming stable even as my core moved further down¡ªthis was a step beyond steps. Where the invisible threads of my ambient mana crossed, they coalesced into lightning¡ªbeautiful, brilliant forks of white-yellow, knifing through the air, glorious destruction. Deep below, the Magelords yelped as lightning and thunder flashed overhead, only ten feet above their dens¡ªoverhead the bladehawk and greater pigeons ducked and bobbed around new obstacles in their past, shrieking angry cries. Akkyst rose to his back paws with a rumble, his mind already racing with ideas to harness this new power and to discover all the mysteries within. The cloudskipper wisps warbled with enthusiasm I hadn''t seen from them yet, zipping and darting over the floor; the clouds in their wake crackled with lightning from no doing of their own or the storm eel, who was flying around with rampant confusion in her mind. They would have plenty of chances to adapt. Everyone would. For the Skylands were complete. Chapter 119 - He, Learn猫d The mist-fox yipped. I stared. It was a smaller thing than I''d hoped for, with a gleaming silver-blue coat and clever black eyes. Moonlight wrought in vulpine form, claws ticking away on the stone and a long, curling tail that didn''t seem to end where it should have, longer, trailing off into whorls of mist. It peered around at the Skylands, pointed ears flicking, little ivory fangs peeking out from its black lips. A hunting creature, one for the moorlands. Moorlands which I could provide. I just, ah. Wished I had remembered that a touch earlier. But it was fine, I was sure. I could feel Khasvar here, that lingering ozone crackle in the back of my core, the star-burn hovering around the Skylands¡ªI had, of course, accepted his boon and then immediately added new creatures. Not the best thing I could have done, in all manners of the word, but there was simply nothing to do about it. I would remember them next time. Not that there would be a next time. But for now, five new mist-foxes darted off over the Skylands, some three, four feet in length, with long, writhing fur and a tail that kicked up odd shapes in the mist. With the cloudskipper wisps racing overhead, grey pouring from their amorphous bodies and spilling over the stone islands. They would hunt lesser things, the greater pigeons and burrowing rats, but already I could see the potential¡ªif their illusions could guide others to fall off the islands, the Magelords below would keep a steady diet and gather material to their ugly little hearts'' content. The foxes would do well here. Already they yipped, playful, so achingly close to my wolf-wisp that my points of awareness swiveled away¡ªinto the clouds they disappeared, their claws scratching on stone, hunting down food and dens and territories. I very carefully didn''t think about it, because that was a dangerous path to tread, but some corner of the golden lettering over my core wondered, if only for a moment. If Khasvar was so absent a deity, one who would grant me my boon and claim my floor but not personalize it for me, hardly pay attention to my doings and goings, would I be able to change the Skylands more than my other floors? Rhoborh''s redwood smell dogged my movements through the Drowned Forest, Nuvja''s rot coiled beneath every shadow in the Fungal Gardens, Mayalle''s stone-teeth pull laced through her Underlake whirlpool. They were all present. They were present. There were pros and cons to this. None of them had called in their contracts yet, though I knew they could. Housing for followers or priests, safety from others or myself, and that damnable open call from Nuvja that was feeling less and less worth it by the day. I had been deliciously drunk on the idea of power¡ªa rotten, terrible conceptualization that I could now say, seeing as I was still choking down Bil''s alcohol-stained memories¡ªand it had seemed such a wonderful idea. It was not. But Nuvja had not yet called for action, and I could wait in this truce. I did not know if Khasvar would ever ask me to house one of his followers, if he would even notice if I slipped more storm eels or mist-foxes into his floor, so long as it was his floor. But while I loved the lightning forking through my clouds, it wasn''t mine, so long as another dungeon out there had it. There was nothing about the Skylands in it; just a change to mana that boosted his own power. Of all the boons I had received, his was the most likely to be something I could create myself with enough time. But he did not seem to care much if I added more creatures to his floor. I did not know. So I turned from those thoughts, because they were dangerous and hungry and all things that gods did not seem to particularly like, and I slipped through my floors once more. Back to the Skylands, past the budding clouds and waterfalls of mist, to deep below. Stone burrows, carved deep into the bases of islands and the outer walls, filled with life and mana. The Magelords, settling into their new home. I crouched over, points of awareness spilling forth to the only den I really cared about¡ªthe largest, near the center of the floor, with an entrance much larger than the others and multiple rooms. Very large rooms, for its very large inhabitant. Akkyst sat, head curled in, looking all the world like a stalagmite if you discounted the some hundreds of pounds and bristling silver fur. His singular eye bored down into the old stone before him, that ancient placard, ruins and runes and moss. Beside him, perched on a stone outcropping that he managed to make, in his own irritating way, look like a throne, was Bylk. Chieftain by his own name, certainly not by mine, but I could admit, begrudgingly, that he was a powerful mage. Wizard. Whatever idiotic categories goblins had. Bylk held a lacecap in one hand, ears flicking. He picked off the bugs stuck to the lacecap''s sticky gills, popping them absentmindedly into his mouth as he stared at the same stone. A verifiable tidal wave of disgust raced through me. These were the creatures I had welcomed into my halls. These. Akkyst, because he was an annoying bastard like that, sensed the mana¡ªhis remaining ear flicked and his gaze turned upward, to the shadows where I perched overhead. "Welcome," he said, voice a rumble like an earthquake in his enormous chest. Welcome? This was my bloody dungeon, thank you. Akkyst, I said back instead of any of my less polite topics, coiling overhead, threading soothing trails of mana through his knotted fur. "Hullo too," Bylk hacked, scratching at his blue-black skin. "What brings you here, Growth?" Gods, I despised him. You are here, I said to Akkyst, pointedly ignoring the wretched little goblin. He chomped more determinedly through the bugs on the lacecap. You have slept. Have you made home? Akkyst''s head tilted to the side, his silver-grey eye peering around as if he could spot me. A rhetorical question, of course, considering all things within my dungeon were mine to see¡ªhe and the some four dozen Magelords had carved and sliced through the Skylands. They had grow fields in the shadow of every island, littered with whitecaps and the occasional lacecap, harvested in cycles; they had homes for each, combined or single; they had rooms for storage and for cooking and for sitting and other meaningless things. The ambient mana here was so strong they replenished their powers well before running out and thus they had made months of progress in the week they''d been here, even without my help. It was a home for them, now. Not the home it had been, the one I had seen in Akkyst''s memories, endless and sprawling and utterly destroyed¡ªwith the rotten corpse of a wurm in the center. Where in all hells had they found one of those? Wurms were to dragons what eels were to sea serpents; familiar, a mirror''s reflection, but pitiable in their folly. A trade for power with none of the understanding. And, regrettably, not mine. Even if I doubted I had the mana stores to make one, I would have devoured that schema like a feast to feed me for decades. Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. Akkyst rumbled deep in his chest, closing his eye. "Yes," he said, still in that goblinic tongue. It sounded exactly like what the bug-eating fool beside him would speak. "We are making it home." Delightful. I let a half point of mana whisper through him, barely a caress, something soft and soothing. He was a creature of knowledge, I could feel, even if I didn''t know what species he was anymore¡ªbut I would find out, and now was my chance. You have settled, I agreed, curling in. Your people have homes, have food. Have rest. Will you rest now? If I wasn''t asking someone to let me give them unfathomable power that they had delayed before, I would have been proud of my eloquence. But the offer deserved it¡ªa Name, a blessing, Otherworld mana. All things most creatures, even those dungeonborn, had no access to. Akkyst blinked¡ªa hard thing to manage with one eye¡ªand turned to Bylk. The bastard. The old stone sat between them, those ancient symbols that weren''t regular runes elsewise I could read them, whatever last piece of crumbled legacy the Magelords had. A Name could change that. And for all he had this odd new devotion to helping others not even of his kin, I knew that, so long ago, he had made the choice for knowledge, and that would not stop now. He rose to his paws, shaking dust off his head. "Will you guard?" He asked, as if I wasn''t right there. Bylk nodded, a gruff old thing, jewels on his ears swinging forth. "Aye," he croaked, rubbing knobbled fingers together. "Figure I can crack a few knees for ya if any come callin''." Akkyst nodded. Then he padded into the back of the den, through the massive opening, to the green algae bed I had grown for him and the whitecaps scattered inside that I regrew whenever they got too low¡ªa feast for him and for him alone, considering how I had let them wilt whenever anyone else tried to eat them. They were for the returner, not goblins. He rumbled again, a soft and weary sound, and curled up. His silver fur cast a brighter glow, spilling over the stone, as he stared. Outside, the stalking jaguar dragged home the corpse of a platemail bug, gleaming emerald fur in the darkness and her iridescent blue tail swishing against the stone. The bladehawk shrieked, rust-red feathers flashing through the building storm, fierce and indomitable. Magelords raced around, practicing their spells, growing mushrooms, creating a home. But for now, it was us, and it was mana, and it was more. Akkyst looked up, and through some twist of fortune, his eye locked onto my point of awareness. The world hummed and buzzed and ceased to exist, melding away, only him and I¡ªthe dungeon and the dungeonborn. The core and the creature. I and Akkyst. It did not mean runt any longer. It was mine and it was his and we were both together, our souls reaching out, entangling, Otherworld and Aiqith alike¨C Akkyst, I Name you.
Starwrought Bear (Rare) Akkyst One of thoughts and thinking. A being not of the shadows but of illumination, guiding forth in its hunt; it gathers in strength and in studies. Fear its mind alongside its might.
Blessing of the Scholar: the world and its secrets are revealed.
Welcome, Akkyst. - Lluc peered into the dungeon''s entrance. The Adventuring Guild spidered out to it, wooden dock hammered into the pebbled beach, a row of boards snaking into the entrance. A bird''s craw it seemed, something dark and hungry, stalactites hanging down and littered with runes made by Lluc''s own hands. He had not come here since those weeks ago, leading fifty men he expected all to die and emerging instead with the first plan he had ever hoped in to push himself from the shadow of the Dread Pirate. Day by day, adventurers from his own Guild marched in, emerging in blood or victory or death¡ªthe dungeon had held up, continued fighting. He''d fed it scraps, keeping the parties small or weighed down with Bronzes, but no longer. The plan did not wait for simpering fools to push all their bait in a line. It had to act. Which was why, as the morning crowned early over the Al¨®mbra Mountains and the heady mist dissolved off the cove, Lluc stood before the dungeon with the next party. Handpicked, instructed by Ealdhere yesterday, prepared to march in with blood on their teeth. Ghasavalk stared back at him, passive, docile, hands clasped behind his back. He had traded his old robes, heavy and threaded through with the bright reds and blues of ¨¹chlagh, for a tunic more typical of Calarata, though it fit him uncomfortably around the shoulders. Still his accent lingered, heavy and laborious in his words, but Calarata was a land of stowaways; he didn''t stick out as much as he could have. And even if he did, the Gold power in his chest would dissuade suspicion from turning into threats. By his side, looking supremely displeased with the scrutiny, was a woman, tall and slender. She had an expression hard to love and a voice only more difficult, umber skin framed with black hair in tight rosettles and a vicious bite to her pocked teeth. What she lacked in subtly she made up for in glamour, armoured edged in gold and jeweled aplenty, all the various prizes and prices near impossible to wear around Calarata if you weren''t content in your power. Which she was. For Sy?alia Celess¨¦ Temoro had won her lion''s share here in Calarata, and she knew how to keep it. Her soul thrummed with the power of a Gold. The first two Golds that would be allowed to delve the dungeon. Not that they had much a choice. "First Mate," Sy?alia said, all teeth, all bitterness untempered by humility. Not that she had any to give. "Is there a reason I''m here?" Ah. She was still labouring under the assumption she would be delving with the original group she''d attached herself to. A regrettable mistake to make. He wondered how long it had taken before she''d noticed that only Ghasavalk was here. Lluc steepled his fingers, adjusted the cuff of his wrist. Spent a wonderfully languished moment with a curl of air-attuned mana to straighten the brow of his hat. "I am aware," he said, slowly, painfully, as if she couldn''t understand him. "That you are not particularly interested in what is within the dungeon, but rather what comes in." He didn''t have to connect the dots for her any further. Sy?alia was a scavenger, fierce and furrowed as they came in Calarata¡ªher grubby paws were for other humans, not dungeons. He''d seen that glint in her eyes from the moment she''d marched into the Adventuring Guild, hunting for another group to join¡ªshe would stay by their side, promising the power of a Gold, then rob them blind the second they turned their back and sprint out of the dungeon. A decent strategy. All was fair in Calarata. Equally fair was Lluc using her for another purpose. Sy?alia stared at him, jaw flexing, knuckles white in their fists. Asshole, her eyes screamed, but her mouth knew it couldn''t. It was a truly wonderful feeling, Lluc rather thought, to watch her seethe. "But I''ve found another group for you," he said, and smiled, felt his lips curl at the motion. "One more aligned to your interests." Sy?alia''s eyes flicked to Ghasavalk, who didn''t react. But his Gold mana hummed and burned under the surface, something rich and scorching¡ªshe didn''t know what his attunement was, and couldn''t risk robbing him blind when it was only the two of them in a group. Judging by the fury in her eyes, she could see that. "Oh?" She bit out. "Delve as deep as you can," Lluc said, humming, a casual request that was neither casual nor a request. "Report back to the Scholar. Keep what you take." And there came that flash of greed. The deepest the other groups had gone had been the third floor, the underground lake, with a cove-facing exit and the stone-teeth of some deep goddess. There were hints that on the fifty-person invasion, others had gone deeper, but they hadn''t exactly come back alive to report what was beyond. Lluc knew the dungeon was stronger. He just needed to know how much. Two Golds. Well above anything the dungeon had faced before. Sy?alia dragged her eyes up him, brows furrowed¡ªthe deal was, in part, in her favour, which was not typical of the deals the Dread Crew extended. But Lluc wanted her alive at the end of this, and he wanted her to spread his name and his power, and he needed more than just Ghasavalk and his ¨¹chlaghan men to do that. Two Golds. Powers in conjunction, powers together. It was time for Ghasavalk to prove himself. Lluc looked at the man, who looked back, calm. He was a particular kind of calm that rankled, that bit at the nerves of those in frantic Calarata, and Sy?alia looked less than comfortable in his presence. But he was strong, and he was powerful, and he had means of escaping this dungeon before it could sink its teeth into him. She will not make an attempt on the core, Lluc said without words, in the curl of mana, in the power that came from being the First Mate. And neither will you. Ghasavalk nodded. They strode into the dungeon. Chapter 120 - Calling Words Sy?alia stared forward, into the darkness yawning before her like all hells made tangible, but her focus stayed arrowed in on the man beside her. She hadn''t exactly given a rat''s ass about her previous group beyond the jewels she''d have wrung them dry for, but at least she had known she was more powerful than them¡ªshe had no such idea for this stranger. Ghasavalk, no family names. Decidedly not from Calarata, although that meant nothing in a city of stowaways. Dressed in common enough garb, broad-shouldered in the way of all adventurers, thick hair piled loose on his shoulders. His eyes were strangely dark, even in the shadows of the caverns, twin black pools peering out at her. She disliked his eyes. She disliked his face. She disliked him. But the First Mate had told them to delve the dungeon together, and Sy?alia preferred to keep her throat attached. The wooden boards thinned and disappeared as they went further in, the Adventuring Guild not giving enough of a shit to build a path all the way to the entrance of the dungeon. Figured. Sy?alia hadn''t been in Calarata long, only a handful of years, but the Dread Crew seemed the kind that would cover shit in gold. Any corners that could be cut would. Quartz-lights flickered from corners of the cavern, protective runes carved into stalagmites, the hum of mana racing under her tongue. And all too soon, the path ended, a too-smooth opening into the stone before them. "Hells," she muttered, crossing her arms to flick two fingers off each side of her throat, one of many symbols appealing to the goddess of luck. Technically that one was more used for avoiding storms, but she didn''t know any specific ones for don''t let this fucking dungeon kill me, so it would have to do. Ghasavalk merely blinked at her, the bastard. "Are you ready?" He asked, his first actual damn words to her, Viejabran thick with an accent that curled over the consonants. No. She''d been ready when her plan had been to wait until her adventitiously-formed group had been suitably distracted, rob them blind, and get out before anything could challenge her. "Yes," she said, because there wasn''t a chance she''d spill truth now. "But we should have a plan. What did the First Mate want?" Beyond the obvious. Ghasavalk tilted his head to the side, examining her. She could feel his mana, irritably Gold, coiling in his chest and spilling up to wrap around his head¡ªpsionic caster or enhancer, if she had to guess. One of the many boons she''d come to love as she''d grown in strength. Becoming Gold wasn''t like a creature''s evolution, with a definitive jump from one level to the next¡ªfor humans, it was more of a general ranking that came with mana density and control. But the Gold-sense was a lovely thing from said control. It wasn''t flawless¡ªfew things were, in Aiqith¡ªbut it made it much harder for things to sneak up unawares on her. Sensing mana made it wonderfully easy to pick marks as well, when she could guess what attunement they had and choose those that couldn''t harm her. Psionic was, unfortunately, one of those that could. Not that she would have been able to rob him blind, being in a group of two and both Gold. Too dangerous. As if a fucking dungeon wasn''t dangerous enough. "He wanted information," Ghasavalk finally said, when it became readily apparent Sy?alia wasn''t going to answer her own damn question. "For us to delve as deep as possible, no?" Deeper than the three floors that had already claimed lives. Fantastic. Gods, Sy?alia was going to wring Lluc''s shitty little neck. "Yes," she said, and added in an imperious sniff for good measure. There was nothing frightening her, not for her fellow Gold to know. Absolutely not. "I know that. But is there anything specific?" Ghasavalk hummed. "Reports for the Scholar," he said, and drummed gloved fingers over his side. "Knowledge of the distant floors. The creatures there. How it is dangerous." What a way with words he had. Little doubt that was the reason Lluc''d had to pluck Sy?alia from her group and drop her with this loner. Gods, if he wasn''t at least competent, she would be turning around and swimming out of the cove to avoid all of Calarata. She hated this gods-cursed city. Only one she hadn''t gotten a reputation in, though. Beggars couldn''t be picky, even as a Gold. She could always pledge herself to Le¨®ro and erase her past for a cushy job under some tyrannical and self-important High Lord, but her fingers fluttered too much to surround herself with such luxury and have it stay in the pockets of those that thought they owned it. She''d made that mistake a time too often to let herself fall for it again. But if Ghasavalk thought she would be hauling his ass through this dungeon, he was sorely mistaken. Something that could almost be a smile flashed over Ghasavalk''s face, a quirk of the lips, though nothing particularly amusing had happened. Hells. She''d have stolen her mother''s eyes if she could get away with it, but now she had to play team. "What can you do?" Ghasavalk tapped a finger on his temple, black eyes fixed on hers. "Ukhan-analt," he said, and his voice purred over the word. "Grasp of the mind. I can influence those around us." Ah, shit. Small wonder he hadn''t had a group before Lluc shoved them together¡ªit took a special flavour of person to attune themselves to such a power, and those that did were often not friendly, amicable types. Fitting, that for Calarata''s first two Golds invading the dungeon, they were both far from what bolder kingdoms considered heroic. Sy?alia just shrugged, like the information didn''t bother her. "No actual combat, then," she said, and took a languished second to thumb at the base of her chin. "Got a blade somewhere in there or just the stick up your ass?" Ghasavalk''s almost-smile stayed perfectly agreeable. "I can fight," he said, nodding, and did not elaborate. Bastard. "And you?" Sy?alia tapped her waist, where twin daggers sat, and called on her mana¡ªit sprung ever bright and hungry to her summons, swirling through her, not frivolously thrown around like casters but harnessed in the perfection of an enhancer. It thrummed hollow in her bones, that diver''s deep weight, and ignited. She smiled and disappeared from the world. It was the kind of attunement you had to be lucky to encounter, and luckier still to claim¡ªand she had wrangled it up to the strength of a Gold. She could throw off the shackles of Aiqith, fade beneath air and lesser things, to slip by unopposed. Mana could still impact her, since she couldn''t actually remove her spirit from Aiqith, but she could get damn close. Brutish creatures with their claws and fangs were the least of her worries. Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. She landed lightly on the cavern floor, mana whispering through her braided hair. Ghasavalk''s eyes snapped back to her, eyebrows to his hairline. She preened. He just nodded, though, instead of fawning over what was little doubt the rarest attunement he''d ever encountered. Maybe she''d find something in this dungeon worthy of killing a Gold and shove him into it. Ghasavalk hummed, motes of light spiraling over his fingers and from the corners of his black eyes, and turned to the dungeon. Stared at it for a second, like its mysteries would fall at his feet, before entering. Sy?alia scowled at his back. Gods, she was going to hate this. But with that, she drew her daggers and strode inside. Another tunnel greeted her, small and cramped, Gold-sense showing her sparks of mana overhead as cave spiders scuttled to and fro on their scarlet-striped legs. But it was merely another fake, a wall layered over another, and she rounded the corner and emerged into the dungeon proper. The Scholar''s drawings, though sketched, were accurate; a sprawling field of algae and mushrooms, ringed and woven through with stalagmites, shadows heavy and pressing in every corner where the glimmers of algae-light weren''t enough. A massive serpent''s skeleton wound its way through the stone, jaws angled at throat height on the nearest wall, empty eye sockets glaring balefully out at her. Humidity poured over her skin, that heady water-sickness of the air, as contrasting to the dry caverns behind as could be. An entirely new world. Maybe it had a name¡ªshe remembered High Lord Thiago''s dungeon having one for each level, and the one crippled by its taming in Abhal¨®n having one for different areas. No way for her to figure it out, though. Ghasavalk''s mana barked and spun, spiraling out as he cast some general spell; a sensory one, if she had to guess, with how his eyes flashed to various corners of the first level. Not one to be outdone, Sy?alia coiled mana and fed her own Gold-sense, heat building behind her eyes. Shadows stripped and fled as she pushed into her power and simply elected to ignore them, though not all¡ªa few were strangely obstinate, clinging to corners and the overcroppings of dens. Maybe the dungeon''s power, or the faint star-burn lingering on the edge of her awareness. A deity-blessed floor. Hells, that hadn''t been in the Scholar''s drawings. Well. No time better than now to note it for later and get out of here. Sy?alia tapped her dagger blades against each other, one curved, one straight; both paring knives, for cutting and slicing, built for combat. She could strengthen them with her own mana in a pinch, so long as they were connected with her, but she''d prefer to use that on her own abilities. And considering her Gold-sense was feeding her a collection of burrowing rats, luminous constrictors, and other scuttling things instead of threats, she wouldn''t need either here. So she adjusted the tops of her boots and strode onward, staying close¡ªbut not too close¡ªto Ghasavalk''s back. His sensory abilities were, to her muted fury, more advanced than hers, likely due to being able to sense both mana and minds, and he guided them through with a casual precision she refused to be impressed by. Luminous constrictors coiled over stalactites, stone-backed toads pressing flat in the algae, even cave spiders pausing in their webs to glance down with apathetic curiosity. She regarded them much the same, though she did turn intangible a time or two and pluck a few choice gems from a burrowing rat''s den. Sycophants they seemed, with their gleaming hoards; maybe those on the lower floors would have even greater prizes. But that was for when she got there. Or at least, if she did, because Ghasavalk kept stopping. First a stalagmite here, strung with gleaming pieces of quartz, hardly enough mana to power even one of his spells yet he still stopped like they were the most interesting things in the world. Another for a stone-backed toad frozen under his shadow, trying with all its might to be so still it could simply disappear off the face of Aiqith. A third as a flare of mana revealed a larger, though empty, den in the side. She could excuse a few, especially when the First Mate had sent them in specifically to gather information, but they were Golds. Let the Bronzes and Unrankeds squabble over the first floor. Not them. "Supposed to go deeper, aren''t we?" She huffed eventually, fingering the edge of her leftmost dagger. The faster she could dump this deadweight, dump this entire city-state behind, the better. Ghasavalk looked at her, eyes black. "Are you not curious?" He had a way of speaking that made her feel like an idiot. Sy?alia bristled. But before she could retort, Ghasavalk knelt, tunic wet over his knees where he was against the damp algae, and peered at the shadow beneath a cragged stalagmite. Sy?alia leaned in despite herself. A mushroom¡ªa lacecap, she thought, if that idiotic baron who favoured himself a genius had explained it correctly¡ªsat in the darkness, great trailing gills beneath its cap sticky with trapped bugs and their desiccated remains. Certainly larger than the others they''d encountered, white flesh quivering with excess mana. Nearing full, if she had to guess, and Ghasavalk seemed to agree, if how he stared at it meant anything. "It is hungry," he hummed, more motes of light sparking from his gaze. What. She stared at him. "It''s a mushroom." Ghasavalk reached out, not touching it, but running his finger over the air above its cap. "All things within a dungeon have minds," he said, like that was a perfectly normal statement. "And it is hungry. More than those around it." Sy?alia looked at the fungi, which hardly came up to her knee. Hungry. Right. Ghasavalk pursed his lips, more mana sparking behind his eyes¡ªthen it traveled, slow and ponderous, to his mouth, gathering over his tongue. He looked to the side, still crouched, and his mana twanged with a soft, discordant note. "Nhasa," he said, in whatever tongue he had, and held out his hand. And then, from the shadows, with the stiff, uncomfortable movements of something who did not want to do what it was doing, a burrowing rat emerged from a den. Its ears were pinned flat, forked tail lashing, black eyes quivering¡ªbut still it marched out, nosing through the green algae, and perched on Ghasavalk''s palm. Sy?alia felt something cold sink talons into her spine. Ghasavalk lifted his hand, the rat steadying itself as its platform moved, and, quite casually, dumped it right at the base of the mushroom. The thing twitched, in what could be excused as wind if it weren''t a fully underground cavern. It wasn''t moving but the bugs caught in its lacy gills were, caught in some horrible, twisted form of life, little more than traps in of themselves. Their wings fluttered and thrashed and before the rat had a moment to shake itself free of Ghasavalk''s thrall, the gills of the mushroom had been spilled over its back, rooting it all but into the mountain itself. The rat shrieked, animal brain finally catching up to the scenario, frantic squeaks that had reflective eyes disappearing back into shadows in other corners of the dungeon, and died a slow, thrashing life as the mushroom''s reanimated bugs wound tendrils over its mouth and nose. Her Gold-sense showed her as the rat''s mana fled its corpse and went to the mushroom, but her eyes were only fixed on Ghasavalk. That was¡­ significantly more powerful than she''d feared. Golds were, by their very nature, but that was steps above; to command a creature with a single word, mana laced throughout, and cajole it into its own death without a fight. Ukhan-analt, he''d called it. Grasp of the mind. She tightened her grasp on her daggers. Ghasavalk stood, wiping off his tunic with disturbing peace. "Interesting," he said, pondering the death. It was only a rat and they were both Golds, and she knew that for all his power she still had the edge to escape, insofar as her intangibility would not let this mountain hold her¡ªbut still, his black eyes taking in the corpse, she felt unsafe. But she was Sy?alia Celess¨¦ Temoro, and she wasn''t scared. "For rats," she said, and simpered the word, taking great pains to elucidate to this man how much she was comparing them. "But I''m interested in something else." And, just to amuse herself, she flicked one of her claimed rubies through her fingers, bouncing along her knuckles until it secured itself in the drawstring pouch by her hip. A spark of warm mana sunk into her channels. Ghasavalk inclined his head. "Of course." He took in the rest of the floor, to the glassy pond in the back and the three beasts she could sense in the walls, watching them from the shadows that refused to retreat from her Gold-sense. "After you." What an asshole. Sy?alia marched on. Time to find her crown. Chapter 121 - Let Darings be Darings Sy?alia kicked another stone-backed toad out of the way, the wretched thing croaking in blind panic. Its elder guardian, an ironback toad with breathtakingly hideous metallic growths over its face and squat limbs splayed like some roadside carcass, did nothing to protect it now. Not that it could, on account of being dead. The second floor of the dungeon was interesting, insofar as being like nothing she''d seen before¡ªand she had been in many a dungeon over her time, at least until her ruse cooked through and the requisite Guild put a price on her head. A life of many extremes. But this was a place of forests, deep underground and choked by rock; the scarlet-trunked and white-leaved mangroves the Scholar had described, shivering in a fog-pushed breeze. Canals raced through the stone, veins of some ancient husk whose corpse had become the mountain, and danger simmered under the surface. Or rather, danger, because the strongest thing she had encountered so far had been the ironback toad, and a stunning pommel hit and slice of her paring dagger had taken it out. A dungeon for Bronzes and Silvers, it seemed; the exponential growth up the ranks was not being handled quite as well. Figured. Maybe Lluc was enough of a coward he wouldn''t come in here himself, if he was sending them in to find information no one else had. Ghasavalk was still thoroughly and moronically entranced by the whole damn place. His psionic mana guided him to every mind in the dungeon and he strode blithely to it, nearly skipping, and a barked word pushed more irritating creatures away before they could think about harming him. Hadn''t actually killed anything, because it looked like he''d been lying when he said he could fight, so Sy?alia was left as the one holding this unwilling partnership on her shoulders. Typical. She pushed a flare of mana through her legs and leaned under a mangrove''s grasping thorns, the hunger tangible in the air, spinning her daggers around her palms. Her pockets jangled pleasantly with jewels and scattered crimson scales; nothing much, but the Scholar paid excess for creature parts. She would deign herself to a carrier if it meant coin at the end. On through the fourth room in this maze of canals, a mess of wretched little paths and gaps just wide enough she had to push herself to jump across. If she got her clothing wet on the second floor, she was going to kill something. Not that she hadn''t already been planning on that. Ghasavalk held up a hand. Sy?alia stopped despite herself, because she wasn''t an idiot, and traced where his finger pointed; another mangrove, thorned roots weaving through the sanded stone, though not moving like the others. Or, well¡ªshe frowned, peering closer, Gold-sense murmuring to the surface. Ah. Surprisingly clever. The tree itself was dead, thorns inert and branches unmoving, but what was on the branches was moving, for all they disguised themselves amidst the white leaves and gentle breeze. Spiders, ghost-pale, scuttling around themselves in their web''s embrace. Maybe this dungeon had a singular interesting point to its power. Ghasavalk hummed, mana coiling around his tongue. "Spiders," he said, like she hadn''t already noticed that, thanks. "Interconnected; a web of minds. Interesting." Everything in this godsddamn dungeon was interesting to him. Forgive her for not falling over at the shock. The spiders scuttled on, the click of their clawed legs trembling the web in their absence. She could see little cocoons strung up around them, corpses of lesser animals, though nothing large. Not strong enough to threaten adventurers, it seemed. Ghasavalk took a step closer. "I do not believe the Scholar knew of these, or there was no mention." He peered at her, black eyes indecipherable. "Will you look closer?" There was no commanding mana in the word, no language she didn''t understand, and she bristled regardless. Mushrooms, rats, fucking algae¡ªand now he wanted to drag her into it, make her play dress with pretending she gave a single shit about this dungeon beyond the prizes it would earn her. Absolutely not. "I don''t serve you," Sy?alia snapped. "No," Ghasavalk agreed mildly. "But to Lluc you and I serve, and this is what he wants to know." Gods, she was going to kill him. If he thought she would bend her knee to him just because he was a Gold, he had another damn thing coming. "They''re fucking spiders," she snapped, and let mana coil through her hands, the world losing its grip as her outline wavered at the edges. Mostly meaningless, a party trick, but a damn intimidating one, especially in the misty gloom of this floor. "Go look closer yourself." Ghasavalk stayed looking at her with apathetic docility, then nodded, then walked over to the tree. Sy?alia seethed. A murmur of ?ldekhe and the spiders froze, scarlet eyes trembling as they watched the human approach their nest, but did not retaliate. She spun on her heel and marched into the next room. Any distraction from this idiot of a man would be ideal. As if one of the numerous gods she prayed to only to cover her bases was listening, she got an answer. In the next area, tucked back against the far wall, a burrowing rat''s corpse hanging from its claws, a scaled figure blinked at her with true bafflement. Ah. Kobolds. Sy?alia hadn''t exactly parlayed with too many dragons in her time, but she was familiar with their fallen kin, and this one looked like all the others. A dusky scarlet spoke to a fire ancestry, its charcoal horns well-grown and golden eyes bright, but still a kobold. Hardly anything to get excited over. For the principle of the matter, and also because this was likely a hunter scout, she moved. Mana blurred on her heels as she leapt the canal, avoiding the inviting rock her Gold-sense had already informed her was too good to be true, and lunged¡ªthe kobold dropped its corpse with a squeak and fumbled back, but her twin daggers were faster. A quick blip out of the world as its claws swung shoddily through where her chest had been, and then she handily separated its head from its miserable little body. Sy?alia dipped back into pure mana again, if only to avoid blood getting all over her arms. There were pros and cons to fighting up close. Ghasavalk entered after she''d already cleaned her knives off on a patch of billowing moss beside it, the feathery fronds drifting away from her ankles. "Ah," he said, tucking a white corpse into his pocket. "A tribe?" "Likely," she gruffed, cracking her back as she stood. "S''one seemed like a hunter." And you didn''t have hunters without more mouths to feed. Ghasavalk hummed again. Did he do anything else? "We must look out, then." Right, like she''d been wandering blind before this. Sy?alia swallowed poisonous vitriol with the effort it took to move mountains. No sense in pissing off the psionic mage while they were in the dungeon together¡ªshe''d wait until they got out before tearing his head from his shoulders. Perhaps metaphorically, perhaps literally. She hadn''t decided yet. But more dungeon still waited for them, so on they moved, the number of creatures picking up¡ªanother guarding walls of ironback toads, burrowing rat dens behind, emerald-carapaced crabs hauling themselves from the canals. They died just as easily as before, considering none could touch her as she danced between body and soul, and Ghasavalk stayed painfully fond of simply sending them away instead of collecting their corpses. The bastard. More kobolds, though still traveling hunters; a pack of three once, but most often singular, skittering through the mangroves underbrush with food in their claws. Still dispatched without difficulty, but they were moving with more of a purpose, eyes fixed outward¡ªsomething had alerted them there was an intruder. Wonderful. But the second floor melted away under the power of two Golds, even if only one was actually doing anything, and Sy?alia could have purred as she felt the mana increase in weight around them¡ªthe end of the floor. The final area. Halfway through entering the last room, Ghasavalk paused. It was an odd sort of pause, the kind that didn''t come willingly; his mana pooled and bunched in his head, spilling through his channels like he didn''t have a stable grip on it. He widened his stance, like he was scared of falling over¡ªthere was a punch-drunk twist to his steps, eyes empty as the mind behind them flew elsewhere, hunting for something she couldn''t see. Couldn''t sense. Her back prickled. "There is something," he murmured, and his lips moved slower than the words that reached her. "Something¡­ hungry. It is familiar." Oh, fuck that. "Keep your godsdamn wits about you," she barked. "Or am I leaving you?" She''d love that. She''d love to. Ghasavalk frowned, and peered into the room, a wide, cavernous thing with a hulking den entrance in the back, littered with scarlet scales and movement within. More mangroves, more canals, ending in a tunnel in the farthest back that gleamed black with promises. "It is not here," he said, electing to ignore her because he was ever so polite like that. "Or, not in this room. But it is within dungeon. What should not be." Gods, she''d rather pull her own teeth than listen to him blabber on. How he''d gotten to Gold when it was far more apparent he''d rather dally around with books and scholars and lesser things was a mystery to her. "Fascinating," she bit out, and poured as much of the opposite into the word as she could manage. It worked. Ghasavalk glanced back at her¡ªthe first visible reaction, what joy, she was going to strangle him with her bare hands¡ªbefore shaking his head, clearing whatever gunk and cobwebs hid behind his eyes. Mana pooled again over his tongue, her Gold-sense lingering on the edges of her awareness as she realized how little mana he had to use to control those lesser creatures, and he turned to the den in the far back of the room. They''d have to walk past it to get to the next floor, but he could pull his weight and command them to stay back while they went past. It wasn''t like base kobolds were worth much of anything, and she''d already picked up her fair share of scales. They were meaningless threats. Ghasavalk stayed staring at them. "The den," he said, brow furrowing. "What is inside?" A den, presumably. He stepped forward, murmuring something under his breath as the raid-frenzy bled off the surrounding creatures under force of his mana. Billowing moss creased and bent under his boots, tunic swishing about his ankles, and golden eyes lit up in the den''s entrance. His approach wasn''t exactly going unnoticed. That was the problem with fucking psionic casters. They got so comfortable in their power they never seemed to remember that it only took one mistake to cut their little escapade short. "There is something inside," he declared. Yeah. Like bones and rotten meat and nests. Her nose wrinkled. "They''re kobolds," she stressed, like he had somehow missed that fact. There was a chance of it with how he spent so much of his time lavishing over mushrooms. Ghasavalk nodded like she''d made some revolutionary statement and marched over. Mana coiled bright over his eyes, over his mouth¡ªa barked ?ldekhe and the kobolds shivered, freezing, one by one as he faced them all. Then Sy?alia was standing alone. There were not enough curses in Viejabran for this. She did her best to fill the gap and stalked after him. A fool''s prize but she did get to see a crack in the man''s armour¡ªas they entered the den, there were some two dozen kobolds within, scarlet scaled and furious, and Ghasavalk''s mana could only stretch so far. They stayed still, or at least what she presumed the command was, but did not freeze¡ªthey clawed their way closer to him, step by meaningless step, trying to brute force past his mana. A pitiable effort, but an effort nonetheless. It wasn''t the choice she would have made, either way. Staying still and avoiding a harsher command would have made more sense. For the kobolds, they could fight and die, or flee and live. The choice was up to them, if they could pull their heads up and understand they were in the presence of a Gold¡ªtwo Golds, whatever, Ghasavalk was a lumbering fool with a power she did not trust¡ªenough to realize this was unideal for them. Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original. Sy?alia dragged the edges of her knives over each other, the shriek of metal echoing through the den. The kobolds watched her with truly delectable fury and the inability to do anything. A welcome break from her new position as a Gold''s watcher. The man was in the far back, neatly sidestepping smoldering firepits and surprisingly organized stacks of meat and pelts, an efficiency she wouldn''t have thought from the primitive species. Mayhaps the dungeon had some fangs behind its bite; or these were well-fed on the Bronzes that marched cheerily in to do nothing but die. Hard to tell. But harder still to tell was Ghasavalk''s fascination with the very furthest back of the den, past overcroppings he had to duck around and more kobolds that snapped and raged on the ends of the leash he''d roped them in. A simple room sat there, a moss-covered bed and pool of fresh water at the base, a thin crack in the stone as an entrance. Sy?alia peered in despite herself. On the wall, crisscrossing over the greyish limestone, were lines. Crude drawings, of lines and seas and creatures; no words to accompany them and each scratch done with an inexperienced hand, but drawings. Recognizable shapes and things. Not the work of fumbling beasts. Ghasavalk''s brows furrowed until they formed an impressive caterpillar crawling over his forehead. "These markings," he said, slow, thumbing at his chin. "Do you think?" He was trying to pull her back into the mystery. And worst of all, it was working¡ªshe kept looking at the drawings, at the height off the ground, at the size of the bed. It could have been a particularly intelligent kobold, even if that statement was comparing dirt to mud, but there was mana here, something soft and lingering on the edges of her Gold-sense. Not the same as what she''d felt in the den. It felt like more. Hells, had the dungeon taken a human? Lluc would pay out the ass for information like that. The whole Adventuring Guild would¡ªthat was marking the dungeon as a threat more than lesser things, more than a nuisance, more than the claimed lives of Bronzes too foolish to understand they weren''t strong enough; this was something beyond. Something that didn''t happen. Ghasavalk''s lips thinned, and he turned on his heel; marched out of the den, still keeping his stranglehold over the kobolds as mana sparked and crackled in the corners of his eyes. Sy?alia rolled her own pair but followed him, fingering the hilts of his daggers. If he gave her but a second more of being distracted, she could have slipped out¡ªgiven Lluc that information and claim that as enough to get out early. But still the jewels jangled in her pockets, the gold nuggets weighing down at her waist. Those had been on the first two floors. What was below? And it wasn''t like this dungeon had been particularly difficult, in any sense of the word. Not the first floor, not the second. Still not a challenge, not even related to one; the toads and rats scurried around her boots, clawing for victory with mana that couldn''t scratch her even without slipping from the tangible world. Ghasavalk had kept strolling through like some noble''s gardenkeeper and she kept hauling his ass through, but the second floor had been much the same as the first, even with the horde of kobolds. She tried to imagine how fifty adventurers had met their end here and couldn''t come up with a single thing that would have killed them. Perhaps they all fell into the canals and drowned. That thought did change as they emerged from the den, kobolds still snarling and hissing behind, and strode to the exit tunnel, where Sy?alia got to face what the next floor would be. Ah. Water. The Scholar had told her of this, but she hadn''t really¡­ thought about what it meant. It was exactly as he said, a narrow, dark tunnel sloping downward for some dozens of feet until it came to a rippling pool, coated in silver-blue of a light she couldn''t see. Deep below, the water thrashed, boiling in on itself in some great shoving force. She could taste the mana with her Gold-sense, that hum on the back of her tongue, something deep and gnawing like old teeth. Ghasavalk peered at it, making an oddly pleased noise in the back of his throat. "Fitting," he said, because he certainly was feeling verbose. Then he slipped into the third floor with a heady splash of water and the rush of mana, disappearing beneath the surface before she''d even had a moment to ask what their plan was. Sy?alia stared, teeth grinding in the back of her skull. He was gone. She could turn around, slip away, fade back into the shadows she so loved and make her living there. She was a thief, not a fighter; her attunement was one born of scraping and scrapping and scavenging in the forgotten corners of the world. Jewels burned a hole in her pockets. Hells above hells. She jumped in the water. It hit her like a shock, that cold explosion of twin extremes before her body realized what was happening. She sank like a stone almost immediately, falling in a crouch to the sandy bottom, silt swirling around her¡ªswirling past her, actually. Her Gold-sense took over as her eyes adjusted, feeding her strands of mana curling around her in a whirlpool, tugging her further into the floor. Old, gnashing teeth lurked in the back of her mind, lined in star-burn. Interesting. Ghasavalk was some feet away, tunic swirling around him and fitting oddly on his body now that gravity couldn''t pin down the looser fabric. His hair floated up, black eyes like voids in the water. His mana seemed almost colourless here, the absence of there, darkness with light. She didn''t like it. She didn''t like him. She was getting the feeling it was mutual. Behind him, instead of more limestone, was an opening. An entrance. Past it, a tunnel sloped outward, but it was a cragged, broken stone unlike that within the dungeon; something external, then. Another mystery to fill this damn dungeon, as if it hadn''t had enough. A caught human, a third entrance, monsters the likes of which she''d never seen before. Fucking fantastic. But that entrance¡ªshe''d spent a year researching Calarata after she''d gone to ground after her last unfortunate incident with the Wandering Empire, and she knew there was a merrow city deep under the cove connected to the Illera Sea. Arroyo, she thought, or whatever word they had that Viejabran had translated. It looked like this entrance connected directly to it. And wasn''t that interesting. The thought was a little too similar to Ghasavalk''s mushroom-investigating lines, so she looked away, back towards the floor itself. A kelp forest loomed through the mist, amber-gold fronds waving gently, clustered schools of silver fish overhead, the cast shadows of sharks circling overhead. About what the Scholar had said, though no sign of the armoured fish he''d had plenty of concerns about. Silt and sand and murk gleamed everywhere, the quartz-light not nearly enough, though little could hide from her Gold-sense. No sense in waiting around for deaths. She widened her stance and started to stride forward. Ghasavalk fell in beside her, a follower with no soul of a leader, water tugging at his clothes. Gods. Soon she''d be rid of him. As long as she cleared all these little monsters first. More of the crabs, just as quick to come and be slaughtered; silver fish that swam to and fro in dizzying patterns that meant nothing as she faded out of corpality. Even the sharks, heavy and hungry overhead, meant nothing between Ghasavalk''s dissuading commands and her twin daggers. Onward they swam, around the amber kelp that sang to her Gold-sense in a way most unsettling, past nooks and crannies and a mind that Ghasavalk motioned for her to avoid on the far side of the floor. Pity. And then, in the back, the wall sloped upward, arching out of the water. She could see a den up there, and feel the mana press heavier on her shoulders; the end of the floor and the weight that came with it. The furthest point any other surviving adventurers had made it to. Excitement flickered through her mind despite it all. Although it seemed there was a reason no one had made it this far, as a shadow cast overhead. Ah. The Scholar had told her about a crocodile corpse that had been discovered, though it hadn''t been seen alive by anyone who had also made it out alive; but it had seemed monstrous even from his laborious descriptions of a beast he had never seen and had no authentic drawings of. Well. Perhaps that was fitting; it certainly seemed a beast more of nightmares than reality. Some thirty feet long, heavily armoured, green-grey scales, claws like daggers, fangs like swords; it hung heavy and powerful over the top of the water, snout narrowed down to look at her, eyes furious and cold. A reptilian hatred curled through its mana. Quite the creature. Quite the prize. If Lluc didn''t care about the human, he''d certainly care about this. Sy?alia kicked off the ground, floating upward, hair spidering around into a halo around her. She tightened her grip on her daggers, letting the water move her instead of fighting back, watching the crocodile as it accepted the challenge. And a more blatant challenge there hadn''t been; she was removing herself from the ground, from her more comfortable land, to enter its territory. She was spitting in its face. Ahd she had ever loved those so quick to react to it. The crocodile moved, monstrous tail lashing side to side, webbed claws hurling it through the water. Speed above speed, the kind she hadn''t expected from a beast of its size, a predator the likes that would consume the world if it had the means. Come here, she hummed, mana coiling through her channels. She grasped at the world''s hold over her, loosening its grip, light burning through her awareness. The crocodile, enormous, bulla on its snout glowing, furious, hungry, lunged for her. Sy?alia disappeared. Pure mana was all she was¡ªand where she had been was now empty, but there was water, and water always made to fill. It rushed in to fill the space, a draw more powerful than the whirlpool, and the crocodile lurched, momentum thrown off. And then Sy?alia coalesced, and suddenly that water had to go out. It exploded out, pushed away by force of mana and the raw understanding that there could not be both Sy?alia and water here, and she won the pissing contest¡ªso the water blasted out in a desperate attempt to flee from occupying the same place as her. It wasn''t a terribly effective attack. But it was enough. The crocodile went low, Sy?alia kicked high, and she slammed her daggers into the scaled plates over its back. It roared, an explosion of bubbles, and thrashed¡ªshe slipped from the world and darted back, another blast of water pushing it further away from her, another tear down its tail. Its tail lashed and nearly caught her¡ªor, it would have, but she was made for martial combat, no matter whether in water or in air. She disappeared from the world again and drifted under its claws, pushing it back, and carving up its stomach. Powerless it was against her, and the feeling was intoxicating; she swam faster, cut harder, disappeared faster. Fire burst in her veins. A dance the likes of the Dead War. "Khang?i!" And then more. Ghasavalk, hovering in the water, mana surrounding him like a crackling storm; his mouth hadn''t moved but she felt the world echo through her nonetheless, a powerful, hollow thing like the ring of a gong. The compulsion sunk its teeth into her awareness, urging her to stop, to lay down, to simply cease to be. For the crocodile, it couldn''t resist. It froze dead in the water. Sy?alia, swallowing her retorts she didn''t need help until she was out of the water, swam up and merrily slammed her daggers into the beast''s skull. It tried to thrash, to defend itself, blood smoking through the water; but Ghasavalk''s command hung. She did it again. Irritating. Her daggers were slightly too short to get neatly past its scales. It took another two strikes before the thing had the decency to die. Then its corpse drifted to the bottom, to land amidst the silt and the sand, and mana burst outward. She shivered as the kill washed over her, a glorious sensation of victory and pride, even ignoring how much the corpse would net her. Ghasavalk drifted down to peer at it, still beautifically unconcerned with any other creatures¡ªnot that he had much to be. The sharks and schools of silverheads had fled from the crocodile''s first attack, not wishing to be in its presence, and with its kill they seemed as though all their spirit had left them. Pity. She could use another kill like that. But it was dead, and she would take that. A fine reward to show the dungeon just what it had underestimated of a Gold. Ghasavalk looked at her, hands before his chest; he turned and twisted them in a way that was probably supposed to mean something. Sy?alia raised her eyebrow. The man sighed, bubbles drifting from the corners of his mouth, and moved a laborious finger to point towards the den the crocodile had come from, far up through the water''s surface. She could have said that. But up they drifted, uncontested, and emerged out of the underground lake. It wasn''t a pretty thing, unfortunately. With clammy fingers Sy?alia dragged herself up, mana aching, cold settling in like a living thing. The second she was on the stone she gasped, a low, sweltering sound that hung heavy in her lungs¡ªgods, she hated holding her breath for that long, no matter how viable. Bloody fucking water floors. Every other dungeon she''d been to hadn''t had them for good reason. Beside her, Ghasavalk spat out a mouthful of water, dragging his hair back. A bit of kelp hung in his mane. Blood had misted around him in the water and now it hung heavy on his clothes, the leather stained¡ªblood she had spilled, blood she had won. A thief she was, and proud of it; but there was a fervour from killing that nothing could beat. And that crocodile¡ªit had been a kill worth a song. She''d preen when there was someone without a stick up their ass to preen to. But for now, Ghasavalk drew himself up to his feet, shaking moisture from his head and adjusting his sopping clothing. Still he stayed looking at her, and she couldn''t shake the feeling he was seeing something more, than her thoughts were not hers alone. Ice gripped at her spine in a way that had nothing to do with the chill. "We go onward," he said, and looked to the tunnel past the den. A dark and festering thing, alight with movement but no glow; whatever fresh new hell they had no preparation for. An unknown mystery. A place of death and punishment. "Oh?" Sy?alia said, because she had always enjoyed twisting the knife. "And if I think that crocodile is information enough for your beloved First Mate?" He looked at her, eyes hollow, void in his empty face. "I am not done," he said, and there came his almost-smile. "And the body is heavy. Not something to take out alone." It was an odd thing. A threat or a statement, or neither, or both. Sy?alia''s mana thrummed in her chest. But he wasn''t incorrect, which was irritating. She was an enhancer, but not for strength; she could only haul the damn thing out so long as she had time to do it, which was a precious resource not given lightly in a dungeon. She''d want his help. And, more accurately, she''d want him alive so Lluc didn''t cut her apple to asshole when she emerged alone. So she bared her teeth, sneer firmly affixed, and jerked her chin towards the tunnel before them. "I''m not done." Ghasavalk inclined his head. Bastard. Time to live up to her challenge, then. Sy?alia peered into the darkness, into the hungry maw of thorned algae and the promise of wayward souls never laid to rest. Not a cheerful place, not an inviting one; in essence, a dungeon within a dungeon. Little wonder no one had come back alive to report to the Scholar what was beneath the water. But they hadn''t been Gold, and they hadn''t been her. Gold-sense leapt at her call, the world blurring and bleeding off her outline. It was time to descend. Chapter 122 - To the Trouble and the Thrall Sy?alia had hated this dungeon the entire time, but this was a particularly personal sort of hatred. The fourth floor started bad and descended into terrible, dipping its toe into hellish whenever the fancy struck its mood. It was a choking nightmare of identical tunnels without stone walls but instead algae, an emerald green carpet crawling over every inch, drifting with bioluminescent spores as the only source of light. In description, that wouldn''t be much a threat to her, with Gold-sense at her beck and call¡ªmore wasted mana to avoid bashing her nose into the wall, but a waste she''d suffer to chase away the worst of the shadows in the curl of her attunement. In truth, the walls were a touch more proactive than that. Sy?alia snarled, reaching out to bat away another whip of algae before slipping out of the world; its thorned embrace curled around where she had been, ridge-like blades woven through its emerald sheen, and unknotted itself in a fury at missing its prey. She coalesced further away, but her feet landed heavily on another section of algae, and the whip sprang for her with a hunger. Overextended, enough she could sidestep with a second of dissolving into mana and slice her dagger through its knobbled base, and then have to spring back from another godsdamn whip. Clearly they had some kind of intelligence, considering how Ghasavalk had been bellowing khang?i at every new section to get them to freeze, but Sy?alia honestly wouldn''t mind even one extra thought for them to learn from their mistakes. Or thought, perhaps, because she wasn''t quite sure how this worked still. Calarata had its share of dryads, tribes bleeding over from the unnamed jungle around the Al¨®mbra Mountains with their greenery sprawled through the streets and even sitting pretty in the Dread Crew, but those were beings, not plants¡ªmost those of the floral persuasion were content to be little more than food. Not this algae, though. Or the mushroom on the first floor. Or the mangroves on the second. All things within a dungeon have minds, Ghasavalk had said. She wondered, in the part she would never say aloud to reveal she didn''t know everything, just how his attunement worked. Ukhan-analt¡ªgrasp of the mind¡ªwas not a terribly descriptive title, and every time she''d seen him use it the words had come in his odd tongue instead of Viejabran. Could he only use commands with that language, or was it a choice? She had thought his strange manner of speaking was an accent, but there was something noticeable in how he didn''t issue commands to her; merely questions, open and leading, or statements involving them both. Whatever it was, it was one more damned secret in this accursed dungeon, and she wanted nothing to do with it. Which was fantastic, because this was easily the longest floor by far. In the dark, in the lingering shades of grey her Gold-sense limited her to, there was no way to tell how much time had passed. But it was certainly longer than the previous, with a bite that even the deepening call of mana couldn''t soothe. Fucking hells. She''d bitched about the watery depths of the last floor, but it seemed the dungeon was determined to disappoint. Ghasavalk seemed miserable in the muggy heat, which was the only modecorum of justice Sy?alia had found in this world, and she took great pains to make her own stops at rat dens along the way so he had to wait. The little thieving bastards were even more prevalent on this floor, but they were no longer burrowing rats; they were an odd variant, with silver-grey fur and tails that slithered like snakes. Curious, although less so with the way they watched her, fury in their eyes as she plucked jewels and gems from their den. It took her Gold-sense to find them as well, which was an extra layer of a concerning thought. They cloaked themselves in darkness and danced away from her dagger with the grace of acrobats, disappearing into the volatile algae like a second home, and though both she and it swatted at them they disappeared before they could be caught. Irritating, though she could admire their spirit. Or, she had admired their spirit, until she noticed the damn golden clasp on her left boot was gone. Fucking bastards. She would skin the whole dungeon of them for the slight. From the darkness, a chittering sound¡ªSy?alia bit back another curse and slipped from the world just as a pair of sickle-like arms cleaved through where her thighs had been, carapace glinting off the bioluminescent lights. Another of the damned hunting mantises, common enough beasts but made suitably more dangerous in the darkness of the tunnels. Useful in their own way, though, as she dipped back into the world behind it and carved through its chitinous skull¡ªthey were far too common to take as spoils, so she had taken to dumping their corpses at the interconnections between paths. Because it wasn''t enough to be endless tunnels. It had to be a maze, too. Ghasavalk stared at her, head tilted to the side, mana sparking from the corner of his lips as he held the algae at bay long enough for her to dump the corpse in the path of where they''d just come from. The strain was a bitter thing for her, since she was merrily transponding herself between body and mana by the hundreds, but Ghasavalk hadn''t seemed to feel the emptiness. Even in the kobold''s den, he''d only struggled to control the large number; his mana stayed thick and it stayed coiling. Gods, she hated him. Brief and bloody fantasies flashed through her head, and she let them linger long enough to smile before pushing on. Through the dark and through the endless they went, First Mate Lluc''s damned commands hanging in heavy weight over her head; there was no part of this adventure that seemed viable, not anymore. They''d found the next floor, hadn''t they? She''d stuffed her pockets with jewels aplenty from the rat dens. It would be easy to slip back, to follow the trail of corpses, and shove her knowledge into the Dread Crew''s palms before disappearing once more. Simple. But these tunnels were not kind, and less than that for one alone; for all she was a Gold, she had not gotten there by overconfidence. Serpents slithered through their surroundings, mere shadows in the thick of the algae; the lithe creatures were annoyingly fitting in this maze, like the tunnels were snakes themselves in the darkness. The luminous kind, which had the annoying habit of responding with light whenever they were spooked, but Ghasavalk''s mind sense was enough to point them out in advance, and Sy?alia did her damnedest to creep around them without either side being bothered. She mostly succeeded, and when she didn''t, an impromptu impaling did the trick nicely. But it wasn''t always neat and tidy, if anything in this dungeon could be. Because after another snake slithered by, Ghasavalk guiding her to its location, something changed. From the depths, nearly hidden with its diamond scales buried underneath the algae, the serpent twitched. An odd thing, racing down its spine, rattling in its bonds and exposing its pale underbelly, forked tongue flicking out. Then it looked up, and instead of white, luminous blue eyes looked back. Sy?alia stilled, and something crawled over her awareness, a spider''s dance down the length of her spine. The serpent was still shifting, moving, swaying back and forth like a slithering hunter, but its eyes were no longer its own, and the blue was like nothing it''d had before. They stared at each other, and she got the sinking idea that something else was staring back. "Hells," she murmured, barely a whisper in the depths of the tunnels. "Ghasavalk. Here." The man glanced back, following her finger; the serpent was there, frozen, tongue flicking in and out. Little more than one of the luminous constrictors she''d hardly paid a thought to on the higher floors, but here its eyes were glowing, and there was something missing in its movement, in its actions. Something aware. Sy?alia slipped from the world, coalesced above it, and drove her dagger through its skull. The blue disappeared in a flash as the serpent died, blood arching out in scarlet spray; but there was no puff of mana beyond the expected, nothing to explain what the blue was. Ghasavalk crept over, eyes narrowed; but it was a corpse now, regular, hardly more than the dozens she''d left behind on the higher floors. Sy?alia stood, shaking the thing off her blade; it fell to the ground with a disquieting splat. Maybe she had overreacted. Or maybe you could never overreact in a dungeon. She tightened her grip and kept on. The serpents were still there, but none of their eyes glowed; she watched them with a burning suspicion, the kind that itched to loose her daggers in their scales. They crept through the tunnels with the same blind hunt they had before, searching for rats and lesser bugs, easily dispatched or ignored in equal measure. And then the serpents stopped showing up. And then the rats disappeared. And then the bugs went silent. By the time Ghasavalk froze, Sy?alia was about to claw out of her own damn skin. They were crouched in the darkness of a tunnel, algae rustling on each side, boxed in and crowded with threats; but not tangible things, no creatures, just the idea of one. The lingering pain in the back of her head that told her something was approaching. Was approaching her. From the shadows emerged a monster. Twenty feet long, moving with the silence of night distilled down a living form, it pulled itself from the shadows. Midnight blue scales, the deep-wrought depths of some carved beast, and above a twisting head of horns. Moonlight, almost, or silver, or stars¡ªand beneath, four slitted eyes. A serpent, crowned in power she had not felt in a very long time. Something in Sy?alia''s skull ached. For the first time in the thankfully short time she''d known him, Ghasavalk looked truly shocked¡ªhis black eyes were wide, lips parted, even as mana sparked over his tongue and dripped from his teeth. Whatever this snake was¡ªif it was even a snake anymore¡ªit wasn''t what he had expected. Sy?alia hadn''t been expecting it either, but it wasn''t like she''d say that. "This is no time to die," she hissed, nudging him with her boot. And certainly not for her. Ghasavalk hardly seemed to hear her, entranced as he was. The serpent reared higher, its crown brushing at the algae overhead, for all it did not dare strike. Whatever this¨C this thing was, it was the ruler of these halls, and there awoke a terrible fear in her, the likes of which she had not felt since claiming her first kill. But Sy?alia Celess¨¦ Temoro did not crumble, and she did not die. Ghasavalk exhaled, and mana bloomed alongside his breath, no spell or casting but merely a latent burst of power. It sparked like darkness as it fell to the tunnel''s floor. "You are¡­ like me," he murmured, hand twitching like he wanted to extend it. Bloody hells. If he started turning into a snake, she was going to gut him herself. Their powers weren''t that fucking similar. The serpent rumbled, something deep and melodic, and did not strike; it stayed opposite them, unthreatening, its four eyes peering through the darkness like a set of moons. Even the iridescent edges of its scales were hardly more than the gleams of starlight, something enveloping and warm. A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. There was a¨C a beauty, perhaps, in the strange, in the arcane. The serpent''s eyes glowed with a pulsating blue, the deep, summoning call of something unknown, flickering off the edges of its iridescent scales. Her jewels no longer felt like the prize they had been before, not in material treasures, or at least not in what she had found so far¡ªwhat could the serpent have, in its nest? Something brighter? Something¨C "Khar?l!" With the shriek of twisting stone, the algae lurched off the side walls at Ghasavalk''s call; it wove together its many arms and whips and lashes into a shield, filling the tunnel, blotting out the glow from the serpent''s horns. The compulsion broke the second Sy?alia couldn''t see its eyes, gasping, staggering back and nearly losing her daggers to clammy fingers. "Fuck," she breathed, eyes wild, nearly trembling out of her skin. "Fuck, I¨C I almost¨C" Hands, grasping at her shoulders, hauling her back upright¡ªGhasavalk, skin sallow, teeth gritted, mana howling like a caged beast in his skull. "Up," he commanded, and she scrambled to listen, vicious retorts dead and dying under the fear that grasped at her heart. "And run!" She ran. The algae leapt and lashed for them but it had met a cautious Gold before, and she was not one now; her blades flashed and her body melded and she was a hurricane through the tunnels. Ghasavalk lumbered at her heels but she sprang forward, light as wind, jewels jangling and spilling from her pockets. "Left!" Ghasavalk barked, and Sy?alia didn''t have a damn choice but to listen to him¡ªmana coiling through her Gold-sense, she stumbled over the desiccated corpse of a platemail bug and charged, daggers out and rigid, through the darkness. Right, straight, right¡ªpulling directions seemingly out of his ass she followed his words like they were all she had, baring her fangs, still the thrall lingering in the depths of her awareness. Until eventually, with aching, heaving breaths, Ghasavalk slowed¡ªSy?alia stumbled back to meet him, huddled in the darkness, glaring at the algae like that would hold it back. All she needed was a second, just to think, just to¨C to understand what had happened. "Hells," she gasped, fingers knotted through her hair like it would do a damn thing. "Hells, fucking hells, what was that thing?" Ghasavalk breathed, a heady, shallow thing. "A Chosen," he said grimly, mana still sparking around his black eyes. "A being of the dungeon. Power above what is known to be had and to own." Gods. Lovely. She''d thought the dungeon itself was the threat, the passages, the ecosystems tucked beneath old stone and mountains, but it seemed there were monsters aplenty within. Gods. Gods. Ghasavalk grimaced, scrubbing a hand through his hair. "I hoped it did not have them," he muttered, kicking at a greyed strand of algae like he was attacking the snake instead. "We will have to hope there are no more." Sy?alia went very still. Her gaze slid up, carefully, to land on his¡ªin her Gold-sense, there was little more than shadows for a face, but it was enough to see he was looking back at her. There was nothing to see but the hollow of his furrowed brows. "That sounds like you think we''ll be continuing forward," she said, very delicately, a dagger''s edge. Ghasavalk did not hear the danger, or he ignored it, and merely inclined his head. "We will continue." Sy?alia laughed. It was a wild and bruised sound, ferocious and fanatical, the delirium of encountering a moron your life was now sworn to in the depths of this accursed place. "Are you mad?" She shouted, knuckles white around her dagger. "We will continue," Ghasavalk repeated mildly. "I''m sorry," she said, hissing in a way that burned of the opposite meaning, "but we nearly died. Your grasp of the fucking mind doesn''t seem to matter much when someone else can grasp the other side, huh? If you''re as damn useless as I thought?" She was breathing hard, air hissing between her clenched teeth. This was¨C she wasn''t like those barbaric Golds, those who sought for Electrum and Mythril, who wanted to scar their names across the sky. She didn''t need this dungeon, didn''t need this threat, didn''t need this death. But Ghasavalk merely stood there. "I believe you misunderstand," he said, and he looked at her, and he was speaking Viejabran but she stiffened regardless. "From the mind of the beast, I took knowledge of these tunnels. I know the way out¡ªand I know the way down." Sy?alia couldn''t look away. "We will continue," he said, "and I will lead you out once we are through; or you may go alone." She didn''t know how to read him, how to examine his face in the darkness and see what he was thinking; but he spoke with bland apathy, and there was no mocking lilt to his voice, no pressing manipulation. It was a fact¡ªshe came with him, or she fought the serpent. Gods, she hated him, something old and aching. No wonder the First Mate had paired them together¡ªGhasavalk was little more than the monsters he hunted. "Fine," she bit out, and stepped back. "Fucking¨C fine, you bastard. Lead the way." Ghasavalk inclined his head and started down the tunnels again. She snarled in silence and followed. There was no need for corpses now, with Ghasavalk leading them with soulless ease; but the creatures increased, hungry, boiling at the seams as the mana thickened around them. More serpents, with eyes that burned blue as soon as she saw them¡ªfaster and faster she killed them, panting, blood slicking over her calves and pooling in her boots. Her Gold-sense hissed, retreating from her eyes in a flash of mana¡ªafter the endless darkness of the tunnels, this was the sun, arching through her eyes in the white of quartz-light and the subtle green of algae-light. She hissed, slipping from the world for a momentary relief, coalescing but a second later to look upon this new threat. A forest, or a blind man''s idea of it¡ªinstead of normal trees there were twisted stone growths, spidering outward, and instead of leaves they were crowned in algae, roiling masses of green. Something like a memory of a jungle, just wrong enough it reflected in the corners of her mind, like the spider-choked mangroves from the second floor. The dungeon certainly had a theme. The room itself was enormous, a sprawling cavern of monumental heights, jagged and wild in its freedom, an aching contrast to the rest of the floor. Trees scattered throughout, dens carved into the surrounding walls, a mess of madness. She did not like it, but she saw it, and she carved it into her memory. Enough to tell the Scholar, to tell Lluc¡ªsurely it would be enough, with the crocodile''s corpse and the knowledge of the dungeon''s Chosen. It was weak, it was pathetic, but she looked to Ghasavalk to see if he agreed. By the look in his eyes, he did not. "We go on," he said blandly, uncaring, and strode into the false woods. Sy?alia bared her teeth, knuckles white around her daggers, but didn''t dare stay alone in this unknown territory. Moss billowed around her, gentle swaying fields like a prairie if the stone hanging overhead wasn''t deterrent enough, the scattered grasp of stars. More of the bulbous spiders she''d had the pleasure of avoiding with her Gold-sense in the dungeon proper skulked here, weaving webs of pure iron and stone and jewels, jagged enough to cut to shreds, watching her with beady eyes. Serpents slithered through, both luminous constrictors and odd hooded ones and even those that left pale scales scattered in their wake, but the monster was not there, and Sy?alia slipped from the world to avoid their gaze as Ghasavalk pushed them away with careful words. Onward they crept, sticking to the sides, out of the main light. An idea that backfired as Sy?alia stepped too close to a den''s hollow in one side wall and something scurried from its depths, tail lashing behind¡ªa rat. Impressive. A rat on its hind legs, far larger than any others she''d seen before, and with a coiling spark of mana wrapped deep in its chest and threading through its channels. Hells. Mages. She could go intangible all she liked, but that form was pure mana¡ªsomething that was, unfortunately, rather receptive to other mana. That was why she had never been a fighter, never a star clawing for higher glory; her attunement carried her to aces in the mundane, amidst the Unranked and Bronzes who could do little more than touch her, but it did not have the same weight in the upper echelons. But then came First Mate Lluc and fucking Ghasavalk, and that choice had been removed from her. The rat scampered forward, earthen brown fur stirring in an unfelt breeze; it had green eyes, little emeralds in the depths of its face, and a hunger that had nothing to do with food beyond. "Back," Sy?alia snarled, daggers held out like twin promises. "Or I will wipe your miserable line from existence." It squeaked, ears flicking up. Jade energy flicked over its claws, curving up the length of its tail. Hells. This would not be where she died. Sy?alia slipped from the world and threw herself back, deeper into the room, following the call of Ghasavalk''s mana¡ªand from behind, a lance of green, spiraling through her intangible form with a deep, bonecrushing crack. She flew, half from speed and half from force, mana pushed apart and scattered; coalesced on her knees, slumping forward, arm reforming seconds after the rest of her body had already come together, nearly blown away. Blood poured from her scalp, from her shoulder; gentle little cuts, all things considered, but they were wide and they were long and they burned, heavy in the knowledge the rat had been powerful enough to unmake her if it had so gotten the chance. Even now, she could feel it, could feel more of them, gathering forces somewhere in the floor. Sy?alia staggered upright, dragging herself to her feet, heart thundering in her chest. Too powerful. It was¨C it was a fucking rat, how had it carved such a clean blow through her? They had to leave. But Ghasavalk wasn''t looking at her. He was standing in the middle of the room, head tilted to the side, looking to the far back with such a look of empty curiosity it made her teeth ache. "The den," Ghasavalk murmured, eyes enormous in his face. "There is a person within, no?" She didn''t care. She didn''t fucking care. "Ghasavalk," Sy?alia hissed, blood carving a line down her face. It had been so long, so terrifyingly long since she had been touched by physical pain, by something more than the strain of overdoing her attunement or the general scuffs of a living life. Reaching Silver had smoothed over most mortal concerns and Gold even moreso, but now she was here, and there was blood in her face, and she hadn''t escaped. Mages in the walls, and more unknown dangers below. The den didn''t matter¡ªthey had to leave. Ghasavalk stared forward and did not move, but his attention flicked, eyes shifting to the side like he had sensed something. He exhaled, very softly. And, with a pouring of icy regret down her spine, Sy?alia turned to see a serpent. Not one of the luminous constrictors, something longer, with deep grey scales and a flared hood and glowing blue eyes. It stared at her, unmoving, until the gleam in its eyes disappeared, and from the tunnel entrance of the room slithered the crowned monster. Gods, it was back. Slowly it moved, slender in its bulk and graceful in its movement; not a creature of hunting like its underlings, for the fangs and the fury, but its horns gleamed with moonlit power and the aura that spilled forth was undeniable. A beast above any this dungeon had to offer. Sy?alia grasped for her mana, coiled it through her spine like a living thing. She would not fall under its thrall again. It came through the forest to coil before them, and all around, from every corner of the hall and dens and patches of billowing moss, a horde came to follow. Serpents of every kind, moving with the blind obedience of the foolish, of the fallen. A thrall, or maybe it didn''t have to be¡ªmaybe they served willingly. Sy?alia snarled. And Ghasavalk stepped forward, arms spread. "Chosen," he said, and gods, he was talking to the fucking thing, chatting like some amicable friend over lunch no matter the stiffness to his spine. He should have been crawling for his life, not¨C not whatever the fuck this was. "I do not mean harm." Yeah, well, the serpent sure did. It seemed to agree with her, four eyes flashing, a flicker of mana arching over its crown of horns. Not one for immediate attacks, though for the life of her¡ªwhich might not be all that much longer¡ªSy?alia couldn''t figure out why. Why it hadn''t struck as soon as it''d seen them in the tunnel, or commanded its horde to take them out, why it was playing around in this fa?ade of something else. Why it was letting Ghasavalk talk to it. And then she saw Ghasavalk''s eyes gleam, a spark of light, like it was talking back. All of her prayers had never seemed so useless. "Ah," Ghasavalk said, still unconcerned, still uncaring. "Will you let us pass?" The serpent rumbled. That was a no, then. Sy?alia tightened her grip on her daggers, mana coiling fragile grips through her spine. This was not an ideal world, far from it, some mockery of hells from a pious fool who hadn''t yet realized they would not win their deity over; but Sy?alia had been through these hells before. She''d gotten herself sworn from every dungeon in Le¨®ro, Abhal¨®n, and the Wandering Empire¡ªand those were only the ones organized enough to bar her entry, rather than simply trying to run her through. She would not die here. She would not. "Apologies," Ghasavalk said, and turned to face her, tilting his head to the side. Stared at her, impassive, the jaded docility that sat on his skin like armour. The serpent hissed, unused to being ignored, but Sy?alia couldn''t tear her gaze from Ghasavalk''s eyes. She saw, much as before, the same man who had dropped the burrowing rat to its death, that had watched its corpse with nothing but idle curiousity. Apologies for what? She wanted to ask, but there was a part of her that knew the answer, and she pulled on her mana a second too late. "Sarnulakh." The air rippled in wake of the word, none of the darkness of their surroundings but something deeper, something old, the weight of worlds and the black between them. Sy?alia hissed and flinched back, but her own attunement slipped away, and she could not look anywhere else. And though she did not speak his language, still the word sunk through her, and still she understood. Distract. Her daggers came up unheeded, unchallenged, the thrall settled deep and rotted into her core. She turned to face the serpentine beast, face slack, movements sure but not her own¡ªthe dungeon sank its fangs into her shoulders but it would no longer be her death, not as her consciousness buried beneath the darkness of Ghasavalk''s command. Lunge forward, the hollowness in her mind murmured, beneath her screams of fury, and her body obeyed, blades up. The monster''s crown of horns glowed, its horde racing at its call. Her last sight, before Sy?alia Celess¨¦ Temoro lost herself to the battle and the blood and the breaking, was Ghasavalk, strolling through the mist-choked lands, as he disappeared down to deeper floors. Chapter 123 - Soliloquy Beset on every side, a horde surrounding and a thrall in her mind, the Gold still did not die quickly. Sy?alia, able to drift into clouds of mana and flit from danger like any spriteling in ocean pools, attacking with a fury that didn''t reflect to her blank eyes. One word¡ªsarnulakh, in whatever tongue that was¡ªand she''d quite abandoned her desire to flee for something more bloody. Veresai answered her in kind, an endless army of serpents, spiders beyond, the warbling cry of lesser creatures, and the Gold''s death was assured. But I didn''t want her to die, because she wasn''t the only fucking threat in my dungeon. Because as Veresa''s horde continued their vicious attacks, the mage ratkin launching great beams of mana and tearing free strips of armour, someone continued to descend to deeper floors. Ghasavalk. Deep in the darkness of the den, past the thrall he''d slipped into Sy?alia''s mind with the command distract¡ªnot even speaking to my creatures, just at the clever-fingered Gold he had seen no harm in casting aside like an Unranked commoner. Whatever the language he spoke, whatever mana he wielded, had made Sy?alia seem irresistible, a siren''s call of mana to hunt, as she spun around their attacks with blistering grace unhindered by mere mortal things like fear and self-protection. Veresai seemed a monster, with her power to pull people under her command¡ªbut I had taken comfort in her being my monster. Ghasavalk was not. Every time one of Veresai''s horde made to look back to their den, to follow the screaming commands I heaped in their mind to get them to go fight the actual bloody threat, Sy?alia was there, slamming her dagger hilts into their skulls or lashing out with an armoured kick. A living distraction, but the further Ghasavalk descended, the less and less his thrall held over her¡ªalready her movements grew sloppier, mind torn between the dark and the dreaming, between the commands and the consciousness. Lovely, really. I was so interested in watching how his power worked. I was just slightly, tinily, infinitesimally more interested in killing him. Not her, I snarled, the roaring bite of mana sinking through their skulls. Not her. Him! Hunt! But whatever he''d done, whatever stinking, insidious power that cloaked Sy?alia held strong. He turned through the tunnels with careless ease, guiding himself like he had been born in these darkness-choked lands without mind nor care of creation. My hunting mantises and shardrunner spiders were hardly passive prey but that meant all but hells to him with his fucking mind control, the simple little words in his odd tongue that pushed them away like wafting breezes. I sat overhead, and I seethed, and I felt a fury well beyond what I could have wielded. A dreadful thing, sometimes. To be a dungeon core. It was to live again, to spread my power as great as the gods above; but all while trapped in marble, in the swirling red-black stone that had been my heart. Though there would be at least one death to satiate me. Sy?alia wheezed, an empty, fluttering sound that rattled in her chest¡ªblood beaded and spilled over her skin, shallow cuts from where the mage ratkins had billowed apart her intangible form. Still fighting, but now of her own accord, which meant viciousness with one eye pinned to the back of the Stone Jungle like she thought she could escape. A fanciful dream, but an impossible one. She would not just be leaving. But that was a question to puzzle over when I didn''t have a fucking threat marching its way merrily down towards my core, so I dumped a few dozen points of awareness over her head and flew down to the depths beneath the Jungle Labyrinth. Down and down and down, Ghasavalk went, through the tunnels I''d painstakingly carved, the ones that had never felt a human''s feet beyond Nicau, until he emerged into the awe of my fifth floor. There was a part of me, however small, that was more curious than afraid. The Skylands were so recently completed, mana arching together in synchronicity and new godly boons, and it hadn''t been tested for a very long time. I would have preferred some slinking Silver who I could be assured would be stomped dead well before they could make it deeper, but I would take what I got. And what I got was Ghasavalk drawing to a halt in the Skylands, steps freezing beneath, looking out over the wonder and splendor and glories of the mist-choked isles forked through with blue-white lightning and the shriek of distant predators. "Oh," he breathed, something soft and startled¡ªI preened like a luxurious beast. The first time any foolish eyes unaccustomed to my beauty had laid eyes on my floor, and at least he wasn''t enough of a coward to appreciate what lay before him. Well deserved. Short lived, however, as pragmatism took back over; Ghasavalk hummed, mana crackling around his eyes, spilling from his teeth like fangs. More of his commands, I guessed, more of those infuriating words that kept my creatures at bay; but oh, I rather thought he''d find this floor a touch too much for his liking. This was not the cramped tunnels of the Jungle Labyrinth, where my monsters came at him one-by-one, or those of higher floors, much weaker than those fed by deeper mana. Gold he was, but a dungeon was I. In fact, I prowled closer as he took his first steps into the Skylands, eyes still wide and a gleam of confusion as he took in the exotic sights. Already I could see his death playing out before me¡ªperhaps the bladehawk would spear him through the heart, or the storm eel would sink her twin jaws into her first terrestrial prey, or the¨C The awareness swept over me like tar. Akkyst was here. Akkyst, asleep, slumbering under the weight of the new Name I''d so graciously bestowed upon him, unconscious to the world. He would be out for days, if what had happened with Seros and Veresai was any indication, and in that time he was pressingly, achingly defenseless. A starwrought bear, silver-furred and scholarly-minded, but that meant nothing if he was asleep. Ghasavalk did not seem one much for killing¡ªthat had only been Sy?alia, for all he held my creatures still and docile under her knife. But I wasn''t much interested in finding out if that stayed true. Akkyst was little more than a body to be slain now, and that meant I had to find him guardians. Ah. My mana coiled to a dagger''s point. There was someone in the room with him, who had sworn to protect him, for as much as one was a humanoid and one was a cave bear; and he was the only one around, the only one with the teeth that I could manipulate enough to listen beyond the raid-frenzy. Gods, I hated this. But I was not quite so proud as to abandon my newest Named. If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. Rise, I snarled, fierce and desperate, into Bylk''s mind. The faux-leader of the Magelords snorted, mana popping lazily to his grasp. Rise, you blinding fool, defend! The ratty, disgusting goblin drifted out of unconsciousness, one hand resting on Akkyst''s back, stripes over his skin rippling as he sat upright. Geriatric toddering idiot, but Ghasavalk was coming, and I didn''t have the luxury of choosing my army. Defend! "Danger," Bylk rasped, phlegm thick in his throat and crust over his eyes but listening, hearing my words. "What?" Hunter, I said, mana jolting through his mind. Hunter above. Keep from Akkyst. Bylk''s shoulders stiffened, dragging himself upright as his lip curled. "Supposed to attack it, then?" Gods, how I wanted them to¡ªripping Ghasavalk to shreds under elemental powers and the bite of a thousand-coloured fingers would bring me joy well beyond what I had felt in a millenia. He deserved it, the fucking bastard. But I had seen what simple work he had made of my monsters, of Sy?alia, and there was something I was not willing to risk. No, I said, though it was active poison to admit such weakness. Keep from Akkyst. Do not let reach. I didn''t want it to reach such depths, but I had two more floors beneath this one; better to push Ghasavalk down to the Hungering Reefs then pull him between the islands of the Skylands, where Akkyst was an abandoned hatchling in the deep sea. He would not survive it, even if the Magelords managed to kill Ghasavalk afterward. Bylk squinted, scratching idly at a tuft of white hair. "If you''re sure," he said dubiously, which did make me want to flay him alive. "S''not like we can''t hold ourselves in a fight." I wasn''t worried about him, the blundering idiot. So I didn''t bother him with a response and just darted away, back up through the mist, through the crackling clouds and the energy that seeped deep and heavy through the air. Already Khasvar''s boon made a name for itself, my ambient mana forking out in jagged blows that caught and redirected themselves in electric fragility. A hellscape I couldn''t be more pleased with. Without Sy?alia, Ghasavalk was not the untouched god he had been before¡ªhis tongue only moved so fast and these were flying predators, those with speed and storms on their side. Already some greater pigeons flew with lightning that crackled along their wings, the bladehawk''s feathers taking a thundering echo, and these were not what psionic powers could fight against. Ghasavalk snarled, tearing a baterwaul out of the air when it flew too close¡ªhe crushed it between his palms, viscera splattering under his boots, and marched on. More points of awareness spiraled over him, my attention hanging heavy¡ªbecause he was still moving, stumbling through my islands as more and more of my creatures came alive in the frenzy to attack. Beneath him, mirroring his movements under the stone, Bylk led a collection of Magelords¡ªthe cloudskipper wisps had woven a tight enough net of mist to keep them hidden from Ghasavalk, even with his Gold-sense, since it seemed he still had to focus his attention in whatever direction he was suspicious of to use it, and my lovely wisps had made the clouds thick enough he clearly didn''t think there was a drop there. Lovely to know that was how it seemed to invaders. I''d be remembering that. And then, some hundred feet from the end, dripping scarlet from dozens of minor wounds and shoulders slumped with an exhaustion I took exquisite satisfaction in, Ghasavalk paused. Mana lit up the corners of his eyes, something deep and thrumming¡ªbefore him, some stars aligned and softened the mist just enough to let him look past the last island, to see the room that hummed and sparked with mana. The room that had housed my core for so long, the longest of any of my floors, and still held the remains of my presence. But Ghasavalk wasn''t looking at it with hunger, with the foolish bite of adventurers looking for whatever would satiate their fill. No. He seemed almost curious. "Draconic," he murmured, hands clasped before him like an idiotic human''s prayer. His head tilted to the side, static energy crackling up his long loops of hair. "I see." Just what did he see? I was ever so curious, and my curiosity had always come with teeth. Ghasavalk hummed, something flaring in his black eyes, and made to move closer over the islands¡ªanother snapped word kept back a cloud of swarming wasps, nearly invisible in the cloudskipper wisp''s wake, but the stupid Gold-sense seemed irritably apt at detecting them. He padded over another island, staying tight to the center, even as Bylk guided Magelords to mirror his movements beneath the stone. Nearing the end, well over halfway there¡ªhe was so fucking close to my hoard room, awash with silver and runes. Already my mana surged beneath, waking Chieftess and Nicau in the Hungering Reefs, preparing for him to make it below. I would not die here, that was for certain. Psionic powerhouse though he might have been, that did not mean he would defeat me. And then, from the depths, from the darkness at the back of the hoard, a monster emerged. My monster. Seros, droplets sparkling off his scales and horns thrust back, stalked forward from the mist. Gravitas spilled from him like a struck bell, the ringing of power beyond that Aiqith lent out to mortal creatures, a gleam in his golden eyes like inner fire. Ghasavalk went very still. Whatever confidence he''d had shriveled away as Seros prowled forward, claws tearing furrows in the stone, tail lashing behind in slithering fury. "Another Chosen," he whispered, barely a sound in the air. Damn right I had more Named. The invader stood there, knuckles white, breathing in gentle, rhythmic patterns that did little to stave off the panic I could smell building within. "Thank you for your care, dungeon," Ghasavalk said, leaning his head back to widen his gaze, through the trembling clouds of mist like I lurked beneath the grey. His attention did not leave Seros. "I will not bother you further." Oh, he''d certainly been bothering me. Seros felt that sting of my fury through our connection and rumbled, something deep and thunderous in his chest. He didn''t have wings but gravitas flared behind him, spread to capture the scene, mist swirling at his beck and call¡ªnot his typical hydrokinesis, but still something within his power. He''d grown quite far from the cantankerous brute of his past. "I do not mean you harm, dragon," Ghasavalk said, palms out. He took slow, careful steps back, eyes fixed forward, and wariness curled around his shoulders. "Your master will not be troubled by me today. I made no attempts on the core." Oddly presumptuous. Oddly specific. Seros hissed. He agreed. Ghasavalk inclined his head, as if a dueler to another, and started walking backward. A fool''s retreat. My creatures sensed weakness and darted in, feathers bristling, claws extended, talons poised¡ªanother Magelord, clinging to the side of an island. Her claws bit into the wall and skittered, barely out of adolescence and with a burning desire to prove herself, slunk up the stone gripways her kind had built, blue-black ears pricked and mana humming over her fingers¡ªone lucky swipe, barely a scratch, anything to break his concentration. Seros snarled and lunged¡ªGhasavalk gathered his mana and threw. "Khang?i!" The Magelord froze, tumbling off her precarious perch¡ªthe storm eel shuddered to a halt, fangs bared¡ªeye-blight butterflies collapsed under their own unmoving weight. The Skylands creaked and crashed in absence of movement. My beautiful, lovely, wonderful draconic monitor stayed charging. True, honest fear flashed through Ghasavalk''s eyes and he ducked under the attack, almost throwing himself off the island¡ªSeros'' tail lashed and mist swirled around him, breaking vision, scattering composure. Ghasavalk''s eyes burned with Gold-sense and he threw himself back, limbs clattering over the stone. After him! I shrieked, voiceless in fury¡ªmy creatures lost themselves to the raid-frenzy but then Ghasavalk abandoned all poise and ran, the cluttered, awkward movements of one unfamiliar with it, and threw himself into the tunnel. Greater pigeons and bladehawk feather skunk into the stone a heartbeat after he had been there. Seros howled, a terrible and furious sound, and pursued. Up Ghasavalk ran, panting, mana coiling through his limbs in desperation strength¡ªinto the Stone Jungle. Sy?alia was still there, though hardly for long, eyes blurry with fatigue and losing blood far faster than she regained it, slinking back from the serpentine horde like it would save it. She stared at Ghasavalk, mouth dropping in shock, before fury overtook it. He didn''t care. Just jerked his arm out at her, fingers curled. "Sarnulakh!" Once more the thrall overtook her, irresistibility coiling over her skin, and he sprinted past her with harsh, wheezing gasps. Seros exploded into the Stone Jungle, fangs bared and a curtain of water swirling over his scales, and promptly fell upon Sy?alia with a roar. No! I screamed to him, but Ghasavalk''s thrall was a wretched thing, and even as she lost an arm in the process Sy?alia threw herself at Seros with fury artificially manufactured in her slashing daggers. Ghasavalk disappeared back into the tunnels. More and more of my creatures awoke, hungering, but still he''d memorized the tunnels in whatever he''d ripped from Veresai''s mind and he hadn''t lost it yet, darting his way up and through with frightful precision. He dodged the stalking jaguar, the shardrunner spiders, even the midnight cave bear that lumbered from the shadows¡ªand then he dovely freely into the Underlake. The armoured jawfish lunged for him, the royal silvertooth gathering his controlled servants; but Ghasavalk was only wearied by exhaustion, not defenseless. Psionic mana curled insidiously over his tongue. And then he grabbed the sarco''s corpse, the lovely, wonderful thing I had grown so fond of, and dragged her through the cove entrance, and disappeared. Well. Shit. Chapter 124 - Ferality That was. Ah. Ghasavalk disappeared from the cove entrance, clutching the corpse of the sarco, and faded beyond my sight. Gone, then. But not dead. Not damaged. Not destroyed. Seros had scared him off. Maybe they could have fought, but I wasn''t about to ignore that he had needed to sacrifice Sy?alia to distract Veresai, rather than command her directly. My Named were not to be sucked under his thrall, lost to the power of his words. He had known that. Had been aware of it enough to immediately cut his losses when Seros entered the battlefield. I did not understand his powers, not in the slightest. He had not been defeated by my dungeon, hardly even threatened¡ªit had been his choice, careless and casual, to leave. He had merely decided that the time was right to dip his head and retreat back to the shadows, to curl up without exposing his stomach and venture to higher planes. His fellow Gold he had left as some parting gift, a reason to keep Veresai pinned to her floor as he ventured further; it had been entirely his decision. I had not beaten him. And though he had neither beaten me, it didn''t feel like a victory. Fucking hells. All this time I had feared and gnawed over choices regarding lesser Silvers, and I had never quite realized that the threat was far greater. At least there was one mercy in this world¡ªand that was Seros, mist coiling around his body and flowing from his scales like makeshift wings, tearing into Sy?alia. She''d already lost an arm to his claws and was stumbling drunkenly back, a fumbling thing in the darkness and the horde, and his fangs snapped her head from her shoulders with easy precision. Ghasavalk''s thrall held until the last second. She twitched once, shuddering, and died. And power exploded outward. She had been a Gold. Whatever mana was hidden under Sy?alia''s skin was far and above anything I''d seen before, and I knew just how powerful Silvers were. I still didn''t understand the specifics of how killings worked in my dungeon, how the mana was divided amongst the victors, but I knew there was something deliberate about it. In the way that the kobold traps gave back to those that had created them, and how Chieftess earned from directing her tribe in battle, and how the webweavers split their kills evenly. So it would not just be Seros, with his fangs stained red with blood, who would benefit¡ªVeresai, her horde, the mage ratkins, and all others would receiving this mana, bright and sparking and more than there had ever been before, and I couldn''t wait to see what happened. And I wouldn''t have long to wait, as almost immediately, my core lit up in golden letters. I pounced on the information with glee. The Stone Jungle burst into light, the shuddering glory of power beyond¡ªhalf a dozen luminous constrictors immediately settled into becoming crowned cobras, no other options of particular interest, and fighting Sy?alia had shown me the versatility of ranged opponents. They hissed once, a pleased, lazy sort of sound, and curled up under their glow. Two more had the option of becoming jeweltone serpents, with their burgeoning interest in magic perhaps from their continued rivalry with the mage ratkins, and I wasted no longer before selecting that. I would certainly never reject magic. But they were not the only options. For in the far back, right next to Sy?alia''s sluggishly-bleeding corpse, collapsed on the ground with a wound over its head¡ªa luminous constrictor, one who had nearly given its life to kill Sy?alia. Its eyes were glassy with pain, breathing with a rasp in its scaled chest, but it was still alive, and now Gold-level mana exploded through it.
Congratulations! Your luminous constrictor is undergoing evolution! Please select your desired path. Jeweltone Serpent (Rare): Learning from those around it, they sacrifice their scales for the elegance of gems. Though they are slow and ponderous, they can force great feats of magic, and only need replace their jewels once they are used up. Astral Constrictor (Uncommon): Alight in the glow of the stars, this creature has learned from the psionic touch of its empress and found solace in its power. It serves as a gleaming reflection for her reach, greatly strengthening her presence. Spectral Serpent (Rare): The paleness of its scales are more than disguise; it slips between the death and the dreaming, phasing from the world to hide from mortal worries. Its strikes are unseen, its fangs unnoticed, until the moment is far too late.
Well. That was certainly an unexpected range. I hadn''t particularly noticed this serpent before, simply one more of Veresai''s endless horde, but it had thrown itself into the fray with a determination that did not come commonly to the more passive constrictors. It¡ªhe¡ªwas an old thing, though not enormously so, but serving the empress serpent had granted him far more mana that he would have found on the higher floors. Appropriate, really. There was a reason Veresai had been so frightening Ghasavalk had rather sacrificed Sy?alia than face her head on. But those evolution options were tempting for all different kinds of reasons. Not the jeweltone, given I had others of those, but between astral and spectral¡ªhm. Astral did immediately call to me, if only for giving Veresai another fang to adorn her well-deserved crown, even if I didn''t fully understand what power he would be granting her. Spectral was easy enough to tell, taking from Sy?alia''s attunement, and that power certainly seemed the kind welcome in my halls. The choice wasn''t only mine, however. I ducked into his head, hazy under the pressing weight of evolution, and scanned through what ran there. And I saw, in his thoughts, a fear¡ªa deep and gripping fear, the kind that came from the wound he had sustained in battle. It would have been a mortal wound for a creature outside of my dungeon, without my healing touch and the mana flowing throughout. Not even the blade of her dagger, just the pommel, struck over the head hard enough to knock scales loose and send him flopping to the ground. Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. The fear of the death, after he had pushed himself to attack. A terribly wretched kind of fear. And one I could allow him to avoid. I selected spectral serpent, to let him dive between worlds and escape unharmed from wounds like these. He disappeared under the glow, his scales losing what little colour they had already, a ghost soon to be born from the fear. Something I would certainly welcome. And more in the Stone Jungle¡ªfar from the fight, having taken a position crouched on an extended piece of stone with her little paws held up and mana sparking over her emerald eyes, the eldest mage ratkin shuddered as the weight of Sy?alia''s death fell over her. A long time coming. I dove into her options with a pleased sort of purr.
Congratulations! Your mage ratkin is undergoing evolution! Please select your desired path. Illusionist Ratkin (Rare): Small in size but large in creativity, it whips together great whorls of mana to cast a shadow far larger than any it could have. Hulking and deadly, or slinking invisible, or distractingly bright; any form is theirs to conjure. Forestfall Ratkin (Rare): Caretaker and commander of nature, this creature uses its nature attunement to control great swathes of forests and flora, to serve at its biding and do as beckoned. Dire Rat (Uncommon): A beast of untold potential. For too long have they skittered underfoot, unfeared as mere vermin; no longer. Growing to monstrous sizes with fangs and fury alike, they are the fear of many an adventurer.
Her mind was soft with evolution already, humming under the light that covered her earthen brown fur, but even then I felt her pride. She had been the first of my rats to truly carve an empire for herself, to scrape and tear mana from the jewels I''d strewn about the Fungal Gardens. Long ago had she evolved, and then taken other rats under her wing, shown them the power of consumption when the prize was a mana-filled jewel. Oh, how the dire rat called to me, a monster of endless size, and the illusionist ratkin, with deceit above anything my dungeon had; but she had swallowed the gem to earn her mana, and I would not part her from it. I selected forestfall ratkin, and pushed vague thoughts of satisfaction through to her. She churred, a soft and gentle sound, and curled up under a bed of billowing moss. I would protect her while she slept, but after that, I rather suspected there would be little on this floor that could challenge her properly, not with the forest under her command. As a sea-drake, I had been well-content with my size as the greatest deterrent, but small things could often be just as deadly as those enormous. If not more. Oh, she would be quite a little monster when she finished evolving. I couldn''t wait. Even now, the Stone Jungle echoed in the wake of those evolutions, Sy?alia''s corpse steaming as her mana flooded out of her in great pulsing bounds. Veresai hissed, a deep and rumbling sound, her horns gleaming with the deep blue-white of starlight. She seemed a touch peeved she hadn''t evolved also, even as the mana flooded through her. A greedy thing she was. But she''d proven her might, and the fourth floor held strong under her command, for all that Ghasavalk had scraped his way deeper. She had earned her strength and the reputation of her floor¡ªthe next evolution would come with time. Empress serpent, Named, and a tyrannical warlord. Truly, she was a creature after my own heart. Beside her, Seros hissed, throat bobbing as he swallowed Sy?alia''s head whole¡ªhis tail lashed and mist scattered from his scales, despite not being on the Skylands, summoned from the air at the call of his blessing. I could feel his displeasure, the burning hatred he felt at having fallen to Sy?alia''s distraction, to Ghasavalk''s thrall¡ªnot something I had exactly prepared him against. Not something I would forget in the future, considering Ghasavalk had survived, and made it out of my dungeon with far more knowledge than I wanted him to have. The fucking bastard. Soon, that Gold-ranked mana of his would be mine, and I would feed his attunement to Nicau like the finest of wines. And then, far above, something distant from Sy?alia and untouched by her mana, another strand of golden letters fluttered through my awareness, the gentle caress of attention. I paused, points of awareness flickering up¡ªhad another creature come in when I had been distracted? Another invader? But no. It was just a lacecap, huddled in the deep darkness of the Fungal Gardens, a rat''s desiccated corpse clutched tight to its rippling base. One that was glowing with the pale light of evolution. Oh. Oh!
Congratulations! Your lacecap is undergoing evolution! Please select your desired path. Shadowed Lacecap (Uncommon): Born from darkness, this mushroom fades from the waking world into the darkness beyond. There is nothing to see, nothing to fear, until those who venture too close are caught. Bloomcap (Uncommon): No longer content with a sheltered territory, it spreads through enormous clouds of spores, filtering through the air. Whatever they land on they grow from, be it land, water, or the lungs of any unfortunate creature. Reaper''s Cap (Rare): The beasts of burden and battle, to be made anew. All those who die within its grasp are puppeted, brought back to undeath, to serve as lures for greater and greater prey.
My word. Rarely had I encountered such a diverse selection of options¡ªthough I supposed that was with the territory of evolutions beyond the first, especially for one that had been within my dungeon for so long. The shadowed lacecap was from Nuvja''s blessing, but the other two were unfamiliar to me¡ªperhaps what the lacecap had earned itself? Even now, looking up, I could see how massive it was; a sprawling thing of frankly unrealistic proportions, gills sprawling out into faux tendrils with the rotten corpses of flies and crickets stuck to the tips. The rat''s body curled around its base, fur sunken in and pale bones sticking through its paper-thin skin, jagged edges protruding as if from a century''s long death. A little monster, and one I hadn''t even noticed until Ghasavalk had fed it. Of all the options, however, there was only one that spoke to what it already had¡ªthe shadowed lacecap was glorious and well deserving on its current floor, and the bloomcap was a killer beyond what could be avoided by mortal means, but that was not the creature I beheld before me. It was a deceitful thing, one built of trickery and lies, and reaper was a deliciously apt word for it. And if reanimating flies was what it had done without an evolution, I couldn''t wait to see what it did after. I selected reaper''s cap and let the pale glow overtake it. And then I sat back, coiling my awareness around my core in a protective spiral, deep beneath the Skylands and the Hungering Reefs and the seventh floor, still unnamed. Once more, the realization of what had actually occurred sunk through me, at the cove entrance, at the missing sarco, at the danger and destruction left behind. Well. I couldn''t quite say I was happy with what had happened, with corpses still rotting through my dungeon and horror left in wake of the escaped Gold, but I was rather pleased with these evolutions. It seemed I would be needing them. Chapter 125 - Come Consequence of Death The gleaming satisfaction of evolutions did sustain me for a while, but I was far too busy to really revel in it. A shame, because I was ever so excited for the reaper''s cap, but the imminent threat of a Gold merrily sauntering his way into my dungeon after escaping with five floors worth of secrets took just a scale more priority. That was the weight and work of it, unfortunately. I darted overhead, scattering points of awareness in my wake like stars; healing mana coiled through the ambient air, crackling over the Skylands in forked points of lightning that both healed and thoroughly shocked anyone they brushed. Back in the Stone Jungle, Seros hissed at Sy?alia''s corpse, slitted pupils narrowed and gravitas pouring off his scales like rising tides. Our connection thrummed with his hunger, at the first true hunt he''d had in a long time that had been just a deception, just a fruitless battle against someone who hadn''t been in their proper fighting mind. He was a champion, my first Named, and this was not a battle he was happy to have won. She was Gold, I murmured, at least a balm over the blasphemy. A good reward of mana. Seros'' thoughts simmered like boiling water. He did not, apparently, see it the same way. What a little sycophant. He wanted to get stronger, which means he needed greater ambient mana and larger prey to sate his fill, and then he was pissed that he didn''t get to fight the same level of invaders he had before. As if he would be happy clawing miserable little Bronzes to death and potentially chipping a fang. He needed to go work through his frustrations in a battle with the sea serpent. He had grown from fledgling to juvenile, a true monster in the third room of the Hungering Reefs; his attacks cleaved stone from walls and he regularly devoured roughwater sharks to satiate his hunger, and all those within my halls knew to fear him. His battles with Seros were legendary. In another world, Seros had fought with the sarco, a training companion of similar size. But he was dead, and now she was dead, and the Underlake was missing its monarch. Ghasavalk would pay with blood and consequence for killing her and taking her corpse; I knew I needed to make a new one, to fill the void left behind by the end of the apex, but there was a biting urge of melancholy that roiled in my core. Two sarcos had I had, and both had died. Neither had even been in glorious battle, in victories that came with their sacrifice; the first had killed the dryadic fighter, but the other had needed to be killed by Seros. Ghasavalk and Sy?alia had killed her without more than minor injuries¡ªand she''d been so clever. Her thoughts had been full of some melody deep in her mind, a Song she spoke of with great reverence and wonder. A call to magic more than might, something that her evolution would have given her in spades. It would have. If she hadn''t died. To be a dungeon was to be one of death. Dozens upon dozens of invaders had entered my halls, and many of them hadn''t left. I had relished in their demise, in the mana I had won from it; I didn''t care about them, and frankly I refused to. They had made the choice to come seek treasure with a garotte around their necks. But my creatures didn''t have that choice. They were born within my halls, to live in a paradise¡ªand they were killed before they could ever reach their heights. The sarco, perhaps, could have been a mage. She had been reborn from a fossil, found nowhere else on Aiqith, and she had been so hungry for power. For something beyond what she had already had. And she was dead. I needed a distraction. I would come back to the question of new sarcos when I was more stable, when I had accomplished something other than letting a Gold with intricate knowledge of my first five floors slip through my clutches with corpses in his grasp, when I could focus past the death and the destruction and the decay¡ªso I pushed Seros to venture back to the Hungering Reefs, to carve his frustrations into the only creature large enough to go claw-to-scale against, and fled myself down to lower floors. Past the lightning, past the reefs, to the smoke far beneath. Still unfinished, still empty and yearning with its ten thousand foot sprawl, but I never felt better than when I dug my claws into a project, and this was one I had many ideas for. The basalt pillars. The endless smoke. The untitled land. In concept, the floor was simple and beautiful for it, and I couldn''t love it more. For all I was still not a fan of fire and smoke, such dreadfully garish manners of destruction with little more spark of creativity than muddy earth, I had imbued a certain elegance of my own make into this seventh floor, and I treasured it dearly. The billowing black choked out the floor, plunging it into darkness, thick and grey and deep¡ªI had ignited another two furrows with mana from particular invaders to bring it up to nine coal-fires, all for magical cohesion, but I''d filled the rest with pockets of stone and potential. Not enough mana in my stores to create more magma salamanders given their seventeen point cost, unfortunately, but still those three I''d made were living up to the pedestal I''d set them on. Gluttonous, lazy beasts, some five feet long and growing, with cragged skin barely visible beneath the stone they melted under their bulk¡ªglorious. Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original. And then, above on the basalt pillars and darkness skittering around, the bounding deer raced. Still with the eldest leading the original herd, his pale antlers held high and hooves kicking up sparks as he darted over the plains. Already he''d gained a knotted pink burn scar over his hindquarter, where a scorch hound had leapt for him in an attempted hunt¡ªbut he was fast and he was clever, as far as deer went, and he''d managed to escape. Other members of his herd weren''t as lucky, their numbers thinned, but already the scorch hounds were blooming. The hollows between their ribs were filling out, the embers returning brighter than ever to their eyes¡ªthey''d claimed one of the many dens in the far back of the enormous floor, and already a litter of pups was on their way, with the hunting returning true dividends. They hadn''t managed to scratch past the carapace of the mottled scorpions, but they were making steady progress. Everyone on the floor was developing stronger claws, actually, after running over the basalt¡ªalready the scorch hound who had so captured the attention of my beast-tamer kobold had sparks that kicked up around her paws, new fires in the darkness. She was growing exponentially, actually, more than even her pack; something about the kobold working with her¡ªmore accurately, attempting to work with her, she hadn''t really agreed to avail her pack to work with him yet, though he was making progress¡ªhad bolstered her beyond, and she was a beast in the darkness. Larger than the others, faster, more clever¡ªher fangs were always tinged red, and she''d gained back the weight the Skylands had deprived from her. A right monster, she was. And the kobold at her side was positively blossoming in these fiery depths, as much as I deeply, deeply hated it. His scarlet scales seemed iridescent at the edges, charcoal horns growing longer and more ridged, and in the middle of his hunt I''d caught him with smoke trickling from behind his fangs. The absolute asshole. It seemed he was going directly the route of the fire-drakes, the idiotic imbeciles with their garish breath weapons and moronic fighting styles. Well. I had Rihsu, and Chieftess, and all the evolved kobolds from the Hungering Reefs. I would leave this little fool on his own. He fit in with this floor, at least. I hadn''t yet decided on a title for it, something to carve out meaning from the deep and the dark, but fire was unfortunately fitting and belonging here. His evolution was coming extremely soon, I could sense it, and that was even ignoring the bond he was forging with the scorch hound. Whatever he would evolve into, it would be something I would have to live with. Maybe. As proven by Ghasavalk, adventurers could make it down to the lower floors. Perhaps he would be put out of his misery before he could make the regrettable decision to fall to the fire. But as Ghasavalk had also proven, adventurers could make it down to the lower floors¡ªfloors which were not perfect. All creatures here relied on close combat, on invaders getting too close to their magma pool or not seeing them lunging from the darkness; but I did have a schema that hadn''t yet found a proper home in my dungeon. Well. I had given it a home, and then Veresai had killed them all. She was a true delight, at times. The spined lizard would fit well on this floor, though. I gathered all of the mana I''d had before Sy?alia, since I certainly wasn''t using the Gold-attuned points for this; only around twenty, but I wove together a group of four just to seed the population. They were a touch too bright, the majority of their scales being a gold-brown instead of the deep grey of the basalt, but clustered over their backs were black-white spines that bristled and shivered at every movement. They blinked at each other, forked blue tongues flicking out. Their tails flicked. In the distance, a scorch hound howled, and immediately they scattered. Little hooked claws wrapped around the lips of basalt pillars and pulled them up, tails lashing as they ran¡ªeven with gold scales they blended into the darkness almost immediately, lost to the smog and the smoke. Already I could feel them weaken in the acrid environment, little lungs struggling under the grey, but these were common creatures not yet evolved¡ªmy ambient mana flooded through them, powerful and endless. Their little channels thrummed with mana, adapting to this new land, healing what damage the smoke caused. This batch may not survive, considering the other predators here had already gotten quite on their way to perfecting their hunting style, but already I could see the dream¡ªspines launched from towering pillars of basalt, striking from shadows unseen and unheard. There would be nothing that would stop them if they got powerful enough. And in my dungeon, the potential was all there. But for now, those four skittered off to distant corners of the basalt lands, finding the algae pools and carrion left by the scorch hounds, carving out a home amidst the chaos. When I regenerated more mana, I would create more, to pour them into the nooks and crannies to serve as smaller prey for the scorpions that were not quite fast enough to kill either the scorch hounds or bounding deer. But with that, I rocked back, settling in my core with its golden lettering. I peered out, awareness flickering through my various floors, tracing the path that Ghasavalk had taken out of my dungeon. It had taken him and Sy?alia hours to go through my dungeon, even with him stealing paths from Veresai''s mind, and in under a day another adventuring party would be coming through. It would never end, I feared. And I would not die¡ªI refused to die, not again¡ªbut a Gold had escaped. Escaped not just alive but newly bolstered with knowledge, with very uncomfortable information about my floors¡ªI didn''t know all he had learned, but it was clearly something, and that was without what he''d brought in himself. Something about Chosen, he''d said, rather than Named; and about sensing draconic powers and Kriya, deep within Veresai''s den. So. All things considered, not particularly desirable. But I was alive, and Sy?alia was dead, and new evolutions bloomed under my power¡ªand there was still a void in the Underlake, still an emptiness of death, still a dearth of victories. I would not allow it to stand. My gaze slid up, past the floor I was working on, to one that had so recently been tested. Been tested, and held strong. The Jungle Labyrinth had certainly shown its strength. Perhaps it was time it received its just reward. Chapter 126 - Hunter, Fighter Nicau squinted at the gourd. It was. Well. Certainly a gourd, which wasn''t saying much, but he didn''t know what else to say. It was round. Hollow. Curled at the top with an opening below. Orange with scarlet stripes. He had never been eloquent before, but he was beginning to feel rather foolish. "Thing," he said, because of course he did, he hadn''t embarrassed himself enough already. "Used for storing." Chieftess cocked her head to the side, golden eyes furrowed in curiosity. She tapped at the one in her grasp, claws clicking over its surface. Not wood, she warbled, pondering. But plant. Storing? Nicau hummed, fumbling at his waist¡ªhis new coat came equipped with pockets aplenty, little things to tuck trinkets and other safeties around. He plucked out a snake''s vertebrae, one he''d been planning on sharpening into an arrowhead when he had a spare moment, and raised the gourd¡ªdropped it inside. "Storing. Hold many small things together." Chieftess perked right up. Storing! Nicau smiled, despite himself. It wasn''t quite as revolutionary as when he''d shown them fire, when the first orange gleam hit their eyes and he got to watch them understand what true devastation tools and things could wreck; but it was still learning, and it was fascinating to watch. The kobold tribe was still rather juvenile, fumbling through the motions despite being taller and stronger and overall more developed than him. They could rip his arms off with a sneeze, if they wanted. Which was. A very fun thought to have. But still he could teach them, and each of them soaked up the knowledge like lifeblood, and relished in anything they could have. The dungeon had grown gourds over their den, strung through the mangrove branches and twining into the stone. They had taken time to fully ripen, but now dozens of them sat ready for the plucking, with enough still left on the vine to continue ripening. He wanted to see what the next progression of them was, what next they could do. The dungeon had whispered something about mana collection, which would work perfectly for the two shamans that were still wrangling a grasp on their more magical abilities. Slow going, with no one to train them and no one who knew what they were doing. Which was great. But between Nicau and Chieftess, the tribe was sharpening, coming to a dagger''s point in this new land. And what a new land it was. He''d been beyond exhausted when he''d returned from Calarata, hefting the weight of the new reputation he''d apparently decided to start spreading, and after that, all his thoughts had been focused on not offending Seros as he rode on the draconic monitor''s back across the lagoon. He''d seen the beauty, of course, but when you were perched on the back of a lizard that could kill you with a flick of its tail, you tended to hone in on that instead of anything else. When he''d woken up after two days asleep, he''d finally been able to see what was his new home. The Hungering Reefs. This floor was, in all polite terms, insane. He''d thought the underground mangrove canal had been enough to rattle him to his bones, but the dungeon kept finding ways to startle him. One of these days, it would show him a new ecosystem it had built thousands of feet beneath the earth, and he would simply keel over and die. But there was no time for dramatics, not as he and the kobold tribe had found themselves thrown into this new world where the old rules didn''t matter and the threats were higher. The first obstacle¡ªwater. Everything here was covered in it, beyond thin strips of sand and soil where mangroves and palms sprouted. Limiting themselves to land only meant starving much quicker than any of them were necessarily prepared for, and Nicau had really survived too much to go down for a lack of food. So. Water. Rihsu, the first evolved kobold with her deep maroon scales and connection to Seros, had shown them the basics, as unwilling as he''d ever seen a lizard be. Claws as paddles, tail as rudder, muzzle pointed forward to limit catching in the currents; the kobold hunters were taking to it with the most grace, which was still unbelievably far from graceful, and the others resembling half-drowned rats. But they needed food, and food was found in the water, and they were determined beyond belief. Chieftess had occasionally proven herself to be¡­ distressingly incapable of rational thought when she thought there was a battle around. Already Nicau had to trick her away from the fucking sharks on the floor just so she wouldn''t throw herself into the water she could still barely swim in just to fight them. Life wasn''t all challenges, though. The floor, in all its dangers, had amenities to offer. The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation. They''d found a ruby that seemed oddly large and oddly specifically placed¡ªthe dungeon''s offering, though it hadn''t actually wanted to give it to them easily, so instead of creating it in their den it had shunted it off to the far corner of the second room with some thousand feet of swimming to get there. Lovely. But with it, and one of the kobold shamans who had claimed the gem as soon as he''d laid eyes on it, they had still managed to cook their food and char their arrow tips. He''d attached the ruby to the tip of a mangrove branch, tying it in place with sap and resin and plant matter; it wasn''t stable, but it was close enough. The other shaman hadn''t found a gem of her own yet, and she was rightly pissed by it; in the meantime, since she was frankly jealous of her other, she''d clawed a chunk of coral from the edge of the lagoon and tied that onto a mangrove branch as well. Little copycats. They had a nasty habit of flaring their feathered crests at each other, for all they never attacked. But the warriors grew strong and powerful with new fights, the hunters grew lithe and clever with their territory, the shamans grew¡­ slightly less fumbling with magic, and Chieftess bloomed. They weren''t invincible, because this was a dungeon, but Nicau felt pride settle warmly in his chest. And he was hardly falling behind, either. Two companions he''d made¡ªthe parrot, mysterious and entirely unknown, swooped through the trees with piercing shrieks, snagging gourds to eat and smaller pigeons when she felt peckish. The kobolds had been utterly fascinated with her ability to mimic speech, even in empty statements, and she''d been the star of the show for many nights as they crowded around with hooted encouragement. Then there was the shadowthief rat, who perched on his shoulder most days and watched the world with curious eyes, luck broiling in her gut. He still hadn''t figured out if she understood him. Sometimes she did, bobbing her head and obeying, but other times she just chittered with confusion or did the opposite. Maybe purposely. Her species didn''t have a language, so he couldn''t hear what she responded with, but maybe she could still hear him? Much like how he could command animals with shouted commands, for all they wouldn''t understand the word spoken normally? He certainly didn''t know. Pigeons hadn''t been this complicated. She hadn''t been given a name yet, either. The kobolds had mostly picked their own, after their position like Chieftess or other idiosyncrasies they adored; but the rat mostly stole and squeaked, and he wasn''t quite comfortable shackling her to a name she might not even like. And his own magic grew, taking root and spreading into something worthy of terror. He had real muscle behind his voice now, though each command still drained him to the marrow; but once he got over the shame of shouting nonsense at fish, he could force them to freeze for just long enough for a kobold hunter to impale them through and drag them up for a meal. The mana was faster to summon, too, rising quick and light to his tongue. He tested himself on anything that swam near enough the shore, since he wasn''t quite confident enough to try using it while swimming. The sharks were brutish and enormous and utterly uncaring about his mana, swimming by in blissful apathy. Maybe the water made it easier to ignore his commands. But the fish he could grab, and the kraits, and the birds overhead. The new turtle¡ªthe reefback turtle, apparently, the dungeon had whispered to him when he''d asked in all shaking humility some days ago¡ªwas an enormous thing, its shell eight feet across, smooth and sloped down to a mock island on its back. Already clumps of coral had begun to sprout over its scutes, rooting deep in a way that looked remarkably painful, though it didn''t seem to notice. It hadn''t come close enough to the shore for him to try commanding it, but he was waiting. Whatever a reefback turtle was, he was deeply curious in its strength. In everyone''s strength. In how he matched. The Hungering Reefs were a nightmare in many ways. He missed, sometimes with a ferocity that scared him, the comforts of the Drowned Forest; of the swaying mangroves and rushing canals and chittering rats. It hadn''t been safe, not in any sense of the word, but it had at least been a familiar danger. The kind he could predict, if not avoid. This land had none of that. Everything was new and terrifying and entirely unknown, even as he clawed understanding from its pure white sands and glistening blue waters. It was dangerous. It was more. He''d mostly silenced it with his own ambition, with the drive for more that burrowed in his gut like a living thing, but sometimes he still heard Romei''s voice. It felt like a lifetime ago when they''d first poked their heads into the dungeon, dreaming of dragon scales and joining the Dread Crew; when he hadn''t mattered and he''d wanted nothing more than to be someone. Do you want to be worth something? Nicau stood in the entrance of the kobolds'' den, looking out over the cove, stone overhead and blue beneath. Mana thrummed in his veins, trickled over his tongue, languishing at his beck and call for whenever he needed it; soon. He was approaching a threshold, he could feel it, something within them that stretched and yearned and grew under power he had never known before. His original attunement had been all but burned out under the dungeon''s power¡ªthe little thing, hunting for mana trails in the air, a stowaway''s desperate bid for relevance. Now mana scorched from his mouth, commands that caught those who listened to obey and opened ears that could never have understood him. Now he talked with monsters and they talked back; now he made monsters friends, and led them, and guided them to strength that would kill other humans. Now he joined with a dungeon. Now he was the Pirate Lord of Calarata, a mystery from the depths, unknown to any. Perhaps that mugger whose knife he now wielded had spread his name, told the Adventurer''s Guild to expect his arrival in the indistinct future. Now the dungeon spoke through him, a mouthpiece for a well of Otherworld mana and powers beyond human control. It hadn''t happened yet, but he knew it would soon; the day that an invader came down to the sixth floor and saw a human, and relaxed, and spoke to him like an ally. It wouldn''t go like it had before, in that frantic night of panic and desperation as fifty invaders poured into the halls and he''d stabbed someone to death in blind terror with a broken spear. No. When it happened again, he would stand tall, and he would be Nicau, the Pirate Lord, the Communer. Romei hadn''t envisioned this when she''d dragged him to the dungeon; when she sought to make her fortune with a few discarded scales and the prestige they could bring. Nicau hummed, staring over the Hungering Reefs. He tapped his fingers on the hilt of the dagger by his side, the blue-leather coat swirling around his ankles, the parrot perched on his shoulder, the shadowthief rat near his feet, Chieftess at his side. If she could see him now. Chapter 127 - Strands Between In comparison to all my floors, the Jungle Labyrinth was remarkably defined already. Whenever I''d decided to make the last push before, it had always come with the understanding that I had to make changes, to pour deep into the mistakes I''d made in its initial form and carve out the perfection that was hidden underneath; but not so for this one. The Jungle Labyrinth had held its weight under the charge of two Golds, and it was already a beast of tangled vines and impervious passages. A hellscape of my own design, if I did say so myself. Which I did. I poked my way through with numerous points of awareness, tense on the pulse of mana since I couldn''t well peer through the darkness, and poured through the endless tunnels. The floor was enormous and it was content with it; hundreds of separate pathways that all interwoven and connected with each other, forking in and around until it formed a maze so densely layered any invader wouldn''t be able to tell one path from another. Connection points had the thornwhip algae fade and soften so I could create small pockets of safety, with oases of fresh water and soft glows¡ªhalf to give my creatures some respite, and half to terrify invaders, to make them linger in these exposed areas for fear of delving back into the surrounding darkness. It was glorious in every shade of the word. Oh, how I dearly loved this floor. Creatures plodded through the shadows, only those sturdy enough to ignore the lashing arms of the thornwhip algae or cleverly quick enough to avoid them. The platemail bugs, trodding on in their never-ending search for sustenance, or the hunting mantis with their sickle blades and ferocity. Shardrunner spiders, weaving rocky webs between pathways, a promise to cut the head from anyone who ran through with too much vigor. Already some had rust-red iron threads, sickly in the dim. And then, a whisper in the night, the stalking jaguar. She was a monster here, and one well-adept at holding her title. Already she''d grown, reaching some four feet at the shoulder, and her amber eyes were twin torches in the gloom she claimed as her hunting grounds. Still an adventitious thing, unwilling to give up her allyship¡ªshe took to dragging a platemail corpse down to the goblins in the Skylands, keeping what friendship she''d made with Akkyst and the Magelords he commanded, but she always went back up to the Labyrinth. She was the first creature of mine beyond Seros that had tasted the mana density on deeper floors, but still chose to rise back up. Peculiar. I could tell she was powerful and looked to become moreso, hunting more and more dangerous prey, but she hadn''t yet tried to go lower. Maybe she was waiting for a floor more closely aligned to her hunting style. The darkness was perfect for her, but the cramped tunnels, some ten feet, didn''t allow her to build up any speed or clever maneuvering. She''d carved out her territory, once I shoved into Veresai''s head that she wasn''t to be attacked like an invader with a serpentine horde until she died, but their truce was shaky. Any serpents that ventured too far into the tunnels away from the Stone Jungle died in the attempt. The midnight cave bear as well, stomping through the dark. Away from Nuvja''s blessing, he''d taken some time to figure out how to wrangle his shadows, but he was well on his way to becoming little more than a memory of visibility as he stalked. A predator in nearly every sense, considering he still quite preferred snacking on fungal delicacies, but one with teeth that never hesitated to carve victory from the world around. I loved him dearly. ¡­still no jeweled jumper. His absence was beginning to gnaw at me, to scour at my composure; he was too powerful an ally to lose like this, to simply disappear to the shadows of my halls. I knew he wasn''t dead, because I certainly would have felt a soul like his entering my core, and his schema would have been mine. But he was just gone. Even with all my points of awareness, I couldn''t find him. He had evolved at the same time as Veresai, in the same battle against that original cave bear. But his growth had been stagnant, kept to these dark tunnels without greater prey to fight. Veresai had grown through her horde, through her Name, through her spars with my other creatures. But the jeweled jumper hadn''t¡ªhe fought solo, he hadn''t been Named, and his spars were always fatal so there were minimal options for him to train repeatedly. Now he was gone. Worrying. But I couldn''t sit here and panic over a ruby-red ghost in my halls, no matter how much I wanted to find him. The Jungle Labyrinth would be in a fine place for him to return to, whenever he found his way back. So through the tunnels I went, and if I poked my way into the mind of every shardrunner and cave spider I passed, then that was my business, and I busied myself with it as I dove through the tunnels to arrive at the final room. The Stone Jungle. Oh, what a nightmare made incarnate, my beloved. It wasn''t a particularly large room, not when looking at the floor right below, but compared to the cramped tunnels it was an elysium. Rocky trunks draped in green algae like leaves, billowing moss creating pillowy clouds underneath, jadestone moss lacing up the walls to entangle the quartz-lights overhead. Dens on every wall, water pooling in corners, a last few glowing spores from the thornwhip algae floating in from the entrance. And monsters within. The mage ratkins, a bolstering community of little mad mice who had determined their best chance to get ahead in life was to swallow magic stones in the hopes it''d improve them before it killed them¡ªand they were, to the world''s detriment, correct. Their leader slumbered now in unconsciousness, the light of evolution settling on her umber fur, but she''d wake soon enough, and I had little doubt that they''d strike out for greater shores with her at their helm. Hells, maybe she''d take the strongest of them and descend to the Skylands, to partner with the Magelords. What a tribe of insanity they''d become. Burrowing rats, stone-backed toads, lesser scuttling things who did little more than die to become food; food for one creature in particular, my tyrant and her syncophantic horde. Veresai, the empress serpent. I layered her back with points of awareness, curling contentedly around her mind. She was still reeling from Ghasavalk''s invasion, even as her army picked their cut of flesh from Sy?alia¡ªthe last time she''d encountered another psionic creature had been¡­ one of those annoying brutes from the enormous invasion, the one with the blindfold around his eyes. A terribly human name. Uninspired. The same attack she''d gotten Kriya from, who even now was still asleep and looking all the worse for it. But that had been her only other time facing someone who held the same power as her, and she''d crushed him easily. Not so for Ghasavalk. He hadn''t dominated her, I''d been very sure to confirm; and it seemed he couldn''t control my Named at all, if what had happened with Seros was an indication. But he''d certainly talked to her, and taken something from her mind, with how he ran perfectly through the Jungle Labyrinth on his way to escape. After talking with her right after the event, she couldn''t sense anything lingering he''d done to her, nothing that would facilitate crushing him even more than I was already planning on, but still frightening. The blessing of the oracle had stayed relatively one-minded, in an annoying way. She could see through the eyes of her followers when she took hold of their mind, could flick her awareness throughout the entirety of her territory. But I had been hoping for something more, in the way of Seros'' mist manipulation or Nicau''s commands, or whatever Akkyst''s Name would end up being. Maybe she could learn from Ghasavalk, or from his mana, when I tore him down to rubble and marrow. Soon. If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. But she was a power above powers, an apex in this land, with her horde¡ªstill mostly luminous constrictors, who never lived long enough to really become much of anything, either killed in the hunt or eaten for failing to bring food. But those who survived long enough were powerful, more than any other serpents in my floor had become; crowned cobras, hoods flared, venom lancing through the air. Jeweltone serpents, pale white with scales flaking off, a few jadestones embedded around their neck and eyes flicking green. The other horned serpent, still treading on a fine line as she tried to grow into her own power and avoid Veresai''s wrath by pushing too hard. And now the spectral serpent, coiled up under white light, preparing to evolve into a form that let it slip from the world. Her army, growing stronger and stronger, ready at her beck and call. She wouldn''t stay here forever; this land was her palace, but I wouldn''t have it become her prison. No, as she grew stronger, as she evolved, she would descend to the lower floors; but there would always be a horned serpent to haunt the halls of the Jungle Labyrinth like a ghost, and that would be powerful enough. So it was time. I gathered Sy?alia''s mana, the Gold power that hummed through my core like lightning, like something aware and crackling. This floor was nearly perfect, was carved from power and understanding; it had, perhaps, always been perfect, but I had delayed it again and again as I dove into lower floors. But no longer. It was the last of my first five without a title, and I would be giving it one. Action. All at once, I began¡ªnew passages, combining some and destroying others, until I had hammered out the problems; too long of an unconnected stretch here, not enough oases here, too straight of a path in this side; I hollowed out faux dens around the oases, shallow enough to seem tempting but with nothing inside but more death; I dipped into the stalking jaguar''s mind and let her guide me to where she wanted to sleep, an outcropping in the deepest blackness of the twisting tunnels; I pulled down more bugs from the mana-gauntlet in the Fungal Gardens, larger varieties of useless things to fill the air; more thornwhip algae to patch up the gaps, twisting ridged arms to grasp for prey; silverheads to splash through the empty oases; dimmer lights in the thornwhip algae''s spores. Little things, but things that had piled up, becoming not yet problems but something holding it back from perfection. Something I''d always been too busy to properly sit down and do. But now I did, and I watched those rough edges of the Jungle Labyrinth smooth down, those minor annoyances wilted down until they became just another strength. More distractions in the halls, more death traps masquerading as safeties, more fatality laced up as comfort. Exactly as I liked my halls to be. It wasn''t much, but there didn''t need to be. The floor was near perfect, and I just made it perfect, and I honed it to that point. Every creature within raised their head as my mana flowed through them, threading into the stone of the place and reawakening what had been left to curdle, but now spread its wings. The Jungle Labyrinth, infinite and choking, land of mystery. Crack.
Congratulations! Your floor has attracted the attention of the gods. Some wish to become Patron of the Jungle Labyrinth. Please choose from the boons they present.
My mana curled around my core in purred contentment. The star-burn crackled to life around me, endless and calling, and my mind opened; popped right off like it had never been contained, drifting up to the wild galaxies over us all. There was nothing quite like it, nothing in any of my time as a sea-drake that I had tasted anything like this¨C this ease, the way they summoned me, the way the world slowed to a crawl for them to talk with me. Gods were gods, at the end. The nameless world in which they lived, apart from Aiqith, the Otherworld, the Underdark, the world beyond worlds¡ªsomething more than what mortals could understand. But I wasn''t quite mortal anymore, not with a marbled red stone where had once been a heart and a dungeon for limbs and wings. I was something more. And that more lifted me up, far above Aiqith, into a land full of stars. With my mana fluttered docilely at my command and what served as approximations for my eyes lowered, I flitted from bubble to bubble, with great yawning presences that peered down at me with an eldritch understanding of amusement. Little more than a sniveling beast I was to them. But one they would be granting power. A god with a coiling presence that hummed with a lizard''s scales promised me to turn every creature within the jungle into something reptilian, the better to serve Veresai; one with teeth and fangs and hunger granting it to all those within, from paralytic venom to numbing to blood thinning bites; a goddess whose voice thrummed with fire and death showed me visions of each glowing spore from the thornwhip algae changing into burning sparks. A goddex of wary and worry, of calling invaders to lost tunnels like grief; the goddess of fireflies with the thornwhip algae spores flickering in false life; a god of brimstone and smoke who seemed a touch more eager for my seventh floor than this one. And then one in the back, one with a curling voice. Nenaigch, Goddess of Weaving. Her star-burn was something light and airy, a gentler touch that curled around me with the flick of silk and satin; but her proposal came to me with the pleased thrum that said she knew exactly how much power she was offering, and that she had no doubt where my choices to settle. The assumption was enough to twinge every sense of annoyance I had left. But her power. Oh, her power. She was the goddess of weaving, of threads strung together to create something new; but of the act of it. She was not of tapestries, of silk, of anything else that weaving was a process for; just the weaving. Just the movement. And through her star-burn, the agonizing ache of her presence, she showed me a world in which my tunnels were no longer static, an endless maze snaking through the world; instead she showed me how, with her power woven into their core, they would move. Not fast, not with anything resembling speed or urgency¡ªshe wasn''t able to push her true godly power into my halls, unfortunately¡ªbut they would start sliding and carving and shifting. Piece by piece, overlapping each other, entangling each other in a web. She showed it to me, and though she was intangible, I felt the jagged tips of a spider''s mandibles. Weaving. Ghasavalk had stolen the layout of the Jungle Labyrinth from Veresai''s mind, and then escaped. He''d taken that knowledge to the outside world. But oh, if I could claw that victory from him, claw what insipid little plan he''d made, then I would certainly do so. And she was a smaller goddess, one who was looking at me, seeing what I wanted, what I needed. Well. I was ever so happy I''d spent all that mana rearranging my tunnels so they worked better. But to her I reached out my mana, and to her I gave my acceptance. Nenaigch laughed, a tinkling sound like the shattering of glass, and tossed me back down to Aiqith. I slammed into my core, awareness shuddering back to life, my creatures perking up and looking over as they felt the change¡ªand the change that was still to come. Nenaigch''s mana coiled through my floor, loose and wandering, in threaded movements and the deep, unspooling power of something hooked from the bottom of the world. The Jungle Labyrinth awoke at her call, the stone trembling as something new laced through it in all power it had never felt before. Something moving. Something alive. And there¨C A low, grinding rumble. One of the tunnels, one near the beginning, the thornwhip algae shuddering as its anchor moved. Barely anything. Just a gentle shift, the slow rocking of a boat over midnight tides; but change. It wouldn''t be everything, wouldn''t be a perfect solution. Little more than a pressure that never let them walk the same route between days. But oh, I would dearly love to see Ghasavalk try to show those fucking pirates just how he thought they could reach my core now. Chapter 128 - Mind of Man Her world had changed. Veresai hissed, tail lashing, as she abandoned the corpse and the madness in its wake. The invader with her power to disappear from attacks like they hadn''t existed was infuriating in a way she hadn''t experienced, and that was before the Voice Below had told her just how she had been only a distraction. A chance for the other invader, the one with the mind, to escape. But before she''d even understood that, before she''d ground her fangs into the frustration and ripped it to marrow and bone, the Voice Below had said words to the stone her home was carved from, and titled it. Not Naming, not the mind-opening power-giving awareness-making thing she cradled close to her connected soul, but another. Teeth, though her floor had already had fangs. Sharpness where there had once been fragility. Her world had changed. There was something different, something in the air, something in the tunnels. Still her horde spread, bringing her knowledge of those outer edges, but there was something else in her floor, claiming a greater power than her. It moved the halls, shifted the stone, hollowed understanding from what had once been a map of perfection within her mind. Danger, yes, but danger not from her¡ªdanger from something else. An insult. A goddess, it was called, in response to the titling; something of softness and tendrils, like a spider''s silk, but thoroughly unwelcome. Her world had changed. But if her world had changed, then she would change to beat it. Veresai inclined her head, silver light spilling from her crown; her horde shuddered and raced for her unspoken command, slithering off in search of food or information. Anything to keep them from falling to her fangs in failure. She hissed, a soft and pressing sound, and flicked her forked tongue¡ªstill mana sat on the air, heavy and unwelcome, both from the goddess and the corpse. A corpse that had fed her, filled her channels with power well beyond anything lesser rats and crawling bugs could obtain, a fire and a fury she hadn''t tasted since the last battle with humans where she had ground victory from their bones. But this body was not the only invader. It was just the only corpse. Veresai looked to the back of her sheltered home, where the tunnels moved, but too slowly to stop who had escaped. The man. The human, the invader, the one who had spoken mind-to-mind with her, who had ripped understanding from her and slunk through the shadows to flee; he hadn''t been like the woman, simplistic in her attacks. No. He had been¡­ familiar, in ways she didn''t appreciate, with a mouth of mana and mind of madness. Infuriating. But though Veresai was loath to admit it, she knew that he had been powerful. Not more than her, considering she had chased him away and he had abandoned his underling just to die at her fangs rather than face her himself, but powerful still. Something she hadn''t quite understood. So she hissed another command to her horde, vitriolic obedience embedded into melded minds, and turned back to her den. All fled before her, clearing the path with silent fear, as she preferred it. There was no victory that could not be claimed from obedience. Even the horned serpent, who was her as she had been before, without Name or soul or new heights, knew not to upset her. Oh, Veresai would not have been so subservient then, even against an empress serpent; but that was why she had been chosen to be Named, and not this upstart. Veresai would allow her to live for now. There would have to be someone to claim these wretched little halls eventually, when she descended to new lands. Particularly with the goddess kicking around and trying to claim her power was what made this land dangerous. It wasn''t. But in the back of the den, wrapped around moss and the gentle trickle of water from stone overhead, was a body¡ªnot yet a corpse, though it had very nearly been one, but cloaked in deep scarlet scales and slitted eyes, it had been spared. Kriya, the serpent-born invader, snake made human, human made snake. She was asleep even now, the Voice Below pouring soothing mana over her eyes, keeping them closed and breath soft. An odd thing, this creature, with all the beautiful elegance of scales dressed up in the garish legs and limbs of humans. A hood at least, that could snap open in wide crimson blotches and fangs behind a strange fleshy mouth. But asleep. She had been asleep since the attack that brought her, since Veresai had ripped her mind to shreds in an attempt to control her, and been forced to lay her to sleep instead. Since Veresai had attempted to control her, and given someone else the task. Someone who had not yet succeeded. As she approached, horns held high and four eyes narrowed, another presence flinched and coiled in on himself. The crowned cobra, deep grey-blue scales, turned to face her with cautious eyes. Veresai hissed, curved fangs dripping venom. Insults and acrimony bled through her psionic power. With fragile obedience, the crowned cobra fled from her presence, head bowed and hood tucked to his sides. Failure. He hadn''t unlocked the secrets of the serpent-born, had barely done anything, just curled around her still body and hissed frustrations into her uncaring face. No healing, no evolution, no nothing. If he didn''t find another way to prove himself, she would eat him, and soon. She had chosen him for his strength, and he had not delivered. That was on him. But behind him, tucked in the gentle embrace of her den, was the serpent-born, and all the potential that still simmered under her skin. Veresai slithered closer, coiling around the body she dwarfed in size and power and might; but Kriya had one thing she did not, which was healing. Her horde was little more than extensions of her grand will, bodies for problems and eyes for sight, but they died, and they died quickly. Precious few had evolved, and she couldn''t risk harming herself in such brutish combat that so many invaders enjoyed; she needed her horde to throw themselves at problems, and they needed to be alive to do so. She''d seen the little human''s potential so long ago, when she had first claimed her life and tried to control her. The Voice Below had not taken and Named this serpent-born for her, changed it to her side like the male human before. It had disrespected her in the most irritating way that she couldn''t combat, because there was no mind there to slip her thrall around, no body for her horde to sink their fangs into. And she did, to her own conniption, still appreciate the Voice Below¡ªit had made and Named her, even if it hadn''t given her this serpent-born. But that didn''t mean she couldn''t take it herself. Before, she had attempted to do this like she had with her serpents. Dive into their minds, take their eyes, make them extensions of her enormous will¡ªthis one was serpent-born, so surely it would work the same. But it hadn''t, and the Voice Below had told her to stop. It wouldn''t work. But perhaps though she was serpent-born, she was still human. And that invader, the man of mind, had shown her that humans could not be controlled through mana alone¡ªthey needed words. Veresai was not one to suffer failure. That was for those lesser, those who scuttled and scurried in the shadows, who clawed for any power that the world would give them. Those that did not fight for it. Those that did not claim it. If her psionic power alone would not be enough, then she could do more. So she coiled around the serpent-born, iridescent blue scales pressed to crimson, and lowered her great head until she near touched the human''s face. Her horns lit up, silver light splashing over the den, great and demonstrable, power above power; for this world was hers. It was not the Voice''s, not the goddess'', not the invaders¡ªit was hers, and all things were hers, and she would make it so. And what she wanted, she got. Awake, Veresai hissed, in the ancient tune of the beat that pulsed alongside her soul, in the words of mana more than speech. Awake. Become mine. And, shuddering, Kriya awoke. - Ealdhere fought the truly incredible desire to flee back to his room under weight of this conversation. The Darlington family had been one of the elders in Abhal¨®n, of course, with power and treasuries to match¡ªbut he had been far from the one to stand at the vanguard. A third son was taught entendre and fineries and cutting words disguised with crumpets and extravagant meals, yes, but he wasn''t expected to use them. And he certainly wasn''t expected to have to be the one frontmanning missives such as this. "I am sorry," he said again, like he could just keep saying it and one day it would actually be accepted. "But I can''t offer you anything else. What you collected has already died." The man with the giant ancestry frowned, a delicate thing on his brutish face. He stood there, arms tucked behind his back, a bandage still wrapping up his arm from the holes the thorns had impaled through his palm. He''d been in the first group to emerge from the dungeon, two members when three had entered, and he''d brought with him a branch from one of the odd mangroves, and knowledge besides. A very extraordinary find. Unfortunately, an extraordinary find didn''t mean much when Ealdhere couldn''t pay how he wanted, and instead how Lluc commanded him to. "I apologize," Rordan said, stiffly. He was unerringly polite, even if something in his eyes said he didn''t wish to be, which honestly made it worse¡ªEaldhere had never been one to insult others, and he rather felt like he was grinding this soft-spoken man under his heel, even if he could snap Ealdhere in half over his knee. "But I discovered for you its diet, and obtained a sample as well." A sample that was now little more than a stick of greenwood, dead and dying. Deprived from its tree, it had died surprisingly quickly, even after dining on Rordan''s blood. Which. Fascinating, truly, and what had led to Ealdhere making a fine breakthrough on the seedling he tended in his personal rooms, but still not enough for Lluc to offer the Adventuring Guild''s coffers. But the mangrove. The neusangoj mangrovoj, the delicate sapling that had grown significantly less delicate once he''d learned just why it came with white leaves and no particular requirement of sun. He''d named it, as the Scholar who had the right, and he''d named it with a kind of old pain. It should have been merely sangonoj mangrovoj. Neusangoj, instead, in memory of Neus¡ªthe kind, gentle soul with dryadic hair and a propensity for quiet stories in late night relaxations. He''d barely known her, and when he closed his eyes, all he saw was her corpse, sprawled over the moss-covered floor of the dungeon, eyes wide and scarlet haloed around her head. Dead for a dead man''s mission. Little more than gold greasing palms and the idea of extravagant adventure. How far he''d come, from the man who had left the Darlington Manor with feathers in his cap and dreams of writing papers on things unknown, when he''d studied Viejabran and marveled at the curiosities of Calaratan natives. When they had been little more than elements in some greater story. Neus had died, and he had lived, and he would remember her, in any way he could. Her and Steshe and Jorge, caught and bloodied, dead and unburied. Neusangoj mangrovoj. "I understand," Ealdhere said, and gods, he did, he really did. "And I wish I could pay you more¡ªbut my hands are tied. You''ll have to collect more samples and keep them alive long enough for me to replant them before I can give a true discovery''s boon." Technically, the discovery''s boon should go to him, the first one to bring a mangrove out of the dungeon and name it, but Scholars rarely earned that honour, considering it was expected of their position. And Lluc would certainly never give him anything he could use to free himself from this well-appointed prison. Rordan''s frown deepened. "But I¨C" "Excuse me?" A deep voice, heavy on the consonants and rasping at the corners. Ealdhere blinked, turning around. "Oh!" Approaching from the entrance, hands clasped and face blank, was Ghasavalk. Ghasavalk! A curiosity well beyond others¡ªEaldhere had been quite taken with him when they''d first met, with his thick ¨¹chlaghan accent and odd style of speaking, so apart from anything he''d grown familiar with in this unfamiliar land. Particularly with how First Mate Lluc had chosen him specifically, the first Gold to invade the dungeon, alongside an acrimonious woman named Sy?alia who had seemed remarkably incurious about the world in a way that rankled his feathers. There was no question not worth asking or answering, but she hadn''t been interested. What a waste. Not Ghasavalk. He had, if anything, been as focused as a Scholar himself. "Scholar," Ghasavalk said genially, inclining his head. "If I could have a moment of your time?" "Why, of course, of course!" Ealdhere not-quite blustered, turning away from Rordan with a swallowed wince. "Apologies, my good sir, but I''ve duties to attend to. If we could speak later?" Later, meaning when the man delved the dungeon again, and came back with things Ealdhere actually had the ability to pay him for, rather than offered platitudes of Lluc''s noose around his neck. Rordan bobbed his head in an empty sort of nod. "As you wish." He strode away, steps echoing over the foundations, and had to duck his head just to leave the Guild''s entrance hall. Little doubt he''d find himself in the dungeon soon again, with his strength and the fire-spitting woman he partnered with. "Forgive me if I''m wrong, but it seems you''ve found a world of discoveries," Ealdhere said, smoothing down his open face robe, fingers itching for paper. Ghasavalk and Sy?alia had began their delve two days ago, and while he wasn''t one to begrudge taking some hours to recover from a truly arduous expedition, they had been the first Golds who had no doubt discovered more than any adventurers up to this point. He was ever so curious. "To my office, or here?" Ghasavalk hummed, an ambiguous sound. "To the Withered Hog?" Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road. Ealdhere¡­ paused. Calarata was a pirate''s city, one without laws beyond the Dread Pirate''s, and he was a commodity with red hair and pale skin and blue eyes that hadn''t seen outside of this Guild in seemingly years. His imprisonment, if he bothered not to dress it up in prettier words, was doubtless seen, but not given any mind. Calarata was stuffed full of those with chains, both tangible and not, particularly those who served the Dread Crew, and the Scholar was just another lost soul. A tavern was not where he was allowed. "I would love to accept," he said, cautiously, "but I''m rather fond of this building, I''m afraid." Ghasavalk just smiled. "Lluc suggested it to me," he said, calm. "If you wouldn''t mind." Ah. Ealdhere wasn''t a fool, though it would be easy to believe the opposite. Lluc wanting him seen outside of the Guild, specifically with Ghasavalk¡ªwith a man he had personally chosen to be the first Gold to delve the dungeon¡ªmeant something. Well. He could play along, and particularly so if it meant seeing the sun. So Ealdhere smiled, shucking his coat off and slipping a bag with papers over his shoulders. "Who would I be to refuse? Please, lead the way." Ghasavalk nodded, turning back to the entrance, and pushed the door open. The clatter of voices as Ealdhere followed him, those lining up in the welcoming room in their hunt to be next to invade the dungeon, to scour gold and gems from its shadowed depths, or power and prestige from its core; they all watched him with wide eyes as, for the first time since its inception, the Scholar of the Adventuring Guild left its halls. It was nearing evening, the quiet dimness of approaching night¡ªbut the sun caught over the horizon in brilliant gold, lancing over the cove in orange-gold-amber, fire on water. Midyear humidity, heavy and pressing, the kind that sank into his bones and softened his eyes, that wormed into his awareness like a blanket in an Abhal¨®n winter. Beyond, glorious life, a city alive and burning and feeling. Calarata, land of thieves and scavengers and pirates and murderers and nightmarketers and bastards and fools and monsters and people. It was just another city, another sprawling destination with whitetack walls and grimy alleys and little more than desiccation over prosperity; but still Ealdhere drank in the sight like the finest red from Ter Asla, and he marveled at its splendor. Storm sigils dusted in ash over the surrounding buildings, the pebbled beach clattering against the evening tide, the wooden dock spidering out into the cavernous entrance in the Al¨®mbra Mountains. Ghasavalk moved quickly, the light steps of someone with a destination in mind, and Ealdhere trotted at his heels like a loyal dog. He couldn''t tear his eyes away from the sights. Lluc had spared his life, but taken away the living. Oh, how he loved research, diving into the minutia of creatures and beasts beyond normality, but he was still a man, who needed laughs and light and love of things beyond sketched drawings and corpses to study. Whatever game Ghasavalk had, he would play along, if only to continue this. After the dock came the sprawling streets of Calarata, open and packed and dust-choked. Markets, piled high on corners, sturdy stalls to fragile pallets stacked for a veneer of professionalism. The sizzle of steam from cooking dishes and smoke from distance alley fires. Raucous calls from those drunk or looking to become so. The creak and groan of distant ships in the docks, repairing storm-damage or battle scars from naval wars. The stench of life and its excrements, but also of exotic spices and salt-filled breezes. He''d missed this, he knew that. Had expected this yearning. He hadn''t expected the attention. Ealdhere had been well-known before, because the Darlingtons were, to play fanciful pretend for a moment, rather beloved in Abhal¨®n¡ªbut that had been for his name, for the extravagant robes with his family''s crest. But here, people turned to watch him with curiosity because of him, the Scholar, the reputation he''d hammered into the base of Calarata''s dungeon. Ghasavalk hardly seemed to notice, or at least care. Just kept walking with the same jaded docility, mana flashing from the corners of his eyes, paths clearing before him with ease. He was a particular kind of calm, one that struck Ealdhere with memories of Abhal¨®n like a blow; the kind with empty eyes and blank face and a perfectly agreeable almost-smile. A trader, but without the necessary charisma; a king''s man, but without the devotion; just a person, slipping between the pages of the story that tried to contain him. A curiosity indeed. Ealdhere did so love mysteries. What keeps you here? He wondered, quiet, little more than a missed step as he trailed after the man into the city he did not come from but stayed in regardless. What keeps you tethered to these stars? There was no answer. That was the way of the best riddles. Further in and in they went, through winding streets shaped from necessity instead of design, past hovels and humble abodes and outposts of greater groups in even number. The Withering Hog was a place on the edge, one of the switchbacks that crept up the base of the Al¨®mbra Mountains to make Calarata appear as a huddled mass far above the pedestrian ground; an open tavern, with old wood and rickety tables exposed to the evening air, looking over the city above and below. Right in the middle. Maximum visibility. Peculiar. Ealdhere eased into the seat Ghasavalk led him to, humming happily as his aching knees sank into the reprieve and his elbows clattered onto smooth wood. Ghasavalk mirrored him, one finger raised in casual authority, flicking to one of the barkeeps who had been watching them with wide eyes. Recognizing at least Ealdhere, then. Whatever his¡ªhis and Lluc''s¡ªplan was, it was beginning to set seed. "Will Sy?alia be joining us?" Ealdhere asked, twisting in his chair like she would pop out from a shadow in the tavern, walking over with three pints in hand. Ghasavalk shook his head. "She passed," he said, with a kind of performative sympathy. Not friends, then. Little wonder, with how Lluc had shoved them into a group together. Something rankled at him, at the callous disregard for life, for existence. The man before him would not have cared about Neus, would not have named the mangrove after her death; but perhaps that was what being a Gold meant. What being so powerful that those beneath didn''t matter. That nothing did, perhaps. Ealdhere couldn''t call himself happy that he would never reach anything about Unranked, not with his area of expertise, but there was a certain amount of contentment in how he would not have power change him to apathy. "I see," he said, and flicked his fingers in the base appealment to the world beyond worlds, so that her soul might fly to its final rest with the understanding that someone would remember her. "My apologies." "Of course." Ghasavalk leaned forward, bracing his arms on the table, the bag at his side swinging forward like it carried a great weight. "Her sacrifice bought great rewards. I made it to the fifth floor before turning around." Five floors? Goodness. The one in Abhal¨®n had laid claim to twenty, but each were small and empty, no longer fed by a core near crippled by its taming, safe for him to wander through with a handful of guards at his side. Five for something fierce and angry, vicious in its innovation and producing things never seen before, was a feat indeed. "My word," Ealdhere breathed, already fidgeting with excitement that seemed a touch out of place considered those five floors had likely cost Sy?alia her life. "Were each as alive as the first three?" Ghasavalk tilted his head to the side. "I''d have thought you''d ask about how dangerous they were." Ealdhere waved a hand. "Yes, yes, but later. I''m a Scholar; the fangs and fury are for adventurers. Were they systems? Established and functional, rather than monsters for monsters'' sake?" That had been what excited him most about this dungeon, over unique creatures and fascinating strands of mana¡ªit had been a place, more than a creation. Perhaps his opinion was stained by the dungeons he knew from his home but those had been defanged and smoothed over by ownership, mere hallways with vicious beasts rather than lands and legends. Here, full worlds beneath the stone, of life beneath quartz-lights and with predators and prey fighting for dominance more than just invaders. Ghasavalk stared at him. His black eyes were uncanny in the evening light. "They were alive, yes," he finally said, and there was an odd note of curiosity in his voice, something to break past the deliberate weight in how he spoke. "The fourth, a maze of tunnels lined in algae, ending in a cavern of stone trees. The fifth, a collection of islands over clouds, filled with flying beasts and storms." Fascinating. Fascinating. Neither of those could be found in the surrounding area, although perhaps the jungle could have lent inspiration for the fourth, which meant that the dungeon was a thinking thing creating more than defending. Creating! What discovery there was in this magical thing''s mind, it was more than he could have imagined. "For creatures, there were many," Ghasavalk said, head still tilted. "Most of what I discovered were from the first three floors, but I will present them." Never removing his gaze, he reached into the bag at his side, other hand tapping on his seat. First he pulled out the faceplate from an ironback toad, nicely cleaned of gore, heavy enough the table muttered complaints in the creak of old wood. Then the white corpse of a spider, legs curled in and eight eyes glassy¡ªoh! One of the mysterious ones from the second floor, what he''d thought were either icetouch or phantom-adjacent; something wonderful to study. And finally, a scale, large as his palm and ridged in grey-green. He laid it on the table with a quiet sort of smile. Ealdhere blinked at it. Too big to be one of the many serpents he''d heard of, with edges lining the sides and an odd, curved tip instead of a more jagged point. Still distinctly reptilian, but not the red of the kobolds or the sea-green of the dragon he''d heard so many stories of. Something else. "From a crocodilian," Ghasavalk explained, something vaguely proud in his voice. "This is just a scale¡ªI have the corpse waiting in the cove." Hells be damned. "The one in the third floor," Ealdhere said, eyes wide. "You killed it?" Ghasavalk nodded. "I did." It had been killed before, back in the original delve that ended in so much more blood than life, but that had been with fifty people charging into the depths; this was merely two people, and depending on where Sy?alia had died, it might have even been one. A feat well above a normal adventurer. Ealdhere kept blinking. A full corpse to study, rather than fragmented memories stitched together from those who had seen its decapitated body and fled out the next second; he could create a full understanding of it, of what he had never heard more than stories about, even at home. Utterly fascinating. "I have more collected pieces," Ghasavalk said, still bland, still open. "But these are the most interesting. The others I will give back at the Guild." Interesting. Certainly a way to put it. Ealdhere brushed a finger over the crocodilian''s scale, the ridges on its edge, and the curled legs of the mysterious spider; all parts of some greater mystery, of puzzling out just where this dungeon put its strength and what it had made it from. "You''ve discovered more than I could have imagined," he said, because it was well true. "What did you find on the lower floors?" The ones unknown, the ones untested. Ghasavalk hummed, drumming his fingers on the table. The barkeep still hadn''t approached them, though she''d gathered two pints, an elven ancestry keeping long, jagged ears pinned flat to her skull. More people were looking at them, befuddled, recognition and suspicion warring in equal measure. Decidedly unpleasant. "It has Chosens," Ghasavalk said, with an odd intention in the word¡ªmore than typical emphasis, something personal. And considering Ealdhere had grown up around dungeons, tamed though they might be, and he had never heard of the term Chosens, that was something else. He would piece together the vague idea, that they were made Guardians by a dungeon, given power and prestige¨C But Chosen. A peculiar phrase. Maybe that was what they called them in ¨¹chlagh? "At least two," Ghasavalk continued. "A serpent and a lizard. One psionic, one draconic." Hells, he''d encountered two Guardians and lived to tell the tale? A rare kind of adventurer indeed. Ealdhere blinked. "How powerful?" "Exceedingly so. The psionic serpent combatted my own abilities. The draconic lizard fought with water and mist." Something in Ghasavalk''s jaw tightened¡ªnot one fond of discussing his own weakness, considering by how he talked about both as if they were still alive, not like he had managed to kill them. Ealdhere stored that. "But easy to distract. Not guided by a firm hand." Curious. Curious, curious, curious. So very many things about this dungeon were. "The lizard lived lower than the fifth floor," Ghasavalk said. "But it was within a room engraved with draconic runes, and it had an intelligence not befitting its power." Draconic¡ªthat led more credence to how the dungeon formed, though Ealdhere had never quite figured out whether that was supposed to be public knowledge. It seemed rather blatant to him¡ªVarc¨ªs Bilaro had killed a dragon, and some months later, a dungeon had sprouted from where its corpse had landed. Surely obvious, no? But still some people marveled and wondered at where it could have come from. "Goodness," Ealdhere murmured, drumming on the table. "If it is already that powerful, I don''t wish to imagine how strong it will get with time." The man across from him seemed to agree, if how his jaw tightened further said anything. He''d been truly threatened by it, then. That might have something to do with a counter to his own power, though Ealdhere didn''t know what his attunement was, but just as likely that anything to give a Gold pause was something they didn''t necessarily want still kicking. "And I sensed someone within," Ghasavalk said, fingers knotting together. "Sleeping, I believe. But on the fourth floor, within the serpent''s den." What? "What?" Ealdhere asked. Ghasavalk turned to him. "A person," he repeated, like that had been the confusing part of the sentence. "Someone within the fourth floor. I did not encounter them, only sensed their presence." Ealdhere was rather grateful they hadn''t been brought ale yet, because he would have dropped his. "There''s a human in there?" A pale reflection of confusion flicked over his face. "Does that change so much?" "This changes everything," Ealdhere says, bemused. "Why, either they''re there willingly, or they''ve been taken¡ªbut that''s a human mind within the dungeon! Likely someone we need to rescue, if they haven''t been killed the moment you sensed them¡ªI shudder to imagine what could have happened to them. What the dungeon could have learned from them." Ghasavalk went very still. "A human mind," he repeated, quiet. "Do you believe the dungeon might have taken one?" Ealdhere blinked. "If you sensed one within, then yes?" He tapped the crocodilian''s scale. "It clearly has creatures powerful enough to combat the majority of those who invade it, considering no one has claimed its core yet, and obtaining multiple gods to patron its floors means it has an intelligence we can''t ignore. If it already has the wherewithal to create Guardians, then it could take a human, either to study or use as bargaining." He paused. Swallowed his own words. Pondered them. The dungeon was intelligent. That was easy enough to tell, because of course it was¡ªit had created living lands capable of both defending itself and thriving, becoming more than they had been shaped for, and done whatever ritual was required to create Guardians. It had survived some weeks of daily raids and seemed to only be growing stronger, digging deeper, further than they could even sense. But it was intelligent. The dungeon in Abhal¨®n had been little more than an extension of will from the family who held its core. High Lord Thiago''s dungeon was similar, a stripped beast of power and death. Unclaimed dungeons were either claimed or killed, with very few in between¡ªand those that never lived long enough to savour it. In Calarata, it hadn''t been claimed yet. It hadn''t been killed. It was alive, and it was moving, and it was intelligent. Ealdhere''s hand curled around the crocodilian''s scale. To be an Adventuring Guild''s Scholar was to be one who studied a dungeon, who pierced through its mysteries to find its creatures and their uses, what could be created from its spoils. That had been what he had been charged with, what he was expected to carry out; what Lluc held over his neck like a sharpened blade. Even now, as soon as he finished playing dress-up for whatever Ghasavalk wanted the public to see him for, he would go back to the Guild and begin mapping out the fourth floor, creating more detailed documents on the creatures within for adventurers to defeat and harvest. But he was not just facing new wonders within a dungeon. He was facing a dungeon itself. Something that no one had ever had the chance to study, because they were always defanged first. Something new. "Yes," his mouth said, filling the silence as his mind raced like a horse free of its bridle. "Yes, I believe there may be someone trapped within the dungeon. I believe Lluc will be very interested in that." Ghasavalk looked at him, brows flicking together¡ªbut Ealdhere was Unranked. A petty noble caged by a pirate''s orders, little more than a researcher on a chain, and he was hardly deserving of suspicion; he smiled, open, curious, the same face he had worn for the past weeks. Ghasavalk''s expression faded back to apathy. Ealdhere stayed smiling. Stayed unsuspicious. His mind flew. There was someone within the dungeon, likely unwillingly, but they were still alive¡ªand they had been alive for, at the very least, a day, if they were from the previous invaders a day before Ghasavalk''s delve. For a dungeon that had the power to end a Gold, it wasn''t from a lack of ability to kill them, which meant they were alive for a reason, which meant the dungeon had reasoning, and it was something that had a consciousness, however alien or draconic it was. It was something entirely, entirely new. And Ealdhere wanted to know more. Well. He likely wouldn''t be allowed in the dungeon again, not if that would give him the chance to slip the chains Lluc was so determined to keep on him, but there were people who could. And there had been that man, anciently powerful with scales crawling over his face, that had seemed remarkably interested in forging a truce. A connection, between Guild and Market, who had been in that wretched cavern with Lluc''s brand of cruelty and the towering guard of the Dread Crew. Ealdhere had things he needed to investigate, things that couldn''t be found with Lluc''s eyes watching him with the feverity of a water-sick beast. Things that would aid the Guild, yes, but more than creatures and ideas and strategies. They were things to do with lives, lives that Calarata seemed so content to ignore, to cast aside as little more than costs to be paid or a thing to be caged and bound for power. Things Ealdhere cared for still. Perhaps it was time he reached out to Gon?al. Chapter 129 - Moonlit Mysteries With an odd, stumbling jerkiness, Kriya rose to her feet. Every point of awareness I had in the newly-titled Jungle Labyrinth raced for the Stone Jungle, for the den enclosed in the back¡ªbecause hells above hells, that was a human, just up and toddling upon my dungeon. Not bloody again. The aforementioned human blinked slitted eyes, arms curled in close to her sides. Her umber skin was dressed up in scarlet scales, patches that trailed down her arms and up her neck, slotting around her fangs and flared hood. Shorter for a human, with a thin build and a Bronze''s mana swirling sluggishly through her channels. There was a passing resemblance to Nicau, in a way. Not in her naga ancestry, which was at least some sort of balm over her abject human-ness, but in her demeanor. She was a nervous, flighty thing, I remembered, and that had been before her entire party had been slaughtered and herself kidnapped by a serpentine monster. Not one to charge as a barbarian through my halls, if she was even cognizant enough to stitch together a plan. But that didn''t matter, as Veresai''s words echoed through the mana of my halls. Become mine. Words, instead of psionic commands. Something tangible. Something there. Kriya, shuddering, stood there, and looked upon the serpent before her. An adventurer she was, an invader, one of those who had delved in my halls in search of treasures and my core¡ªbut her eyes were devoid of that desire now. No greed. No terror. She was watching Veresai with worry, with fear, because she was a twenty foot serpent with four eyes and mana that boiled through the air¡ªbut it wasn''t the fear of someone who thought they were about to die. It was the fear of someone who knew that death could come. Veresai hissed, mana dripping from the prongs of her crown, with stars burning in her eyes. She was not a creature of doubt or second-guessing, I knew that, but through our shared connection I felt an unease. She didn''t truly know what she was doing. To be frank, neither did I, but it was clear something was happening. Kriya looked up at her, scarlet-gold hood pressed flat to her neck, shifting her weight between legs shaky after weeks of unease. "Hello?" She managed, in a voice soft and unsure¡ªit rasped on the edges, curled vowels and bitten consonants, shaped by the fangs that glinted past her lips. Veresai''s mana flared once more. Mine, she hissed, words echoing through mana she''d coiled around the den. Serve me. Become mine. Kriya''s amber eyes gleamed. Not dead, not unaware, but merely glowing with reflected power, the blue over Veresai''s scales. Something entirely separate than the pale red she used for her healing attunement. "Yes," she whispered, quiet, like it was a fact written across the stars. "I am." Every point of awareness I had went still. Nicau had sworn himself to me with the three-day dead corpse of a pigeon and a kobold''s claws at his throat. Oh, he''d eventually come around, in whatever fashion a human clutching for power from a dungeon core could be, but that had been after weeks of near captivity in the kobold den. An offering made from desperation. Not for Kriya. This was her first time awake in weeks, and she had said it freely. Whatever Veresai had done to her, it made her say she was hers. But I still hadn''t told Nicau where I hid my core, what my weaknesses were, anything he could share with Calarata that would harm me. Humans were creatures of greed and deceit, betrayal written into their very core. I would never trust them. Proof, I murmured into Veresai''s mind, a gentle thing without my characteristic booming echo from speaking to lesser creatures. As a Named, my voice wove with hers like a song. Make proof. Veresai''s eyes flashed a brilliant blue, her mind darting over her followers like currents through a ripstream¡ªthere, in the far back of the den, curled up and shivering. A luminous constrictor, still young and foolish with it. He''d been struck by Sy?alia, a glancing blow from her daggers that''d ripped scales off his back and scoured blood over the moss below. He was on his way to recovery now, but it would take time, a dangerous thing to ask for in Veresai''s horde. But when his queen''s mind slipped into his, he jerked upright, forked tongue flickering out. His wound had barely scabbed over but still he slithered out of the hole he''d tucked himself into, head lowered and tense, and went to seek Veresai. She tilted her head down to him, horns gleaming with starlight. Not words, like she''d done with Kriya, but just a twisting of the rope around his mind, holding him still. Not fleeing. Then she turned to Kriya again, tail lashing. You are mine. A flick of her head. He is mine. Heal. My mana tightened around the two of them, an inhalation of breath, a sharpening of claws. Kriya blinked, pupils flexing. She was an invader, someone born for the guts and glory¡ªbut she had also chosen the attunement of healing. That was not a path for those cruel and uncaring; it truly had no way for her to cause harm to the world outside, not like those with fire and lightning at their fingers. Psionic powers were powerful, but whatever Veresai was doing wasn''t control. It could be broken, could be fought against¡ªand while Kriya was merely a Bronze, hardly that dangerous, she still had the potential for some macabre final act if she willed it. But she had chosen to be a healer. And all Veresai was asking of her was to heal. The blue glow stayed in Kriya''s eyes as she knelt, hood flaring out, catching the ambient mana like a whirlpool. "You poor thing," she whispered, voice lisping on the edges. Her dappled scales gleamed with pale red as mana sparked over her fingers, hazing into the air like a storm cloud¡ªevidently more power than she''d ever had before, if how her eyes shot open said anything. "Here." The luminous constrictor hesitated, gaze flicking between Veresai and Kriya. In his tyrannical world, he certainly wasn''t familiar with concern or kindness, but Kriya was kneeling before him, hand extended, warmth spilling through her fingers. He slithered closer, tongue flicking out, diamond-grey pattern melding through the moss. Kriya waited, still hesitant, still pressingly aware that she was surrounded on all sides by monsters, but she had the heart of a healer¡ªshe set her hand over the constrictor''s wound and closed her eyes. Light spilled between her fingers. When she pulled away, he was healed, only a faint patch of discolored scales left behind. She''d healed him. Freely. Fully. With her own mind. Well, shit. Veresai had learned from Ghasavalk, more than even I had¡ªwith her serpents, how she controlled them was to jump from mind to mind, peering from their eyes, curling her power around their very thoughts. But that was for serpents, who were lesser things in terms of minds, not yet sapient. A human was different. But Ghasavalk had commanded Sy?alia, and he''d done it with words, rather than control. Sy?alia had been a fighter, as detailed by the strewn serpentine corpses she''d left in the Stone Jungle before she''d finally been taken down, even without her attunement. Ghasavalk hadn''t been one, a thing for the shadows¡ªif he had tried to take control of her, to shove his mind in alongside hers, she would have died. Or at least not killed any of mine. But he hadn''t been controlling her. He''d been commanding her. His action, but her free to obey as she knew how to, all of her expertise as a threat alongside his demands. Veresai didn''t know how to use healing mana, even if she took control of Kriya''s mind. Not that. It wasn''t control, psionic power whittled into chains. It was a geas. A compulsion, rather than puppeteer¡ªKriya would have her mind but not her direction, able to act as she thought was best but only in working for what Veresai asked. A blade, but one that sharpened itself and performed as directed. Something without enough mind to fight back, but instead fight for. Hells above hells, she''d made a geas. It wasn''t some perfect thing, I could admit¡ªit was likely only because Kriya had been unconscious for so long, disoriented, and weak that she''d been able to hook her, but she had, and now Kriya was standing, confused, hesitant, entirely alone¡ªbut alive. Listening. Functioning. Veresai had ever been a tyrant, content in the ache and murder of her underlings, serving as little more than bodies to bring her food and exist as her eyes. Control had been her driving power, with fear for those she wasn''t actively in the minds of¡ªbut control and fear were things that could splinter, that could divide her attention and brew hostility and rage. But a geas. Oh, it would break one day, because all good things fell to ruin¡ªbut for now, Veresai had not a slave, but a follower, one who thought she was willingly complying with her own mind. The luminous constrictor shook himself, tongue flicking out, and then swiveled around to look at himself in wonder. A wound that would have taken weeks to heal in the outside world and still days with my ambient mana, gone in a second, new scales grown and strength returned. Kriya smiled at him, the dappled scales on her face catching the last light drifting off her fingers. "You''re okay now," she whispered, and brushed her hand over his head, little more than a ghosting of her fingers. Serpents weren''t overly fond of physical touch but he leaned into it, a quiet hiss in his chest, before slithering off. Returning once more to the hunt, to fill the gap in his stomach. Alive. Healed. Kriya looked back up, and the blue had rooted into her eyes, swirling alongside the amber like marbled veins, a dizzying image. Anyone that saw her would know immediately she was under a psychic compulsion, but who would see her, deep within the fourth floor? I didn''t know much about geas, considering I had certainly never been so weak-willed as to fall under one, but I did know that Veresai was doing everything right. The geas was a simple thing in essence, but much like the thread of a spider it was not infallible. Too many commands and it would splinter; too much pressure and it would crack; too opposite the nature and it would shatter. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it. But all Veresai had commanded was that Kriya was now hers¡ªa part of the serpentine horde, serving as its healer. She wouldn''t be fighting other humans, wouldn''t be harming herself for me, wouldn''t be beating against her own beliefs. She would only be healing, what she had already been doing. As long as Veresai held onto her, kept her safe, I didn''t see the geas breaking any time soon. And now she could afford to be more aggressive, to go after greater prey, to strengthen her horde with fights that could end in more than death. Kriya had healing, had strength, had clever human fingers that could plant gems into jeweltone serpents'' scales instead of relying on just slithering over them, could do all sorts of things that snakes were unfortunately limited in. She had gained herself a remarkably powerful ally, and learned an incredible skill at the same time. Oh, my beloved tyrant; how I loved her and her vicious ways. Though¨C I dipped into Veresai''s mind, into the connection that thrummed through our shared souls. I''m not Naming her. Veresai hissed, four eyes flaring, but it was a minor annoyance, a light drizzle in what had once been a cloudless sky. Pride stronger than anything I''d ever felt coiled through her like fire, igniting the mana in her channels and echoing in her mind. She knew just how powerful the thing she''d just performed was. Soon, the Jungle Labyrinth would be too weak to hold her. Though it was still some time off, the ninth floor would have to be able to house her, though not forever. I didn''t know how many floors I would end up, how large my dungeon would sprawl, but nearing the end, when I felt my mana was strained to its limit, I would create a floor entirely for her. And for Seros, and Akkyst, and all my other Named¡ªif they had earned a Name, they had earned a floor, a paradise shaped for them. Soon. I didn''t know when, but soon. Veresai hissed, pleased, and lowered her head to peer at Kriya. The human winced and tucked her head in¡ªfor all she believed she was a part of the horde, that didn''t mean Veresai wasn''t every shade of dangerous. Which meant I poked my awareness in, mana spilling through the den. Though I certainly didn''t like Kriya, even with her naga ancestry¡ªthere was an irritating lack of Nicau''s frantic servitude that I did enjoy¡ªI would at least provide her a place within the den, more than sleeping in the mass of serpents that filled the larger rooms. The room she''d been in now was small and cramped, the bottom softened with moss, but it was a room made for an unconscious human with nothing else. So I billowed out great plumes of mana, vestiges of what I''d had before Sy?alia''s Gold potential poured through me, and I raised a moss bed, twined a stalactite down to drip fresh water into a pool for her, set up shelves for trinkets and stored food. Kriya''s eyes blew wide, stepping back, a hand over her mouth. A miracle, right before her. Veresai hissed, pulsing magic through her crown, silver light splashing over the walls. Satisfaction hummed through our connection as Kriya turned to face her, astonished, respect and fear in even amount in her eyes. Like she''d done it. Gods, what was it with my creatures taking credit for my work? I flexed a point of mana into her mind. Veresai didn''t flinch, but she did level a glare at a wall I was tucked in. Not pleased with me. Well, bully for her. But she had earned Kriya, and I wouldn''t begrudge her of that. I''d still be waiting for her to properly settle before I''d attempt to use my Welcomer title, to see if I could make her a dungeonborn creature¡ªif that even worked, with her as a human, rather than merely a sapient goblin¡ªbut I would house and keep her, and tell my creatures not to attack her. Too much. A healer. I floated away, drifting through the wall as Kriya started to wander her new room, shoulders still hunched in and eyes cautious, but adjusting. A new world for her, one with blue-amber eyes. As a sea-drake, I''d certainly never had need of healers¡ªI had merely slept away the decades on my silver hoard, letting the gathered mana refill my channels and soothe over any injuries. But my creatures weren''t as powerful as me, with the power I''d managed to accumulate. They needed healing¡ªand they needed healing in the heat of battle, which I couldn''t provide, not with invaders sucking up all my ambient mana. But Kriya could. So I supposed I would allow her to stay. At least for now. If her geas ever broke and she suddenly started to question just why she was healing all of these dangerous monsters who had murdered her adventuring party, then I would kill her. But not yet. So I flew away from the Jungle Labyrinth, back down to the seventh floor¡ªthe Scorchplains, I thought, with choking smoke and plumes of lava in the darkness¡ªto rebuild the spined lizard population. The original four had been reduced to two, choked out by smog and mottled scorpions, but already they were rebuilding, aided by a dozen more I sent skittering into the dark. Soon they''d be a proper threat. So I busied myself there, fixing up the floor and smoothing over its problems. And then, because today was simply the day of reawakenings, I felt a stir in the Skylands. Every part of me jerked to attention. My points of awareness swiveled to the den deep in the back, tucked under one of the islands. The largest of them all, with a small room in the side for the mysterious tablet the Magelords had brought, and multiple sleeping dens in the back. Bylk was still there, teeth gritted, gnarled hands wrapped around a piece of wood like a staff and mana sparking on his hands. Even though Ghasavalk was gone, he was a paranoid old bastard, through eyes gummy with lack of sleep and a tangible exhaustion present. Hrm. I still didn''t like him, because he was irritating and archaic and a blistering blight on the perfection of my dungeon, but I could respect his protection over Akkyst. Maybe. In a manner of speaking. But in those back dens, one of them was filled with soft silver light, now fading into the air as the creature within awoke. Akkyst, my newest Named. The starwrought bear, with the blessing of the scholar, returner to my dungeon. He huffed, a loose and sleepy sound, before pushing up to his paws. He was even more enormous than before, eight feet at the shoulder, a towering monster in the relative quiet of the Skylands. His fur gleamed with light, like the stars he was named for, and his eye had changed fully from deep black to grey, quicksilver in his face. Mana thrummed in his chest like a volcano. A monster. Hello, I murmured, reaching out to pluck at our shared connection, a vibration from his soul to my soul to the Otherworld, power beyond what I knew he had felt before. Hello, Akkyst. The bear went very still, mind still stumbling out of the evolution haze, inhalations like an earthquake in his chest. "Hello?" He spoke out loud, because he still used the brutish goblin tongue, but it echoed now between his mouth and our minds. A twisting intelligence that I was unfamiliar with, an elegance to his thoughts that even my other Named creatures didn''t have, an organization to how his mind worked. Fascinating¡ªI couldn''t wait to see if this was how he was after only one evolution and a Name. Where would he go next? Although. Well. When I had first collected his schema, he had already been massively powerful¡ªperhaps he was already evolved from a base form, though he had been born like this. That would explain his heightened mana cost. But either way, he had at least another evolution in him, and whatever it was would take him to new heights. Outside the den, Bylk straightened, rubbing blearily at his eyes¡ªbut he''d heard Akkyst, and it was with fumbling steps that he poked his head into the den, mana sparking in an unsaid threat. One that quickly faded as he saw the bear awake, his eyes flying wide. "Akkyst!" Akkyst blinked¡ªdifficult, with only one eye¡ªand turned to face him, leftover mana pluming from his mouth and curling off his silver fur. "Bylk," he said, and there was even a precision in his speech now, coming still deep and powerful from his enormous chest, but with the proper growl and bite to the words I''d had the misfortune of hearing from the goblins. "You''re here?" Bylk stomped into the room, cragged old face split into a grin. "Told ya I''d watch over, eh? Not leavin'' you to figure out this¡­ Name business by yourself." He huffed, spitting a wad of phlegm off to the side. "Not that Growth told us how long you''d be out. Bastard." I was right here. Akkyst rumbled a laugh, something that softened his ivory fangs and jagged claws and made him seem kindly, for all he was powerful enough to battle near every creature in my dungeon. "Thank you, friend," he said, and gods beyond, that was damn near eloquent, what had his Name done? Then Akkyst tilted his head back, staring at some random point on the den overhead. "And thank you." I preened, sending soothing thoughts through our connection once more. Generalities of welcome and praise, intangible claws brushing over his fur and sparking little flecks of mana in his channels. The presence of a watchful dungeon. Bylk coughed, tilting his head to the side. The gems swinging in his ears lit up with vague motes of power. "What''d it do, then? Beyond gettin'' ya even bigger?" Akkyst shook himself, the last bleariness from his days-long sleep fading away. He pawed at the ground in some abject confusion, peering at his dextrous claws and pure silver fur, attention flicking around the room. I could almost see him thinking, brain purring to life with power few others could claim, the desire for learning and knowing and more¨C And something drifted off his coat. What? It didn''t look like much of anything, just a faint wisp of light¡ªI thought it was a stray piece of fur at first, the same quicksilver consistency, but it wavered and shifted like smoke. Originating somewhere near his neck, it billowed upward with gentle speed, and coalesced into a half-formed spiral with three jagged marks beneath. I stared at it. Bylk stared at it. After a moment of confused silence, Akkyst followed our gaze upward and then stared at it. The shape, seemingly quite content with our scrutinization, simply floated there, unchanging. Then, just to complicate things, more lines of pure light flitted off his fur, merging and lining together into more shapes, into more puzzles, bobbing stars in the darkness of the den. None of them were the same, all different combinations of lines and dots and curves, some flat, some spherical, other irregular masses. But there was a consistency there, in the sizes, in the way that each time Akkyst seemed to start a new train of thought they would form, as he looked from each other they formed anew. Shapes, similar in stature, lining up in a spiraling wave. It almost looked like a language. Akkyst stood in the center of the den as silver picked up around him, great swirling clouds that billowed and plumed like living things, strands of light and colour and words. Nothing I knew, even with my dungeon core awareness, but beyond that. The starwrought, the starmade, the star-formed. The bear who scraped understanding of a language from nothing and clawed himself to speech just so he could. A scholar. One who learns. One who teaches. Akkyst looked around, eye wide, his remaining ear perking up like it was trying to see more of what surrounded him. The light kept spilling from his fur, shapes and sounds melding together into a dizzying display. "You''re the stuff o'' stories," Bylk said, eyes wide. "Rock ''n'' rubble, Akkyst, what is this?" "I don''t know," Akkyst rumbled, rearing onto his back legs¡ªhells, I''d have to make his den even larger, he was truly enormous¡ªto brush his claws through one of the illusions. The silver swirled and spiraled around his paw, not sticking to his fur but displacing around it¡ªand new ones emerged from the movement, little scratches and near pictures. He nosed at another illusion, more breaking and clustering around his face. His eye seemed to glow, stars caught in the silver of his gaze. "It''s showing me something." He exhaled and more silver flowed out, words and images of mystic things I couldn''t understand. Something well above what I had guessed, what I could know; this didn''t seem like something for combat, not like how the mist-foxes used their illusions to hide or disguise themselves; bright, yes, but not covering. Not distracting. Something else. Blessing of the scholar. The world and its secrets are revealed. These were pieces of information. Some language I didn''t know, that Akkyst clearly didn''t either, but every time he had a thought¡ªevery time he interacted with something¡ªevery time he moved or shifted or flicked his gaze elsewhere¡ªmore came to be. Little things, floating incongruously in the dim, with information. The secrets of the world. Bylk''s gaze flicked, very slowly, to the ancient tablet in the corner of the den. The old piece of history, scraped free from the rampage of the stone-wurm, of something lost to time. Something to be studied. "I don''t know," Akkyst said again, but there was a fanatical gleam in his eye, the excitement of a new project, a new goal to strive for. Something he''d been granted power and ability for, something well above what he could have thought. Something more. Something greater. "But I''m going to find out." Chapter 130 - Deeper Threads With slow, methodical precision, the tunnels moved onward. It was a soothing sort of thing, which I hadn''t thought of at first, so content in the fantasies of Ghasavalk peering his fat fucking head into the first entrance and being blinded by something different than whatever precious map he''d drawn up, but it was a gentle thing. A rocking, almost, like hatchlings carried along by their first oceanic current. A guiding hand, firm but not coddling. Not quite enough that invaders would find themselves lost in a twisting labyrinthian nightmare, unfortunately, but certainly enough they couldn''t sketch out pathways to carry back for the next day''s group. Which was plenty for me. I spread points of awareness around in dappled attention, loose and drifting as I gathered my wits back about me. The endless engine of my dungeon rumbled ever on, a beast in the shadows, in the depths and the dark of the Al¨®mbra Mountains. Oh, how I dearly loved it, and all the monsters it housed. Even if it wasn''t a prize I could keep to myself. Other bastards had to poke their noses in. Up above, tucked in the Fungal Gardens, the newest batch of invaders were creeping through my halls. Three of them, lower Silvers, but they moved with the hunched, dogged steps of the wary¡ªnews had spread, then. A Gold had died within, and the other had fled like all hells barked at his heels. And oh, I was sure he was telling such lovely darling stories about his own heroism, about the corpse of the beloved sarco he''d dragged out, of the beasts he''d encountered; but that was for cowards. He''d ran from me, from Veresai, from Seros. What victory he thought he''d scraped from the mind of my empress serpent was useless¡ªwhat information he''d taken had only been from my first five floors. I had two more below that, filled with monsters for themselves, and now my fourth Named had woken. No, I was not some baseless thing for them to tame, and I took a great pleasure in watching these new invaders creep through with hackles up. Three of them, Silvers only, and cautious as baitfish in open ocean. They wouldn''t be pushing deep, if they made it to the Underlake at all¡ªbut I rather hoped they would die, so I could collect more mana. I had, perhaps, not done the most intelligent thing by immediately emptying my mana stores in finishing the Jungle Labyrinth instead of recreating all the creatures I had lost. It was a constant battle, one that my impatience didn''t lend well to¡ªone infuriating in all the worst ways. Many things were infuriating. I was an easily-infuriated creature. But for now, I whispered soft nothings in the ears of the kobolds of the Drowned Forest, warned them of the approaching danger and how it would be in their best interests to avail themselves of such a glut of mana, and then dipped below myself. I had things to do. A few points of awareness slipped around to my various floors, attention kept just to make sure nothing happened¡ªI was still rather concerned about losing my jeweled jumper¡ªas I settled in for an intensive process. Akkyst was below, hunched over with Bylk by his side. More silver scraps of information floated off his fur, living wisps of lights¡ªthey crackled oddly on the edges, but I rather thought that had more to do with Khasvar''s boon, rather than his Name. A lightning flavouring to all mana. And what curious mana this was. It didn''t seem to be any kind of attack, not nearly blinding enough to function like the luminous constrictors, nor as distracting as the mist-fox''s tails and illusions. With Bylk blabbering on in phlegm-y monologues and Akkyst walking around to try and find anything new to see what information came from it, they were making some kind of progress, though I couldn''t tell what. Information was, of course, an open thing, free and willing to pour out about anything¡ªbut information was rather useful when it was understandable, and there had been the odd choice to have it be a language that neither I nor Akkyst could decipher. A touch targeted, in a way. Rather rude. But if anyone was going to figure it out, it would be my one-eyed bear who had carved through the mountains and come back with an army and an evolution. Seros swam through the Hungering Reefs, hungry and vicious with it, already a roughwater shark bleeding murky scarlet as it tried to flee from his hydrokinesis. He was truly in his element here, much more than the cramped corners of the Underlake. Here, under gleaming blue waters and pure white sand, he was a monster unparalleled. Every section of capturing coral he swam past flickered with sea-green light, little sparks of power from the Otherworld, reflecting off his ivory fangs and glowing eyes. ¡­he''d faced Ghasavalk in the Skylands, mist hissing off his scales, chasing him down like a swordfish to bait; but he''d never gotten to fight. Ghasavalk had fled, and though his mana-filled commands hadn''t worked on my Named, he''d managed to conjure up enough distractions to keep from being fought. Seros hadn''t had the chance to truly battle someone, not since the fifty-man invasion that scoured down to a fear I hadn''t felt since the Dread Pirate fired a spear of pure nightmare black into my chest. He sparred with the sea serpent in the third room of the Hungering Reefs, enormous fights that tore limestone from walls and trembled down to the mountains, but I didn''t allow either to kill each other. Just spars, keeping the blade sharp, but nothing more. The eldest of my Named, wasting away in my deepest floors. He deserved more. Which brought me back up to my fourth floor, to the plan that had taken root in my core and bloomed to a truly devious plan, if I could pull it off. Veresai was still working with Kriya, giving her a magnanimous tour of the den and beginning to line out just what she would do here, but past that, Nenaigch''s power suffused through the tunnels like a living thing. A power, slowly shifting the stone, grinding away in divine intervention. And where my plan would take root. Ghasavalk had escaped, and he''d murdered his way out. New invaders, back to a level of threat I was comfortable with, but if they were sending in Golds then I couldn''t be content in this pitiful display of lacking power. More Golds would come, those with expectations tempered by whatever Ghasavalk had managed to bring out, and I would have to meet them with teeth and trial. My first five floors were locked and settled, more than any others. Even as I kept digging deeper and deeper, their godly patrons would mean that their mana levels would stay consistent, fed by more than my Otherworld connection, and the creatures there would continue to grow and thrive. But Ghasavalk''s delve had shown me where I had made mistakes, and I was rather interested in cutting those loose weights away. And there was one place that had opened a new avenue of potential. I drifted to my core, to the golden runes wrapped around the marbled red-black surface; the housing of my soul and the connections within. In particular, one connection newly made, still humming with excess energy from the unnamed world. Nenaigch''s presence curled around me, eight-faceted eyes flickering with star-burn. Interest, curiosity; a faint amusement at me calling upon her. She peered down. I, with an uncharacteristic hesitance that truly pissed me off, extended my proposition upward. It was a fragile sort of offering, because in truth it brought me brilliant rewards and gave her little. Which was, ah, certainly a choice of mine to do, a mere day after she had agreed to become the patron of the Jungle Labyrinth. Hardly enough time to build up a geniality for me. And particularly so for the goddess whose presence clicked and skittered like a spider, mandibles whispering with the cloying brush of silk. But I needed this plan to work. The Golds would be coming back, and they were strong; more than I wanted to admit. The entrance was marked and known, a hole through what had once been security, and I couldn''t maintain it. Sending Nicau out, collecting new information or schemas; all of that was hamstrung by how they knew my entrance and could track it, watch it, see what I was doing. That couldn''t be allowed. This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience. But the cove entrance in the Underlake was another sort of weakness, a way for merrow to slither inside without facing the dangers of my other floors. Not what I wanted. And that was why I needed Nenaigch. The Jungle Labyrinth was a mess of tunnels, ones that now changed. It wouldn''t be mapped, not in a way that would threaten me; and it wouldn''t be discovered, not with how many I had. So what if there was one more tunnel, inconspicuous, that didn''t lead deeper into the floor, but instead to the outside world? Small, indistinguishable from the others. Still on the fourth floor, so even if someone snuck down it they would still have a gauntlet to traipse through before making it to my core, but something that I could have emerge anywhere. A way for Nicau to leave without drawing suspicion, to collect more wayward creations that the Adventuring Guild wouldn''t kill before they reached me to keep from my grasp, to learn about the Dread Pirate and Calarata and the eventual way to defeat them. A fourth entrance, for the fourth floor. The Goddess of Weaving listened to me. Her amusement left for a trader''s calm, the discerning weight of eyes larger than creation pressing down on my core. A thoroughly uncomfortable sensation. More potential for discovery, I tried, with a kind of desperation that didn''t cover up the terrible deal. I was, after all, trying remarkably hard to keep invaders from finding this pathway, rather than having them traipse through with open arms and a mind for accepting a new godly presence in their life. Not what most gods wanted. Nenaigch''s presence ruffled, the spinning click of needles against each other. And words, eldritch and abominable, a language both comprehensible and not, the same power as that shattered rising sun rune from the long-dead scroll and the memory of a beast that devoured stars, echoed through my core. A path for thee, Nenaigch murmured, coalesced in glimmering teeth. With gift for me. Oh. Oh! She had, unfortunately, discerned the deal wasn''t equal¡ªbut she''d given me an opportunity to sweeten it. And in her words, in the jagged, humming things that forked like coiled webs more than speech, she had sent ideas; she wanted more. The Jungle Labyrinth was enormous, easily one of the largest of my floors with how many tunnels there were, but gods were ever greedy, and I had asked for quite a boon alongside what she had already offered me. But oh, I could work with this. Because I''d had another plan, one I had originally been planning on implementing by myself, a half-shackle job dug into the base of the Skylands for lack of anywhere else. But if she was offering, then I would provide, and glory in it. She wanted more floor? So did I. And, in the back of my core, where still my soul raged over the death of the sarco and the wretched unfairness of having to stay put and die as Golds clawed for prestige from my youngest creatures, a glimmer of an idea took root and bloomed, great spreading tendrils of potential. A solution that would solve another problem for me, and get me the acceptance of a goddess. I did so love when my plans came together. Taking some inspiration for her illusions, I wove together an image, the idea of what I would create¡ªfirst was the path out of the dungeon, emerging in some hidden structure I would have Nicau find, far from prying eyes but still capable of being collapsed if discovered. Her power would suffuse the entire path, both for my creatures and anything within, power above and beyond¡ªbut that wasn''t it. Because I also showed her another tunnel, one forking off beneath with an entrance that constantly shifted and moved, nearly impossible for any invaders to access in the constantly spinning tunnel. But past the tunnel, separate from my Jungle Labyrinth, a floor between floors, I showed her a paradise. ¡­a haven. Patchwork, stitched together in every type of land; a mangrove forest here, deep water pools here, open stone here. Small, comparatively to the rest of my floors, but content. No traps, no danger, just fresh-grown mushrooms and clear water. Antithetical to a dungeon. But perfect for an ecosystem. My creatures were growing more and more powerful¡ªand more and more rich. For those I had the schema of, I could barely afford their mana costs, and that was even without the evolutions soon approaching; Veresai was one of the most powerful creatures in my dungeon, but if I wanted another to join her, all I could do was start at luminous constrictor. And that would take a wretchedly long time to get anywhere, and in the danger of my dungeon where death stood tyrant, it would likely die well before it reached those impossible heights. Consequence was for strength. They could only grow power, could only evolve, through combat. I knew that, reveled in it, appreciated it¡ªmy dungeon was not a place for coddling protection and gentle morning lullabies. But still the sarco''s death hung and bit at my core. She had been so dangerous, so powerful, so desperate to grow strong¡ªand she would have, if she hadn''t been alone. But a haven, a room for peace, would let more sarcos grow old enough to defend themselves, and then go into the wider world. The sarco wasn''t the type who would have stayed in this room I was planning, not with her drive to grow stronger, to gnaw and bite and devour her way into power¡ªbut others would be. Others that would stay in the haven, away from danger, away from the steel and swords and spells of invaders, and their offspring would go out to the dungeon proper. It wouldn''t be a place of growth, not like my dungeon. It would be soft and weak and pathetically friendly, predators settling for glaring at each other rather than tearing each other to shreds. No evolutions would happen here, not now, not ever. But they could live. Nenaigch shifted. Curiosity, in some sense of the word¡ªI was not particularly subtle that both of these offerings would be phenomenal for me and only mostly beneficial for her, which. If someone had brought this deal to me as a sea-drake, I certainly wouldn''t have taken it. But Nenaigch was the Goddess of Weaving. She was not powerful, not in the way that gods could be, and her followers ranked few in comparison to deities of silk or rope. To work with a dungeon was a claim to power that very few could have, with how limited their number was, and she''d clearly wanted it, with how much thought and power she was pouring into her offered boon. So a second deal with a dungeon was only more prestige. But not one this uneven, unfortunately. Nenaigch''s presence shifted. More, she murmured. Ones who sing my name; who rejoice in me. Who call upon me as Mine. What? I had to get her priests? Hells, how was I supposed to do that? All invaders could pledge themselves to any patrons of my floors, which would earn them a fucking irritant in the form of protection, though certainly not to where I would allow them access to my halls. But that was not a thing I could plan for, could organize. Unless. Far above, a point of awareness flicked up. In the Drowned Forest, cradled by Rhoborh''s boon, dead mangroves stood stark and pale in the mist. Instead of leaves they had only webs, careful things stitched together, white bodies scuttling over in fanatical fervour. The webweavers. They were devoted, certainly zealous, and rabid in their desire for following. To me they served, killing numbers of their own to sacrifice, growing enormous spiraled webs of power¡ªweaving, a spider''s greatest offering. They wouldn''t be priests, not in the typical humanoid sense. But oh, they could be something. I pushed them up, showing the detailed intricacies they made and marked and protected, the memory of them ripping one of their own to shreds so I could obtain their schema. Power, rabid loyalty, and her own name in theirs; a better gift. It would be up to me to make them follow Nenaigch, to shift their focus from the being that had created them to a distant god, but I could do it. I''d never been tamed by a challenge before, and the prize was too great to ignore. Nenaigch hummed, a rustling sound that choked out ambiance¡ªI felt her attention press futilely against the restraints of the Jungle Labyrinth, trying to peer up to the further floors, but they weren''t hers. She could only truly see them through the memories I offered. But the webweavers, and a haven floor, and a pathway out. Gifts and glories, the most I could give. I could feel her interest. This was like what Nuvja had offered me¡ªa changed deal. Not our original contract, not what we''d agreed upon. A chance. And, far above, in the unnamed world incapable of being understood by mortals, I felt a presence even greater than Nenaigch, than Khasvar, than any other god I''d made a deal with¡ªsomething big and ancient and Old, more than existence, more than Aiqith. Something observing the changes. Deciding if it would be allowed. I didn''t have lungs, but I was holding my breath. The presence looked in. Tilted its awareness to the side, a flickering curiosity, a whisper of a mind I couldn''t comprehend. It drifted away. Approval. The deal would be allowed to stand. Nenaigch''s mana coiled and curled. Silk, wrapping around me, the rumble and grind of tunnels. I accept. Chapter 131 - Doors to be Opened With teeth and trial, Nenaigch''s mana sunk once more into my halls. It was less blinding than the first attempt, more cloying, the deepening pull of what was already there¡ªbut that didn''t make it unnoticeable. She didn''t have anything to aim it at but I felt the pressure increase, the rising spots where her mana coiled and hissed like a living thing. Two points, for me to choose as I wished, claws bared and waiting. I preened. Nenaigch would get her priests, get her second floor, get her passage¡ªand I would get power. Always more power, the likes of which I could never have dreamed up in another world. Soon, I would make the haven, the little paradise within a hellscape of my own creation¡ªbut I had a greater mission first, one that would also take another''s hands in the process, grubby though they may be. So I pushed vaguely soothing intricacies to Nenaigch, lavishing as much praise as my soot-black soul could muster, and dipped away from her floor, past the lightning-choked Skylands and into the coiling reefs below, the watery paradise with all its extended teeth. The first room, awash in billowing schools, and then the second, with its sprawling lagoon and shifting trees. And, in the far back, the den, perched on white sands and crowned in vampiric mangroves. Not the vampiric mangrove, the Ancestral Tree still haunted by her vampiric dryad who had taken to dragging roughwater sharks out of the water and feasting on their desiccated corpses to the remarkable horror of her neighbors. No, for today my focus was for the kobolds, and their companion within. Chieftess, halfway through pouring over what was a rather juvenile attempt at a carved map of the Hungering Reefs, tilted her head to the side as she felt my awareness slip into the den, the humming buzz of my intensified mana. She warbled some kind of inane question, rising to her claws, gripping her newly-fashioned spear. Still something that could serve as a staff, her commanding call to her underlings, but with the jagged fang of a slain shark affixed to the tip. She was not a passive leader. Her scarlet scales had blood to match their hue. I pushed a point of mana into her for little more than general encouragement before diving into the back of the den. Tucked in his room, resting on the moss bed and sketching little pictures in the dirt on the walls, was Nicau. Bored, from my initial brush of his surface thoughts¡ªthere was little to do but fight, rest, and hunt, particularly for one who had been used to more dramatic lives. Well. When he went to Calarata, he could perhaps finally learn how to read, as I''d commanded him, and bring back books for his entertainment. You, I murmured, something quick and fleeting. Nicau still shook and jittered upright, because my mental voice was a power deeper than any thought, and he flashed an apologetic bow in what could generously be called my direction if he had recently been diagnosed as blind. Go above. Find an entrance. Find a shadow. A shadow, something hidden and unknown, where perhaps a quiet little opening could appear and be none the worse for wear. A home for the crawling and skittering beasts, where pirates rather had better things to do than poke their ugly noses in. Something Nicau was uniquely suited to find. Because while I didn''t want this in Calarata, I wanted it close¡ªI could not simply sit back and content myself on ignoring the pirates, letting them bluster and blow themselves out like storms against an unforgiving coast. They were, very irritably, a threat; and one I was determined in crushing. Therefore, I needed information. And where better than from the throats of those who cursed my name? Nicau frowned, tilting his head and worrying his lip with his teeth. "Ah," he said, delicately, like one seeing a garotte that hadn''t yet wrapped around his neck but was dallying too close for comfort. "Back to Calarata?" My mana billowed around his mind, shoving in pictures of the Golds that had poured within my hall, and the deal I''d struck with Nenaigch¡ªa way in and out without the constant threat of discovery or being closed off. A way for him to leave easier, to keep seeing the world, to continue spreading the epithet he''d so graciously given himself. Pirate Lord, I thought. Dreadfully uncreative. It must have taken him all of two seconds to make it. Nicau''s cheeks flushed. "Of course, o'' dungeon," he managed, pushing off from his bed and fumbling for his dark blue coat, swirling it over his shoulders. His blind loyalty was appreciated. "More creatures?" Knowledge, I said, and then corrected myself. And creatures. Nicau nodded, a hesitant little bob. "Yes," he said. "I will. Leave immediately." He did know how to endear himself to me, the little sycophant. I pushed a vague point or two of mana into his channels, a plucked string between our shared souls, and shoved more information to him; he''d have to sneak past the Adventuring Guild and find a place for me to dig my tunnel to, somewhere out of the way and undisturbed, not too close and not too far. I was resting a worrying amount of responsibility on the shoulders of a mere human, but, well. I''d saved his life when his own kind had sent him here to be killed. Inept though he might be, I could trust he would at least try. Nicau straightened, brushing a hand through his hair, which had grown long and ragged enough to brush the top of his back. He hadn''t cut it, though, in part at my behest¡ªthough I couldn''t understand why humans allowed such an odd, stringy thing to grow from their heads, I could appreciate that it disguised his face, though few would be on the hunt for a pigeoncatcher. He stared around his room, tightening his grip on the knife he''d won on his last trip. Something old entered his gaze. "Ashes to ashes," he murmured, drumming his fingers over his side, eyes pinched at the corners. "Back to the before, I suppose." Was that an attempt at eloquence? Had he truly gotten so bored in my halls he''d fallen into poetry? Well. I''d leave him to it. Because he wasn''t the only one I was sending out. It was, in some kindness, not the most intelligent move I could make, but I needed to. Nicau was my ears on the ground for Calarata, for the vibrant little pirates in all their glorious failure that was unfortunately dangerous; but just as I couldn''t afford to ignore them, neither could I elevate them to apragons of lethality. My existence had to be for more than killing the Dread Pirate, though I very much would be. I needed to know more about the world around me, about the jungle I still had yet to name, about the humanoid politics that I hadn''t paid much more attention than debating which colour of flag looked nicest as I dragged their ships to the murky depths, about all manners of creatures and connivers and wretched little thieves with wisps in their paws. This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it And if Nicau would be diving into the city and unnamed jungle when I was feeling peckish for more schemas, there was one more realm I had need of exploring. So further into the Hungering Reefs I went, around the liquid blue and whispering sands, a scarlet flash of the parrot overhead and the shine of hunting triggerfish. And, in the third room, with its towering pillar-reefs and choppy waters, another predator lurked, training himself in the swirl of currents off his vibrant scales and wavering frills. Seros, the first of my Named. His head flicked up as I dipped into our shared connection, the humming melody of our entwined souls; he let the last roughwater shark he had been toying with the idea of hunting slip away, flicking his tail to latch onto the closest pillar of coral for a grounding hold as his head swiveled fruitlessly in an unconscious desire to see who he was speaking to. Hello, I murmured, gentle as the westerlies. He was, as always, my much beloved¡ªthe draconic word for friend, when I had been still foolish and unable to spend more time giving him one to strike the same fear as a proper dragon''s name should. Seros churred, bubbles rippling out of his maw¡ªhis claws flashed and he dove deeper into the water, currents swirling to life as he tore out of the third room and hauled himself into the tunnel in the back, heading down to the Scorchplains, though he merely rested on the stone with his tail still hanging in the blue. He rumbled something deep and welcoming in his chest, reverence and amiability in one. He''d come so far, from the little underground monitor scurrying for rats in the depths of ancient mountains. I sunk into his mind, curling mana around the jitter and snap of his thoughts, and pushed blue to him¡ªideas of waves, of currents, of tossingly bitter waves and the sanctuary they protected from foolish terrestrial beings. A seabound monitor he''d been, and draconic now¡ªbut all he''d tasted were the tamed places under my control, and he could not become a sea-drake with only Mayalle''s whirlpool as the idea of the ocean. Or, at least, I certainly wouldn''t let him. Being a sea-drake didn''t mean merely having green scales, or an appreciation for something with more depths than piddly little flames or high flights. It meant being a part of something eternal, something that had existed longer than the oldest forests and mountains and lands and peoples and beings and would continue existing for longer than they could comprehend. It meant being more. It meant being immortal, in a way no others could achieve¡ªimmortality by giving up yourself. By being a sea-drake, one claimed and held by the sea, merciless as she delighted in being. I had prostrated myself before only two. The lord of dragons, father of the scaled, as my creator; and the sea, as my existence. So you could be damn well assured that I would be shoving that understanding into Seros'' skull well before I let him evolve into one. Seros perked up, ivory fangs flashing. He wasn''t like my other Named, who tried to speak to me in words and speech; his thoughts flowed through our connection without censorship or diffusion. Open. Excitement, bright and burnished, at the memories I was giving him; the Hungering Reefs were the closest I could give him and he delighted in them, rarely extending down to the Scorchplains except to sleep, wrapped around my core''s pillar in slumbering guard. Schemas, I said, because of course I wanted more, and as with the burrowing rat so long ago, Seros had proven himself capable of restraint in devouring his kills to bring me corpses. But knowledge. Learn about the things within. Curiosity. He tilted his head to the side, horns catching the light. Vague memories of the wretched merrow Priestess and her diamond staff, the fight he''d had after they tore a hole into the Underlake, and then become worryingly silent after. Yes, them, and what I hoped was only them. Most aquatic races were fiercely territorial in a way that terrestrial creatures simply couldn''t understand, with their open skies and ample resources. Oceans were, by definition, rather empty and yearning¡ªfor those like sea-drakes, who slated our fill on other equally large creatures, it was of little concern. But for merrow, mermaids, aicaya, and other like, they needed reefs and kelp forests and shallow lagoons, which were mere pockets in the pressing emptiness. Thus, fiercely guarded. No, I had little doubts that the merrow were the only ones in this cove, but that was what made it all the more concerning that I was seeing so little of them. A dungeon with water access was a thing unheard of, and certainly not one without a claimed core. They should have been clawing down the mountains in their effort to reach it. Seros'' nostrils flared, tail lashing. No, he didn''t think of them with much kindness of any regard. We were quite similar. Them, I said, still gentle. And more. What is within. And, with a kind of care deeply antithetical to my being, I pushed the vaguest recollection of the nightmare to him. Twin maws. Black skin. Hissing through water, through air, through mana, consuming star-bright mana and decaying it to emptiness. The pitch-shark. It had come from the cove, from somewhere within the water, and it was not of Aiqith in any way that mattered. Nicau''s mysterious rune had spoken of the same idea, the world that had existed before Aiqith, before the Otherworld, before any of the others¡ªup until the Breaking, named so with emphasis, but undescribed. A terribly wretched thing. And much like the merrow, it didn''t make sense I hadn''t seen another. Something was happening in the cove. And I needed to know. Seros hissed, claws rooting into the stone. But fear, barely a whisper, lurked under his fury. He knew the strength of a pitch-shark when it was caged within cramped corners and belied on all sides; out in the cove, in the openness, it would not be so limited. But he was Seros. None had ever defeated him, and it wouldn''t happen now. Pride flowed through me, the kind I couldn''t have snuffed out and muffled if I wanted; matching bravado in equal turn. His Name had so far manifested as hydrokinesis, the rush and pull of surrounding water; but Nicau could command, and Akkyst could instruct, and I had little doubt there was something more to the blessing of the depths. The draconic monitor nodded, his iridescent scales catching the light as he slipped back into the water. He''d have a hells of an easier time getting out than Nicau, given there wasn''t a great fat Adventuring Guild perched over that entrance, but he''d still have to be quick and clever with it. I had no doubt in him. I told him so, as he swam up through the coral reefs and into the Skylands, and he preened as he clambered higher through my dungeon. Other creatures watched him with a wariness characteristic of gravitas, budding though it was; they knew he was a threat, long before their eyes registered his size and might. An unconscious understanding of danger. Draconic monitor for now. Dragon, soon. Already outpaced by Seros'' elegant movements, Nicau was fumbling his way across the Hungering Reefs, the kobold''s prototype raft lashed together from fallen cloudsire palms and desperation, a few kobold hunters doing their best to swim alongside. Neither group was moving particularly fast. But he would make his way across and then clamber up through the rest of the floors, emerge out in the tunnel, and strike to the shadows until he was out in the wider world. Back to Calarata. And return with schemas and knowledge aplenty. Now, with my Named striking out for greener pastures and threats embodied by every kind of nightmare, I could settle in, wrapping my sparks of mana around my core in a fruitless little lightshow that did nothing but make me preen. I had made a goddess rescind her previous deal and strengthen it; to grant me even more power than she had originally given. Made myself strong. And yes, while I would little doubt have to go bother myself against the webweavers and bring myself down to their scuttling level, I had some time before I could do that. And my sights were set on my side of the bargain for now. Nicau to Calarata, Seros to sea¡ªand me, to paradise. I grabbed my mana and started to dig. Chapter 132 - Forest Rise About half a thousand feet into the beginning of the tunnel carving through for paradise, several points of awareness flickered to life in the back of my core. I could not have stopped digging fast enough. Evolutions. Oh, glorious evolutions, another balm over the vitriol of Ghasavalk escaping¡ªSy?alia''s mana, Gold-powered, in their blinding radiance that spread over my halls. Perfection, or as close as I could get to it, and from a single death that had immediately triggered new evolutions and allowed me to finish a floor within the same day. What would an Electrum''s death do, if I could ever achieve it? Or even a Mythril? Gods above, how I wished to discover that. But for now, I flicked my attention up to the Fungal Gardens high above, rooting through Nuvja''s shadows and the rumbling snores of the lunar cave bears who preferred sleeping for every hour of the day, to the little pocket of white in the back side. Something large and blooming underneath, curled around the base of a stalagmite. The light dimmed and died, already a soft thing under Nuvja''s protective shadows so as to not draw attention. Considering the last batch of invaders, who had made it down to the Drowned Forest before cutting their losses as the kobold tribe came howling in, hadn''t noticed it, that felt like it was working. A deal I''d made with Nenaigch, and a deal Nuvja had made with me. One of them would be coming to call. As a sea-drake, I''d rarely involved myself with the gods overhead, little more than pious reminders that I was unfortunately aware of. But while I knew that I was to finish Nenaigch''s new floors and obtain her followers¡ªquickly¡ªI still didn''t know what Nuvja wanted from me. Her changed deal had been vague in ways I was biting myself for agreeing to, but it didn''t seem malicious, and any gods who had become my patrons had an implicit reason not to want to smite me. A concern I, quite truthfully, did not have enough information to properly worry over. So instead, I pushed past Nuvja''s shadows, into the light softening down to gentle white. A mushroom beneath. A reaper''s cap. It was large and sprawling, no longer limited to a single stalk and cap but instead a rippling forest of them, pale white and ghostly in the shadows. I could sense a web of mycelium under the stone, linking all the different prongs together into one billowing thing. Still pure white, with odd pockmarks over the cap and little marbled lines weaving throughout. But its gills. Its gills. Most mushrooms had gills that served as little more than their names¡ªlines of fabric-like veils under their cap, serving for the release of spores. Already lacecaps had extended them, creating longer, lace-like structures dripping with bile to catch prey, and then this particular one had stretched them further into draping little things with corpses stuck to the tips. But the reaper''s cap took it much further. Instead of anything resembling normal mushrooms, the gills had evolved into tendrils, spongy white flesh like the thornwhip algae that bloomed beneath each of its many caps. They were thin things, not made for choking¡ªbile glistened over their surfaces, that rich, cloudy adhesive that made any creature quickly regret its life choices. And then, on their ends, was the real prize and meaning behind its name. I curled my points of awareness around the reaper''s cap and crooned. Little bodies hung from its tips. Some were insects, chitinous limbs poking from the flesh, wings that fluttered and flapped with dazed imperfection. Others were burrowing rats, desiccated fur pulled taut over bones, blank eyes peering through an empty face. They weren''t truly alive, in any sense of the matter, but they were corpses that were now moving, in some mockery of life, in order to attract more prey. Surely this area of mushrooms was safe, with the buzz of dragonfly wings and rustle of rats moving around its base¡ªsafe enough for others to come. And that was with it newly evolved, large but not particularly so¡ªbut it would grow, and grow, and grow, past bugs and rats and toads. To invaders. Oh, I truly couldn''t wait. What a little monster of mine, a beast in all shadows and deceit, another trickster to add to my dungeon. Not a living mind, in the way that the vampiric dryad had been before her evolution, but as much as I was loath to admit Ghasavalk had been right about one thing. All things within a dungeon had a mind, and there was a lingering sort of consciousness to the reaper''s cap, a whisper of original thought; most of it was hunger, of a deep and pressing ache for food, something that would never be satiated. One of those who desired strength. It would stay on this floor for now, perfect as it was, but I could see a future in which it moved down. Not the Hungering Reefs, where mushrooms were rather an unoptimal choice, nor the Scorchplains, where the smog would keep others from noticing the entrancing corpses. But perhaps something lower. Something in the future. I still had no real developed ideas for other floors, nor for how many I would want in total. There was still a faint push from my dungeon memories, the thoughts that weren''t mine, telling me that I couldn''t be greedy. Godly patrons would lock in mana for the floor they gave boons to, allowing me to move my core lower without subtracting mana, but it wasn''t a permanent balm¡ªif I descended too deep, then my upper floors would lose first mana, then awareness, and then my ownership over them entirely. So no. I couldn''t dig forever. But I could dream, and I had many of those. The reaper''s cap shivered, a stone-backed toad corpse making a lurching jump forward in its mockery of living. One day, I would give it a paradise to live in. But for now, I simply pushed a soothing point of mana into its channels, enough to encourage it, and then dove down three fours to the other change in light from within my halls. The Stone Jungle, and all those within. This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work. Luminous constrictors reached crowned cobras, unfurling their new hoods and hissing around flexing fangs. More ranged attackers for Veresia''s horde, and those that could be healed if they were injured¡ªKriya was tucked far in the back of the den, watching with wide eyes as the evolutions completed around her, mana thick and choking in the air for the little Bronze. Doubtless another reason to stay obedient even if the geas broke¡ªit was rather clear who held the power here. But crowned cobras, nearly a dozen, slithered off to test their new bodies, and two more jeweltone serpents shook their pale heads and flicked their forked blue tongues. Kriya''s clever hands would be the ones to push jewels into their scales, granting them the power they hadn''t been able to fully master yet. Glorious. One more serpent lurched from unconsciousness. He was tucked in the far back, in a room that had once been left alone but Veresai had allowed him to use for evolution, the spectral serpent awoke. The beast who had taken Sy?alia''s attunement, the beat and bulk of her power, though he had been just a lowly luminous constrictor before. In truth, I would have preferred if perhaps Seros or Veresai would have gotten her power, but I could also see why this was best¡ªboth of them had attunements already. To take her intangibility would be to weaken themselves, rather than combining into perfection. In an ideal world, I would strike out to go kill draconic creatures and psionic monsters like Ghasavalk, anything to grant Veresai and Seros the perfect mana. But I was unfortunately limited to whatever strode blithely into my halls. Well, perhaps if Nicau was successful, I could certainly choose certain targets to try and lure within. But for later. For now, I watched the spectral serpent awoke. He was some fifteen feet long and thin, clever as a whip, with mottled grey-white scales like shadowed seafoam. His eyes were a pale blue, fangs of pure bone, and an odd, black-lined pattern down the center of his spine. Curious. I peered closer. Mana positively thrummed through that mark, choking in it, barely present in the rest of his body in comparison; the black line twined up around his eyes to the tip of his tail, only a scale or two wide, and crackling with power. He uncurled from his slumber, tongue flicking out, head lilting as he raised it up. He peered around him, mana flickering with mana as his first evolution settled through him. His thoughts, still hazy, hissed with excitement. Still a scar sat over his head, a patch of miscoloured scales. One of Sy?alia''s attacks, the one he hadn''t been able to avoid, to flee from. But no longer. With a completely subtle prompt from me, the spectral serpent tensed, mana wisping over his scales like mist over water, and then disappeared. It wasn''t like Sy?alia, erasing herself from the world and existing as little more than mana¡ªinstead, he became transparent, the white of his scales bleaching until only the memory of them remained, wavering and inconsistent. His face was a smear of white with two pale pinpricks of blue, wavering fangs beneath¡ªand then one solid black line, hovering in ghostly space. His anchor point, what kept him locked to Aiqith. Fascinating. He appeared back with a rattling hiss, exhaustion pulling on his thoughts¡ªsomething that would require training. Unfortunately understandable. This was a hells of a power to give to a creature in their first evolution, when before he had been little more than a snake overfond of brutish biting. He would need time to master it. I slipped into Veresai''s mind, humming over our shared connection. Let him train, I murmured, because I knew damn well she wouldn''t if I didn''t tell her to. Tyrannical overlords were not particularly forgiving, even if I hoped that Kriya would teach her about the importance of offering kindness alongside cruelty. Although not too much. I didn''t want Veresai to lose her violence; it was what made me love her. But a touch of forgiveness so that her followers would stay loyal rather than only fearful would go a long way, and a nervous, quiet human who had chosen to become a healer seemed like the most likely opportunity. Veresai hissed at nothing, tossing back her crown of antlers, but pushed begrudged acceptance back to me. Glorious. I grew more moss around her scales before flitting off to the other side of the Stone Jungle, still recovering from the Gold invasion, to a pocket far from their rivalry with the serpents. In the largest side den, guarded by other mage ratkin who hissed at anything that got close with bared gnawing teeth and a flash of mana up their little hands, their leader awoke. The forestfall ratkin. Her emerald green eyes flicked open, a gentle flutter, thoughts stirring alive. With careful precision, her whiskers twitched and her ears raised. The other ratkin squeaked and scurried around her, paws grasping futilely as they kept from touching her. Which was exceedingly fair¡ªshe had been kind to them, taking them from the empirical nepotism that had spawned on the first floor, but she was also the one who had swallowed a jewel and descended four whole floors just to get more power. Evolution could do strange things to the mind, particularly when the one it was strengthening wasn''t the most stable to begin with. Their caution was warranted. The forestfall ratkin squeaked, ears twitching, as she rose. She was enormous for a rat, oddly hunched, until she pushed up from her front paws and rested fully on her back. Her spine straightened out, tail lashing, and she looked almost at home standing like a humanoid. She and her other ratkin had risen to their back paws before, but it was often a limited gesture, little more than grabbing things or casting spells; now she looked like she wouldn''t be going back to all fours. Curious. I''d thought ratkin were still more rats than kin, not up to the level of sapience as kobolds; but much like the kobolds, in her evolution, she had only changed the specific epithet, not the species. Her other ratkin still had a ways to go before rising to her level of strength, but perhaps they were closer than I thought. The forestfall ratkin shook herself, deep earthen-brown fur rustling¡ªand rustling, because over her flanks and spreading up her back, was moss. Little flecks of jadestone moss, the same she''d swallowed the jadestone from, barely starting to grow but clearly rooted into her fur. The same colour as her deep green eyes. Light crackled over her black nails, down to the fork in her tail, over her muzzle. Dangerous, particularly as she stood at over four feet tall, nearly the height of the original kobolds. A proper threat and a beast¡ªone that Veresai wouldn''t be able to intimidate quite so easily, especially considering that I hadn''t named the Jungle Labyrinth for only its maze of tunnels. Someone who commanded plants would have plenty of strength to pull from here. And that was before she could get the rest of her little tribe to evolve. I pushed more consoling mana into her, a bright encouragement, and then dove down to my own project with reinvigorated vigor. Hells, my floors were getting stronger, day by day¡ªit was time I gave them more tools to succeed. Not the fourth exit, considering I needed Nicau to tell me where, but certainly the other. My plan for the paradise was rather simple. It wasn''t going to be an enormous floor, one fraught with territorial disputes and madness, because I rather explicitly was going to be layering my ambient mana with enough innate compulsions not to fight that it would have quelled a siege. This was to be a haven, for raising families rather than raising strength. Excluding all the shriveling little prey creatures that would be there to serve as food. Bully for them. I hadn''t ever had a problem before, considering most creatures overfond of dying often had reproduction rates to match, but perhaps I would make a smaller outcrop for rarer prey creatures, so that they could recreate without fear of death. Maybe. But it would be enough. It had to be. I continued digging, my thoughts full of emerald-eyed rats and necromantic mushrooms. Chapter 133 - Alliance Ealdhere took a deep breath, brushing over the front of his Scholar''s robes. It didn''t help, but few things did in this gilded cage he''d found himself in, and there was little else he could do but merely accept it. Or, to be more accurate¡ªhe could play at pretending it, let Lluc think he tamed, and do what he could in the shadows. Which was why he was here, many hours before the Guild would be allowing today''s adventurers into the dungeon, waiting at the door he had propped open with a spare pebble kicked in from the beach to keep from the magical lock from attaching, and waiting with a rather deplorable kind of anticipation before the sun had even risen. Calarata was a cold icon in the distance, whitetack against pale rocks, the green of the jungle spilling around and beyond; the wooden dock spidered closer, a twisting black shape in the dark of night, framed by the figure striding over its surface. Ealdhere adjusted his robes again. Gods, how he wished for his colourful coat and brimmed hat, any mockery of his previous trappings. Anything to grant him comfort in what was little doubt the most dangerous thing he would be doing in what was now feeling like a regrettably short life. Delving the dungeon had doomed him, and doomed his companions; this was a far less impersonal sort of ruin he would be bringing on his shoulders if this fell through. But the dungeon was alive, in whatever sense of the word he could use. It had kept humans without killing them, had made new and unbelievable creatures, had been born from something. He had to know. And so Ealdhere nudged the door open, glancing once around to make sure no one else was around, careful not to leave the building himself in case Lluc could sense that, and watched Gon?al of the Silent Market approach the Adventuring Guild. Three days it had taken him to send a single message to the outer world, a pittance concealed in a street urchin''s palm¡ªshe had been a straggler since the very opening of the Guild, scrounging in the shadows, a pitiable thing with pale eyes and clever hands. Unranked, just like him, which meant Lluc didn''t care about her. Hardly noticed her, if she ever drew his attention. A ghost. One of the many lost in Calarata. In return for the fangs of a luminous constrictor, she''d agreed to deliver a piece of paper to the Silent Market, under the guise of the name Alami. It would have meant nothing to anyone but those who had been present for the invasion and its aftermath And it appeared Gon?al had answered the call. He ducked through the opening, a faint glow spilling from his eyes, one palm braced on the doorframe in what would have seemed normal if it weren''t for the gouges his claws dug into the wood. Ealdhere swallowed. Gon?al was a terribly intimidating man, both through his own cultivation and his natural state of being. The copper-bronze scales on his face, furrowing over his brow and outlining his eyes like kohl, the flash of canines in his trader-calm smile, the claws poised on the tips of his fingers; also the height and bulk of a man who fought, who made himself strong past just his attunement and ancestry. But Ealdhere had been invited to fanciful parties and engagements and other extravagances in the past¡ªhe knew to look below the surface. Entirely unfamiliar with Calarata politics was he, but he did see that Gon?al was¡­ missing things, in a way. Strong, yes; powerful, yes; and tethered to the Silent Market. Not an unwilling prison, in the way of the Adventuring Guild, but something almost from desperation. Gon?al was a mystery of a man, and Ealdhere did love mysteries. But more than that, he wanted freedom, something to untether him from the Dread Crew. The dungeon was not kind. It had killed dozens, more; slaughtered them with ease unbecoming. But it had done so for those that had delved its floors, rather than apathetic murder. It would not be an ally, not in the way that Ealdhere wanted one. But hells, maybe he could get something from it. The competition was Lluc, who loosed daggers from his tongue and relished in death; black-eyed Ghasavalk, who smiled without meaning anything; Varc¨ªs Bilaro, a man in the shadows who built an empire of marauders. If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. Who had buried Neus? Who would have buried Neus? Gon?al peered around the room, a bland kind of interest, more glow flickering through his eyes. Maybe his attunement? Ealdhere hadn''t seen anything of his power before, other than his ancestry. But he didn''t spend longer than a moment before following Ealdhere into his office, strung up with crocodile scales and sketches and pieces of collected moss. And the ceramic pot, carrying the mangrove sapling. He''d been experimenting with different types of blood, but it seemed to always prefer his, to grow best when it was his arm he cut. Which. He was a firm believer that all things should be explored, that investigation was worth in of itself, but that was a touch concerning. Gon?al''s eyes lingered on a drawing of a shadowy fish, stitched together from some poor description of a group that had only poked their toes into the third floor before retreating. His teeth caught the reflected quartz-light. "This is not the oddest time I''ve been summoned to a beneath-ground meeting," Gon?al said, head cocked to the side, bird-like. "But certainly the first from you." He didn''t have to play coy. The implications were rather explicit. Secret gatherings were rarely for genial topics. Ealdhere splayed his hands over his desk, drumming his fingers on the edge. Sketches, papers, alchemic predictions and estimations. A legacy of work held by one who didn''t care about the lives it took to claim it. "I have," he said, and hesitated; glanced around like Lluc would appear from the shadows, like Ghasavalk''s black eyes would report back to whatever rotten little allyship he had with the First Mate. But there was no one there. There was never anyone there, because they had caged Baron Ealdhere Darlington in a prison of passion and thought him contained. He was not like these rough Silvers and Golds that called Calarata home, with death on their teeth and apathy in their eyes; just Unranked, a parrot dressed up in fine feathers. Why would he do anything? He was the Scholar, one who stayed in the Adventuring Guild and died there. He wasn''t strong like them. Perhaps that was to his benefit. So Ealdhere looked back to Gon?al, straightening his shoulders. "I have a proposition," he said. Behind him, the mangrove sapling shivered, pale white leaves unfurling anew. Another mystery, one made by a dungeon that wasn''t just instinct. Something more. "An alliance." Gon?al raised an eyebrow in a trader''s impassive curiosity. "I thought we were already partnered," he said in a deep rumble, crossing his arms before his chest. That was true. What he would be saying would be revealing something that would bring the axe down on his head if it got out, but, well. The last time he had interacted with this man, it had been over the corpse of a woman he had never learned the name of, Coseth''s throatless body, and the ink-drenched Alami, and it had been with Lluc threatening Gon?al''s life for obedience. It was hard to be sure of anything in Calarata, but Ealdhere was relatively confident that Gon?al wouldn''t go cry secrets to Lluc. "Not between the Silent Market and the Adventuring Guild," he said. "Between you and me." Gon?al''s eyebrow raised higher, but he stayed quiet. Well. Cards on the table, then. Ealdhere splayed his hands. "I''m not to leave the Guild," he said, with as much an air of indifference as he could summon. "But I have reason to believe the dungeon is more intelligent than we thought, and it hasn''t been conquered yet. There''s a chance that it has the potential for communication." The man stared at him. Not one of many words, it seemed. That was fine. Ealdhere had more than enough. "An offering," he said. "You delve into the dungeon for me, attempting to talk to it, and in return, I grant you every advantage the Adventuring Guild can offer." And that he could sneak past Lluc''s awareness. Gon?al hummed, not quite hesitance, not quite curiosity. Or, rather, it was, but carefully packaged up into a trader''s calm. Seeming too interested meant poor deals and negotiation, particularly with rampaging creatures as the common target. But Ealdhere wasn''t blind, though many were content to pretend it was so. The adventurer''s eyes were a touch too bright. And the bounty was real, in part. Ghasavalk had taken his share of gold but left all his findings for study, from the crocodilian''s corpse to sections of algae from the fourth floor to the curled white body of the strangely psionic spider. Any piece of those would line the Silent Market''s prestige. Ealdhere had spent three long days planning this out with a delirium that rivaled genius. It was as surefire as he could make it. Gon?al''s hand brushed at his neck, a silver chain that disappeared beneath the collar of his light armour. A lump, over his collarbones, a faint glow spilling through cracks in the leather. He closed his eyes, a rumbling hum of contemplation. Peculiar. Ealdhere leaned back, brushing his shoulder against the mangrove''s growing canopy. Slow-growing, a mystery apart, something that Lluc had only paid attention to in consideration for strategies to attack or how to harvest it for parts. No wonder, no whimsy; just another cog in the endless spinning wheel of power in Calarata. The dungeon was dreadfully deadly and dangerous in turn. Whoever claimed it, whoever understood it, would have teeth in Calarata. But those that tore into it for power would never have the mind to talk to it, to find more than simple pathways to elevation. Ealdhere had always been a creature of curiosity. Gon?al opened his eyes, twin stars in his scaled face. His fangs flashed. "I accept." Chapter 134 - A Life Spent Below Through the Underlake he swam. Seros swam like the predator he was, currents swirling around his claws and pressing against his scales. Through the murk he flew, like spat venom from a crowned cobra, a shadow in the swirlings depths. This was not his preferred home, not against the crystal blue waters far below, but he knew this place with an intricate understanding that mere beauty couldn''t replace. But though he dove past sluggish roughwater sharks and emerald crabs that wouldn''t be more than a heartbeat to snap down, he swam past, for he had a mission. A goal, called upon by the Core himself. And Seros was not one to fail. The waterpool that hissed and snapped with stone-teeth and ancient power bucked against his control, determined to drag him back into the Underlake¡ªbut Seros was the first of the Named and most powerful, and with a lash of his tail it broke and slowed, a passage opening within the heart of its spiral. Something lurched at that, a presence above displeased with his action¡ªSeros hissed a mocking cry and swam through the entrance, frills raised. Deep in his soul, the song. The Core''s connection hummed one last note of fondness, a murmured farewell, and then he slipped out of the dungeon. He felt it immediately, in the drag on his scales and the weight in his soul¡ªthe song faltered and dimmed, barely a whisper, a memory of the connection that once thrummed within him. And instead of quartz-light and glimmering green algae, it was just empty stone, grey and lifeless, extending out in a macabre mockery of a proper dungeon''s tunnel to the blue water beyond. The mana here tasted different, white and cold, a bare memory instead of fill. Seros growled, bubbles spiraling from his mouth; it wasn''t home, wasn''t the song that purred in his soul, wasn''t anything he knew or loved¡ªhe reached out for his water-control and it shivered, coming to with sluggish acceptance. There was no mana here to feed it, nothing that flowed through him from the outside world. All the mana available was weak and thin, stained with watery attunement and entering him only reluctantly. Useless. How the Core provided; what he was only able to understand in its absence. Seros snarled, dragging at the depths of his soul to spool out mana. Lacking from the dungeon or not, the water was still his, and it would obey¡ªhe spat out clouds of crackling aura and wrenched the currents back under his mind, spiraling them to push him out of the cramped tunnel. It gurgled, spiraling, but moved. He hadn''t been this uncoordinated with his power since he''d first been Named. Perhaps it was best he wasn''t in the dungeon so the Core didn''t have to see this. But with a lash of his tail, soon he was out of the mountains, and within the cove. The world outside. How long had it been since he''d been here? So long ago, when what thoughts he''d had were narrowed in on food to gather and predators to flee. A moment where he had poked his head through the entrance merely to test how the Core could feel him, but no other time, no contact with wider existence beyond what entered his floor to die. Seros called the water to hold him, right outside the tunnel; it lurched sickeningly to his call, almost fighting him, unwilling to leave from the pathways it had perfected. He bared his fangs and dug deeper, tore spirals up to wrap around his limbs and keep him suspended; a stone in the depths, only the faint glow from his eyes spilling forth. The cove was enormous. He¨C he didn''t want to think this, to even consider the comparison, but it was larger than anything he had ever known. When he was weak, the world had been too large for comprehension, and only the small places had mattered¡ªbut now he had grown enough to truly see how small he still was. The Underlake had been a paradise, and then he had grown; the Hungerings Reefs now housed him in glorious freedom. The cove dwarfed it in every conceivable way. He couldn''t even see the bottom, the sides, the walls; just an endless expanse of blue, made inky with night, the flash of distant scales and crashing waves overhead. What power had shaped this cove? Before the Core, he had never even imagined this, had never wondered at the eve of his creation; had only tucked away from the sun and hunted for rats in the shadows. For rats when he felt confident enough to try; for insects when he was scared. What life was that? Who had created him to live like that, terrified, hunting for nothing but life in of itself? He wasn''t like the others, shaped by the Core, only Named. What purpose had he been made for? What life was a life spent weak? Seros tilted his head back, to the waves dancing overhead, capped in moonlight. Beyond, he knew, sat a city; a den for humans, tucked away in the shadow of mountains. White against grey. Movement. Humans. He had been afraid of them, when he had known fear and fright; when he had been small and the world had been terrifying, before there had been even a thought of fighting back. An underground monitor, the Core had called him. Small and scurrying, tucked in the shadows. No longer. He clawed at the water, tearing himself through the currents until his head broke the surface, gills flattening and steam hissing around his fangs. The air outside was brisk and salted, infused with twilight, but the darkness had no bearings of his eyes. He was one for the deep seas, the darkness; he saw through it more clearly than sun. This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings. So he saw, so far away, the human city of land. Calarata, it was called. A word without origin, no draconic twist of sound or growled power. A useless word. But one that the humans thought that they needed; that they deserved a name, despite their lack of ambition, of strength. They had not earned one from the Core. It was not a true Name. Seros settled on the water''s surface, claws flicking as he made the currents hold him still on the surface. Only his head poked out, barely a ripple in the dark surface, a shadow amidst many others. He watched the white city, crawling up the base of the mountains, made of odd, stone-like walls and tamed boulders. What existence was that? Perhaps there was danger in falling, or of creatures breaking in¡ªbut it was like a den. A den was for rest, for food; a protection from the world, yes, but not for life. You could not grow strong, tucking yourself away behind stone walls. Perhaps they would never grow strong. But if that was true, then the Core would not build his strength to oppose them, not merely the desire to be more. Seros rumbled, mist spiraling off his grills and drifting over the water''s surface. These humans¡ªpirates, a different word¡ªwould never survive in the dungeon, neither by living there or by invading. He would make sure of both. But they were not his target today. So with a final glare, he slipped back beneath the water and summoned the currents to tug him along, a gentle pull against his tail and horns, what should have been stronger but still fought against him. He bit against the disrespect and dove, deep below the evening-dark air, down into the shivering blue beneath. To the merrow. Twice had he encountered them, once in the grips of fear he had never yet felt from himself or the Core and the other when fury undefeated. Aquatic things, clever, without much of tools or trinkets that Nicau would like. They brought no warmth or kindness from him, much like the humans, but they were more understandable, perhaps. Choosing the brilliance of water over the mundanity of land, particularly with scaled bodies and water-attuned mana. A choice that did not excuse their vengeance against the Core, but did make Seros take the time to appreciate them before slaughter. And even now, though he was more used to the murk of the Underlake or the glimmering perfection of the Hungering Reefs, he could feel their presence here¡ªa current tugged out of its normal alignment, one even less willing to listen to him, its habit already thralled by another. It was odd, in a way. All things within the dungeon obeyed the Core, whether by choice or by nature¡ªso too did the currents within. But here, out past the mountain, Seros could notice when this current served some greater power as being different, because the others didn''t. There was no mind whose song they danced to. Or perhaps there was, and he just couldn''t hear it. Curious. So for now, Seros clawed for fragile control over the water that had once leapt to his command and followed the strange one, one that looped and spiraled around to gather warm water streams from old, deep volcanic vents and any lingering sunlit warmth. Something for civilization, then¡ªand one leading to something tucked beneath, far below the surface, in the murky gleam that no humans'' eyes would ever penetrate. Seros was not so limited. He dove down, past the grey, and saw what lay below. A city, made of rock and amongst it, under the water. It was¡­ nothing like Calarata, not in any sense he knew. Instead of climbing up, it huddled in the shelter of a mountain, some rocky outbreak from one half-buried in the cove; no white walls but deep grey stone, rubbed smooth by currents and faded down to near imperceptible difference. A shadow, tucked in the depths, some forgotten place with an emotion he didn''t know to place. Curious. Seros would never grant them any mercy, nor truly any extension of admiration, but he would save memories of this underwater palace for the Core to learn from. The walls were natural and curving, great spiraling arches and pillars¡ªno towers like humans or exposed heights like trees, but merely stalagmites, stretching upward to connect with the mountain base with holes peppered through their surface. Shapes moved, barely visible in the gloom but to Seros'' eyes, the flash of scales and fins. And, in its center, a shock of brilliant gold. Kelp, what he remembered from the Underlake¡ªthe entire city was built like a ring, encircling the kelp forest. A guard or a prison? The warm water fed the kelp, brought the fish, and served as an alert, if he had to guess¡ªand the kelp protected its own. Perhaps that was how they functioned, if this could be called functioning, so tucked away and hidden as they were. Where was their drive to fight? To call all attackers unto themselves so that their mettle could be tested? So they could grow strong? Movement. Far larger than any of the other merrow he had seen, little more than a grey shadow slipping through pillars of the city, something with a slender body and great spiraling arms. It slunk up the side of one pillar, a trembling blotch of movement, and disappeared into an empty hole. It didn''t look like one of the twin-maws, the empty-beast, the void-made-teeth; there wasn''t the same aura, the same gnawing viciousness that slunk up on his memories when he was least prepared. But it did look like something dangerous. Something delightful in a fight. And the Core had expressed interest in more corpses to devour. Seros relaxed his grip on the water and started to drift, a gentle movement, the warmth of the transposed current wrapping around him and tugging him deeper below. He stretched out his limbs, splaying his tail¡ªthe current wasn''t particularly strong, but for smaller creatures, if they didn''t keep their wits about them, they would be pulled towards the city until their inevitable escape or transference into food. A clever trick, though not as good as the Core''s whirlpool, but indicative of a society that had been formed and functioning for a while. Seros let a hiss build and rumble through his chest. The Core had told him of the merrow''s goals¡ªto reclaim something they had willingly forsaken in invading the dungeon, that staff was no longer theirs¡ªand their supposed strength, as well as the memory of the sunlight-wielding merrow that had managed to levitate out of the water with a strength that didn''t make sense for their aquatic life. And the mention that this was only the thirteenth house of merrow, implying many more, all within the city¡ªArroyo, another meaningless word, another name without being a Name. Seros flicked his tail. There was no air for mist deep below the water, but warmth boiled off his scales regardless, spilling around him and blurring his outline. One of his favoured tactics for battling the sea serpent. But in those fights he had been within the dungeon, with currents that leapt and danced to his tune with a glee of obedience¡ªthe ocean was entirely unlike that. It was hungry, and there was no voice he knew¡ªor no voice he could hear, or be aware of. Something the Core had spoken of, without words, just a quiet reverence for something he didn''t have words for. The Core, in reverence to something. An impossible concept. So Seros ignored that and looked down, bubbles trickling out around his fangs. The city glimmered before, bare flickers of movement, of merrows and their pale scales and darkened magic. The Core had told him to investigate, to find more than what scraps invaded his halls and threatened his power. Seros could have stopped here; could merely look upon these scurrying baitfish beneath him and take refuge in their lack. Understand that those so scared of growth could not possibly take the Core. But he had been weak once, and he had become strong. He could not dismiss the merrow. So Seros lashed his tail, bared his fangs, and dove to the city. Chapter 135 - Wolfbite Nicau had a darling of a time sneaking out of the dungeon, thank you for asking. League after league of water-drenched, water-flooded, and vine-choked tunnels, only a flickering quartz-light for any kind of comfort, and the vague, half-focused attention of the dungeon to keep threats from gnawing his face off. But he''d survived, and made it out, and now he was crouched in the hollow entrance to the Al¨®mbra Mountains and tearfully wishing he was anywhere else. No shadowthief rat this time, shoulders uncomfortably bare¡ªbut that was just for today, as he found an entrance point, and then she could come with him every time he left without worrying about losing her in the process. He could do almost anything, after the new tunnel. It was an odd thing, being excited and terrified in equal amount. If the dungeon made the entrance, then his freedom would bloom; he could sneak out to Calarata for a perusal rather than a whole event, could come back without the dungeon having to coordinate layers and floors and be prodded into remembering that he tended to need conversation and interactions beyond trying to murder each other. And if the dungeon made the tunnel and was immediately found out, that was Nicau''s fault, and he, ah, wasn''t thrilled at that idea, either. But a greater pigeon''s corpse some months ago had doomed him to this life, and it was just where he was, now. As all great things happened, perhaps. Nicau tightened his grip on his dagger and slipped out of the shadows. Calarata in the evening was a muggy, unpleasant thing, made fierce by cove winds and insufficient shadows of the frontcast Al¨®mbra Mountains. Distant sounds of life and living echoed over the water, hawking merchants and bawdy chanties, alongside the creak of old timber from ships docked in the bay. The boardwalk, spidering over the pebbled beach, a web strung with trapping fineries. And one young boy, extremely out of his depth, walking from the cave and trying to pretend like he had been anywhere else. A difficult prize to pull off, particularly with the Adventuring Guild a stone''s throw from his nose. The last time he''d seen it, there hadn''t been much to see¡ªjust a cluster of materials and disgruntled working mages. Now a sturdy thing protruded from the grey, flagstone base and hammered wood above, a gabled roof and terracotta sweeps. A rich building, because of course it was, one both in harmony with Calarata''s architecture and dashingly separate, a gleaming pearl amidst the slum backdrop. Which. Nicau elected not to think about the particularities and just marched forward, plugging up anxieties with the veneer of reckless confidence. Shoulders back, eyes up, and a hand white-knuckled around the blade in his pocket, sharpened as best he could manage lacking both proper materials and knowledge. The plan of unabridged assurance lasted about four steps closer to the building. Doing a wonderful job of being an insurmountable obstacle, a Dread Crew member stood guard outside the dungeon entrance, line of sight encompassing the entire beach. Lazily picking her teeth with the broad side of a curved dagger as she leaned against the flagstone wall, she flicked him a bland look, one eye yellow and the other clouded under gaze-weed. "Oi," she gruffed, voice like an avalanche of boulders. "Where''d you come toddlin'' from?" Fuck. Genial? Offended? Challenging? Which one would keep him unstabbed? "The jungle," Nicau said back, flicking his shoulders in a movement that did absolutely nothing to remove all the actual dust there. "A scrap with a scorch hound and mottled scorpion, merely testing my mettle." Was that pompous enough? At least he could pull creature names to give some credentials to his tale, tall as it was. Nicau broadened his shoulders as best he could, as if that would hide the fact she could see his mana as being Unranked. Well. Could she? His magic was fed by a different wellspring now, no longer dictated by the rules of humans; he still wasn''t particularly strong, somewhere around Bronze if he had to guess, but for anyone looking at his mana, all they would see was the markings of an Unranked. An easy target. Maybe that was why he had been dragged into an alley on his last visit here. But he wielded magic, and at least did his best to speak and dress like a powerful noble. A walking contradiction. Would that garner him more or less respect? The Dread Crew member frowned, head cocked to the side, bird-like. She adjusted her grip on her dagger, flicking it back and forth. "Not much of a scrap," she said. "No injuries, and lookin'' a mite closer to the dungeon than the jungle, there." Nicau had, at least, seen how the aspirant street gang leaders not yet grown into a deeper voice would have handled such an insult. He dragged himself upright, flaring the hand that wasn''t clenched around his blade. "The Pirate Lord doesn''t get injuries." Hard to defend against why he''d been near the dungeon. Better to deflect. And using his lovely epithet that he had absolutely no regret over choosing felt like something distracting enough to draw attention. She raised a notched eyebrow. "Funny," she scoffed, clicking her teeth together like fangs. "Think I could carve ya up without much trouble." Lovely. Lovely, really, wonderful, great, glorious. Gods, why did he ever leave the dungeon, where he was protected, to a city where she very much had the rights to kill him? If anyone in Calarata even had rights. "As it were," he said, because that seemed like an appropriately dramatic turn of phrase to plug the hollow, "I have a vested interest in delving your dungeon. I go to the Guild now." Nicau would have needed a far sharper knife to peel the disbelief from her face. She grumbled something intelligible, a fleck of pure white in the corner of her eyes, and tapped her heel against the wall she was leaning on. "Be my fuckin'' guest." "I shall," he said, and added a sniff for good measure. Because he had been planning to go in, after he, you know, spent the day exploring the market for knowledge and schemas. Not the second he got to Calarata. But the Crew member had a knife and an expression that said gaze-weed wouldn''t throw off her balance enough to stop her from killing him, so Nicau tucked his coat tighter around his shoulders and marched into the Guild. It was even more raucous than its distant backdrop; what served for an entrance was a sprawling beast of a room, riddled with empty space and mockeries of seats, a cooling place of corralling over any real offerings of comfort. Today''s group had already been sent inside but adventurers swarmed about, hunting for the chance to invade tomorrow, or the next day, or the next day, or anything they could get their paws on. An exhausting mess, really. Nicau, very suddenly, stopped moving. There was a particular edge he had learned over his short life, when he had watched what parent he had left wither to a blank-eyed hull and thrown himself onto a ship with nothing more than the desire to be elsewhere, when he had scraped and scrounged for magic to see mana trails through the air, when he had hurled himself off rooftops to grab fluttering birds for a scrap. He didn''t know letters, though he was trying, and he didn''t know how to blacksmith, and he didn''t really know what he was doing in his batshit decision to serve a dungeon¡ªbut streetrats were prey, and they knew how to spot predators. As Nicau entered the Adventuring Guild, pushing through the throngs of people bustling for hunger and action, his eyes snapped to a woman standing in the back. She was tall in a way that seemed effortless; an odd connection, but it was the first thing he thought of. Too many people clamoured for presence, built themselves up like towers, like mountains, a shouting match of power. For her, it seemed inevitable. A forest, spreading no matter how many trees were cut down; inescapable. He was a room away, and his hackles raised. Dark skin, a coil of hair knotted down her back. Fingers curled around a quarterstaff of unpolished wood, sprigs protruding from the top and moss clustered in its crevices. Golden eyes that flashed like a cat. Oh, Nicau was the first to know that adventurers chose odd accouterments; he''d seen dozens upon dozens wearing flashy robes and stupidly spiked armour and in one memorable case, a floral-painted guitar the kobolds had smashed before he could rescue it. The more power you got, the more you felt determined to showcase it. Hells if he didn''t prove it himself, with the dark blue leather flaring out around new boots and as prim a shirt as he could manage in a dungeon. But she didn''t feel like an adventurer, despite standing in the Guild and her magical staff. Older, past thirty summers, without rippling scars or trophic fineries. Perhaps a nightmarketer, even of the famed Silent Market? But why was she here? Nicau realized, a touch too late, that perhaps he should have spent the time thinking about how dangerous she was without his eyes locked on her. Particularly so when she met his gaze, a single eyebrow raising, and started walking over. Fuck. Fucking shit hells, he was done for, he was ruined, he was going to have to ask her politely to drop his corpse off at the dungeon after she murdered him so at least Chieftess wouldn''t think he''d just ran off. Nicau stiffened, tightening his grasp on his shitty little knife, still tucked into his pocket, like it was going to do anything. She was extraordinarily gorgeous, in a way he hadn''t really taken the time to notice before the terror had set in, and other adventurers clamouring for their turn to convince the Guildmaster to let them in shot him looks ladled in resentment. Nicau would have given his left arm to trade with them. High cheekbones, braids framing her face, a golden tint to her lips and eyes. Fascinating. Truly remarkable. He was going to die. In a display of unparalleled kindness, she stopped an arm''s length away from him, and even in the thicket of movement of the bustling crowd, some part of their subconscious kept them from bumping her, a gentle circle sprouting around their feet. Nicau swallowed. "It isn''t often someone Unranked enters a dungeon''s Adventuring Guild," she said, in a voice thick and rich, a faint accent bouncing off her vowels and adding a harmonic lilt to the ends of words. Familiar, actually, though his nerves were quite keeping him from placing it. "Particularly one without a group." You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story. Ah. Maybe it hadn''t been just him staring at her from across the room that had dropped him into this hell. Lovely to know. He choked around what should have been an answer and managed a cough. "I am the Marquesa de Wolf," she said, all teeth in a smile. "And yourself?" What? Le¨®ro had particularly gruesome laws for any who dared call themselves lord, lady, or liege without being one of their dungeon-owning nobles, but Nicau hadn''t exactly gathered a list of all the replacements that people went by or their rules. Or, rules, considering they were in Calarata and it was almost easier to make up an epithet than try to use your real name, and rules had little to do with pirates. Was it basic to call himself something else? He''d thought he had been deliberately unique there. Damn. Calarata had always been a particular world of deceit and deception; just, well. As a pigeoncatcher, he''d never been too involved in all of the madness. Oh, he''d imagined it; in the cold alleys, huddled beneath bowing eaves and collecting rain drip-off that was never enough in the dry season, he and the other orphans had played for any fallacy of luxury. Chipped cups of boiled sea water, plucked feathers spread like a placemat, excess rags draped over shoulders. Oh, High Lady Romei, surely you must eat more of the angulas¡ªthe elvers are positively scrumptious this time of year! That was. Probably accurate. Right. Nicau tilted his head in a remarkably innoble way, considering she was some hands above him and not stunned stiff with nerves. "And I am the Pirate Lord." Gods. Why had he chosen that? Why had he chosen that? The Marquesa de Wolf hummed, a soft, ambiguous sound. "Pirate Lord," she said, like she was testing the word, tapping her fingernails on her staff. "Well met." Nicau nodded again. It felt right. He, the Pirate Lord, her, the Marquesa de Wolf. Hells of a duo, met only because he had a wild and dramatic inability to not lock eyes with the most dangerous person in the room. Did she have a shorter name? Did he have to call her the Marquesa de Wolf every time? That seemed exhausting. And pointless. And annoying. Politics. Right, she''d asked him a question. "Guilds are free to all," he said, a baldfaced lie, because one click of Lluc''s fingers and it could very quickly become closed. "What brings yourself here?" "I have an academic interest in dungeons," she said, lightly. "Particularly so when one has been available for so little time yet the streets are already filling with bodies." Nicau frowned. Dozens of invaders had perished in their attempts to delve, but, well, striving for bland apathy, that was rather the point of a dungeon. Those that lived made it out with wealth; those that didn''t, didn''t. "What?" "Oh?" She said, one hand raised to her throat. "My, you haven''t heard? Nine people, dead, throats open. Thrown to back alleys, I believe, not a word of the killer." Something in the mana of Nicau''s chest thrummed. She was telling him this. And not just in the manner of opening her mouth and letting words out¡ªno, she was telling him this, with the explicit idea not of common knowledge she was surprised he didn''t know, but being something that wasn''t known, but she was trying to make it so. She wanted him to know bodies were piling up in Calarata''s alleys, and there was a reason for it. Nicau''s mouth moved to keep up, polite interest. "Many people die in Calarata. Maybe they stole from the Dread Pirate." The Marquesa de Wolf flicked up an eyebrow, some expression of perfectly amused apathy. "What need has he of hiding his deeds, then? He is your king." King. What an odd phrasing for Calarata, who had no crowns. Strings connected¡ªher accent was Le¨®ran. Faint, but everyone''s accent was faint coming from Le¨®ro to Calarata¡ªViejabran was but a mild mirroring to Le¨®renthan, a language shift made by decision rather than altering time. Well. Nicau smiled, thin enough to peel back from his teeth. "I suppose you could call him that." The Marquesa de Wolf tilted her head to the side, much like her namesake. "He believes he can control a dungeon with little more than words," she said, words flicking up in a leading expression. "Surely that makes him a king more than a man." Varc¨ªs Bilaro was many things, and none of them were human. "Perhaps it works," Nicau said, because that was a realm of destruction a childhood of murders had built for him. "A dungeon without shackles can create more." Right, talk like a non-dungeon-sworn-servant¨C "And when I delve it, I will see how a free dungeon functions." Her eyes sharpened to a dagger''s point. "Delve?" Nicau blinked. "Yes?" "You are not the Scholar?" What? "What?" The Marquesa de Wolf wasn''t smiling now. "You are tainted by a dungeon''s mana. Your coat is covered in black rat fur and there are kobold scales in the pocket, both creatures known to be held by the dungeon here. Unranked, entering a Guild without a group, dressed in fineries. Attempting to play quiet while the fool in the front masquerades to draw attention. Are you the Scholar of this Adventuring Guild?" Was he the bloody what? He blinked at her, genuinely bewildered. That seemed like answer enough. She brought her smile back, an empty thing only to keep others from listening in. Moss crept up the base of her staff and something wriggled in the pocket of her doublet, the rustle of cloth and an odd, clicking sound like bark against bark. Her eyes were twin suns. Nicau didn''t consider himself particularly smart, but even he could see it was time to start playing defense. Twice today had he needed to switch conversations to keep from losing his guts over crowded shores. If this was becoming a habit, he was invested in switching. Whatever was in the Marquesa de Wolf''s pocket shifted again. Okay. Why was she here? She had come over to him with the expectation he was the Scholar in disguise¡ªand she had wanted to tell the Scholar that people were being killed in the street, and find out how the Dread Pirate controlled his dungeon. She hid her Le¨®ran roots under an adventurer''s eccentricity. But instead of staying in the shadows, burying her past under anonymity, she was seeking people out. Important people. She was here for information. Information he very much didn''t have, but she wanted. So he had to give her a mystery. Nicau rocked his weight back, letting his coat flare around his ankles, and deliberately removed his hand from his dagger. It wouldn''t do anything for him if she wanted to kill him, only his voice would do that¡ªand if he used his Communer abilities here, then everyone would see, and he would have even more problems than he currently did. "I have an academic interest in dungeons," he said, just as lightly as she had. Not enough. More. "And while I am not the Scholar, I am interested in meeting him." She looked at him. It was a kind of look he had never quite experienced before; sharp and burrowing, old roots into soft loam. "You are also studying the dungeon." The fuck did she mean by studying? Nicau had heard of cutthroat Scholars, who killed the previous one of a Guild and took over; that could explain why she had sought him out. But that wouldn''t explain telling him about the bodies, which would just scare the Scholar into being more defensive, rather than making him easier to kill. No. He didn''t think she was an aspirational Scholar. "I am," Nicau said, biting down before the word could waver in his voice. "And I do think I''ve found out more about it than this Guild has." She hummed. "You have?" In lieu of an answer, he reached into his pocket and pulled out one of Chieftess'' scales¡ªhow the hells had she seen it in there, even he''d forgotten he''d had it¡ªand tapped its center. "This is no mere kobold. The dungeon has created far greater dangers than what the Scholar here will say." Her eyes flicked back to him. "My area of expertise lies more within Guilds than the dungeon itself, I''m afraid." What? Gods, every fucking thing she''d said had caught him entirely off guard. But despite himself and the large, screaming part of his brain devoted to self preservation, Nicau couldn''t help but perk up. The Marquesa de Wolf¡ªwhoever she was¡ªhad what he didn''t. Over time, he could learn how kobolds worked, how draconic monitors spread their aura far past their body, how Names and boons and blessings came to be; but he had been little more than a rat scurrying through the underbrush of Calarata, and he couldn''t figure out what they were doing. But perhaps she could. A mystery for a mystery. And that wasn''t to say she wouldn''t kill him, because whatever mission she was on, him knowing anything about her more than the fa?ade she used was dangerous, and she didn''t seem the type to suffer dangers. Perhaps she wouldn''t slice him open in this Guild, surrounded by this many people¡ªbut that didn''t actually help him. He''d made it out of the mountains because, to the Guild''s understanding, that was rather what people were supposed to do. Adventure in, run out. A good-luck process that also relied on those put on watch being smoked under with gaze-weed. Doubtless he would not be able to go in quite so easily. No, she would have plenty of time to kill him before he could conjure a plan to get back inside. ¡­surely the dungeon would accept this. "A trade, then," Nicau said, light, open, like he wasn''t shaking down to his boots. "I can provide you information about the dungeon, and you information about the Guild." What sort of pompous bullshit would someone else say here? "Things no one else has managed to obtain, I can assure you." Her brows pinched in. That old, streetrat instinct churned in his chest, alongside the tuneless melody of the Otherworld. She was talking about information, about gathering, about Guilds. She was here for knowledge. She was hiding something. Long ago, there had been another orphan who''d had the distinct unluckiness of watching his parents die. He''d been furious, as people often are when their family shrinks to two cored-out bodies with shadows for eyes and one still chubby with baby fat on the streets, and he had voiced it¡ªhad said how he hated this city-state, this city, this world, this land, this sea, this cove, this anything he had the vocabulary for¡ªand this ruler, Varc¨ªs Bilaro, for the part he had played in it. The next day, he was dead. Everyone in Calarata hated the Dread Pirate, because he was, at the end of all things, a rather easy man to hate. With the taxes and the murders and the lawless freedom that was only so in name, he was a tyrant with a mythril fist and ferocity that leveled mountains. But hate was a thing to swallow. It was a thing to whisper in the security of your own mind, to curl up and bury beneath gravedirt¡ªbecause the Dread Pirate would hear you if you said it, and those same murders you hated him for would soon become your own. For years, decades, however long he had ruled Calarata for, he had been untouchable. But the Adventuring Guild was new. It was open. It was fragile. Fucking hells, she was going after the Dread Pirate. Nicau''s mouth moved before he gave it permission. "Knowledge should have no crowns," he said, light, like any other phrase. "Particularly not for the things that raise them." She looked at him. He looked back. The Marquesa de Wolf''s eyes flicked around the room, the dozens of talking bodies, of living ears to overhead. The thing in her pocket shifted again, another click, the rustle of movement and rasp of old wood. "Tomorrow," she declared, in fact instead of statement. "Thinkers should work together, I believe, to talk and share our information. Why, I believe it will prove quite insightful. Not here, but over the Overlook, if you are willing to make the climb." Nicau felt remarkably like a sandfly caught in a lacecap, corroding down to a pitiful end. The dungeon had told him to gather information, to figure out what the Guild was doing. But perhaps the Guild wasn''t the only threat, though Nicau rather doubted the dungeon would give a hag''s promise about pirate murders. If someone else was sticking their dagger into the cracks of Calarata''s armour, particularly with the Adventuring Guild being so newly open and inviting, there was a chance their ire spread to the housed dungeon¡ªand that was if the deaths were even real, or if this Marquesa de Wolf wasn''t sinking her fangs into an even greater fa?ade he couldn''t peel back. But she was doing something. "Tomorrow," Nicau agreed, and, under some act of fervent insanity, stuck out his hand to shake. The Marquesa de Wolf looked at it, faint amusement, and returned the motion¡ªa hand, warm, solid. Some part of him had expected her to be ghost-like or perhaps scaled. Nothing. Seemingly a regular human. "Tomorrow," the Marquesa de Wolf repeated. Then she spun on her heel and disappeared back into the thick of the Guild, staff clicking on the ground. Nicau kind of wanted to cry. Chapter 136 - High Above the Overlook Nicau spent a good percentage of the time he had before meeting the Marquesa de Wolf in a remarkable state of panic. In glorious hindsight, he had made an agreement to stay one extra day, when he had no ability to house himself in any way. There were inns and taverns out the ass in Calarata, but they were places you were as likely to sleep as to wake up with a shiv to the throat. Only those under official Dread Crew power were safe enough to sleep with both eyes closed, and Nicau was not particularly inclined to go to them. But he was far too frantic to consider sleep, so instead, he spent his time climbing up, and up, and up. Calarata had a rotating array of prime locations, just for less than genial purposes. People dumped corpses in the cove until everyone started doing it, and wary eyes would fall on those hauling covered sacks down to the beach; then some number of years would pass where no one would toss bodies in, the reputation too stark, until memories faded and soon it was picked up once more. Calarata was only creative to a point. The Overlook was one of those places, forgotten from deliberation and avoided by those not yet smeared in the undergrime. In typical Calaratan fashion, the wealthy went up instead of out, building switchbacks and towering supports to place their houses high above the cur of the streets. The Overlook was one such place, built in a natural enclave, tucked in the Al¨®mbra''s sheltered embrace. Not directly over the city, more to the west, but what should have been a place of perfection for the rich, beyond a quaint little problem of avalanches. Three noble families dead, and now it was a graveyard, made of crumbled stone and the whisper of old foundations. A location for getting rid of problems you wished not to have. Nicau, rather fervently, hoped he was not one of those problems, considering he was hauling his way up the broken switchbacks to get to that woebefore peak. Night spilled grey fingers over his steps, darkness wrought in blindness, and he''d tripped twice and nearly fallen off once, so whatever sleep he could have had was well and truly deserted. The Marquesa de Wolf hadn''t given him any specificities beyond tomorrow, but considering they were dealing in illicit secrets and potential rebellion against the man who killed a dragon, Nicau had guessed their meeting was to be at night. Not that anyone in Calarata particularly hid what would mark them as traitors in other countries, but this was a scale higher than mere smuggling. And now he was here, caught in the evening light, wishing both to be asleep and elsewhere and dead and all manner of things he wasn''t, looking over the twilight grey of distant Calarata, and wondering just what he''d gotten himself into. The Overlook was a pale memory of a place, whitestone cobbles hauled up to make paths that would never carry their benefactors on account of them being quite dead, the shells of walls hollowed and flattened, thorned weeds and castaways from the jungle in a sprawling mat. Nicau picked his way over the rubble, coat flaring around his ankles¡ªperhaps she would think it was a statement to wear it twice, and not that he had nothing else to change into¡ªand arms tucked tight to his sides. The moon cast a hazy glow over the place, somewhere old and forgotten, beyond scattered pieces of nightmarket trades and abandoned incriminations. He''d been here once before, when he''d been cold and hungry and searching for anywhere to sleep, and he''d been quite glad to never be back again. Not so, then. Nicau exhaled, muggy air billowing under the velvet dark. Jittery with nerves and lack of sleep, but he was alone here, beyond the whistle of distant night-birds and owls. He hoped he was alone, at least. Gods, as much as he loved his Communer abilities, it didn''t stop his mind from wandering through golden fields of any other skills he could have gotten. Something that could have gotten him through yesterday without sticking his foot in his mouth, without staring directly at the most dangerous woman in the room and opened her right up to march on over. Even with the reason that she had sensed how he was Unranked, and thought him the Scholar. Thought he was the hidden Scholar, disguised from the crowds. ¡­why hadn''t she thought the actual Scholar was who he was? Over the past day, Nicau had stuck his nose into as many corners as would allow, and he''d found that the current Scholar was an eccentric foreigner from distant Abhal¨®n, curiously pale with a shock of red hair, and entirely devoid of leaving the Guild. And considering Lluc was the Guildmaster, Nicau had more than a few thoughts as to why he wasn''t leaving, but prisoner or not, most things he heard about the man said he was polite, enthusiastic, and deeply knowledgeable. All parameters of a Scholar. But the Marquesa de Wolf had thought him a masquerading loudmouth, and was on the hunt for who the real one was. There were only so many reasons that a Scholar would be false, and Baron Ealdhere Darlington didn''t feel like one. Movement. Nicau turned his flinch into a turn in time to see the Marquesa de Wolf crest the last switchback, a proper robe thrown over her coat and fineries, deep grey-black except for moss edgings. Still her staff, still her predatorial aura, but softened and smoothed over with anonymity. A disguise. Hells, she really was taking this meeting like an alliance, and it was not for anything good. Nicau inclined his head in what he hoped was proper. "Marquesa de Wolf," he greeted. "Pirate Lord," she said back, in a polite sort of tone that curled around her lips. She flicked a glance past him, at the Overlook in all its corroded glory, before turning back. Her staff clicked on the ground. Something moved, in the shadows behind her. Not large. But it clicked and rustled as its silhouette shifted forward, staying in the grey. Wonderful. Fucking fantastic. "You came alone," she noted, curious, amused. "This is to be your trade, then?" And she didn''t come alone, but he didn''t feel confident enough to call that out. He was a little too focused on keeping his stutters firmly between his teeth. "My trade," he agreed, because mentioning he was merely the human-shaped spy for a dungeon felt out of place. She tapped her staff on the ground, a bloom of moss spiraling up the edges and tucking around the edges of her robe. "Knowledge is best not locked behind shackles," she said, and again the thing shifted. A rustle of old leaves. "What is known should be known." That ancient awareness flickered in his chest, the thrum of mana past and beyond him. Nicau licked his lips. The last of her words floated over him, the implications, the thorn-sharp hunt in her eyes. Hells beyond hells, he was far too deep. And the worst part was that it was entirely his fault¡ªit had been him that had immediately pivoted into trying to make a mystery for her so she wouldn''t kill him for the dreadful crime of just knowing she was hunting for the Scholar. Nicau would excuse himself for fear-made decisions, because being alive was a touch more important than saving face, but the truth at the end of the canal was that she thought he was playing the same game as her. Either serving a master or for his own goals; but to her, the Pirate Lord was investigating the dungeon. ¡­the Pirate Lord. Nicau fought the urge to slam his face into the mountain. When she''d first said her line about crowns and kings, he''d had a thought about the danger of that. Le¨®ran though she was, you didn''t last long in Calarata badmouthing Varc¨ªs Bilaro, or at least you lived a life long enough to regret it. But she''d said it rather openly, even tucked and layered under the subtlety necessary to stay alive, and she''d said it like she was prodding for his reaction. The Pirate Lord was a title nothing less than a challenge to Varc¨ªs Bilaro. Could he be overthinking it? Maybe that was her true goal, and she''d only been more open to test his response; to see if he was in a similar boat. That was a hells of a thing to fake just to get someone on her side, particularly when the consequence often ran more fatal than not. And she''d said that when she had thought he was the Scholar, someone theoretically even more in the Dread Pirate''s pocket unless you had two functioning eyes to see how Lluc kept him on a leash. Was anything she said true? Or was she playing the same game as him, trying to match her faux motivations to his so an alliance could form? Nicau was going to be a cynical old bastard before the day had worn down. Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. But for now, the Marquesa de Wolf stayed smiling, watching him, so he nodded again. "I know many things," he said, because he liked that turn of phrase, but now it was ruined for him. "And I believe you do as well?" "Quite true." Her dark skin almost disappeared into the umbral night, just the gleam of her golden eyes. "You mentioned knowing more than even the Guild," she hummed, like it was idle curiosity. "Perhaps how many floors it has?" Ah. Yeah. For some funny reason, Nicau didn''t think the dungeon would be too interested in him giving that information away without consulting it. So he smiled again. "I believe we arranged for a trade. What could you offer me in return?" What could she offer the very dungeon she was investigating? "I am only now arriving in Calarata," the Marquesa de Wolf said, and there was her accent again, that faint Le¨®renthan lilt to her letters. "So my knowledge on this particular Adventuring Guild is, unfortunately, limited. I have many connections and a rather¡­ intricate understanding of how Guilds function, however. I can assure you¨C" a flash of a cat''s smile "¨Cthat you will not find a more bountiful fountain of knowledge for your queries, as soon as I have time to begin my study." Fucking hells, half of those phrases he had to stitch together from context. The second he finished this conversation, he was going straight back to the kobolds'' den and speaking in nothing but guttural hisses and warbles to cleanse this filthy taste from his tongue. "You mentioned an interest in dungeons," she continued. "Is there any field wherein your studies lie?" Were they going to maintain the fa?ade of being kind, gold-hearted academicians of dungeons? Sure. Fine. Why not. Nicau nodded, splaying his hands. "All things within," he said, because she''d approached him when she had thought he was the Scholar. From his limited knowledge, Scholars were there for glorified price-makers. They knew everything within the dungeon, what it was, how to use it, how to kill it, and what to make from its corpse; all things that Nicau was also quite versed in, though it hadn''t exactly been his choice to learn. "Beasts and floors and environments." Was that enough? By the sudden flash in her eyes, it was. "Then we are paired," she said. "I can tell you of the outer workings, and you me of those within." Everything about this was terrible. Gods, he fucking hated this. But still, he couldn''t help his interest. "Then we have a trade?" The Marquesa de Wolf raised her eyebrows in mock surprise, lips pursed. Nicau wanted to punch something. He hadn''t even hit his twentieth summer yet, and he was feeling every pound of that ignorance now. "That''s rather hasty," she said, a fallacy of concern in her voice. "Why, neither of us have proven ourselves to each other." Well, that was right bloody convenient she''d just finished saying how she didn''t know anything yet, wasn''t it? Nicau smiled, because otherwise he was going to chew off his own tongue. Why the hells had he gotten the blessing about talking? He''d been a pigeoncatcher. This world was not his. "Of course," he said. "What do you want to know?" Not floors. Not Named. Not powers. Not strength. Not¡­ most of anything, really, considering it was him that had to go back and face the dungeon''s wrath if he spilled too much of his hand. The Marquesa de Wolf hummed, the grinding deep of ancient forests. "The number of rooms within the floor filled with canals." Well. Damn. That was a half-decent question. Testing the waters, not pushing too deep, but establishing something she could go off and verify on her own that wouldn''t just be known to the common cur. Great. He could give her that information, and she couldn''t give him anything. But he had one problem left to solve. "Yes, I know that. However," Nicau said, with some imperiousness he had to scrape at the bottom of his soul to fake with the right inflection, "in return for it, I will request a trade." The Marquesa de Wolf raised an eyebrow. "I believe I already told you I have newly arrived," she said. "All information I have is of other Adventuring Guilds, though of course I am happy to deal in generalities." "No," Nicau said, all eloquence. "I''m interested in your connections." Her eyes sharpened. "Oh?" Oh, that was a change. She hadn''t expected him to ask that. Curious. But that was his request, and he was sticking to it. She''d been a suitably dramatic bastard about this, and he saw no harm in playing coil. "Studying the dungeon from within is the best way to gather information," he said. "I am, of course, quite capable by myself¡ªbut to find what would appeal to you, I believe I would need another." Because in all hells was he not walking up to the Adventuring Guild and asking to be a lone delver. First was the fear that Lluc would recognize him, even much changer and disguised and no longer a shrinking, terrified streetrat; second was that up to this point, there had never been a party of one. No. He needed to be in a group, and he¡­ rather didn''t trust his chances at finding one in the few hours he had before passing out and getting robbed within an inch of his life. Her eyes narrowed. "I am not one to make deals with fools," she said, lightly. "The dungeon would kill an Unranked." Nicau wanted to laugh, so he did, touched with madness and flavoured with delirium. Of all things in Calarata, the dungeon was the least likely to kill him. "The Pirate Lord does not die," he said, and grinned; pushed a curl of mana over his tongue. The Otherworld mana thrummed in his chest like fire. The Marquesa de Wolf tightened her smile into a macabre fallacy of one. Not yet frustration, but something budding over the interest. "I believe we mentioned how mortal men may call themselves kings while deaths still await them." Well. She had said that. Nicau, frankly, doubted Varc¨ªs Bilaro had anything resembling mortality lurking under his skin. But if she didn''t recognize that, he wasn''t going to tell her. Nicau shrugged. "Then I die," he said. "And you have nothing to worry about. Secrets to secrets. But if I live, then I prove myself, make a partnership with your connection, and find information in places no one else knows where to look." He let his smile build. "Think of it as an investment, if you will. No better way to explore the nine rooms of the second floor." Her gaze flicked to him. Considering. She got to spy on him in the dungeon¡ªor, at least, she thought she would get a chance to, and he would gather her investment, and he was proving himself to her first. A perfect deal. "I find myself fascinated," she said, slowly, the thing in the shadows behind her shifting back and forth, "by the creations of the dungeons. Not of the creatures, but the shaping and trappings of other things within. There are stories I''ve heard of enchanted armour and blades, pendants, impossible jewels. I''m sure I could find quite a wealth of information on the Guild in return for that." Hm. Not the question he would have expected; something about the scariest monsters, which was all of them, or how many floors. It seemed she hadn''t been lying when she said she was familiar with dungeons. "Of course," Nicau said, magnanimous, because he was about to throw up. "And I find myself interested in the expansion of Guilds, how they grow, how their future plans shape. I''m sure the Guild of a pirate''s city would have a plan worth studying." And a dungeon most curious to discover how they would attack it next. "Well," the Marquesa de Wolf said, head tilted to the side. Less of the pure smiles and polite barbs she''d had before¡ªmore discerning, now. He''d asked things she hadn''t expected and played cards she hadn''t known he''d had. Not quite a threat, but certainly a mystery. Hopefully something worth more alive than dead. "I look forward to our alliance, Pirate Lord," she settled on. Her eyes gleamed. Nicau inclined his head. "Well met, Marquesa de Wolf." Fucking hells. - Some sunrise later, Nicau was rather fervently wishing for sleep, but instead he trudged off towards the Adventuring Guild. It was a particular kind of exhaustion that hung over his skeleton now, clinging its claws into the marrow of his awareness. But the walk was helping in some regard, after he''d spent hours scouring around the Overlook after the Marquesa de Wolf had left, finding every possible sightline and hidden crevice. The Overlook would be his choice to report back to the dungeon. It was high, maybe higher than the dungeon wanted, in which case he would beg forgiveness and grovel and other ignoble things that had long since lost their ability to embarrass him, but for now he thought it would suffice. Away from the action, close to Calarata, opening access to other places, far from discovery. It felt appropriately dramatic, too, which hadn''t been one of the dungeon''s requests but would probably be appreciated. Particularly considering he hadn''t collected any schemas. The Marquesa de Wolf had been rather distracting. But if the dungeon opened a path to the Overlook, a place abandoned by Calarata but still close enough to provide advantages, then Nicau could slip back out, and soon, to gather some physical prizes. To revisit his previous home, though he''d long-since changed allegiance. What a mystery of a life he''d found himself in. From a single pigeon to a legacy. But for now, morning just starting to glare into his eyes, Nicau plodded down the boardwalk to stand before the Adventuring Guild, and he wasn''t alone. A man leaned against the flagstone base, arms crossed. He was one of those that were truly enormous and effortless with it, muscles and bones and everything else that led to a giant more than a man. Well-worn armour, loose for agile movements, chains and odd vials hanging from his waist. Some sort of ancestry crawled over his face, gold-bronze scales and twin fangs, eyes that flickered and sparked with excess mana. Vaguely familiar, in a way that didn''t feel like his own memories. Curious. Whoever he''d expected the Marquesa de Wolf to recruit, it wasn''t this. Well. He''d survived much worse over the past two days, and exhaustion tended to pluck the strings of confidence more than alertness ever had. So Nicau marched on over, head held as high as he could bring it, which was nearly to the man''s collarbones if he was generous. "Hello," he offered, inclining his head in pompous brilliance. "I take it you''ve been sent by the Marquesa de Wolf?" The man''s eyes furrowed. Barely a flash before his trader''s calm smoothed his face back down. "Under a separate name, but yes," he said, with a voice that rumbled like a forge''s bellows. He unfolded from the wall, enormous arms and body and general everything, a Silver''s mana thrumming in his chest. "You are the Pirate Lord?" Gods, Nicau hated that name now. He nodded. "I am." "Then I am Gon?al," the man said, and mana flashed over his teeth, a reminder, a vaunt, some little thing that was likely impressive to anyone who still had the wherewithal to notice. "Shall we?" Well. A solution to all his problems¡ªdisappear into the dungeon, confer with the dungeon on his plan, and either emerge again to convince the Marquesa de Wolf or fake his death in the dungeon''s embrace. Either way, sleep. Nicau followed Gon?al into the Adventuring Guild. It was time. Chapter 137 - Sea-Born Seros swam down as a ghost through the currents. Tail flicking and webbed claws tearing at the depths, he slipped past the evening-dark waters and into the grey-blue far below, to the base of the mountains that housed his target. It could not be truly called shelter, really, even for one like him who had spent much of his life in a rocky crevice and thought it paradise; the mountain had been notched, a strip carved out and hollowed near the base, with a city shoved into the place left behind. The merrow had never been unconquerable, even past when they had opened a new hell into the dungeon, but Seros had at least thought they''d be more capable than this. A cold world, tucked away from the sun and the current, deep below a fragile kind of existence. There was still no mana here, nothing but empty grey and a drag against his scales, the tug of a current without a dungeon to guide it. What existence was that? And what existence was the force behind the current he could feel, in a part of his brain that murmured only into gentle blue-green for the blessing of the depths? Not the Otherworld, not the dungeon, he knew¡ªbut some twisted reflection. A mockery. He shook his head, bubbles twining through his fangs, and entered Arroyo. The merrow haven, land of their birth; where they lived and fought and died. The city was barely standing. Seros knew destruction; he''d seen the wreckage caused by the high invasion, where fifty souls marched in with death on their minds; he''d watched the dungeon carve through stone with deliberation or shriek and wreak havoc until the mountains trembled. And this city had felt all of that and more¡ªa shell of a place, still standing with none of the deliberation that needed to some with it. Just husks, where memories of life had existed. What had happened here? Movement, from the corner of his eyes. Seros whipped around, tail lashing and claws out. Nothing. The last remnants of Otherworld mana hummed in his chest. He paused, letting the current tug him further along; another flicker of movement below, a reflection off something further within, but he kept his gaze fixed forward. The light didn''t move, didn''t reappear further within. Just one flash and then gone, the only lasting effect being a curl of mana, slowly filtering through the surrounding water. It was an illusion. There wasn''t a merrow there¡ªthere had never been one. Seros twisted, rotating around with eyes narrowed; but every flash of scales and pale light was nothing. The tunnels stayed empty; the dens stayed hollow. A lifeless city in what had once been something sprawling and enormous. ¡­where were they? Seros had come to investigate, to scrape the mystery free from the marrow, but excitement in his chest was from the hunt. The kill, if he could find one deserving from it, something to test his fangs against before dragging their corpse back to the dungeon. And when he''d been near the surface, hovering in the cradled arms of a current that didn''t seem to listen to him, he''d seen movement. Flash of scales and a many-armed beast, slinking from tower to tower, grey stone against the darkened overhang. But now that he was here, there was nothing. Just shadows and their memories. A rumble built in his chest. He stopped looking for movement and looked instead at what was left¡ªat the towers, spiraling upward and out, the majesty of pillars that would never again reach the peaks they had once been. Delicate strands reaching up, anchored to stone above and below, with holes for traversal but now holes from powerful blows carved through their supports until they broke beneath them. Furrows, plowed into fields of sand. Grey stone blackened and warped under power. Ruin and rubble, riddle and raze. Familiar. Seros'' tail lashed¡ªhe had felt fear for his life until he was elevated beyond it, when mortal worries stayed in the hands of those who perished beneath his claws and fangs. When the dungeon with its unconquerable power wove together stone into paradises from the corpses of those fallen. But there had been one such corpse that had not received a victory upon its death. One that had only brought fear back from the death he had torn from it. A corpse black and endless, with twin maws. Pitch-shark. This wasn''t what it had wrought, what destruction it had leveled within the dungeon¡ªbecause he knew that what it had fought had been young. It had to be, to fit through the entrance at all, the dungeon had told him; that what information learned from its corpse had said the one he encountered was little more than a youngling chosen for how small it was. What had happened here was more. An adult. Seros didn''t feel fear. He didn''t allow it, not with his power, not with the dungeon. And so it wasn''t fear that made him latch onto the closest tower and splay his neck around, tendrils of mana racing out from his scales as he sought to see if anything was around. Any last remainder from the carnage. From the old carnage, in truth. Ruin and rubble, but the kelp forest had returned, and the place had been swept clean of jagged edges until water-softened ones remained. No, this destruction hadn''t been recent, though he didn''t know enough about ocean patterns to know how long ago it was. But long enough for the merrow to move elsewhere and fake living here. Where had they gone? Anything to flee the pitch-shark, that much he could attest to; but close enough to leave their spells here, to still invade the dungeon en force and trade with Calarata. What could they have left behind to show where they went, without being enough to summon back the pitch-shark? His thoughts roiled at the memory. But he knew the pitch-shark had eaten mana, drained its surroundings to desiccated husks of corrosion¡ªso perhaps it was magical. They could leave a mana-filled trail, content in the fact that the pitch-shark would destroy it with its presence long before it could discover where it led. But what trail could be left in open ocean? Seros let go of the tower and drifted back, twining around a crumbled ruin of a den and the remains of fish skeletons not yet swept away. Perhaps runes, those ancient traditions, or something more physical, in whatever language those under the water could carve out? Swept away. Currents. If there was one thing that could be followed in the sea, one that layered with mana just indecipherable to those who didn''t understand how to taste for it, how to feel it¡ªone thing that answered something greater and obeyed, even if not him. Or, perhaps, not him yet¡ªlost to their foolish ideas of personhood and freedom when a budding sea-drake swam in their midst. But for now, they followed the song of some false master, and to that tune they danced. Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. A dance could be followed. It was antithetical to all he knew, to the gravitas that built and spilled forth like mist from his scales, but¨C Seros closed his eyes. Extended his fins and webbed claws, the frills lining his tail, and let the current tug him forward. It was slow, meandering, and infuriating¡ªthere was none of the elegance when he controlled the water, when a thought meant he spiraled up or around his enemies, when a single flick of his tail lashed him forward as though lightning; this tripped and fumbled and stumbled along like a newborn, egg-fresh, incapable. There was nothing here he would be happy to let the dungeon see. But forward he moved, in flawed pattern, tail flat and claws bound outward, and the current pulled him. To the kelp. His tail lashed. The bloodline kelp back in the dungeon was a distraction, a block; enormous lines of amber-gold from sand to surface, nearly filling the Underlake, swaying and latching with the whirlpool. For those larger and inelegant, it was merely a blockade, something to swim around as they hunted for lesser prey. For those smaller, it was a place to hide, to tuck away like cowards until the threat moved on. But it wasn''t normal. The algae, green and endless, filling the walls and sand; the moss that grew in abundance in terrestrial worlds, the trees. Seros knew plants, how they worked; and he knew those that were elevated above base plants. The kelp wasn''t beyond, like the mangroves were, but it wasn''t¡­ below, either. Some kind of awareness. Something that gave teeth to the amber-gold strands. And the current, dragging him along in dreadful apathetic languidity, was taking him to the kelp. Seros tensed up, tail lashing, but didn''t stop it; wherever this would go would lead him to where the true merrow lived, beyond the broken remains of a pitch-shark attack and faked flashes of scales. He was going to find their secrets. Or, at least, he would have, if something hadn''t wrenched the current out of alignment just before he could disappear into the gold. Seros fumbled, limbs spreading wide, the flat of his internal mana snapping out to hold him in place¡ªhis gravitas hummed and rachetted to life, the near-imperceptible command to kneel, bubbles exploding from his maw. A merrow swam out of the kelp. Seros narrowed his eyes. It was an ungainly thing, even scaled, with its thin, lopsided arms and fragile chest, the tail of a fish stretching up to meet a stretched, sinuous body like an eel. A deep teal, green-blue-green, with silver etchings over the edges of its tail''s scales and the claws of its grasping hands. Something of¡­ coral was clutched in its webbed fingers, etched with a design, and amidst the dried kelp strapped on its body and layered over its weaker parts¡ªall of it¡ªthere was a ring of jewels perched on its throat. A merrow. The first he had seen since entering the cove. Seros hissed, the only thing of his terrestrial ancestry he had been unwilling to give up; bubbles trickled through his fangs, echoing oddly in the water. The merrow lashed its tail, clutching the coral thing even harder. Its eyes flicked around them, scanning the hollowed ruin of what had once been a den to rival all other dens, but there was nothing¡ªjust Seros. Just death, imminent. Seros coiled around himself, claws churning at the water. Was this the moment they fought? The merrow before him was weak, perhaps on its first evolution¡ªor Bronze, whatever moronic names humanoids came up with¡ªand without a metal claw to wield. Mana, yes, but it wasn''t fed by a dungeon''s song; it would run out. But he held, at least for a heartbeat. He did dearly want to rend the useless thing''s tail from its chest but the dungeon had sent him for answers, and he was not as skilled as it; he couldn''t get knowledge from corpses. He had to discover why they had done what they did. The merrow screeched at him. Seros nearly killed it on the principle of the thing. It repeated the sound, a deep, bubble-filled screech that echoed through the waves¡ªirritating and meaningless. Seros wasn''t Nicau, aided in all words and expressions and other things to communicate when fangs would do the job well enough. After a moment where Seros continued to gather all mana within his channels, the merrow switched to something else; clicks, low and sharp, resonance against the water. Interesting. Still meaningless. Was it trying to communicate? Foolish. A predator did not spare prey for reasons of sharing the same tongue; if it thought it would squawk at him and he would curl over, it would not have long to regret that decision. And then the merrow¡­ rumbled. Seros paused. There was no stopping in open water, but he stopped deliberately holding his position still¡ªhe drifted up and around as his head swiveled in towards the sound, eyes narrowing. It hadn''t been the screeches or the click-language, without words or understanding, but something¡­ older. He didn''t know what. The merrow''s white-ringed eyes¡ªand not white like humans, with colours intermixed and sharpened, just pure white with drops of black in the center¡ªnarrowed, its clawed hands raising. It rumbled again, something deep and thrumming. Almost melodic. Almost like a song. Seros flicked his tail and drifted down, doing his damnedest to seem composed despite how the current fought against him. The merrow''s eyes locked onto his, despite being half of his size, a baitfish against the predator¡ªbut it rumbled like a song, and it spoke to him. Not words. He had never seen any point in words, in the fleeting construction of sounds for organization¡ªmeaning would come where meaning was needed. And the rumble had meaning. Faint, indistinct, coming through murky waters¡ªbut a feeling of wariness. Tension. Battle-ready. Not a challenge, but a statement. The merrow was not one to flash its stomach, even though it must have known there was no chance for it to survive against a draconic monitor. The last time he''d fought merrow, it had been in the murk of the Underlake, with a goddess-made whirlpool and dungeon-fed mana. Seros had been a god there, undefeatable, a monster of teeth and claws. But here, surrounded by currents that listened to a song apart and waters without easy obedience to his calls, Seros was no longer above and beyond. He was no longer the first Named, not to this merrow that had no idea of the honour. But just because it was not his home, did not make him weak. A life he had spent weak. This merrow would not be the one to take that from him, no matter how quickly and lithely it moved through open waters¡ªit had secrets, secrets of the sea, and Seros would claw them from its corpse. The dungeon had sent him to the cove to learn the sea¡ªto learn that which he would become. Already he had seen the majesty of the cove''s size, felt the disobedience of the currents, heard the murmur of a distant, ancient song. Seros would not fail. The merrow saw this, perhaps, widening its white-ringed eyes¡ªand then it turned, tail lashing, and disappeared into the kelp. Trusting whatever defense was within to protect it. He pursued. - The beast wasn''t sea-born. C¨¢ssio darted through the bloodline kelp like the night itself chased him, wave-warden gripped tight in his fist and every drop of mana urging the current to take him faster; he could hear it behind him, the savage speed of a monster, even one untrained and fumbling. Katharra below, why did this happen to him? It had been as it always had been; swimming through the remains to harvest the nets they set up in Katharra''s currents, for his goddess to deliver them what food she felt they deserved. Expertly hidden, tucked away in corners and crevices, both to hide from the prey and the predators; for Arroyo could not be discovered. Not again. Arroyo was less than a sea turtle''s shell, a shattered piece of legacy now little more than a shield. Great, once, and every memory of that greatness made raw by its current lack; by the fragile hope that perhaps one day they could reach those heights again. But not now, and not while the tyrant who called himself Lord lived in the cove above. So C¨¢ssio crept through murky waters to the surface above and took fish below to his people, through endless disguises and defenses and an existence that didn''t feel like existing. Survival. But now there was a beast. One of the sea, with blue-green scales and water attunement and the faintest grasp of the sea-tongue, but it wasn''t sea-born; it didn''t know the push and the pull of currents, didn''t know how to move and twist, trying to stay locked in place. What would have seemed like a harpoon loosed from a hunter''s hand to terrestrial creatures was clumsy ungainliness as it swam, no true knowledge, no understanding of where control ended and the Song began. To be discovered was a dangerous thing. Fatal, if it came to that. Arroyo would not be discovered by a beast like this. C¨¢ssio reached out and grasped for the Song, for the melody Katharra offered with the love of an ancient. The currents opened before him, tugging him to follow¡ªone spiraling up, one curling around and out of the bloodline kelp, a third twisting through the old shattered towers. But no. The beast was not sea-born; it didn''t know the Song, know the call of the inevitable, know that the world gave what she gave and all there was to do was respond. Sing back the Song. C¨¢ssio darted down into the hidden current, the one protected by Katharra¡ªthe one that headed down into the true Arroyo, past the fa?ade shown to the outsiders, to the Dread Pirate and his monsters. Let the beast meet the true power of the sea-born. Let the beast meet its end. Chapter 138 - Symbol of Worship In the kelp, Seros was a hurricane. He dove through the center, tail lashing and water lurching to his call, hurling him further and further down into the forest. He snarled, bubbles exploding between his fangs, and clawed down. A nightmare incarnate, the first of the Named, hunter of those who thought themselves above¨C If only he could reach. Weakness was not his to claim but these waters didn''t obey him like they were supposed to, hesitant and wavering and dragging mana from his channels like weights. The merrow seemed to move like it was effortless, spiraling downward, never quite fast enough to leave his sight but not close enough to catch, just out of reach, spiraling downward with its arms tucked to its side. Prey, little more than a meal, but escaping. Seros did not suffer losses. So down he went, through the thick of the forest, water dragging at his gills and tugging at his limbs. Oh, how the Core would hear of this, to know about the merrow and the threats they didn''t pose to the most dangerous creatures, to the Named. He could almost taste the blood coating his tongue, coursing down his throat, the crunch of scales between his fangs. Gold, amber, gold, gold, gold¨C the kelp seemed to dance and twist around him, a dance of some endless antiquity. He''d never encountered anything like this before, this madness within the waters; could the Core create this? No invader would ever be able to get past the Underlake, if they swam through this chaos. What was this? Gold¨C a flash of green, the flick of a merrow''s tail¡ªSeros snarled and dove deeper, clawing through the web of kelp. The oceanic world was still confusing to him but he knew he should have reached the ground by now, that stone should have been in front of him¡ªbut it wasn''t. There was nothing there. Just more bloodline kelp, an endless expanse of it, with the flicker of movement of a merrow in front of him. Gold¨C shouldn''t he have reached the merrow by now? It was so close, he could almost sink a claw in its tail, flashes of teal, constant and repeating and drawing him further down. More movement, a glimpse of fish, a break in the kelp and pale blue beyond. Something soft. A hum, something deep, softer than the merrow''s rumble, melodic, harmonizing, pressing. Something. A song. A Song? Black. - I was, to my own humble opinion, remarkably adept at digging. Seven floors I had already made, burrowing through the Al¨®mbra Mountains with tyrannical fury. I had perfected how to sharpen the edges of my mana until it was something with teeth and trial, gnawing through stone with a precision mortal things could never muster. Terribly efficient. It was such an honour to be the best. And in the stead of the matter, it meant that I had carved a glorious, wonderful haven, a tunnel that arched down through the Jungle Labyrinth and pooled like a river in some far-off section from the rest of my dungeon. It was a paradise, even though I normally attached that name to places of proper danger and excitement¡ªbut for now, I would grant the title. A circular mess of a room, a meandering river carving through the center and settling in an enormous pond off to the side, cloudsire palms and billowing moss choking out the ground plane. No vampiric mangroves, since I rather doubt I could have kept the mostly-insentient beings from stabbing all surrounding creatures to death, and similarly for the razorleaf lichen or thornwhip algae. I had rather a dearth of unaggressive schemas, I was finding. Not that I particularly minded. Anything of mine should have teeth. But it meant that in the end, the haven was a pocket of warmth in a frigid crater of destruction. Few species, mostly stone-backed toads and burrowing rats I could trust to be cowardly enough to simply accept their death when it came, meandering around more as walking bodies of mana than living creatures. I was, to put it lightly, not planning on getting too attached to any of them. Beyond that, it was a little home for those often without, some three thousand feet in diameter and littered with sprawling dens for eggs and infants and other helpless things. Not nearly as large as my other floors simply because there was no need¡ªI didn''t have to worry about creating proper territories when there would be no infighting here. Or at least there better not be. Anyone who played dirty with my proffered mercy would meet their quick and divisive end between Seros'' fangs. I wondered what he''d think of it, actually. He took the most after my previous self, the sea-drake, the hungry and the vicious. Veresai was tyrannical like a gold-drake, Akkyst collected knowledge like a forest-drake with trees, and Nicau could not have been less draconic if he tried¡ªbut Seros was like me, and the me of ages past would not have accepted such weakness. But as long as it wasn''t him being weak, I imagined he''d be more willing. Draconic beings were fiercely protective over their young, given how rarely they had any, and this was essentially a nursery. Gods above, I''d made a nursery. I could hardly believe it. And in terms of gods, I wasn''t alone in my creation, as I layered billowing moss over fine-grit soil and strung quartz-lights through the ceiling. Nenaigch, flickering in the back of my awareness, a spool''s thread of iron-stars. She was not particularly pleased about the order I''d elected to handle this in¡ªshe''d have much preferred I give her priests and followers first, and go about creating all of my elements second. Bully for her. I was working on it. But I was a mite uninterested in the wrath of a goddess, particularly one whom I had already scraped a secondary deal from, and so as soon as I finished aligning the last beautiful strand of algae to the upper wall, a delicate trail down to the ground like ribbons of cloud, I turned my attention not to the many creatures I wished to enter, but to the second floor. If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. The floor where the webweavers hunted. I was¡­ mostly sure this would fulfill Nenaigch''s bargain, due to the fact I couldn''t imagine a more violently loyal bunch, though they might not have quite the intelligence she was hoping for. But what they lacked for that they made up for in collaborative thinking, one thought stretched over every body, and the exceeding willingly to dismember one of their number just so I could obtain their schema. That had to count, surely. They scuttled over the dead branches of a vampiric mangrove, twisting white things with chitinous legs and pooled eyes. There were some dozen of these traps in the Drowned Forest, in the dead trees killed through an influx of saltwater or invaders, but those of this particular tree was the eldest and most powerful. Over five dozen spiders, fattened on steady feedings, mana thick through their channels. My chosen priests¡ªor, more accurately, my chosen tests. I was diving in with blind optimism, but I had learned never to be confident when a deity was on the line, and there was the scant chance this wasn''t allowed. But I would never know until I tried. So I swarmed my points of awareness over them, filtering in like a coat of stars, resting over the ends of their truly intricate web and all the caught and bundled corpses within. They''d been a busy bunch, these webweavers; half a wonder there were any bugs left in the Drowned Forest. They''d do well to keep the ecosystem intact in the haven. Down, down, down, I crooned, plucking at their awareness like the strands of their namesakes. Come further, come below, come to me. As one, they shivered upright¡ªspiders had no muscles to widen their unblinking eyes but I could feel their awareness spike into shock, then awe, then sheer, unending joy just for being noticed. For being acknowledged. Hm. Well. I did appreciate Nicau''s willing obedience, Seros'' companionable allyship, Akkyst''s intelligible conversations; but there was a certain enjoyment in fervent worship. That was what I could have had kobolds for, when I had been a sea-drake. Perhaps I had been missing out by refusing to allow them in my presence. No sense in regret. Or, more accurately, no time for regret. I would certain bitch and bemoan willing servants when I had more freedom to entertain the thought. With Nenaigch''s mana coursing through my fourth floor, tunnels were even easier to shape and move, to carve through the marrow of the Al¨®mbra Mountains until I reached pockets of cohesion¡ªthe webweavers skittered through an opening I carved for the second floor, pale ghosts through the gloom. They weren''t particularly gainly creatures, bulbous bodies and near-sightless eyes; their movement was rather embarrassing to watch, in truth. But they were more sedimentary creatures by their very nature; those to huddle on their webs and create nightmares for those that came near. Which. That felt priest-esque to me; surely that would be fine. But what else could they do to be priests? It wasn''t just a matter of proffering worship; they had to worship. And though sea-drakes were far from pious beings, I had an idea of how humanoids conducted their rituals. I guided the webweavers up to something in the front of the haven, closest to the tunnel out to the fourth floor; it was a simple stone plinth carved into a wall, a hollow littered with stone veins in an approximation of branches, or at least enough nooks and crannies to fill with webs. They picked and darted their way up the wall, hooked claws dragging their bodies up into the miraculous places I''d saved for them. Five dozen of them, pale ghosts in the dim light, a hard contrast against the green and grey around. A shrine for Nenaigch. But it was missing something. I extended a hesitant tendril of thought up to Nenaigch, a question outlined in subservience and thanks. What was the object of her worship? Her answer came down tinged in humour, amusement, the faint feeling of mandibles dragging over the edge of my core. She was not a well-worshiped goddess, as so many of mine were; far more taken by her mirrored deity who stood for products of weaving, less so the process. I didn''t envy these deities with all of their internal politicking and madness throughout. Nuvja''s fight with the goddess of night, Mayalle''s curse to only be worshiped by those who wished to avoid her domain, Rhoborh always lost to the unknowing; at least as a sea-drake, my worth had been won by the strength of my claws and fangs alone, not the opinion of others. Nenaigch''s thought extended down to me, only a whisper of annoyance that I didn''t already know¡ªshe had expected that, though she''d hoped otherwise. Her symbol stitched itself together in my awareness; a needle''s point, with threads spiraling beneath. Or perhaps a mandible with webs¡ªcould be both. Truly an open goddess. Maybe there was a deity of spiders out there who was pissed about how much of their domain Nenaigch was taking. Again, I had no interest in ever joining their charade of power. But that symbol was simple enough. Back to the webweavers I went, careful and light and other gentle things; while I could simply carve out that shape, it didn''t feel like enough to make it a proper shrine, more than something I had thrown together because the contract demanded it. Nenaigch couldn''t read my thoughts but she could read my actions¡ªI wasn''t able to give the idea that I didn''t care about her power. Far better for the webweavers themselves to begin their worship by making her symbol. Through me, I murmured, gentle and soft, little more than a whisper. Do you feel her? Can you sense her power? Can you make it? The webweavers shivered. Their rudimentary minds bucked and shackled my suggestion, but their consciousnesses wavered¡ªthey wanted to obey me, by virtue of me being me, but their deity was suggesting them to follow another deity. What contradoxy was that? Well. They had perhaps a week to devote themselves to her, or I was going to have to find other options. So. I pushed a little harder. The webweavers didn''t have leaders, hardly even seeing themselves as individuals, but one of the largest and oldest took a hesitant step up the stone. Through its mind, I could see the shape begin to coalesce, how the various strands would have to hang and attach to make it. And then, through its psionic connection with its brethren, they began to move to spin their own threads, though they didn''t yet believe in the mission behind it. But it was a start. The haven wasn''t for evolutions, considering the rather extreme blanketing presence of calmness and docility and blas¨¦ disinterest I was going to be threading throughout my mana, but perhaps the weaving shrine could influence their future evolutions when they left. Something to hope for, in whatever distant future I needed to wait. But by bringing in the webweavers first, I was hoping this would leave them as unofficial leaders of this little haven. A base of operations, if I allowed it¡ªwhich I would. They would be the only ones allowed to use this place as such, leaving to hunt and grow stronger but returning to this place of worship and safety. It went against my ethos as a dungeon, as a former sea-drake, as someone who had fought and struggled for my power¡ªbut these would be priests, not fighters. I would allow them¡ªand only them¡ªto have a home they didn''t have to worry about protecting. I hoped Nenaigch understood what sacrifice I was making. But for now, these webweavers had perhaps a week to convert over¡ªenough time to see what worked and what didn''t, because if it didn''t work, as soon as Nicau came back, I would be sending his ass directly back into Calarata to go steal me a couple of priests. Well. Life as a dungeon core was never boring, at least. Chapter 139 - Ruminations of War Wake up. Seros twitched. A single shiver, racing from spine to tail, a murmur past the gentle lull of sleep. Water, swirling around him, humming at the edges of his awareness like mana in his home; but not there. Why wasn''t it there? No answer to his gravitas. Wake up. Something¡­ pulling at his claws, wrapping around his limbs, pinning his fins to his sides. His gills fluttered and breathed evenly but he wasn''t moving, wasn''t drawing water over their surfaces beyond typical inhalations. Water, swirling around him. Not under his control. Why? Wake up. Seros woke up. The world was dark and dim, water grey and unlit by quartz-lights or the luminescent blooms of capturing coral¡ªjust shadows, and the shadows their shadows gave birth to. But it was a room, instead of a world, instead of the endless expanse he''d learned the cove had. Old stone, eight walls, encircling around him. Closed. Seros woke up again, this time in fury. He roared like the dawn of a breaking mountain, lashing upright; tatters of amber-gold clung to his limbs and wrapped around his tail, humming with mana and inlaid deliberate scratches, but his Otherworld mana pulsed once and they tore off his scales like they''d never been. Chains? They dared chain a draconic monitor? His bellow shook the foundations of the stone. With a sweep of his claws he threw himself up, ricochetting around the room and hammering his might into every corner, shattered webs of weakness blooming under his blows. Violence incarnate, hunger and death and destruction¡ªhe rampaged and roared and laid ruin to what thought to cage him. Then¨C A voice. Soft, murmuring, barely a whisper¡ªbut in his mind, not the water. Not the click-tongue or piercing screeches of merrow, nor the faint tune so unlike yet opposite his Otherworld mana. A voice. Hello, it said. It sounded like the Core. He slammed his claws into another wall with a crack like thunder. No other being was the Core. No other being was allowed to pretend to be the Core. I am not, it whispered, like it had heard him, like it had sunk its awareness into his mind and peeled past the layers even Veresai had never managed to claim¡ªSeros roared again, mana sparking around his eyes. Hold, dragon-friend. I mean you no harm. A fine thing to say, when he woke up caged in a prison of stone. The merrow of Arroyo, it said, like he didn''t know that already. Bubbles frothed between his fangs. They are coming back, the voice murmured, fragile, gentle as a spider''s thread; liable to snap at any moment. Seros wanted to snap it, to shred it under his claws and bite away even the idea of something being more powerful than the Core¡ªbut something urged him to hold. Something older. Melodic, almost. Seros hissed, lashing his tail. He had no use for useless words so he snarled in his mind instead, a vicious, burning sound that rippled with gravitas¡ªhe pushed all of his ire and fury and rage within. He would kill them. He would devour their souls and drag their corpses back to the Core. He would lay ruin to this merrow city that had thought to contain him. The voice, instead of fleeing in terror as it should, just returned to him with a faint tinge of amusement. They have not killed you because they fear you, it said, quiet. But give them enough to fear and they will damn the consequences. Seros had killed everything he had ever feared. These merrow made no sense. He couldn''t even be pleased that they hadn''t killed him¡ªnot that they would be able to¡ªbecause this damnable voice had told him it thought they could. He was a draconic monitor. Merrow, caught between scaled perfection and humanoid weakness, would never be the ones to bring him low. Damn the consequences? He was the consequences. A snarl rumbled in his chest but he stopped his ceaseless rampage, ripping his claws out from where they''d been embedded in the walls; though he''d shattered the outer layer and torn rock from its previously stability, there was only more underneath, and he wouldn''t waste his strength against unliving targets. Water rushed by, filling his senses, but he knew there was something beyond it¡ªthe only reason he was still breathing, instead of exhausting the air in this water and choking on nothing. The merrow had put him in here and closed the entrance. The merrow had contained him. And now a voice spoke to him like it knew them, and it said it didn''t mean him harm. Seros wasn''t one to take chances. I am no merrow, it hummed, with a flavour of¨C something he didn''t know. Not quite humour. Not quite exhaustion. I am one of thirteen. Now it was even quieter¡ªweaker. He could hear its strength bleed as it spoke, no mana to force its voice to echo like the Core was fond of doing. But I have lost my connection to my followers. Your¨C And there. The first true emotion beyond amusement and urgency. A sense of deep, profound anger¡ªand resignation. Your dungeon separated us. Seros bared his fangs. He remembered this, in a swirling mixture of his own memories and those of the Core¡ªthe merrow, attacking, cracking a hole through the wall and storming in like they were born to win. Him and the crocodilian beast had convinced them thoroughly of the opposite, stripped them of power, ate their corpses and devoured their mana. Including that of the strongest, a sea-green merrow with a diamond-tipped staff who called herself a priestess and had come for the core. The voice softened again, barely a whisper. Her avarice undid her. But your dungeon took her staff and with it, my voice. Well, it was talking to him now. So clearly its voice wasn''t all gone. More amusement, faint. You are of the one that took my staff, it murmured. To you alone, of all these waters, can I speak. Movement, outside the room. His roar hadn''t gone unnoticed. And though there were no breaks in the stone, no ways to escape beyond the impossible small holes his hydrokinesis could sense, he had watched them tunnel through solid rock before¡ªif they wanted to reach him, they would. And oh, was he powerful, was he a monster; but that was in the dungeon. Seros was not one to admit weakness. But he knew, that in the sea, he was not as strong as he could be. He snarled, shredding the last of the kelp-chains and digging his claws into the stone floor; his tail lashed and the last of his mana crawled sluggishly into the surrounding waters, lurching to his call. The faint hum again, melodic, urging him to abandon himself to it¡ªhe shoved past it with all gravitas and forced the waters to obey, to swirl at his command. They did so, begrudgingly. How the hells did sea-drakes do it? They listen, the voice said. They listen to the one thing greater than them. He hadn''t asked it. Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. You didn''t, came the response, just as unwanted as the last one. You are strong, but you are blind¡ªmortals cannot be all. You will not know power until you know the Song. The Song. Seros slowed, if only for a moment. The way the Core spoke to him was full of tune and harmony and life¡ªthe Otherworld mana spun within him like a ballad. This voice was tinged with the sea, with something deep-ocean and waves and the glimmer of water through the dappled surface, but it¨C The Song. There was something about that phrase. Outside, the sound of the merrow grew louder. Stone, cracking, the echo of something thundering and powerful; the water within his earthen prison trembled. He hissed, bubbles trickling out of his mouth. The Song. He couldn''t stop thinking of it. I am Abarossa, the voice whispered. And I will teach you the power of the sea, if you will bring me to your dungeon. - Pathetic. He ripped his fangs out of the desiccated corpse, huddled with its odd, fleshy limbs¡ªonly four of them, quite the downgrade¡ªextended outward even as it died. It looked almost like one of the tall-long-invaders, those he had grown stronger killing, back when they had posed a challenge; but smaller, with green-grey skin and a useless lack of armour. Where was its skeleton? On the inside? Some creatures really were past saving. And he was, more often than not, the one to kill them. The jeweled jumper was all-powerful, at the peak of his prime, and, fundamentally, bored. He had felt this once before, when his venom only killed instead of corroded, when the Drowned Forest had been his home and all he knew¡ªand that boredom had been new, unique, and enough to drive him to lower levels. Then he had terrorized those green tunnels, slain every beast who dared to exist in his presence, and then¨C Then he had been bored again, but the thought of going deeper hadn''t appealed. He would find the same thing there; more threats just barely stronger than him until he killed them and the boredom struck again. The voiceless being that made him lavished praise over water and mist and other choking things, rose the long-scale-beast instead of him. Territories, yes, but not ones worth claiming. Just more barely-strong creatures that had no defense against one good bite. The being hadn''t provided him a challenge, even in the floors below, even surrounded by monsters¡ªthey were either fast and avoided him, or they were slow and they died. What challenge was that? How could he prove himself the best and the strongest and the deadliest if there was nothing that could stand against him? He would never hate winning. It was what he was, who he was; though he wasn''t like the pale, bulbous things in the Drowned Forest that should have been kin but were far too lazy for the title, who spoke to each other in murmurs and thoughts, he was quick of body and mind. He knew how to hunt. How to kill. But killing. His fights were two acts¡ªhe found his target, and he bit them. They died. He consumed their mana and flesh and moved on. And that was what the had-been-home wanted him to be; an unseen-ghost-killer, taking one thing out and scuttling away while the larger beasts slayed the rest. And he was good at it. Frightfully good at it. Two acts. He either bit first and killed them¡ªor they saw him first and killed him. There was no challenge in luck. So from the had-been-home he left, disappearing from the swirl of mana that never filled him and the beasts that had never beaten him, and headed to the dark and shadowed tunnels beyond. He learned many new emotions in very quick succession. First was a love of the dark¡ªthe had-been-home kept itself strung with odd, non-moving bugs that glowed instead of attacking, or plants that wriggled and spat lights in the air. The tunnels of his second territory had been dark, yes, but an endless dark. There had been no hiding in shadows when the entirety was shadows. But here; there was light from hanging-green-plants and distant corridors, with tall-reach-stones that cast enormous fields of grey for him to tuck himself into. Prey walked in the light and he in the darkness, and he killed them from it, and they never saw him coming. Second was hunger¡ªhe had always been hungry, for mana, for territory, for fights, but he had sated himself on all three with only the latter. But now he had to kill for mana to feed instead of to strengthen, and there was no territory to claim as he crawled ever-on in search of greater challenges. Fights came and went, much as before, in empty hordes of one and single bites to claim victory. He wanted more. Third was fear. He did not care for this emotion. It had come one night as he skulked through stone-shadows, hunting for something to fill his bottomless stomach now that constant mana didn''t sustain him, and then the stone rebelled. Not a creature, not a beast¡ªjust stone, falling, shaken by something larger than him or the hand-been-home or understanding. Simple stone, falling. If he had been beneath it, he would be dead. There was no challenge in that; there was no victory. The stone did not advance from its corpse; he would not advance from avoiding it. Just a death, waiting, pointless and wasted and there. If he were to die, it would not be like that. So he needed to be stronger. But stronger how? He didn''t want to be like the scaled-water-beast, large and enormous, who fought hordes with brute strength and claws; he loved the shadows and the hunt and feeling of venom sinking into flesh unknown. He loved watching his prey die while he stood unharmed. But he wanted them to know. He wanted to fight groups, armies, worlds full of beasts, all at the same time; to strike from the shadows as they stomped and shouted and tried to run; to sit in darkness as they knew he was there but couldn''t flee from him. To not have it just be luck that they didn''t see him; for them to know he was coming and be killed regardless. He wanted to be a nightmare. He wanted to be inescapable. And he remembered, because there was memory now, there was more than just thinking of future fights but now recalling previous ones, to remember being bored and what he had done and what he hadn''t¡ªhe remembered changing, long ago. The change from webs to fangs; the change from red-grey to crimson; the change from weak to fearless. And though the had-been-home no longer fed him mana, he could feel he was full of it, straining at his body, urging him to change once more. But not yet. Not until he had figured out how to have what he wanted. Which was why he was here, in the tunnels darkened by shadows and walked by larger beasts, prodding one clawed foot at the husk before him. It was large but not more than the tall-long-invaders; strong, yes, but only for its size. No fangs, no claws, just an odd, tree-stick-length thing with a sharpened tip it had made one pitiful stab at him with before dying. But where there had been one tall-long-invader, there had been more. Perhaps this beast was similar. The jeweled jumper skittered over its corpse, claws sinking into its tender flesh, the weakness underneath. He had grown from the last days of his boredom, larger than any kin he had known, but even then he could tuck all his limbs in and fit on the face of the creature. Size wasn''t important, it seemed. Not when he could strike from the shadows. Not when he could kill. But he had found so few avenues for strength yet, not in all his time hunting in these dark tunnels, and he would wait to see if more of this beast would come. So he scuttled off to the top of its head, the highest vantage point to see the rest of the sprawling room, and waited. Time, endless, enough his hunger doubled and doubled again¡ªand then movement. More of them. He sprang off its corpse and tucked himself in the shadow of a tall-reach-stone, limbs splayed and eight eyes fixed on the desiccated husk of its body. Vibrations, rumbling over the stone; two approaching things, tall, the same weight and size of the one he killed. Prey. Venom dripped from his fangs. From the dim, two green-grey-beasts entered the room. Their eyes, pale with white instead of black, locked onto the corpse. They were kin, then. The same. Both held tree-stick-lengths, those fake-claws on top, with no armour but scraps of flowing liquid-solid-grey. Beasts. And then they opened their mouths. Think-words, but instead of in the voiceless manner of the being that had made him, they were in the air. Not quite vibrations, like he was attuned to¡ªor, rather, they were, but weak and pitiful. Likely sounds alongside them, something that stirred the hairs on his legs. Some beasts had no idea how brutish they were, using think-words like this instead of within one''s mind. The jeweled jumper didn''t harbour much appreciation for the voiceless being, but at least it hadn''t had to rely on this strange, fumbling form of communication. But the mana within him; the leftover curls and peals from the had-been-home, wanted him to understand, though he had no apparatus to do so. It wanted him to know. Useless knowledge. But he couldn''t do anything to stop it. "Hells," the first green-grey-beast hissed, in a voice that rippled with vibrations and caught at the air. "Somethin'' killed Hinqe." Hinqe? Was that the name of these beasts? Useless. He didn''t need to know this¡ªhe needed to know where they were, how many there were, and how to kill them in hordes. The first one swept its eyes¡ªjust two, again, did no creature other than him understand how to be strong?¡ªaround the room, teeth bared but without any mandibles to bite outside of the flat of its face. The jeweled jumper stayed still, hairs on his legs twitching; deep in the stone-grey was he, lost to the shadows, and they wouldn''t see him. They didn''t. It was as it always was. The other crouched over the corpse, prodding along its body with odd-flat-claws, flipping it over and brushing at the bloodied back of its lower-limb. Where he''d struck it with all venom. The thing hissed, not unlike the scaled-beast, jabbing its odd-flat-claws in the ground. "Ikiar," it spat, gutless and pointless as it was. "Shadow-killer. Fuck else do these mountains have?" The other spat something on the ground, a waste of precious moisture. The lot of them were fools. "Home didn''t have shit like this," it growled, odd-flat-claws tightening around its tree-stick-length. "Won''t be gettin'' home if bastards keep killin'' us," the first snapped. In unison, they both snarled. A rumble like the scaled-beast. Was that a promise of greater strength in numbers? Were they more powerful together, when their sounds could bounce off each other? More venom dripped from his fangs. He wanted to know. The jeweled jumper wasn''t like the other spiders back in the had-been-home; who lounged in delicate webs and waited for prey to land wriggling in their mouths. Who spoke to each other in thought-whisper-smells and joined together. But he could win. And when the green-grey-beasts hauled the corpse of the fallen one on their backs and made to head down a path he hadn''t yet explored, the jeweled jumper followed, and prepared to make war. Chapter 140 - Names and Legacies Nicau knew that at the best of times, he wasn''t one considered wise. Clever, perhaps, when compared to the rats he had been catching; knowledgeable, when his competition were kobolds who, until recently, hadn''t known fire or names or the concept of traps; learned, when the dungeon forcefed him mana until every possible language spilled from his lips. But not wise. He was feeling that now, dreary from lack of sleep and peering up at a mountain of a man who was, apparently, his new guide into a dungeon. A guide into a dungeon that had claimed and Named him, and had not done so for his new companion. A new companion that the Marquesa de Wolf had produced for him; how, he wasn''t quite sure, considering her Le¨®ran accent and the disbelief at Baron Ealdhere being the Adventuring Guild''s Scholar, and with how this¡­ Gon?al had known her under a different name, but apparently it had been her doing. If Nicau had been even a whisper more rested without the delirium of foggy-eyed confidence, he would have bitten his tongue before ever asking her for the favour. But he needed to get back in the dungeon, and the Guild would never have let a singular adventurer who seemed to be Unranked meander his charming way into their most prized possession. Both were poisons, and Nicau was growing rather tired at having to pick which to swallow. A quiet life teaching the kobolds how to swim in the sheltered, glossy-blue lagoon sounded like paradise now. But it happened that he tugged his flared coat higher on his shoulders and brushed loose ringlets of sweaty hair back, and fixed his gaze on, for now, his fellow adventurer. Tall, frighteningly so, built like a statue with scales glimmering over his cheekbones and the underside of his jaw¡ªsomething sharp and gold-bronze. Eyes that burned like twin torches. Again, memories unfamiliar stirred in the back of his head, murmuring faint vitriol and resentment. Whoever this was, the dungeon knew them, and whatever bleedover it had from Otherworld mana to Nicau''s chest didn''t like him. Which. This poison was looking less and less survivable. But Aiqith didn''t give two shits about his comfort and less about his life, so Nicau inclined his head to Gon?al in what he hoped looked smooth and jabbed a finger towards the building behind him. "Have you met with the Guildmaster?" Please yes. Please yes. Gon?al raised an eyebrow with the kind of casual derision that could have boiled from the ground and been less distracting. "He''d hardly wish to meet only half an adventuring group," he rumbled, with a voice like an avalanche. "Surely you must know that." Which. Fantastic. Nicau brushed his hair a little more aggressively in front of his face, dragging curls over the bridge of his nose. The Pirate Lord didn''t seem to know how Adventuring Guilds worked, and he was strutting around like a parrot with Unranked mana out for the sensing and no weapons beyond a dagger that was exactly the level of expected quality to have been taken from a streetside pickpocket. And he would be meeting Lluc Cardena Ferr¨¦, whose last encounter had been sentencing Nicau to death in a dungeon with the idea of seeing what happened from his corpse. "Of course," Nicau said, bone-weary, and made to march through the door. Inside, without the choking crowds of hopefuls, the Adventuring Guild was almost pleasant; open and airy, sturdy protections layered over lacquered wood and high vaulted ceilings. A desk to serve as an informal entrance point, where presumably the Scholar would sit when he wasn''t getting mobbed, and¨C And, standing tall in the center of the room, a man with teeth for eyes and boiling with apathetic death. Lluc. Still tall, still sharp, still terrifying. The pelt of some beast wrapped around his dark leather hat, framing the length of his hair and sweep of his cloak. Not a monster of a man like Gon?al, who towered over in muscle and broad shoulders; a sword, a greataxe. Lluc was an arrow. Poison dripped from his unsmiling eyes. Nicau was going to fall out of his own ass. "Gon?al," Lluc said, an empty politeness. He left some deliberate pause after like he was waiting for the man to fill in his familial names, and just smiled when Gon?al didn''t. A kind of taunt, maybe. "Consider me surprised when our liaison to the Silent Market took so long to organize a delve¡ªand certainly more when his chosen¡­ partner was not of his cabal." Nicau blinked. Hells, Gon?al was from the Silent Market? That explained the various and sundry chains and jars over his body at least, wrapping around his armour in what hardly seemed like a comfortable embrace but he moved without struggle. ¡­young for it, though. No silver threaded through his temples. Nicau vaguely remembered a famed young welcome to that locked-and-barred nightmarketer cabal, but he''d never learned the name of who it was. No reason it couldn''t be Gon?al. With his sheer presence, it certainly seemed like it. Gon?al''s smile tightened to a razor''s edge. He hardly seemed pleased with the turn of events either, which Nicau could agree with wholeheartedly. "I thought it better to wait until the time was right," he said, tense, with just enough injected respect to keep him from sounding actively hostile. It seemed whatever spirit of comradery between him and Lluc had died long before it had ever sprouted wings. Truly a surprise. Lluc was just so welcoming. The man hummed. "I see." He didn''t remove his eyes from them, twin pearls of bitter-cold, but his voice rose to higher volume with a whistle of air-attuned mana. "Scholar?" A crash¡ªor something equally destructive¡ªfrom further within the Adventuring Guild. This early in the morning, particularly with Varc¨ªs'' harsh rules on limits and one party a day, meant no one else was allowed inside until the day''s adventurers had entered; which had one soul left responsible. A door in the far back¡ªone Nicau had seen but hadn''t exactly had time to explore before the entire Marquesa de Wolf situation happened¡ªcreaked open, and the Scholar walked out. If Gon?al was a greatsword and Lluc an arrow, this man was a half-damp half-shredded feather. A loose swirl of red hair, foam-white skin, open-cut robes with pockets more than fabric, and a nervous, gaunt-edged face with blue sparks for eyes. Hardly tall, and perhaps the one other person Nicau had met that he felt he could reliably grapple to the ground. Baron Ealdhere Darlington, the famed and intelligent and entirely willing Scholar of Calarata''s Adventuring Guild. He trotted over to join them, adjusting various straps and papers clasped in his hands, and then stopped. Looked at them, brow furrowing, blinking with slow imprecision. His head tilted to the side seemingly out of his control, a touch like a bird. "Gon?al?" This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. A pause. Lluc''s eyes flicked over. A flash of shadow, like some circling hawk far overhead. "You know each other?" It wasn''t a question. It wasn''t meant to be a question. Nicau wanted to melt to the core of Aiqith. Ealdhere flushed as red as his hair, which seemed like a terribly inconvenient thing for those who had that pallor of skin¡ªno disguising any emotions if it was painted over their face. But Gon?al just nodded, not quite looking at Lluc in acknowledgement of respect but directed at him. "We survived the Dead Man''s Raid together." Dead Man''s Raid? That was a hells of a name to be given to a slaughter. Fitting of Calarata, who celebrated bawdy stories of glory as much as massacres¡ªthough they tended to be massacres of others, rather than themselves. But there were plenty of corpses to laugh at from their desiccated demises back in the dungeon. One corpse, in the kobolds'' den; his first kill done by his own hand. The first time he had ever been powerful. "We did," Ealdhere said, a touch faintly. "But I thought¨C well. I don''t know what I thought." "Scholar," Lluc said, soft, low. "Control yourself, please." Ealdhere shook himself like a dog out of water. "Ah, yes. My apologies." "And you," Lluc said, almost with a hum¡ªlike it was nothing but curiosity. "Gon?al I know, and him I trust to delve. But who are you?" Well. Nicau stared up at the man who had sentenced him to die, and thought. Pirate Lord stayed frozen on the tip of his tongue, but that was a sentence in of itself¡ªif the Marquesa de Wolf had recognized it as a challenge to Varc¨ªs Bilaro, Lluc could snap into it before the last sound had left his lips. There was nothing about that name that was subtle¡ªthere was nothing about that name that would keep him alive. But it was the name Gon?al knew him by. The man would know if he switched. Between Gon?al and Lluc, Nicau was willing to take his chances. "Romei," he said, and barely kept his voice from shaking, much less adding the imperious sniff he so desperately wanted. "Romei." Lluc''s eyes flashed, a curl of errant mana in some sight enhancement. His lip didn''t curl, not nearly as outward, but still a particular level of disdain. "Unranked, I see." "Maybe," Nicau managed. That''s what you think and only what you see and I''m sure that''s all there is to it hovered at the edge of his awareness but all he could do was look up, see Lluc''s impassive face, the same face that had torn him from the back alley and cast him into the dungeon, who had sworn his death and thought of it as nothing but an advantage, and his tongue shriveled in his mouth. No blessing of the communer could save him. Fucking hells, this wasn''t his life; he could play suave and click his leather boots together but that didn''t mean he was. Sweat beaded on his temples. He could feel Gon?al''s gaze burning a hole in the side of his skull. But it didn''t matter, because the singular word was enough. The mana in Lluc''s eyes redoubled, like fire caught in the forge; the sight enhancement scorched over Nicau''s skin like a living beast. The air hissed and whistled like a building storm, charging through the air; dumping more than Nicau even had into this little spell, searching for¨C for something. When Lluc pulled back, mana dying down to the same flicker it had been before, his brows were furrowed. "Hiding your strength?" Sure? Sure. Sure. Nicau shrugged in lieu of a flinch. "Maybe." Lluc frowned. Not angry, maybe, though that could have been the desperation talking¡ªbut considering. The concept of hiding your strength wasn''t well-known, because there wasn''t much of a point; strength always bought prestige and respect. Pretending to be weaker was not something people just did. Gon?al at least seemed interested, so perhaps he wouldn''t flay Nicau alive for the disrespect upon first entering the dungeon. And Lluc seemed too interested, but not in Nicau himself¡ªjust in the concept of it. "Delve as deep as you dare," Lluc finally said, empty, his attention elsewhere. "Bring all you slay to the Scholar to be evaluated; if you discover anything new or find your way on a deeper floor, there are rewards beyond your imagination." His eyes flicked to Gon?al. "Your deal will hold." Gon?al inclined his head and didn''t say anything. With a flair that seemed more rote than intentional, Lluc swept from the room; Ealdhere bobbed a silent farewell and disappeared as well. The Adventuring Guild wasn''t quite as organized as Nicau had thought¡ªor maybe there had been a wrench of some variety thrown into the plan, because this seemed at odds with the raids of times past. Or maybe he was about to fall asleep and he was missing things. Both were options. He straightened out his coat, flicking out the sleeves and adjusting the collar. Maybe the dungeon could pretend to kill him on the first floor so he could get this fucking over with. He wanted no part of any of it. He wanted to sleep. He wanted to sleep for a decade. A century. "Let''s go, then." Gon?al nodded. His gaze danced over the Guild, searching for something, mana flickering over his gold-bronze eyes; but he stayed tense. "Romei, was it?" Nicau shrugged. "Romei." "If you are not Unranked," Gon?al said, slowly, like he was testing the words before releasing them. "Then what are you?" Nicau was half-tempted to say Mythril if he didn''t think the gods would smite him for his fallacy. "Strong enough," he settled on. "I can handle myself." Gon?al hummed. "I see why she put us together, then." Ah. Right. The reason he was even in this mess. "You said she used a different name," Nicau said, a touch hesitantly. He couldn''t care enough to maintain the copious pomposity, now that he''d survived the encounter with Lluc; all his nerves came crawling over his shoulders and down his spine again. "What was it?" Gon?al frowned. "You called her the Marquesa de Wolf." Well. That wasn''t an answer to his question. Nicua nodded regardless. "She came to me under the guise of the Filla de Orgull," Gon?al said, and unease lingered behind his eyes. Filla de Orgull? Even less a potential name than what he knew her under; it just meant the daughter of pride. But maybe using glaringly obvious pseudonyms was more common in nightmarkets? Or something? Something else. Nicau blinked. "You didn''t know her before?" Gon?al''s jaw tightened. "No." He didn''t elaborate. Nicau wasn''t feeling near confident enough to ask him to. But even that answer was worrying enough; he''d guessed it, given her Le¨®ran accent, but having it confirmed was unsettling. The Marquesa de Wolf was playing some game with Calarata; whether it was only going teeth-to-knife with the Dread Pirate or some greater strike from the Kingdom of Le¨®ro, it was a game with shadows over shadows that Nicau didn''t have a scrape of ability to tear apart. Fire and fury indeed. Gods, he hated this. Nicau was loyal to the dungeon, he was, but he''d pushed his luck to its limits and it had barely been enough. He couldn''t be the mastermind behind the legacy, the face for the dungeon''s might, not without more¨C just more. He''d found an entrance for the dungeon and figured out a plan against Varc¨ªs Bilaro. But all he would be doing after surviving this would be sleep. - In the depths of the darkness, something more. A quiet, slumbering little thing; hardly more than a memory. Cool mist floated around it, the canals below rumbling with the soothing push-pull of ancient waters. It didn''t move like the others; didn''t hunt for lesser things. Instead, it watched. The beast-of-depths-and-presence was gone; the thing-of-tongue-and-talking wasn''t here. The mind-of-study-and-wisdom was far below, and the queen-of-strength-and-silver was lurking only a few floors beneath; but they were far enough away. It wasn''t being attacked; it wasn''t being noticed. And it was so, so hungry. The flickers were not enough. They would never be enough. It came from a world of stars and gods and impossibilities; this wretched world of laws and holds. Soon it wouldn''t be caged here; soon it would extend past what trapped it. Soon. Chapter 141 - Depths to be Taught Seros bared his fangs. Deep in the enclosed cage, the water picked up and thrummed around him, shreds of kelp and white-tinged mana. Movement, echoing through the rock; the thing overhead, pressing into his mind. Dragon-friend, the voice murmured, soft, bleeding strength, but with a frenetic energy simmering under the surface. Again the stone cracked, power tunneling through to his earthen prison¡ªthe merrow were approaching. Fast. Seros would kill them. He would slaughter them like baitfish; chew through corpses and drag the remains back to the Core. A flicker of annoyance. You do not know baitfish, it¡ªAbarossa, apparently, whatever the name that wasn''t a Name meant¡ªsaid, sinking into his mind like a coiling serpent. You do not know the sea. His tail lashed, kicking up a spiral of water in the enclosed space. He didn''t need to, not when the dungeon was all he could ever imagine. The cove, enormous, sprawling beyond his eyes; waters inky under night and no walls to be seen, larger than life, larger than existence. Seros snarled around the memories, shook them loose¡ªthe Core was all. The Core was powerful. ¡­the Core had sent him here to learn about the sea. His evolution called him draconic monitor¡ªno longer seabound, but now draconic. Still his scales were iridescent teal, still his gills fluttered and his webbed claws pulled him through water, but no longer was he explicitly for the depths. He was going to be a dragon; was going to be a sea-drake. But perhaps he could learn, for now. Seros didn''t need primitive words, loose conjoinings of names for things that thoughts could convey. He pushed derision and begrudging acceptance to the thing floating overhead, that he would acquiesce to hear its plan. We do not have time, the voice urged, faster now, like it was worried. I cannot speak to them¡ªcannot urge them to slow. You must Listen. He was listening, if the damned voice would acknowledge that. But he would obey only the Core, and certainly not something that offered vague aspirations and wanted an audience with the mighty Core with he could feel its resentment¨C The stone shattered. A careful prison they''d contained him in¡ªrocks tumbled away from each other, locked and grown around, a hole blasted through the wall. Voices, clicking to each other, useless talk for useless creatures; churning water from movement, from life. The tatters of their kelp chains floated around him, revealing Seros, the draconic monitor, the monster, the beast, snarling in the center of their cage and entirely free. He would destroy them and their idea they could contain him. The deep teal merrow, wooden thing clutched in its hand, tail lashing. More of them, the water boiling with swarming bodies, like silvertooths caught in the blood-frenzy¡ªSeros bared his teeth, lunging forward, water lurching to his command¨C Listen! It demanded. Listen and I will bring you home! He didn''t need it, didn''t need empty promises¨C You will kill them, it said, teeth threaded through the words. But what will you win? Win? He would win corpses, things to drag back to the Core to give it mana, to fill it with power and understanding. He would win strength and vicious success, bones to sharpen his claws upon and meat to shred between his fangs. He would win glorious memories to devour as he returned to the dungeon¨C Back to the dungeon, far from where he was, lost beneath the merrow city. Maybe it wasn''t his thought, because he could not ever recall feeling fear of this kind before, maybe the voice was shoveling its pitiful weakness into his mind¡ªbut he couldn''t chase it. He had lost the gold to black and woken up in this cage, no idea, no knowledge. Otherworld mana simmered in his chest but there was no trail to follow back to the Core, to return to that of his home. Just water and death and merrow. He would kill them. What would he win? Seros was not afraid¡ªSeros was never afraid¡ªbut something gummed up his thoughts like coagulated blood. The cove was larger than anything he had ever known, filling his understanding, starker than the eve of his unknown creation and the world that had always been big but was now unconquerable in its vastness. He alone was those of the Core''s creations that could swim¡ªit had nothing else to send after him, nothing to find him should he be lost. Nothing but regret, never knowing what had happened to him. This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report. It wasn''t his fear; just the voice, filling him with wretched panic that was not his, but it grabbed him. A merrow darted towards him, trident raised, ferocious rage in its white-ringed eyes¡ªhis fangs urged to bury into its neck, to fill the water with murky red and drown in his hunger, but¨C But Seros opened his mind instead, and Listened. A pulse of frantic relief¡ªthe voice, sensing him¡ªand then a response. Something swept through him, endless, the chill of deep-water depths and warmth of the currents. The pulse of ancient volcano vents; the bite of lightning forking through crashing waves; the dance of enormous schools and lonesome existence of titanic whales; the fields of waving forests; the beds of sprawling multi-hue reefs; the sand swirling in patternless dunes; the crash of glaciers and societies around skeletons; the rumble of stone larger than comprehension; the immortality of something past years, past centuries, past age¨C He called the Core''s voice a melody. This was a Song. Seros drowned in it; lost his mind and thoughts and mana under the impossible breadth of it. Time slowed to a crawl, the whisper of movement, buckling under the pressure. And above it all, the voice, anchoring him to Aiqith with the grasp it wrapped around him, cold enough to press through his scales. I am the dappled water reflecting on dark backs, it murmured. I am the pale light on black eyes. I am the hunger and the hunter; she who hides the predator and reveals the prey. Many-toothed and jagged-finned; she who brings death. The merrow, swarming before him, ready to beat him down and carve understanding from his scales¡ªthe Seros that had been would kill them, would shred them to miserable scraps and feast on the delight, slaughter, massacre, victory. The voice rose to a crescendo. I am Abarossa, it roared. Thirteenth Goddess of Arroyo, singer of the ancient Song, and you will live! Water exploded beneath his claws. Seros surged forward, a current crackling to life and enveloping him, a hurricane born in an enclosed room¡ªthe merrow crashed back, flailing, as the water rebelled and the Song erupted into fury, discordant memories and thrashing chords. It threw him into the carved tunnel, past shattered rocks; tridents bounced off his scales and spells washed over his back but he was flying, faster than he thought he could move, shaking under the pressure. He crashed into the wall and tore past it, slamming into narrow pathways for slender merrow that crumbled under his bulk. Windows, water, towers; everything and nothing and just hollow stone to shatter past. Past the cage, into the city¡ªthe city, not the rubble and ruins of a pitch-shark''s destruction, but something more. Underground, walls of stone in all directions, hollow dens. And merrow; green, blue, grey, teal, azure, emerald, turquoise, cyan, dozens, hundreds. The civilization that had stayed hidden; the one that had been destroyed. They looked at him; shock pulled their humanoid features taut and they reached for weapons, for magic, light crackling over their fingers at the predator in their midst. But the Song did not slow. In the center of their hidden city, gold¡ªthe pillar of kelp, amber-gold, thrashing, contained, spiraling up to a hole in the rock. How they hid, what he had come to before their wretched magic had stolen his mind and awareness. The voice howled anew and the current sprang forward, Song intensifying into a cacophony, Seros blitzing past like lightning. Like the ascended thing on the fifth floor; like the mana of the Core; like power. It threw him into the trap and pushed him up. Gold flashed before his eyes much as it had before, when he''d chased a merrow''s illusion and lost himself in the hunt. But now he could feel the currents, could sense the three that twined through the passageway, one up, one down, and one twisting into a hollow pocket of dead water for the capturing. Movement, rippling up behind him, merrow trying for the chase as their prisoner fled¡ªbut the Song howled, and he exploded out of the kelp like a storm. Back to the dungeon, back to the Core¡ªSeros swam without swimming as something pulled him, tugged him out of the depths and guided him up, spiraling, faster than he had ever moved before. There were no commands; his mana only asked, only shifted his focus to the currents and showed them where he would want to go, and they arranged themselves for him. The Song flooded his mind, the depths beyond and beneath and above, currents that had flowed for lifetimes, for centuries, since the Breaking of the World. Through the cove, the incredible vastness that he could feel, close his eyes and hear the murmurs of the far corners and lives tucked in every wave. The voice had said he didn''t know baitfish, though he knew well the swarm of silverheads and billowing clouds of prismatic dartfish. But now he knew why, with the far-off rustle of millions, lives dipping and dashing through open oceans and creating societies in their wakes, paroles of sharks and birds and larger beasts, living only through tenacity and gathered resilience. Then, far below, the seabed and all of its mysteries, from fallen ships of rotten wood and boulders cast from mountaintops, carcasses of age-old beasts and scuttling things pulling pale flesh from their bones. How had he thought the cove empty? How hadn''t he seen? Then¨C a pulse of water carved through the base of the mountains, a jagged tunnel that hummed with mana familiar and brilliant, with power. Around his claws, the current died, back to a murmur and the memory of what had been. Seros floundered for a pitiful second before his tail straightened and his limbs shifted back into swimming, pulling him forward with methodical precision and none of the haste. His mind still burned. Hurry, the voice rasped in his skull, exhausted and faint. I have shown you the sea¡ªbut I must speak to your dungeon. The deal that had been made¡ªfreedom from captivity a part of it, yes, but a Song for a meeting. Seros did not like these nameless things overhead, that called themselves powerful and forced the Core to bow its mighty head. They were not warriors; they were not dragons. But this one¡ªthis Abarossa¨C Perhaps he would allow this one leniency. Chapter 142 - Burning Resentment Well. I had little cause to compliment the lesser, scuttling things of my dungeon, particularly when they lacked finery or elegance¡ªbut to their own damning credit, at least the webweavers had managed to construct a passable shrine. A collection of intricate webs, melded together into the faint reminiscent ideal of her symbol of worship¡ªI''d originally thought it as a needle''s point, but now that it was before me, it shaped itself like a spider''s mandible, thread unspooling from the base and scattering around. Nenaigch, the goddess of weaving, with her newest followers. And they''d already done what I''d chosen them for¡ªnamely, sacrifice. Though I hadn''t started to fill the Haven with populations of creatures I wanted to live there, mostly because I wanted to save my mana until I knew if a threat was imminently banging on my door, I had built up the beginnings of the prey populations needed to support them. So, in fine fashion, they had immediately butchered a burrowing rat and strung its desiccated corpse up on the marble platform. That was probably about as close to prayer as a bunch of identity-less spiders could manage. My confidence in the plan to avoid humans and go right to spiders was waning, just a touch. But that was a question for when I had alternatives, so for now I pushed more worship into their insipid minds and moved elsewhere. Time was an ancient enemy of mine, particularly when my distractions numbered painfully few. Until Nicau returned, I couldn''t work on the new tunnel branching out of my dungeon; until Seros returned, I couldn''t talk to him about my future plans; until both of them told me of the outside world, I couldn''t prepare for my retribution. When I had torn out my own heart to wreak vengeance on the man who had slaughtered me, I hadn''t exactly anticipated the waiting. In the future, I would work on limiting the number of my Named I sent into the wider world at the same time. I hated being stuck without intelligent conversation, which was in short supply with Veresai busy compelling Kriya and Akkyst having long, meandering talks with Bylk about their ancient stone plaque and his blessing. Which meant I had to go entertain myself. Horrible. My attention was neatly divided between the Jungle Labyrinth and the Scorchplains, the targets of my design. For the Jungle Labyrinth, it was relatively plain¡ªwait for Nicau, finish the Haven, and then carve a twisting escape far through the madness and the depths of the Al¨®mbra Mountains. Then potentially go steal some priests, because while I wouldn''t put myself in the alien mindset of a deity with nothing to worry about but sycophants, I also wouldn''t call the webweavers particularly respectable followers. Nenaigch had been calm for the moment, the spool of iron-threads in the back of my mind, but I doubted she would stay so forever. No, I needed a better plan. I glared a little harsher at the scuttling, ghost-pale bodies in the Haven. But the Scorchplains¡ªthey were the next floor to truly work on finishing. The Hungering Reefs were well on their way, three rooms of impossible danger and beauty, from the swarming swallows of the first to the elegant lagoon of the second to the crushing depths and many-fanged jaws of the sea serpent in the third room. My own little paradise, though I doubted many of those who died there would see it as such. I wasn''t quite ready to finish it yet, considering I could see little pockets where new creatures could fit, but it was working there. The Scorchplains were an untapped spring of potential. And, well. I was impatient in all the ways that a dungeon core could afford to be. The sooner I strengthened the Scorchplains and made them a land that would survive, the sooner I could begin my eighth floor, and I had many wonderful ideas already scattering through my thoughts. But not until I got this one to a serviceable level. The Scorchplains were, at their core, a very mean-spirited place. The basalt columns, never equal, always a tripping hazard¡ªand tripping that could go right into a magma pool, coal-filled chasm, or waiting stinger of a mottled scorpion. Smoke in the air and darkness all around, no water beyond little oases of mushrooms, rampaging packs of scorch hounds and herds of bounding deer whose preferred response to threats was to trample them. Fire-tongue flowers belched smoke into the air, choking the land in smog where the burning coal didn''t. Already the magma salamanders had blossomed in size, from hatchlings to threats, bulbous bodies pouring molten stone from their skin and wrapping near-toothless maws about anything that entered their pool''s surroundings. Death and devastation made pairs. There had been some interesting developments¡ªnamely, the splitting. The Scorchplains were enormous, some ten thousand feet long, but not divided into rooms or areas like my previous floors. I had imagined it as more of a threat of endurance, where invaders had to struggle across a field of pure darkness with danger on every side, a race of attrition. But my creatures had a different idea, it seems. The elder scorch hounds who had known the starvation in the Skylands, who had their pack whittled down from three dozen to half the number without the stability to support pups, had claimed the back half of the floor; had staked out their territory and defended it. And then all of the new scorch hounds I had created had been entirely kicked out to form a pack of their own, more in the front of the room, separate. Which. Fascinating. Made even more fascinating by just what was happening with the older pack; most notably, their newer member. The beast-tamer kobold. After several long, long stretches of failing to convince the eldest scorch hound onto his side¡ªparticularly in the changed environment, where he could no longer as easily hunt food to give her¡ªhe had switched his strategy. Now he tried to join them to, honestly, much better success. He slept in their huddled piles, hunted alongside them with his spear and warbled shouts, bound their wounds. But in direct comparison to Nicau, who had been showing the kobolds how to become more humanoid, instead he had becoming more bestial to match them. Still with his spear, but now he sharpened his claws and tried to use those, bared his teeth and snarled, devoured meat and abandoned mushrooms. Not quite Rihsu''s strategy, where she was following draconic urges; no, he was committing quite hard to his fire ancestry. Smoke trickled from his mouth when he concentrated, and the embers of his eyes matched the scorch hounds. I hated every moment of it, but it was irritatingly possible that he was going to unlock his fire upon his evolution. Quite possibly the worst, but fascinating. And to match, the Scorchplains had grown and split around this new divided territory; multiple herds of bounding deer darted to and fro, mottled scorpions who would sooner eat each other than team up, magma salamanders living endless gluttonous lives without ever seeing another of their kind. The spined lizards at least formed small familial groups, three to five, darting around like knives in the dark. Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original. With weeks to change, already great things had emerged; and it started with golden letters crawling over my core. There was a genuine part of me that almost sidelined the message; it had been so long since there had been anything new, that wasn''t just shuffling silverheads into new silvertooths or armourback sturgeons and luminous constrictors into crowned cobras, that I wasn''t prepared for anything new. But this was new, from my deepest floor.
Your creature, a Lacecap, is undergoing evolution! Please select your desired path. Houndspore (Rare): In partnership with carnivorous brethren, it has grown into a worthy ally. Its bulbous form billows constant spores that can grow on the fur of passing beasts, hardening into protective armour in return for living off some portion of its nutrients. Magmacap (Uncommon): Fire begets fire. Its cap reverses to form shallow bowls, while its mycelium erodes stone to transport up its stem to melt within. Little pockets of pure lava in pale white caps, heat to dissuade predators and light to attract prey, serving as explosive traps for those who never look down. Tumbleshroom (Rare): From lace grows a tangle; its gills have grown and hardened into a protective coating, many times larger than its previous form. The slightest movement is enough to move it around, where its bile-coated armour picks up all prey in its wake to consume them.
Well. Well! In comparison to the reaper''s cap far above, none of these were quite as brilliant as that change¡ªwhich was sad, admittedly¡ªbut they were still very exciting. The tumbleshroom was the first truly mobile plant I''d encountered; while the creeping vine, thornwhip algae, and vampiric mangrove all had the capability to shift locations, that was slow, shambling movement that could take fortnights to clear feet. But slight movement or gusts of wind was much more promising, particularly in an environment where invaders couldn''t see it approaching in the darkness. Not particularly lethal, but it wouldn''t be a second evolution without a trick up its sleeve. The magmacap was an equal pairing, more snippets of perfectly miserable pockets of suffering for the Scorchplains, taking away even more sure footing until the size of the cavern became its most dangerous element. And the houndspore; I''d certainly never heard of anything like that before. An altered version of the bloomcap from previous evolutions, but less parasitic and more mutualistic. Interesting. The scorch hounds had few predators at the moment on the floor, but I already had my eye on something larger to add to the darkness, and they wouldn''t be the apex predator forever. But hm. What a choice to make¡ªadd more mobile threats, increase the magma, or protect the hounds? There was the question also of whether this was the first evolution in a long spectrum¡ªthis particular lacecap was just the largest on the floor, grown fat on the density of mana, but it seemed likely that more were to follow. Was it worth it to invest all into one species, or cast my luck that I could get more of others later? And where did¨C Energy, thrumming overhead; something connecting with my soul and a kick-up of mana from a slain luminous constrictor, far above on my first floor. Oh. Invaders. Yesterday''s group had been a collection of little misfits, from a scaled being that wasn''t quite a kobold, taller, no proper heritage. Blegh. Lizardfolk; all the potential elegance of draconic kin, but forsaken for only their own strength and a pitiful reminder of what they could have been. And, unfortunately, sapient enough I couldn''t collect the schema from his corpse, once the armoured jawfish had politely removed his head from his shoulders. I had at least gotten something beyond mana though, in the form of a collection of insects preserved in glass in his supplies. Minor things, Underranked, but more to fill the poison-trap race in the Fungal Gardens. I''d take what I could get. His two companions, an angular-faced man with metal climbing over his body and a woman who wielded flashing balls of light, hadn''t fared much better than him, although the mechanical man had dropped metal limbs like a spooked lizard and managed to clamber out. Irritating. But it meant I flicked my attention skyward to the Fungal Gardens, poking points of awareness into the new arrivals that weren''t even playing at subtly, and paused. ¡­huh. I knew these invaders. One of them was small and dusted and tripping along like he hadn''t known sleep in a decade, and it was him whose mana had sparked alongside mine as his soul reconnected¡ªNicau, my Named, my wandering little spy with the tongue of a thousand species and the wits of none of them. Even now, his thoughts sung a weary funeral dirge of defective cohesion, blind to his surroundings. Goodness. I had long abandoned my mortal form and even I knew what he was doing was terrible. Made infinitely moreso by the man standing beside him. Tall, confident, strong¡ªand familiar. Bronze scales and slitted pupils¡ªones that had faced my dungeon before. Chains and charms and cages¡ªempty, for now. Gon?al, the miserable fucking bastard who had stolen my wolf-wisp. The mushrooms could wait. This was, just marginally, slightly more important. Because of some critical interest was the fact that Nicau, my Named, supposedly loyal to me, had just entered my dungeon side-by-side with a wretched thief. My points of awareness unspooled overhead, weaving together amidst Nuvja''s shadows until they formed a watching web of stars. Gon?al strode into my dungeon like he owned it but there was a wariness there, concern in his eyes, tension in his shoulders. As he damn well should, because through the mana-sense my dungeon was infused with, I felt the flickers of a response¡ªthe gentle simmers of something reaching back. Around his neck, beneath the armour, wrapped in crystal and drenched in mana, was my cloudskipper wisp. Trapped. Contained. Caged. Nicau, halfway through entering with his shoulders hackled up to his ears, nearly fell flat on his face as the full force of my wrath descended into his mind. Kill him, I snarled, vicious and biting and bellowing. Kill him, rip his spine out, shred his intestines, feast on his innards¨C "Careful," Gon?al whispered, casual as all hells. Nicau wheezed something without words, clutching at his head as pain echoed back through our connection. I bared unfortunately intangible teeth but did slink back, dropping my shrieks to hisses, untangling the fury into something more manageable. Kill him, I said again, cold. Kill him. My Named, for some fucking reason, didn''t immediately spring up to sink his dagger into Gon?al''s throat. I was going to kill him, too. Nicau just straightened up, still pressing a palm to his forehead like he could hold back his Otherworld mana. "My apologies," he managed, mana sparking to his tongue. "I''m fine." Fine? Of course he was fine, he was back in the dungeon. What was less fine was the distinct lack of murder taking place. Why wasn''t he¨C Nicau looked up at the ceiling, eyes wild and panicked. His mind writhed with excess mana. Ah, that was his problem¡ªhe''d only ever spoken to me out loud, using his mana-gifted tongue, but that was moderately more difficult with a companion. But I didn''t really see why that mattered if he was going to kill Gon?al anyway. Which he was. Because I demanded it. Gon?al frowned, glancing around the Fungal Gardens, slithering with shadows and hidden threats. "If you are not feeling well enough to invade," he said, wary, "then we should not risk our lives for nothing." "Don''t worry," Nicau said, sounding like he was worrying enough for the both of them. "I have a plan." Gon?al raised an eyebrow, mana flickering over his eyes. "A plan?" "A plan," Nicau repeated wearily. "Just trust me." Trust him? Trust him, who had brought a thief into my dungeon without the courtesy of gutting him first? Oh, I couldn''t wait to see this plan. Chapter 143 - Gifts of a Fool With frustrating ease, the bloody invaders made their way through the Drowned Forest. I was every shade of fury imaginable but not to the point of sacrifice¡ªNicau wasn''t near strong enough to defend himself, and I rather doubted such a miserable bastard like Gon?al would defend him, and so I had to call my creatures back. I kept the raid-frenzy down, only the innate simmer whenever foreign mana crawled into my halls, and they strode through like a marvelous fucking paradise. They hardly bloodied their daggers on a few stone-backed toads and the occasional burrowing rat. What a delight for them. What a wonderful vacation. I seethed overhead, points of awareness swarming like a building storm. I was going to murder them. Nicau did his best to ignore my rage. He only tripped a few times. For his part, Gon?al seemed to notice that it was painfully easy, and his hackles stayed raised and eyes boiling with mana. He''d invaded me before when a fifty-person party had cleared the path first, and months later, it was even easier; not the normal progression. They hopped their way over bubbling canals on empty rocks as Nicau knew to avoid the lichenridge turtles, staying far from vampiric mangroves, never so much as dipping their toes into the water. Assholes. But he said he had a plan, and I was giving him until, oh, one mistake to prove it before I killed them both. And it was that way they found their way through the entirety of my second floor, nary a confrontation under their belt, my mana soothing the kobold tribe and softening the danger until they were marching down the final tunnel to the entrance for the Underlake. Easily. Fast. Nicau, with an apathy that betrayed how many times he''d been here and a discomfort that also showed how much he didn''t enjoy jumping into the Underlake despite the understanding that his Name would protect him, squinted at the water. It lapped peacefully at the edges of the stone, disquieting, nothing but an illusion to the horrors underneath. "Steady yourself," Gon?al rumbled, in a remarkable show of good care. "I have been to the third floor before, and it is not for the faint of heart." Oh, he certainly had been here before. And he''d made a damning mistake. "Yeah," Nicau echoed, looking away from the water and around them; still was I keeping the most dangerous creatures from their backs, though it killed me to do so, and they were in a perfectly enclosed little paradise amidst a hell. Kobolds snarling overhead, teeth and spears extended; greater crabs scuttling through underbrush; electric eels crackling in canals. By all accounts, if not dead, they should at least have been pushed harder than they had been. But they hadn''t. Because I was a miserable fool who was allowing Nicau to at least attempt his plan before I gave up on patience and killed them both. Nicau glanced overhead, to one of my points of awareness, lurking like a bird in flight. "Are we deep enough?" Gon?al paused. So did I. "Deep enough?" He repeated, confusion flickering on the edge of his words. "I thought you were here to do research. You said you''ve already been to the second floor before." Nicau hesitated. Ah. The question had been to me, instead. I would say that the first five feet of my dungeon was plenty enough to kill Gon?al outright, but I could agree that having it be a little deeper to keep him from merrily running his way out was not a terrible plan. I pushed acceptance through our connection. Whatever his plan was, it had better be of the fatal variety. "Look," Nicau said, looking quite the world like his next words would be through the murmur of sleep. "I don''t really want to kill you." Which. Sure. I was actively enhancing his abilities with Otherworld mana alongside a Name, and I still thought Gon?al would snap him in half. The thief certainly seemed to agree, raising an eyebrow and crossing his arms. "I appreciate the sentiment," he said dryly, but mana coiled within him, the lightning spark of readiness. He''d already been wary, which served him fucking right, entering my dungeon with my stolen wisp around his neck¡ªbut now he was a beast tensed in face of Nicau''s dismissive comments. My wonderful negotiator. My wonderful incorrect negotiator, because I did want to kill Gon?al, very much so. The acceptance dropped from my mana and ire replaced it, hunger, the desire for scarlet blood cast over the rocks and desolation alongside it. Nicau straightened, mana flowing over his tongue, alighting through his channels and rampaging through our connection. Gon?al stiffened to a knife''s edge as the boy before him rose, strength unseen boiling over, exhaustion fading away as my power sank into him. Still tired, still rubbing his eyes, but¨C more. "I''ll put it this way," he said, mana drifting from his eyes. "I don''t want to kill you, but someone much more powerful than me does. So. Cooperate, and maybe don''t die, or don''t, and definitely die." I barked a jackal''s laugh through the ambient mana, harsh enough that Nicau flinched. Oh, I had a polite little feeling that the maybe wasn''t near enough to save him. I did not parlay with thieves. Gon?al, for his part, went very still. He''d been a coiled beast facing Nicau, all too aware of the budding betrayal, but now his eyes met the air with a fear so delicious I could have feasted on it. Looking around at the air like it was poisoned to strike, something with teeth and claws and wings. A sea-drake, hiding in the shadows. Which I was. And I was oh so hungry. "Ealdhere wasn''t lying," he whispered, and then frowned, concern flickering over his mana. Oh, he hadn''t wanted to say that aloud¡ªmaybe Nicau''s command of cooperate had worked, even if he hadn''t said it like he normally did. Either way, it didn''t matter. I was still going to kill him. The name was curious, though. Of all the souls I''d devoured, that word resonated through their memories; the one who told them of the dangers found inside and how to avoid the smallest and most pathetic of them. The Scholar of the Adventuring Guild, though a pitiful one in face of Akkyst''s brilliance. But wasn''t lying about what? About me? If that damnable Scholar was telling all the invaders about my magnificence, I would take a moment to appreciate it before cleaving his head from his shoulders. My secrets were mine to contain. Nicau hummed, interest prickling over his thoughts. He''d noticed the slip as well. "What are you talking about?" "I was sent," Gon?al said, slow, hesitant, wary as a hatchling caught outside the waves, "to speak to the dungeon, and make an alliance if I was capable." Oh the fuck was he not. I had one useless bloody sycophant who brought thieves to my doorstep and proffered alliances without my blessing. I did not need another. Nicau winced around my reflected fury, scrubbing at his eyes. "Okay," he said, like it was nothing more surprising than comments about the weather. "You''re speaking to it. What kind of alliance did you mean?" The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. A very temporary one that ended in bloodshed. My preferred variant. Gon?al swallowed around something. He looked supremely uncomfortable, which was delightful; although I didn''t know the entirety of what had led to Nicau needing to fake an invasion with someone else, it was clear that Gon?al had thought he was at least more powerful than Nicau. And while he wasn''t wrong, there was the glorious little difference that Gon?al was not more powerful than a dungeon, even less so than me. He didn''t like it. I liked that immensely. "I bring gifts," he said, cautious. I didn''t have the same innate understanding of him as I did my Named or dungeonborn, but from the flickers of mana racing alongside his movements and the sparks in his eyes, I knew he was lying. He hadn''t brought them with the idea they would be gifts, but he was plenty willing to give them in hopes it might preserve his life. It wouldn''t, but I would let him present them like they would. Nicau nodded, stepping back to give him some room in the tunnel. His exhaustion played well here, letting him act like this was all normal, nothing more than rote conversation. It was half the reason I was letting him still talk instead of screaming my mana into the miserable thief''s mind. Slowly, Gon?al divested himself of everything he was carrying. Chains, silver and fine, engraved with runes of sleep and holding¡ªthe same he''d used to capture living creatures and drag them from my halls. Vials, made of frosted glass, for samples and collections; bottles with mysterious liquids inside. Plenty to study and learn from. Not the real prize. A moment of hesitation¡ªtrue frustration flickering over his eyes¡ªand then Gon?al reached around his neck, to the leather armour that wrapped around his bronze scales. My points of awareness swarmed in, flickering and crackling like crashing stars. Gon?al grabbed the leather cord around his neck and pulled out the wolf-wisp. My mana sharpened to a dagger''s edge. She was contained within a crystalline cage, shining and jagged and far too small for her true form. Power thrummed over its surface, runes carved into its glossy surface, blurring the transparency until only the whisper of movement could be seen below, the rampaging limbs of my elemental, my lost soul. Something bitter flashed through Gon?al''s eyes as he carefully unwrapped the necklace¡ªnecklace, he''d turned my beloved creature into nothing more than a common accessory¡ªfrom around his neck. There had to be a reason he kept her on him, even when invading a dungeon, rather than tucking her away in some safe prison. She was important to him; he didn''t want to give her up. Well. Too fucking bad for him. It wasn''t like he''d live to see the consequences. "And a return," he said cautiously, crouching, bronze scales flaring in the quartz-light. "I humbly apologize for taking without permission." I''d admit that he had a pretty tongue where it counted, although being in the presence of a dungeon tended to remind everyone of the concept of respect. And if he truly regretted it, he clearly wouldn''t have taken her from me in the first place. Gon?al knelt, wary, and set the crystal on the stone. Movement again within, the thrash of a living beast strung up like jewelry. As if sensing my fury¡ªit likely wasn''t difficult¡ªhe stood and took an immediate step away, near fleeing the consequences of his own actions. It wouldn''t save him. Nicau saw the wisp and immediately winced, understanding finally cloaking his thoughts. I knew my anger had bled through our connection, but clearly he''d been a touch too distracted to know the reason that this thief would die today, and he''d been content to play house otherwise. But no further. "Okay," he said again, because apparently the mortal need for sleep was so strong that nothing was distracting now. What a pitiful weakness. "Those are good gifts. Uh. Thanks." Was he thanking Gon?al for me? Far bolder than he should be. Gon?al nodded stiffly, eyes still fixed overhead, like he could peer past the stone and find my looming body. He couldn''t, but it wasn''t like my hunger was any more hidden than the mana coiling around the two of them. I wouldn''t distract myself with freeing my wisp, not until he was dead. An alliance. He was more a fool than I thought. What alliance could I possibly make with a thief? "Are you a good liar?" Nicau asked, and then frowned¡ªbefore Gon?al could respond, Nicau sunk his feet into the stone and closed his eyes, mana crackling over his tongue, eyes flaring blue-white. "Answer." The Blessing of the Communer flowed between them. "I lied to Lluc''s face and survived," Gon?al said, frustration twisting his face as the words, presumably, left his mouth without consent. How pitiful. I felt so terrible for him. "Great," Nicau said tiredly. "Then you can say we got separated, and you don''t know if I''m alive or not." Excuse me? That sounded an awful lot like Nicau was thinking I would let him go. Nicau, I crooned, since I hardly cared now if Gon?al felt the mana of me communicating with my Named, I want him dead. "I know," he said, very hesitantly. "But he might be worth more alive." Gon?al stiffened like he''d just become encased in stone. His death, I said, sweetly, will bring me enough worth. Nicau nodded. "Of course, o'' dungeon," he said, which was polite, but he still hadn''t reached for his godsdamn dagger and Gon?al remained infuriatingly unstabbed. "But¨C" he turned to the man, shoulders raising as if they could cover up his exhaustion. "Someone sent him to make an alliance, and I don''t think they''d do that if they wanted your core." Adorable. Trying to find motivations. My mana hissed at him. "And, well¨C" Nicau stared at Gon?al, brow furrowing. "If you made an alliance, would you cross us?" He straightened again, more Otherworld mana pouring to his tongue. "Answer." "I know you will kill me if I betray you," Gon?al said bitterly, hackles raised. "And I refuse to die before I dethrone my master''s legacy and replace it with mine." Oh. Well. I stared at him, a thousand scintillating points of awareness with sight far past mortal vision and scouring into the mana beneath. The chains and cages and charms he''d gifted me for his survival; the wolf-wisp in her crystalline prison. The boiling frustration in his outwardly-calm face. Whoever he was, he had some level of power; but not necessarily strength. Nicau''s thoughts whispered of a Silent Market, a name I''d heard echoed elsewhere, and little thieves with delusions of grandeur did not try to make alliances with dungeons. It seemed like he''d had other plans. Ones he was willing to abandon if it meant his life. Don''t misunderstand me, I wanted him dead and slain and scattered to the rocks far below, but there was something deeply enjoyable about fostering a terrible deal on his shoulders instead and watching him suffer through it. A punishment for taking my wisp that extended far past the immediate relief of just killing him. I was not a particularly patient creature, but I did savor extended satisfaction. Perhaps I would allow him to explain himself before I slaughtered him like the rat he was. "There you go," Nicau said, almost blithely, like he wasn''t signing someone''s death warrant with a secret that would damn him in every conceivable way. "You can go tell Ealdhere you made contact with the dungeon, and that we were separated and you believe me dead." He paused, pinching his nose. "Fuck, the Marquesa." The Marquesa? This was why I needed time to meet with Nicau before he went around making hare-mad plans without me. I hated missing information. Because he was a perfectly spineless fool, Nicau sensed my ire, wincing up at the ceiling. "She''s the one who organized this delve," he said, properly demure. "I think she''s trying to dethrone the Dread Pirate." Oh. Oh. Well, he could have mentioned that before. I hardly needed any help in my grand plan, and I would not allow anyone else to strike the winning blow when that belonged to my claws alone, but anyone to keep the miserable bastard who had killed me scared was someone acceptable in my mind. Gon?al''s lips tightened to a pale white streak across his face. Not fond of being out of the loop, it seemed. Well. If he was going to survive even a moment longer, he was going to have to endure that. I still wanted to kill him¡ªoh, how I wanted to shred his useless intestines and devour his soul and feed his mana into the wisp he had stolen¡ªbut I could appreciate suffering. He hadn''t earned a quick and pitiful death. And I was plenty content to know that was my idea, instead of Nicau''s half-asleep, half-empty plan. How in the hells had he managed to conduct all of this in, what, two days free of my dungeon? He was an ineloquent fool who stumbled over his own devotion more often than he succeeded in it. How had he managed to convince someone named after royalty to partner with him? His blessing only extended to language. Or at least it had, until he''d come back weaving commands into existence. ¡­was that how he had made a deal with the Marquesa, whoever she was? He was not a particularly clever character, not in terms of talk or mind, but his mana sparked easily to his tongue with or without his intention, it seemed. Perhaps he had just been talking to her like normal and then something in his words had changed to convince her to go along with his lies. That would certainly make more sense than Nicau¡ªthe pigeoncatcher¡ªsomehow traipsing around like some reborn god of mythicality. Hrm. Something to ponder over. But for now, I would allow Gon?al a few more miserable seconds to live, even if only to convince me of his worth. Make him speak, I murmured, dagger-sharp in his mind. And then you and I will talk. Nicau winced. "Of course, o'' dungeon." At least someone understood this. Chapter 144 - Unwilling Allyship Gon?al, when his life was on the line, spun a lovely little tale. Fettered descriptions of the Filla de Orgull, with biting eyes and dramatic ways of speaking¡ªshe''d promised him information on another nightmarket in the area in return for delving with a patron of hers. Despite Nicau''s mana-laced commands for answers, Gon?al didn''t have many to give; it seemed like she''d met him only once, and their deal had been a precursor to a later partnership. Exactly what she had done to Nicau. It seemed she was carving an interesting mark over Calarata. And then his deal with Ealdhere¡ªor deal, I supposed, since the Scholar hardly had anything to offer in return. Beyond the idea that I was sapient and thinking, which he seemed to be startled by; which was fascinating in its own regard. I knew I was special and high above other banal dungeon cores, who scrounged for scraps and responded with bestial intellect to threats, but surely the creatures they had seen from my creation should have proved my mind was one of thoughts. Quite the collection of assumptions and misunderstandings, woven together to form a net they had attempted to entrap me with. An alliance that Gon?al had apparently thought he could just investigate, rather than bring the proper trappings of a kingly gift to me. How mortals never ceased to amaze. I wasn''t entirely convinced he was telling the truth¡ªeven with Nicau standing off to the side, mana coating his tongue in commands¡ªbecause Gon?al was a thief and a liar and a bastard, but¡ªthe pieces lined up too well to ignore. So. I supposed for the moment I would believe him, or at least prepare for the events he spoke of. There was to be no chance I would be captured, and if I had to listen to him to achieve that, so be it. He would have his deal for his life, for a partnership that he would come back to ask for boons with actual offerings on his side, and I would spare him. For now. Gods, I still hated him. Was there anything I could do to make him suffer even more for his transgressions? He had already said he would keep his deal. The mention of a dead master, or something similar¡ªthe reason he wouldn''t betray us, because he had something more important to do before he died. In the very long list of things I hated about him, that was something to respect, at least. I had always been a creature of spite. Gon?al stared up at me, mana lurching through his channels like he was preparing himself for defense. Like he could have done anything to me, in the home of my land and the territory I wielded like claws. I glared at him. Oceans would have boiled under my stare. He may go, I hissed, mana sinking into the air. Nicau exhaled in far too relieved a manner. I flicked around a point of awareness to glare at him, too. "Okay," he said, electing to ignore me. Rude. "You can go, Gon?al. Just. Don''t tell anyone about this." Gon?al tilted into an uncomfortable bow, shoulders still bristling around his ears. "Thank you," he murmured, jaw tight, and took a step backward¡ªwhen nothing burst from the shadows to slit his throat, he took another, then another, and then not-quite sprinted back into the Drowned Forest on a race to the exit. I kept the raid-frenzy down, just a simmer, but¨C well, if a few kobolds watched his frantic retreat with gleaming eyes and claws tightening around their spears, that was merely an intimidation tactic. Gon?al was certainly running like terror-beasts were on his heels. What use was a scaled ancestry without any of the fervour and power that should have come from one? But that was another deal I''d made. Another deal with a human, with a thief, at the behest of Nicau. I''d sent him out to find information, and he''d returned with a partnership from a mysterious woman who called herself a wolf and a liar who brought his own alliance with the Scholar of the damnable Adventuring Guild. And the parrot, from last time. And the suspicion from Lluc. Why had Nicau gone and spoken to so many blasted humans? Were the kobolds not enough, not even Chieftess, who took him as a second-in-command and listened enraptured to all he had to say? Did I need to go find him more¡­ enrichment, or some other useless things? This was why I didn''t bother with humans. As if to prove my point, Nicau sagged against the wall, one arm raised wearily to brush over his face. Deep bags hung over his face, red veins lit up in his eyes, and his thoughts were a sluggish plod of ocean boulders. I supposed I had pushed him rather hard¡ªand I had other things I could take care of in the meantime. Nenaigch could allow a pitiful moment of distraction before I called upon her power once more, with my webweavers hunting around for more things to sacrifice to her. And I would hardly risk Nicau being too tired to do it properly and messing up my fourth entrance. You may rest, I said magnanimously. Then show me the path. Nicau bobbed his head, exhaustion bleeding through his eyes. "Thank you, o'' dungeon," he said, rubbing at his face. "I''ll be ready." He would be. Three days apart from me with liberal use of his abilities had left him drained for mana, just a flicker through his channels even as his return to the dungeon refilled them, and that was a dangerous thing to be. I needed him to take better care of himself if he was going to survive this. I flicked a point of mana at him like an admonishment and opened a tunnel in the side wall so he could skip the Underlake, because I was a dreadfully caring soul despite my attempts to be otherwise. He bowed at the wall and stumbled in, back down to the Hungering Reefs, to the paradise I''d crafted. Because I apparently wasn''t done caring, I sent a message to Chieftess for her to prepare a hearty meal for his arrival. She immediately perked up, warbling something near-comprehensible, and strode out of her den¡ªbefore her, in the lagoon, some half-dozen hunter kobolds were swimming through the blue waters with three-pronged spears. They''d dried out the funnel gourds I''d grown for them and strung them over their scales, using them to hold both fish and tools as they hunted; quite the efficient little beasts. Nicau had taught them well. Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. But he''d make it home, feast, sleep for a day, and then show me where my newest exit was going to be. In the meantime, I had a paltry offering of gifts to investigate. Gon?al had merely set them on the ground without much care of any kind, which was typical of mortals, but it hardly mattered. I dove through them, points of awareness spiraling up and around, mana fluttering against their edges. Chains, cages, vials¡ªenchantments I would no doubt infuriate myself when I wasn''t able to mimic the power within them¡ªand other things I dissolved just to consume, filling my core with new understanding. I already had silver and glass, but I stored each of the runic shapes to recreate later¡ªperhaps to show Akkyst, if he could figure them out. But if my bear, lovely and wonderful though he was, discovered how to make enchantments before I did, I was going to have to think about that for a long time. No matter. I ate the last of them and cleared the path, no more entrapments, nothing to potentially harm her. And then I reached out, mana sharpening into fangs, and shattered the crystalline cage. The crackle of a broken enchantment¡ªshards of crystal tumbling over the stone and into the water¡ªand the eruption of a beast freed from her prison. Hells. She was¡­ bigger than I remembered. No longer did an amorphous form flicker with the ceaseless motion of mist; instead a fully realized wolf darted through the room, head held high and tail flowing behind her. Ivory fangs dripping water snapped at the air, claws digging into currents and throwing her forward, miniature storms kicked up in her wake. Clouds poured into the room, strong enough Rhoborh''s redwood scent whispered in the back of my core as he sensed the new power in his claimed floor, the cloudskipper wisp rampaging about. My mana rebounded, reconnecting with her after so many weeks apart¡ªher soul, back to mine, my dungeonborn, my creation¨C Evolution crackled through her like an explosion. What. The message crawled over my core and I ignored it for the moment, reaching out, dipping into her mind. She was fury wrought and incarnate, teeth and adversary, clawing at the air like Gon?al was before her¡ªshe wanted to kill him, she didn''t care what it took, she was going to find him¨C Deeper, I urged, soft and soothing. Away from threats. Close to me. The light of evolution hummed and thrashed around her, raring for a target to punch her rage into, but I was her creator and she knew my voice. She howled with a whistle like rushing winds and plunged down into the Underlake she had once ruled¡ªthe other cloudskipper wisps raced away from her, sensing the boiling turmoil. She hardly paid them mind, darting over the lashing waves and kicking up into the Jungle Labyrinth, a streak of silver-blue through the darkness, and then into Khasvar''s lightning realm. I thought, for a second, that she would keep running¡ªthat the depth of deeper mana would call to her, particularly with the potential bursting in light around her, but she didn''t. She looked over the world before her, the twisting islands of rock and instability, the billowing clouds of grey-white, the endless war between baterwauls, greater pigeons, and eyeblight butterflies, the bladehawk shrieking his warcry overhead, the storm eel snaking through the shadows, the mist-foxes darting around with illusions in their wake, the goblins far below, Akkyst with his gleaming blue energy¨C The Skylands, my land of destruction. There, the cloudskipper wisp tossed back her head and howled; a whispering, rushing sound like a storm-call, and plunged forward. The other three cloudskipper wisps ducked and bobbed away from her, kicking up trails of silver in their wake; the storm eel dove through their passing as a new enemy entered the floor, a new combatant. But I saw it in their minds¡ªthey knew cloudskipper wisps. They knew them as intangible, friendly things, entirely removed from mortal concerns, flitting about in gleeful oblivion as they created fields of clouds to play in. They thought that my wolf-wisp would be like them. They were wrong. I could read her thoughts, feel her rage; she had at first settled into this canine form as a means to run faster, for legs to propel her, but now she had grown into her claws and fangs. She wanted death. She wanted to tear out Gon?al''s throat. And, well. I was rather confident the thief would outlive his worth eventually. Then she could hunt. But she couldn''t hunt as she was now, little more than steam, and so I looked down to my core and the golden letters scrawled across it.
Your creature, a Cloudskipper Wisp, is undergoing evolution! Please select your desired path. Cloudrider Sprite (Rare): Summoner once, wielder now. No longer are clouds only brought in its wake; it creates and directs them at its will. Entire field drowned in grey; entire mountains draped in silver, led by their powerful host. Stormcaller Sprite (Rare): Hardship breeds power. From the depths of captivity awakens a spirit for power, for a break from fragile clouds. Soaring through others'' creations, it howls to bring forth a storm to strike against its foes. Mistrunner Sprite (Rare): A thing of speed and distance. With fashioned legs and canine form, it carves enormous territories through its percussive presence, each step throwing out lands of mist to swallow all invaders and mark it as superior.
Well. These were all very fitting for the one who had returned to my halls for less than a heartbeat and already summoned the power to evolve. Cloudrider seemed the most direct evolution from cloudskipper, digging deep into the grey; mistrunner was likely from her canine form, granting her even greater speed and unconquerable territory. But stormcaller¨C That was her power. That was her strength. She had felt the call of deeper mana but stayed on Khasvar''s floor, where lightning crackled around every spark of mana and things darted through air; this was where she wanted to be. Akkyst had come back from his adventurer and learned intelligence; she had come back and learned fury. There was only one option that truly fit her. I selected stormcaller sprite and called her down, letting the mana suffuse her in gleaming perfection as her thoughts smoothed over. She couldn''t rest, not like my creatures of flesh and blood, but she merely¡­ separated¡ªinstead of a wolf, a glowing cloud joined the collection on the floor, crackling with lightning and power. Let it be known I would never understand elementals. But oh, I couldn''t wait to see her when she evolved. Khasvar''s awareness drifted over the Skylands, the faint whisper of someone looking down from on high. Not truly looking, though, in the manner of powerful gods; just one small facet of his enormous presence. Acknowledging the change and moving on. Not enough to annoy him. Lovely. So for now, I let the floating-glowing-cloud-that-had-once-been-a-wolf drift away, burning with potential, steading and coalescing into a new form. I had reclaimed her, brought her back from the torment that had taken her, and now the world spread before me in lovingly possibility. While Nicau slept, I would wait for Seros and then finish the Hungering Reefs and the Scorchplains, sharpen them to the destruction I knew they could be. And then, once I''d dug my tunnel and finished the Haven, it was time to begin my eighth floor. Chapter 145 - Forgotten Battles I had plans upon plans, when the stars aligned well enough to allow me them. And with Nicau slumbering away in the Hungering Reefs, roasted rat warm in his stomach and mana slipping in to replace all that he''d lost, I had the time to enact them. Not all of them, because I was crossing hope that Seros would bring me back schemas to accent my sixth floor before finishing, but I could dive down and claw out some of the myriad options I had created. An empire, built upon the pillars of destruction. Perhaps I was feeling more pissed than normal. Gon?al''s lovely little retreat gnawed at bones I didn''t know I still had. Was it the right decision? Debatable. I had my own Scholar, no matter the potential one of an Adventuring Guild had, and recruiting a thief powered by spite was not something that came without consequences. But Nicau had made a deal with someone who called herself wolf and wanted me to go along with it in terrible travesty, so along would I go. For now. Distractions first¡ªI peered back at my core, at the golden letters scrawled over the marbled surface. Three options for a lacecap''s evolution; houndspore, magmacap, and tumbleshroom. A hells of a debate, particularly so when pitted against the concept of mobility in the shadow-choked lands of the Scorchplains, but Gon?al''s reappearance had rattled me. My creatures needed ways to defend themselves, to grow strong enough to never give nightmarketers a way to steal them. Magmacaps were stationary and too similar to my already-existing lava traps; tumbleshrooms offered unseen strikes but with only bile-covered stems. I selected houndspore. All over my Scorchplains, little pockets of light bloomed, the oases I''d made as the only water source gleaming under the power of evolution. All of them were well-fed by the hundreds of bug colonies I''d layered throughout the smoke, but the evolutions weren''t necessarily made by that¡ªjust by being on my deepest floor, where mana reigned at its most dense. Few, if any creatures would stay unevolved down there, if they lived long enough to absorb it. That was the power of a dungeon. The power of me. But for now, the lacecaps disappeared under silver glow, their fungal flesh already beginning to bulge and grow as they were remade. Hopefully soon, if how fast their first evolution had taken. All around, the bounding deer charged, scorch hounds sniffing at the air as the mana changed. The floor wasn''t done yet but was approaching it; a few more evolutions, a few more schemas, something to sharpen it to a dagger''s edge. Either the scorch hounds or the magma salamanders, whichever came to power first, would be the hidden threat here, as soon as they pulled up the mana necessary to become one. I was quite content each way, either a leader for the pack of vicious canines or a molten beast of fire to consume invaders whole, but I wanted a roaming threat with size instead of numbers. Something with teeth to fit the smoke. Later. Always later. I rarely finished floors before building the ones underneath, and my mind was consumed with half a dozen ideas for my eighth floor, all wildly incongruous and interchanging. As soon as Seros came back, I would start on that, content in all the mysteries I had to be prepared for. Finishing the Hungering Reefs, too, preparing to grant it to another deity who wanted to offer power. The Hungering Reefs. A point of awareness flicked up, looking over the sprawling floor¡ªthe paradise of desolation and all the dangers that came with it. The misery still untested but deeply powerful. My proudest creation, in a way. Oh, I had a wonderfully petty idea. Back up to the Hungering Reef I went, to the third room¡ªsecond largest and deepest, formed of spiraling towers choked in capturing coral. Oddly enough, it was the least colourful of all my rooms, despite the coral''s propensity for nabbing up any souls or hues that traveled near them. Unlike the schools of prismatic dartfish in the lagoon or twisting silver kraits, this room was colder, more empty. Just looming shadows of roughwater sharks and emerald-carapaced greater crabs. Perhaps that had something to do with the enormous sea serpent prowling through the depths. He''d grown well past his fledgling days into a proper beast, one not yet in his prime but wonderfully close. Gone were the pristine silver frills and unsullied fangs¡ªnow he was a tested thing, with scars and discolorations to prove his experience. Oh, eventually he would shed them, grow large enough that he didn''t need battlescars to display, but for now, he wore his prizes like laurels. All victories, strung like jewels over his scales. Though not quite all victories. For all I prevented him and Seros from killing each other, that didn''t mean his larger size led to him winning. Seros'' hydrokinesis meant he clawed wins more often than the brute strength of the sea serpent. Dragons were superior. That was just how the world worked. But here, deep in the sixth floor, the threats he faced were minimal. Ghasavalk had made it to the Skylands before tucking tail and running, and that was as fucking far as I wanted anyone to get¡ªso the sea serpent had to content himself on sharks and mock spars. Unless I got him something to lord over. Yes, I was still pissed at Gon?al, and Calarata overall. This was my way to express it. I dove deep into my core, plucking through all the schemas I''d gathered¡ªeasy, to pull up wood and metal, and start to shape them. More work than inorganic stone and without a stable design to build off, but I had destroyed dozens in my previous life and I still remembered the Dread Pirate each time I looked away from my dungeon, standing on the prow, ink-black lance in hand. The bastard. The murderer. So, in my Hungering Reefs, I constructed a shipwreck. Petty as all hells. I loved it. I set it up in the middle of the room, impaled around one coral-tower and sprawling like it had been sunk for centuries. The knowledge from my core, useless things that I was granted through mana, told me I was making a galley¡ªa pirate''s vessel for the high seas, the kind that had slain me, the kind that if I had but a moment more time I would have crushed to the bottom of the cove long ago. High decks, sprawling sails, rich lacquered wood¡ªall sunk and broken. Like it deserved. If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. Calarata was a land of pirates. This was my intention towards their master. The sea serpent dove from his lazy patrol down to inspect what I was doing, deep amber-gold eyes curious as he coiled around a nearby pillar to watch. Wood wove itself into existence, swelling and bursting with water, tossed like an avalanche''s stone over the floor as I delighted myself in punching enormous hulls through a non-existent hull and snapping fences like bones. He rumbled something, deep and ocean-hungry. I pushed soothing thoughts through him, regaling him with fantasies of slumbering in the ruins, a den carved from victory, false though it was. I hadn''t much talked with sea serpents in my previous life, considering we were more fond of ripping each other to shreds, but with their twisting bodies they didn''t need as large of open space as sea-drakes for rest. I had seen plenty of their dens being in shipwrecks, a taunt to any who dared invade their territories. To sleep on those they conquered. With a hiss, he swam closer, slipping through a shattered chasm through the main deck and into the maze below. I followed him, widening gaps and filling in loose segments with more pieces of wood and loose metal bolts, all to sell the image like a real shipwreck. My memory was unfortunately slightly more focused on my death, so I couldn''t put any markings to indicate this was the Dread Pirate''s ship, but I would know it was in my heart. Core. The sea serpent seemed to appreciate it. His eyes gleamed. And then, as I twisted some bloodline kelp around the mast like a throat of jewels, something thrummed in the floor below. Golden runes, scrawled over black-red. Words. Evolutions. One part of my consciousness flicked down, preparing to shuffle more kobolds down to the sixth floor or elevate silverheads, when the location made me pause¡ªthe trail of mana went up and up and up, all the way to the Fungal Gardens, to the pit of stone I''d constructed in the far back. The one filled with bugs. The one glowing. Oh. Oh! Hells, it really was a day of new changes. Was my entire dungeon celebrating with the wolf-wisp''s return? I couldn''t see any other reason for so many evolutions; unless, ah. It had been some time since I''d last checked on the boiling pot of insects I''d left there, all fighting over scraps and feasting on corpses. Maybe they had eaten the mana long ago, me forgetting to replace it, and this was merely the result of their continued struggle against each other. Terribly sorry. I wove half a point into a coalesced drop, humming with potential over the algae. Let the rest of the monsters make their way up for easier victory. But these were battle-hardened, mana won from corpses alone, and I dove into them with a vigour¡ªonly two survivors, facing each other across a stone gladiator''s ring, hemolymph and chitin scattered in their wake. One was tall and ridged, covered in six protruding legs and a jagged end. Its chitin was oddly cracked and rasping, like this was an aquatic creature lugging itself out of the depths for combat, which was always something I would appreciate. And the other was¨C The other was¨C Familiar. What? Some inches long, earthen-brown, with a segmented body and wide, grasping pinchers. It wasn''t Underranked, like so many of my other creatures, but instead one tier above¡ªa groundbreaker ant, like the colonies I had down in the Jungle Labyrinth and Skylands. One of the soldier variants, built for defending the nest. But here, so far from any others, fighting on my highest floor. Abandoned? A runt? Or had I just evolved it without looking closer, taking the option selected without guiding it down to others of its kind? They were bugs, yes, but I was their master. I should have taken better care of them. My mana pushed into their insectoid minds, soothing mercy and pulling them apart before they could gut each other, enough death already spread in their wake and potential needed instead. With these evolutions, I would give them a proper path forward. The unfamiliar one first.
Your creature, a Dragonfly, is undergoing evolution! Please select your desired path. Edgewing Dragonfly (Common): Uncanny mobility and a hunger for prey creates danger. Its wings serve as blades as it flies through crowded canopies, drinking the blood of all those it cuts open in its wake.
A what fly? Excuse me? I had consumed this schema long ago and I dug through it now, ripping through the meat of what dared to call itself a dragon. My assumption had been correct that it was aquatic, this being the larval stage called a nymph, though with my mana flowing through the air it had managed to pull itself out and do combat with others for victory. Soon it would pupate, growing wings and a long, curling tail, with a mind that even now I could tell was sharp. But not sharp enough. Why was it a dragonfly? It didn''t even have scales. I glared at it. The groundbreaker ant next, smaller than what I remembered soldiers being, but perhaps that was because it had never made its way down to a colony, for something to protect. Just by itself, alone in the Fungal Gardens, stronger than others only in numbers it didn''t have. Its mind shivered as I poked inside.
Your creature, a Groundbreaker Ant, is undergoing evolution! Please select your desired path. Farborne Ant (Common): A traveler of lands and valleys, it ventures into the wild on endless marches to find better territories for its colony. It can walk for weeks without rest and minimal food, guided by an innate understanding of direction that ensures it will never be lost. Stoneshaper Termite (Uncommon): Strong of gullet, it builds from the earth around it into a palace. All its nutrients come from stone and are returned to it, creating elaborate tunnels and archways to house its ever-growing population. Cleaver Ant (Common): Born from soldier ants separated from their colony, it lives a solitary and hungry life. Its namesake jaws cull all prey in its path as it devours more and more, searching for the power it needs to return to its queen.
Well. That last option was as clear of a damnation as I had ever heard. I had likely evolved this poor ant without ever looking closer, leaving it to try endlessly to fight its way down to a queen it didn''t know the location of. Shit. I did the mana''s equivalent of wincing. Gods, how long had it been since I last truly checked it on here? The mana, empty, no prize for winning¡ªno evolutions handled with care. How much faster could they have evolved if I had just given them the mana needed? Terribly sorry. Even beings as great as me could make mistakes. I dropped half a dozen points of awareness in the ring so I would know immediately when it ran dry again. But the option was clear, at least. While the first was interesting and the second blended well with Nenaigch''s ever-changing tunnels, only the third matched what it was. I selected cleaver ant and edgewing dragonfly, letting both bugs fade away beneath the shimmering glow of evolution. I had gotten my wolf-wisp back, and rejoiced in her. I would not neglect my other creatures. Then¨C Movement, far below. A mind, slotting back into mine, twisting through the Otherworld mana to spike into my awareness. The rasp of iridescent scales and thrum of deep power. Seros. And he wasn''t alone. Chapter 146 - Iron-Teeth Seros swam into the Underlake. I swarmed him like a living collection of bees, points of awareness spilling over iridescent scales and the silver twist of his frills¡ªhe churred, low and excited, bubbles spilling through his fangs. Mayalle''s whirlpool tugged him through, tail lashing as he called upon the water to guide him home¡ªand with an elegance I hadn''t actually seen from him before. He called the water and oh, still with the gravitas of a dragon, with the sea-drake budding in his bones, but now with an understanding. Not yet refined, still fumbling, but he spoke instead of shouted, and something reflected back. Made easier by the passenger he was carrying. My mana sharpened to claws. Seros'' tail flicked as he pushed into my dungeon proper, his claws spread wide and something thrumming in his mind. Still excited to see me, thoughts rampaging about with all he wanted to show me, but he could sense my wariness. The fangs I was greeting the mind alongside his with. And, to my remarkable dismay, the mind spoke back. Hello, dragon-core. I coiled up like a threatened serpent. Trespasser. The voice was a deep and powerful thing, one that echoed with the faintest memory of the Song in the recesses that my caged core couldn''t fully comprehend. Old, in a way teeth were, and with a flavour of¡ªnot deference, because it was too powerful for that, but some kind of respect. This was a god. Hells above hells, Seros had brought back a god. He didn''t think in words or sentences, but he did push a feeling of quiet acceptance to me¡ªwhoever this god was, it had helped him. I caught a flash of tangled kelp chains, of stone cages, of merrow with deep teal skin¡ªbefore I heard, faintly, the reflection of the Song. Something in the corners of his mind. Brief elation that he had perhaps come closer to be a sea-drake, before the moderately more concerning element returned to me. My mana reached out, drifting into the quiet murmurs of his mind and the deity tucked in the corners. Why are you here? Now that there had been a connection, I felt the deity unravel, stretching out into an impression of cold shadows and jagged fangs. Black eyes, tucked beneath the star-burn. I am Abarossa, it said, soft and sibilant. Thirteenth of the Thirteen, defender of Arroyo. I am here to parlay. Ah. Hm. Of all the many things in the world, I wouldn''t deny that this wasn''t exactly what I was expecting. If it was here to parlay, what did it¡ªshe¡ªhave that I wanted? Or what did she want from me? A faint lingering breath of frustration¡ªnot quite hated, softened by divinity, but certainly disconcertment. You took my voice. Hm. There was a schema, floating back in the marbled red-black of my core¡ªof a staff, long and twisting, with a diamond on the top. I''d been particularly delighted to devour that, considering the sheer arcane potential woven throughout diamonds and all the mana they could hold. And they were remarkably auspicious. The perfect thing to build my glittering hoard. So I had, with minimal regret or even thoughts, dissolved it down to mana and ate it. Then, of course, a handful of merrow had gotten pissy about that and fought me, and died, repeatedly, and generally spent the last moments of their pitiful lives supplying me with mana. I plucked knowledge of their thirteen gods and all the madness of their cove city from their souls as I devoured them, and essentially considered that was that. So perhaps, if you were being generous about this all, I had taken her voice from the merrow, and from Arroyo. Her fault, for having them try to steal my core. Seros landed at the bottom of the Underlake, sand billowing up around his claws. He was in an odd predicament, and he didn''t seem all that pleased about it¡ªthe voice, latching onto his mind like she belonged there, and him as the hapless carrier. Parlay, I thought, loud and stained through with curiosity. What do you bring? Abarossa''s mana coiled around mine, the sinuous strength of a predator. Through me, recreate my staff, she hummed. Give my merrow back my voice. Would that mean they attacked me more, or less? And in return, I will bestow a boon upon your sixth floor. Huh. My mana settled back like hungering cats, ears pricked. That was certainly an offer, and one that had a surprising amount of thought put into it¡ªand also none at all. What kind of boon should she offer that was so incredible that it was worth giving power back into the hands of the merrow? A fraction of them, supposedly, but I had little doubt that having all thirteen gods back at Arroyo would make them stronger. A goddess didn''t particularly have to worry about whether I was thinking directly to her¡ªshe heard my thoughts regardless. I will keep them from you, she murmured. And¨C hesitation, for a moment, before she pushed through. They are not strong. The thing has harmed them too much to come after you. I flared out my awareness, core thrumming with energy. The thing? Entirely undescriptive, and without giving me anything to go off. The concept of something so strong it harmed merrow wasn''t particularly hard to imagine¡ªhells, I was plenty strong by myself¡ªbut there was a wary hatred in Abarossa''s voice. She didn''t try to respond with words. There wasn''t a need. Instead, she set her fangs into my core, and poured vitriol through the gaps. Stars¡ªgleaming, white-silver-grey stars, endless in hue and density, swarming overhead¡ªone went out. A second. A third, flickering in and out, ate in one and excess mana pushed out the second. Eaten. Eaten. Black skin¨C black eyes¨C ivory fangs¨C My mana swarmed around me, stinging and snapping at the air¡ªand deep within my core, something¨C twitched. Moved. Raised its twin-mawed head, before the drowning serenity of my core pulled it back under. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. The pitch-shark. Well, if I had wanted any more indication the one that had attacked me had been but an infant, the idea of an entire merrow city being broken down to the foundations was plenty. They will not harm you, Abarossa said, and her voice was softer now, weakened, the visions she had given me enough to clip the wings of her ability. Why was she so weakly tethered to Aiqith? Not when I can speak to them. They are focused on their own regrowth. For some surprising reason, I wasn''t particularly interested in the merrow growing more powerful¡ªbut Abarossa was a goddess, and they did have multitudes of laws about lying. So. With her staff remade, maybe she really would keep them from attacking me, or at least distract them away. It wasn''t as if I wasn''t powerful enough to slay them if they thought to take my core, as I''d proven in the past¡ªstill they''d never made it past the Jungle Labyrinth. And she had said parlay. Maybe this was an attempt by myself to distract from the pitch-shark, from the schema that snapped and hungered in my core in a way it was not supposed to, but I would take it for the moment. Perhaps later I would capture some elder merrow and interrogate them about how their city had been destroyed. Even from the bare flecks of Seros'' mind I wasn''t taking the time to dive fully in while we had an audience, I could see the shattered stone and ghosts left behind. You wish to become patron of my floor, I said, cautiously. There was a potential in the offer stretching both ways I wasn''t much a fan of. Abarossa''s presence stretched out like a shark''s shadow. Yes. The Hungering Reefs were, admittedly, rather perfect¡ªI didn''t know exactly what she was the goddess of, but it was drenched in the sea and the jagged points of fangs. Something hungry, powerful. Fitting, then, that it had been her priestess so hungry she had been the one to try and claim my core. But the floor wasn''t done yet. Oh, it was getting closer, considering I was still enjoying myself thoroughly touching up the broken shipwreck and giving the sea serpent a home he could be truly proud of, but it wasn''t done. Only the third room had anything truly large and dangerous, and the second, while crowded, only had roughwater sharks as true terrifying predators. The silver kraits, yes, and the vampiric dryad whenever she floundered through the water to drag out prey by its shorthairs, but not yet complete. I had larger dreams for it, for the paradise that was most similar to what I knew and remembered of my past life. I''d wanted Seros to bring me back schemas, but instead he''d brought me a goddess. But maybe he could bring both. Was this a good idea? Most assuredly not. But I had invited Nuvja into my hall, and from her earned a promise for future deals. And I had spoken to Nenaigch, wrapped her power through my walls until the Haven was made for her, until my newest entrance would be opened as soon as Nicau had pulled his head out his ass and guided me. Abarossa had come to me. In all worlds, that meant she wanted this deal¡ªthat it was her bringing it to me, hitching a ride in Seros'' mana like she belonged there, like she needed it. That gave me power, in a way. That gave me the ability to request. My floor is not yet complete, I said. Unless you would offer to provide creatures to complete it. Abarossa was a goddess, one of the many-fanged stars high above. There was no face I could ascribe her to, no mortal trappings I could imagine an expression on¡ªbut I still got the sense that she was, ah, hm, displeased. Her teeth wrapped around me, closed and cold. Creatures. Not necessarily with her bopping around like a goddess off to fetch corpses, but she knew the Song, and with her staff she could command her merrow to bring me whatever I wanted. Not forever, since that was too dangerous an ask for even me, but certainly some brilliance. Yes. A pause. And allowing me to complete the floor after you become its patron. Because I wouldn''t be stomaching that wrath gods wielded whenever I made changes to their precious floor. Abarossa stared at me, wrapped in liquid fangs. Still the prickling ire. But I could make her staff, and she wanted it. And if she wasn''t planning on claiming my core for her merrow, then me growing stronger wasn''t a problem¡ªwas only a boon, truly, since she was the only goddess of Arroyo that would have any connection to me. Very well. Entirely intangible I was, but my mana quivered with glee. No time for hesitation¡ªI reached out to Seros and pulled him along, unsheathing his claws from the sand as he kicked off to swim down. Through the Underlake, plodding over the Jungle Labyrinth, walking on the creaking isles of the Skylands. Then, plunging into the Hungering Reefs, and all the death that awaited there. The sea serpent, coiling on his broken shipwreck, the kobolds in their lagoon, the reefback growing a palace on her shell. All glorious elements of mine. Not done. Not yet. But a goddess offered to provide, and I would allow her. So I gathered my mana, great coiling wreaths of it, spinning around the floor like all stars made, and sunk it into the stone¡ªinto the pure white beaches, the towers of capturing coral, the crystalline water with quartz-lights overhead. The Hungering Reefs, palace and paradise, land of predators. Boom.
Congratulations! Your floor has attracted the attention of the gods. Some wish to become Patron of the Hungering Reefs. Please choose from the boons they present.
My core shuffled and split¡ªmy consciousness, bobbing out like an untested hatchling, drifting up to the star-filled sky far above. The world beneath me, precious Aiqith, tossed aside in favour of this nameless land where power flowed like a current. Where stars hovered, thrumming with ancient energy, staring down at me with mana-filled eyes. ¡­very few of them, this time. It seems they knew when a floor wasn''t completed, and weren''t willing to settle for what I was offering. Pricks. But they were here, and they were calling me, and up I went to see what lavish spread of mana they held in their grasp. Perhaps a dozen, or more, lingering blue-red-purple-green-violet-maroon-cerulean, star-burn deep in the midnight sky. I reached up to them, at the power they proffered. What would she do if I picked a different deity? Slipped my sixth floor into the hands of someone else who offered me power, like the goddess of fireflies, who was still floating high overhead even on a floor that even my own mana didn''t think was complete. A few smaller ones were still here, willing for anything I would offer, and I sensed her watching me, the coiled hunger that threatened to cut out my core if I didn''t fulfill our deal. Very well. I picked and wove my way through the other deities, lingering for but a moment to feel their offer as to not be insulting before going higher. Abarossa swam overhead, the gleaming light of her star sinking into my core, into my power. All that she was, all that she offered me. Abarossa, the goddess of sharks. Well, that was fitting. Star-burn was she, but teeth alongside, cold and ink-drawn. The shadows moving overhead, the black hunger of eyes. Worlds above my roughwater sharks, something bigger, something older. And what she offered me was the power of the hunt. My Hungering Reefs were here for destruction, for desolation¡ªbut they were in essence, the ocean. An unforgiving land, where death was consequence. But I wanted my creatures to grow stronger, and to do that, they rather needed to avoid death. So Abarossa would take my creatures, and make them sharks. All those in the Hungering Reefs would feel no draw of hunger, no claws of tiredness, no world in which they would rather rest than continue their hunt. Their dens would go empty; their teeth, sharpened. Ever would they circle, hunting either for more prey or to avoid predators. Invaders? They wouldn''t receive the same honour. There would never be a moment of rest, of peace, as they were surrounded by monsters who never slept, never waited, not when there was something to hunt. It wasn''t exactly what I wanted for my floor. I had pictured something to do with the coral, with the lagoon, with the sea serpent''s cove. Abarossa was powerful, but in relation to sharks; she couldn''t offer me power that wasn''t hers. What she had was the best she could do, although better than merely giving me sharks. My paradise would become more of a danger. Would become dangerous, never-ending, constantly changing and moving. Would give me teeth to keep up the kobolds and menaces within. And, I said, you will bring me creatures. Abarossa''s mana wrapped around me. Cold, iron-teeth. I will. The deal was made. Chapter 147 - March Set A sarco crocodile snapped lazily at the air as I pondered Seros'' story. With him back, swimming through the Hungering Reefs as exhaustion melted away under Abarossa''s thrall, he had fully opened his mind to me, and I had welcomed it¡ªlet all of his memories and emotions flow through me. The ruined crater of Arroyo, the city-that-had-once-been, the destruction razed through its stone beyond the bloodline kelp at its center. A pitch-shark, wrought and terrible, leveling destruction as easily as bleeding. And unlike the battle I had won, there hadn''t been a corpse at the bottom, hadn''t been proof it had been stopped¡ªwhich implied that it won. I would not feel sympathy for the merrow, not after the entrance they''d blasted through my Underlake and the death they''d poured into my halls like tar, but I could, perhaps, understand Abarossa''s desperation to give her voice back to them. Maybe I could even understand why the Thirteenth Priestess had decided to risk it all to claim my core. But. Back to the sarco. Because there were two of them, fat and newly-born, sprawled over a patch of quartz-light-warmed stone with their tails dangling in the water. Three thousand feet wide in a circular room, a creeping river down to a sprawling pool, toothless plants and prey scattered about. The Haven, my birthplace of creatures to fill my halls, and gift of Nenaigch from our brokered deal. Complete with useless webweavers scuttling over a ramshackle temple in the far back. Lovely. But now, with all my Named back, I felt comfortable shoving mana into starting to populate it¡ªapart from the destruction, there was little else to do here but populate, and I had built enough extravagant dens and clutch-holds that I had hopes there would be nothing else on their mind. It wasn''t as if I had too many creatures that needed to be in here, anyway¡ªthings like the silvertooths and armourback sturgeons evolved plenty up from regular silverheads, and others were a touch too violent to be allowed in the peace. No, the Haven was for my predators, the large and indomitable. Three thousand feet wide felt like an enormity until you saw how much room each creature took up, and then it was understood that I couldn''t go wasting it on things like magma salamanders or jeweltone serpents. In theory, I could make the Haven larger¡ªand I likely would be, once I felt comfortable enough¡ªbut I didn''t want to push Nenaigch''s acceptance. Keeping it for my monsters felt the most appropriate. Thus¡ªthe breeding pair of sarco crocodiles. Already my Underlake was feeling the dearth of their presence, despite the new one I''d woven into existence to fill the gap. I wanted more, I wanted power; and for a reborn fossil that had to be an evolution, my mana couldn''t keep up. My knowledge of crocodiles was rather limited, due to their complete lack of even a lingering draconic presence, but I knew they laid eggs in clutches, and if they were even a fraction as diligent as the midnight cave bear as a parent, at least some would survive to rule the Underlake once more. If the armoured jawfish didn''t kill them when they were too young to defeat him. It was, at times, difficult to grow attached to anyone within my dungeon. Twin sarcos, a den in the back blossoming into a pair of lunar cave bears that immediately started pawing for whitecap mushrooms at their paws, and a smattering of lichenridge turtles in the pool, since the ones doing passable impressions of stepping stones in the Drowned Forest never really got around to mating. That was all for now, beyond the prey scurrying underfoot. I would love to have more¡ªlove to have more predators. Particularly those I couldn''t have, no schema tucked away in my core despite how much I yearned for it. Buried deep in the Jungle Labyrinth, padding her way through blacklit tunnels with a peacock-feathered tail swishing behind her, the stalking jaguar hunted greater prey that her own lithe bulk to feast on their heart and drag the meat down to Akkyst. And above the starwrought bear, the blade-hawk spread his wings to toss rust-red feathers down at yipping mist-foxes, his shriek echoing through the stone. Dangerous, wonderful, and dungeonborn, with my new title¡ªbut not mine, not in knowledge or understanding. Hells, I didn''t even know if stalking jaguar and blade-hawk were their actual names, just what they called themselves. The damnable difficulty of not having a schema. Goblins marching about and a parrot with gold-edged wings similarly eluded me, and there was no way to get their schema nor increase their population. ¡­none of them happened to be pregnant, did they? Was the blade-hawk hiding a clutch of eggs somewhere? Damn. For a moment, the urge to take schemas from their corpses came to me. But eons ago, when only scuttling bugs met my awareness and mushrooms came to my mana, I hadn''t killed Seros, when every dungeon instinct screamed at me to do so. I hadn''t killed him because I didn''t know if I would have had the mana to recreate his schema, and who knew if more monsters were coming, and already he had proven himself capable of listening to instructions, and I wanted more, and¨C And I would have been alone. Dragon-friend, I had Named him. Was I friends with the stalking jaguar and blade-hawk? Certainly not. Both were lacking the necessary scales, though the jaguar''s blue-green feathered tail was at least the right colours. But to Akkyst they were friends, and I did not have slaves, not my Named. They were as close as I could have to companions. So I would not kill his friends. Those that had followed him through mountain and misery to come to my dungeon. Even if I wanted to. Instead, my Haven held its current inhabitants, and it would remain at its capacity until I either earned another schema expensive enough to be worth placing here, or I finally found something a touch more serviceable as godly priests. For some wild, incongruous reason, murderous sycophants wasn''t enough, even though the webweavers had tried their damnedest to supplement worship with sacrifices. I had, apparently, taken up a profession in juggling godly requests. Nenaigch, watching over the webweavers with something burgeoning on disapproval; Nuvja, her open-ended contract still perched in my core; Abarossa, waiting for her staff. All of this was terrible. The worst. There was a reason I had been particularly fond of sleeping away the decades as a sea-drake instead of having to be so busy. Well. Nenaigch was already looking in, watching me elevate her Haven to the sunlit clearing in the center of a thorned forest, so I might as well push my luck with her a little farther. My points of awareness shivered, stretching out, and floated down to the den at the far back of the Hungering Reef. The den where, until a few hours hence, a human had been sleeping peacefully. Abarossa''s mana snaked through the air like a living thing, like the shark she was, and slowly the den was emptying out¡ªnot completely, because it was still a place of storage and cooking, but certainly less. Those healing under a shaman''s magic curled in enormous piles of scales and sleepy hisses, others braced over fire with their claws extended, and in the back, Nicau blinked at a ceiling with a drawn bewilderment in his thoughts. He was tired. He knew he should be tired. He wasn''t tired. He was, in fact, feeling quite capable of venturing out into the world again. His thoughts cycled through this on repeat. Gods, it must be exhausting to be a human. Still not full of mana, because it had been three days out of my halls, but he was awake and alert and very confused about it. So when I slipped into his mind, mana coiling around his thoughts, Nicau sat upright, ducking his head into a shallow bow. "O'' dungeon." Obedience, my favourite of his limited beneficial characteristics. Well awake? I asked, pushing a half point of mana into his veins. He stood up from his moss-bed, patting at his thighs and pushing back his tangled locks of hair. "Yes," he said, blinking. "Very much so. Um. Thank you?" Well, I''d certainly take the credit for it. My mana hummed. The path. Three days, and he''d returned without any schemas, but with a thief and the wolf-wisp he''d stolen. Not an admissible trade, not something I would welcome constantly, but a suitable prize for the rage. Now I just needed him to fulfill the other part of his conquest. Nicau nodded, peering out of the den. His Otherworld mana swarmed and barked against mine, waking up, Abarossa''s power soothing through him like the coil of a serpent. Even the bags under his eyes¡ªsuch an odd weakness, why did they have that?¡ªwere fading back to umber skin. "Of course, o'' dungeon," he said, then paused. "How?" Excuse me? Nicau winced. I swiveled my points of awareness further in. "I did find a spot," he hastened to add, because my mind was curling around his with teeth out. Good for him. "It''s called the Overlook," he said, like I would become magically aware of the meaning. "Above Calarata?" Above? I was perhaps overstating Nicau''s intelligence, but I did hope he had noticed I was a dungeon. We were, rather by definition, underground. He closed his eyes and reached out¡ªhis mana, fumbling against mine, through the connection that tugged at his soul like a tether. Thoughts poured through, bright and brisk, darting about¡ªCalarata, tack-white in the settling dusk, far below. A pale memory of a place, this Overlook, made of stone that held the echo of hammers and chisels with grass threading through the cracks. Nicau''s lack of sleep stained all of the images with exhaustion, blurring the Marquesa de Wolf''s face into blurry angles and only the sound of the old-bark-birch-leaf creature behind her, but the location was clear enough. Buried in the Al¨®mbra Mountains, high above the city but not directly, and with enough ghosts haunting its rockface that it wasn''t likely to be drowned in adventurers who had the wherewithal to stick their noses into my entrance. Acceptable. I supposed. And if anyone suspected me of having another way in, they would likely presume as I had that it would be low and grounded, closer to the dungeon. It would be a point of weakness, to have to snake a tunnel through so much unknown stone before reaching my entrance, but much like my first true kill what felt like a century ago, the tunnel would also be long enough that I would be able to manipulate the end even if an invader made it into the entrance. Then I could simply collapse the rock and bolster my defenses to keep it from getting in. Not perfect, but up to my standards. The advantages were too much to pass up. All that was left was to get to it. And to do that, I would simply be digging. Nenaigch had proven herself capable of moving tunnels, and presumably I could beg and plead her to smooth over my twisting mess of a path once I popped out in the right area. Trial and error¡ªparticularly with my own perfection¡ªwas worth it over sending Nicau out blindly and hoping I could still reach his mind when he was so far away. You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version. I dove into his thoughts again, embedding all his memories into mine. Though it was dark, I was magic incarnate, and I sharpened the images until I could see the faint glimmer of the pebbled beach, the Adventuring Guild, the spidering path that led to my dungeon. There. A rough idea of where and how far, and plenty of precaution to lead my way there. Eating through stone had become rather an expertise for me, and with Nicau to serve as a guiding force, I could do that with one fraction of my consciousness while I busied myself with more important tasks. Burrowing through mountains, particularly for nothing more than a ten-foot tunnel without plants or creatures or water sources to create or maintain, would be simple. Perhaps I''d even stumble on my fossils on the way. You will walk, I said, plucking at his mana to guide him. I will dig. Together, we find the path. Relief, sparking over his thoughts that he didn''t have to emerge from the dungeon seemingly alive after barely avoiding Lluc''s attention last time, and then confusion. "Right," he said, hesitantly. "Just¡­ walk?" And dig, I added helpfully. Nicau stared at his hands like he was reconsidering most of his existence. "Of course." He''d figure it out. He always did. Perhaps the long walk through the mountains would be good for him. Being that this was Nenaigch''s gift, I couldn''t have it emerge from any other floor but the Jungle Labyrinth¡ªno matter how much I wished to put it lower¡ªbut she wasn''t the only one who could dig tunnels. The fourth floor would have my fourth entrance, and then I would weave a spider''s web to connect to that. Confusing, inefficient, but purposeful. Soon, all of my creatures, most particularly my Named, could leave my dungeon without detection to handle all the myriad tasks I required. We''d need luck and time to finish this tunnel, but I would take that over the chance of discovery and destruction. Some wasted days over Nicau brought before the Dread Pirate in chains was moderately more acceptable. Luck. Well. I''d take all the advantages I could get. Take the rat with you. Nicau blinked. "What?" The rat. I pushed a vague impulse of shadowthief rats, their black eyes and clever paws, and particularly one I poured a suitable amount of rage over from her taking my moonstar flower. For luck. Take her. Nicau closed his eyes. Reopened them. Seemingly resigned himself. "Of course." He didn''t have to sound so enthusiastic. I darted up a floor, swimming through the monotonous paths of death in the Jungle Labyrinth. Every one was identical, coated in thornwhip algae and faint glowing spores, and I chose a random spot opposite the Haven''s entrance to press an imprint of mana into the stone. Nenaigch hummed around it, the weaving embrace of her mana wrapping through the grey, before her presence melded and shifted back¡ªshe would allow me to begin digging. Lovely. With that distraction handily wrapped up, Nicau morosely plodding through the kobold''s den in search of his rat companion, I dipped past the Skylands, where the wolf-wisp''s glowing cloud was crackling with lightning as her evolution came to a head, and back down into the Hungering Reefs. Seros swam through its depths, a roughwater shark fleeing from his braced claws, the reefback turtle paddling through the crystalline waters, Chieftess barking commands over a hunting squad. Abarossa, woven throughout, struck her awareness against mine like the chime of a bell. There was a prickle of annoyance from her cold-iron teeth, from the black eyes watching me like a shadow through dappled waters far above. She had rather expected me to take her boon and immediately get around to making her staff. Well, bully for her. I had other matters to attend to, such as Nenaigch''s growing irritation and the uncomfortable idea that I had limited time to scrape my side of the deal from her before our relationship would sour. Abarossa was fresh off an alliance and just a touch more open. I pushed vague ideations of apology, images coalescing in my core¡ªher staff could I make, form with her guiding hand like all powers reborn, but there wasn''t much I could then do with it. In order to leave my dungeon and not become a permanent fixture of my hoard, I needed someone to take it out, and Seros was exhausted from his trip outside. A bit of time hunting in the Hungering Reefs, filling his stomach and letting Abarossa''s new boon soothe the tiredness from his bones, would put him back in the shape necessary to push the staff outside of my dungeon. And if I happened to do other things while I waited for him to recover? Well. I was a busy dungeon. I wouldn''t apologize for efficiency. Her star-burn scraped at the edges of my awareness like teeth. Now. I bobbed polite acceptance and gathered my mana¡ªonly mostly cut in half by creating the sarcos and lunar cave bears, it was probably fine¡ªand pushed it into the first room of the Hungering Reefs, far from the kobolds who could perhaps be stupid enough to grab it before Seros could transport it out. The old schema fluttered to the front of my awareness, sinking into the air like a mold to pour iron into¡ªand piece by piece, it came into existence, the twist of water-sealed stone and diamond overtop. I hesitated for a moment but she pushed me, and I created the runes as well, carving lines too intricate for a merrow''s claws, looping around the narrow width like a dance. His hunt complete, half a fin disappearing between his fangs, Seros poked his head out of the water. His lantern-esque eyes gleamed as he watched me, his mana reaching out to entangle through Abarossa''s. He knew the mission, knew the potential. Faster and faster I worked, star-burn bright behind me, creating something that had tried to kill me into brilliance once again. The runes, the diamond, the pattern tucked under the surface¡ªeverything that had been. But, as I finished it, my mana drained to under a quarter, it hung in the air and did nothing. None of the Priestess'' power, none of the glory she had hammered into my mountain home. Just a staff, as powerful as anything Nicau plucked from a tree and used to bash in a stone-backed frog''s head. More detailed, yes, and the diamond was large, but that was it. Until Abarossa reached out, jagged shark fangs sinking into the stone, and then I was a conduit for her mana¡ªfor her power, her presence, crashing through me like a tsunami. Thirteenth of the Thirteen am I, she murmured, soft as sands beneath currents. Seer of shadows and maker of death; the hunger and the hunter. Teeth and trial are mine¡ªthe Song is sung¡ªmy voice will be heard! There was a crash like thunder¡ªthe boom of violence torn into glimmering stars¡ªfangs digging into the marrow of Aiqith itself¡ªand¨C The staff, previously dormant, crackled to life. Each rune lit up in silver-black, a lightless glow that burned regardless, no brighter than their surroundings but thrumming with illumination. A paradox woven underneath the diamond, flashing with silver, runes scrawling up its side in a current''s dance. My mana lashed out in echo, fleeing from the presence that reared its head like a tyrant, Abarossa''s voice roaring through the Hungering Reefs. I am Abarossa, she howled, exultant freedom. And I am here! All over my floor, her power crashed and rose to a fever pitch, my creatures shuddering beneath it¡ªtheir hunger drowned, their fear forgotten, only the hunt in their mind. Not the raid-frenzy, not the destruction, just the predator and the prey. Just the hunt. Well. Ah. I really hoped Abarossa wasn''t lying about keeping the merrow from attacking me, because I did not need that power helping them claim my core. Thank you, she said, and it wasn''t a whisper; now she spoke freely and openly, similar to one of my Named, her grasp on Aiqith no longer weakened. Send it to Arroyo. In most other situations, I wouldn''t accept a command like that, but with the aftereffects of Abarossa''s power still lurching through my floors, I was feeling a touch less confrontational. Seros raised his head, paddling over to the shore as I gently set the staff down. Enormous and dangerous was he, but there was a lingering respect for Abarossa in how he leaned down and grabbed the staff between his fangs, biting just softly enough not to marr the runes. Conscientious. Go, I murmured. Just to the cove. Not the city. They can find it from there. Seros nodded¡ªrather awkwardly with the some six feet of staff in his mouth¡ªand began making for the Underlake. Abarossa followed him, her presence retreating in a burst of star-burn and cold-iron teeth. Which. I waited until she was far enough away¡ªnot truly leaving, but her focus was settled on Seros'' back, following him out of the dungeon with the only voice she had left¡ªbefore I reached out, tugging up a few points of mana. Weaving them into the same shapes was easy, though I didn''t manifest another staff and just let them hover in the air, pulsing with power. The innate literacy that came with being a dungeon core flowed through me, speaking each meaning to my soul, the weight behind the words, but¨C But nothing. Without Abarossa there to bind them together, they were just runes. Just letters, just symbols, just meaningless things that read like stories for all the power they had. Not an enchantment, not a conduit. What was I missing? What was the secret ingredient needed to weave mana into things, to make a schema perfectly but have it be more than a dead husk of a thing? What did I need to do in order to craft? Dragons had no need, and an all-powerful sea-drake even less so. I had been perfect in most conceivable ways. But if I truly was, then I would have been able to do this. I let the mana drift away, runes dissolving back to white-silver motes that fluttered on the air. Enchantment, so powerful, so potent, caught on the wind before my claws could snatch it up. Abarossa had done it effortlessly, it seemed; spoken a few pretty words about her power before the staff had gleamed with divine power and her voice echoed like an underwater volcano. I was the one who had done all the work, made the staff, engraved the runes, crafted the diamond¡ªbut the enchantment was all her. Loathe to admit it, but I had done nothing. I sent Seros out into the cove to learn of the sea, to become one with the mystery that I loved more than words had the meaning for, and he had come back with the Song humming in the back of his mind and a sea-born goddess on his back. Not learned yet, because the immense vastness of immortal centuries couldn''t be picked up in a fortnight, but he had breached his own self-importance to take the first step. There was a journey before him to complete it¡ªa path of victory and madness before he could be more than draconic and become dragon. And not just dragon, but sea-drake; a beast of the endless blue and danger within. He needed to learn. I knew that. I wanted him to. My mana coiled around my core like slithering kelp. ¡­perhaps I had something to learn, too. Not from a goddess, not from someone more mana than mind, a collection of far-wrought stars in a nameless world with power that flowed like a river into a delta; no, I needed a teacher. Someone who had learned enchantment, rather than been born alongside it. Someone who understood what it was like to fight for the learning, for the knowing. It would have to be a mortal. More damningly, it would have to be a mortal out of my control. In all likelihood, it would have to be someone from Calarata. That was a problem for a later fucking day, however, because I was still imagining Seros'' fangs sinking into Gon?al''s throat and death arriving for the Dread Pirate on black wings. Rather far from just allowing someone incredibly skilled with mana to just¡­ prance into my dungeon like they owned the place. No. Not yet. I had other things to do before that particular indulgence. My list of tasks was ever-encompassing, as my floors grew larger and more dense and bulging at the edges with potential. My first six had patrons, were frozen in place, though I still would be changing the sixth¡ªand that meant I only had one to work on, and it was nearing completion in of itself. That wouldn''t do. The Haven sat as an unhatched egg, waiting to come into itself, the tunnel currently boring itself through the Al¨®mbra Mountains with Nicau trotting at its heels, the Scorchplains filling themselves out in the crackles of distant fire and belching of acrid smoke. My fifth floor¡ªair, flight, storms. The wings of my past self, the skies I had flown through like the currents that had been mine, the freedom I had taken for granted. My sixth floor¡ªwater, oceans, reefs. The home that had been, perfection incarnate, both for monsters and for growth. The lagoon in its gentle embrace; the towers in their fury. My seventh floor¡ªsmoke, wrath, fury. The predator I had been, hunting through murky waters to leap upon prey unknowing and striking from underneath. My eighth needed to be something different. Though Abarossa was promising to hold the merrow back, I couldn''t trust that, and Calarata was only going to get more bold¡ªvarying between floors meant they couldn''t predict what was coming next. Meant I could allow my creatures to grow stronger, to develop into the beasts I knew they could be and not be hamstrung by needing to stay on higher floors away from dense mana. Veresai would get a floor for herself, one day. One designed perfectly for her. But as I hesitated in the end of the Scorchplains, my mana poised to dig, I couldn''t feel a strain¡ªmy dungeon instincts were telling me I could go deeper. I had more floors in me before I pulled the thread too tight and had to stop before it snapped. And I didn''t want to keep her up high, keep her from full potential. No, her floor would come later. And would Akkyst''s, and Seros'', and any other of my Named. But an empress serpent did not belong on my fourth floor. The eighth floor would house her, while I prepared for something deeper. A thousand ideas spun through my core, each more intricate and darting than the last¡ªbut from sky and sea and smoke, there was one I hadn''t created, not truly, and I knew what I wanted. My eighth floor would be a jungle. Not the Jungle Labyrinth, nor the stone-tree room at its center, nor the Drowned Forest with its tangled canals. No, I wanted a humid, choking mess of towering trees and shuddering underbrush, with creatures plucked from the bounty on my doorstep and all the fineries that Gon?al would earn his life by delivering. I wanted something for Veresai to prowl through, something for Seros to remember what it felt like to hunt on land, something for air so thick with water it could drown those walking, something impossible to exist under a mountain except for within a dungeon''s embrace. I wanted a wilderness, and what I wanted, I got. My mana sharpened. I began to dig. Chapter 148 - Black Flag Progress was irredeemably slow, and also lightning. I was a spiraling tower of deliberation as I burrowed down, twisting the tunnel back and forth in unending switchbacks as I skirted the line of how close I could dig to itself as I wound my way through the mountains. Five hundred feet below the Scorchplains, then six, seven¡ªand I still hadn''t left the tunnel and started the floor proper. No, I had plans for this one, and that required a settled base. One deep enough the limestone left and only basalt greeted my mana-hooked claws. My eighth floor, my answer to the smoke-grey above, and one I burned with excitement for. Jungle I had said, which was evocative enough on its own, particularly when even bare trees fascinated the sea-drake of my mind who had only known fields of swaying kelp and coral reefs before this, but I wanted more. I had already made myself a creature of originality, with floors that were never quite expected¡ªthe only one to skirt that idea was the Fungal Gardens, and that was with the inherent idea it was supposed to play pretend at being normal so lesser creatures wouldn''t bother me more than necessary. Then came a floor of canal-carved rooms, endless twisting tunnels, islands in a sea of storms, choking blackness and lava pools¨C Thus, it couldn''t be just a jungle. Which was why I was digging a mountain''s depth, and cursing out my own genius as I worked. By the time invaders reached my eighth floor, they would have proven themselves adept. Surviving two aquatic floors, a labyrinth, a sightless place¡ªthey''d be prepared, at that point, for new and unique dangers. And that I would provide. Armour was heavy, supplies were heavy, and you could be the most powerful adventurer in the world and still fall victim to gravity like all the others. So they would emerge from the tunnel, eyes smarting after the darkness of the Scorchplains, and find themselves very small, in face of the tower before them. A channel carved through the mountain, taller than impossibility, and all they would have to do would be find the exit. The exit. Well. I was particularly proud of this idea. I''d disguised them in the past, hidden in the darkness or made a maze to reach, but it was never particularly difficult. General intelligence said that I should place the exit as far away from the entrance as possible, and that meant it was possible to simply take the long path in a roughly straight line and find your way out of the current hell. Invaders would expect that. Would take comfort, likely, as the seven floors above worked in the same manner. But not here. I''d have a tunnel on the ground¡ªit''d even go back into the stone some fair bit, just enough for adventurers to lower their guard¡ªbut the only thing within would be a den, one of luxury and comfort for the largest of my creatures, and those adventurers would find themselves on the opposing end of many fangs. No, there would be no escape there, no exit out. Because where did jungles go? They went up. So my eighth floor would be a heart tree. They were one of the concepts that only revealed themselves to me once I became a dungeon core, once the instincts lurking in the back of my memories pried open my consciousness to dump themselves inside. Forests were not as old as the seas but they were old, or had the potential to become so¡ªand all that power had to go somewhere. And it went to heart trees, the emperors at the center of a territory, and they became the guardians for all those around and made themselves unconquerable. But because they were in the center, rather choked out in saplings and underbrush and trees, they couldn''t use that power to go out, so they went up. Taller and taller, until they filled the sky, until the mark of a powerful jungle was the ability to blot out the sun. A heart tree, large enough to fill the entire floor, impossible except within my halls. Did I have the schemas for this? Partially. The wonderful thing about being a dungeon core with mana at my beck and call was that schemas did not have to be perfect things to fit into the puzzle I''d constructed¡ªI could weave and dissolve them as I saw fit. There would never be a tree tall enough to take up the room like I wanted, never something that could stretch the hundreds and thousands of feet up to the ceiling, but I could make it look like it. If I shoved enough cloudsire palms or vampiric mangroves or whatever Nicau would collect on his next mission out to the unnamed jungle, it would eventually look like one tree, the beating hearts of terrestrial forests, older and more powerful than all its fellows. Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel. It wouldn''t be a heart tree, because I couldn''t force one¡ªthey took centuries to grow, to gather, and I was not near patient enough for that. But I could get damn close. Then, bring the goblins in, with their wretched dexterous fingers¡ªor the kobolds, who had the decent sense to at least appear subservient to me even amidst their growing sapience¡ªand make it a floor possible for more than those with wings. Vine-fibers woven into rope bridges, houses carved into the base of petrified wood, stalactites wrapped together¡ªa verifiable disaster spidering its way up to the ceiling where the exit laid. The floor would have a surprisingly small footprint, likely under three thousand feet, because I wanted this land to go up, and I wanted it to be perfect. The one tiny, minor problem with wanting a tower that rivaled the height of the mountains was that I had to dig the damn thing. Hells, I''d send Seros out to drag home the stone-wurm corpse I saw in Akkyst''s thoughts just so I could have a creature capable of boring through rock alongside me. It was made worse by how half of my consciousness¡ªand more than half of my mana¡ªwas currently following Nicau through the Al¨®mbra Mountains, picking their way around the rotten corpse of a pirate city to reach the Overlook at its peak. I wanted that other path out, and I wanted it before Nenaigch got too pissed at the current priests I was giving her, and that meant I was splitting focus in a way that made large-scale projects, to put it lightly, difficult. Eventually I would sink my teeth into becoming powerful enough to truly spread my wings. Another evolution, maybe, with an increased regeneration that meant digging new floors wouldn''t leave me dry and empty¡ªor an increased capacity, so I could rest for a few days and then have enough to finish the entire thing in one go. Multitudinous options, so long as I evolved. ¡­it had been quite some time since I''d been tested, though. Oh, Ghasavalk and Sy?alia still haunted me with what I refused to call fear, but though they had been Golds, they had been only two, and one of them with an agenda beyond capturing my core. The Adventuring Guild was hungering under the rabid dog that was its Guildmaster and the Dread Pirate hadn''t so much as poked his head into my halls. Complacency made me nervous. And when I was nervous, I covered myself in protection. A heart tree, to mark the descent. Three thousand feet down, my tunnel weaving over itself like a serpent in death throes, I finally settled deep in a pit of basalt and looked outward. So far from my core, mana came sluggishly, struggling to fill the new space I''d carved for it. But already I could taste the potential, could see how impossible this new floor would be. Abarossa said she would hold the merrow back, and through my strained connection with Seros I knew he was already swimming back to me, her staff dumped in the water to be picked up by the first one who swam by. Veresai was working with Kriya again, healing her horde, and Akkyst was practicing his blessing with Bylk, and my dungeon thrummed with a hunger. Something was going to be striking, and soon. I hadn''t lived¡ªor died¡ªas long as I had without paranoia. So a heart tree I would construct, and hide my core within its endless boughs, and rain death on whoever thought they could take me. - The jeweled jumper, in absentia of boredom, became death. It was easy. It was simple. He had followed these grey-green-beasts deeper into the mountains in hopes of a threat, in hopes they would be more than what they were, and found them lacking. They were not the tall-long-invaders, those with only four limbs but silver-sharp-claws to make up for it. They were not like the scaled-beast, with bulk and brutality to make up for a regrettable limitation of bones. He killed them, and they died. One bite. One shadow. Ikiar, they cried, with stupid flat mouths and inefficient teeth. Ikiar, they cried, as he slaughtered them indiscriminately and drained their corpses dry. But it wasn''t enough. Battles in the shadows, battles in the grey¡ªthey knew he was coming, because he was always coming, because there was nothing he could not watch his venom wither away to nothing, but they didn''t know he was there. They feared every shadow, instead of knowing when he was hunting them. A general fear, instead of something condensed and rich. The had-been-home was filled with dangers tamed and understood. It made him and changed him and left him behind. He had learned from it, much as it had tried to learn from him, and he had left¡ªbecause only out in the shadows had he discovered emotions and thoughts and memories. But the jeweled jumper knew how to recognize power. The voiceless thing that had made him was mighty; think-words were useless; the scaled-beast had potential. These things he kept killing were not powerful, not by themselves, and barely with each other. Only two eyes, but enough in groups that he had to stay hidden, and that was it. One bite. Click-click. Dead. And it was some time later, after a few no-eye-sleeps, that he crept down a stalactite and saw one grey-green-beast standing above the others. It was just as weak¡ªjust as short¡ªjust as few-limbed¡ªbut there was something about it that made him look again. Something in the way it screamed, how it shook its odd-flat-claws. That one, he decided, pressing four of his claws to the stone to get a closer look. The way it held itself, the way its think-words bounced through the air and ricocheted off the others like bites. It was powerful, or at least thought it was. Something to test for himself. And the jeweled jumper never failed. - Deep within the Al¨®mbra Mountains, the goblin tyrant of the War Horde died. His followers did not take that lightly. Chapter 149 - Elevations The scorch hound yelped. She tripped backwards, sneezing, plumes of smoke trickling through her ivory fangs. But she couldn''t well run from herself¡ªor, at least, from the things growing over her fur. Spores, imperceptible to the naked eye, but like gleaming stars to my points of awareness. The houndspore, my newest evolution, pride of my Scorchplains. Too long had my creatures been focused on aggression and dominance. It was time we had some more defensive plays come to my halls¡ªand this scorch hound, eldest of her pack, still with the beast-tamer kobold trailing at her paws like a lovesick fool, was about to become the first of these new dangers. Bristling, organic masses, like strange plated armour, molded over her back¡ªnot fully grown nor hardened, but certainly beginning to. They threaded through her fur, chains of grey-black, only her face free. She''d have to burn off some sections to keep up her mobility, twist her legs about and make sure their full range still kept, but there was a danger in how the armour settled around her back and the russet fur disappeared beneath grey. In contrast to their delightful spores, the mushrooms themselves were far from pleasing to the eye. Their schema called them bulbous, but that was truly underselling it; instead of delicate gills of lace latticework and ghostly translucence, they were grotesque blobs of myconid flesh and rippling pores. In a word, disgusting. At least the smoke of the Scorchplains hid them to some serviceable degree. Tucked them under the grey and grime, their new larger form¡ªsome two feet across, though losing their height for misplaced lumps against the basalt¡ªspidered over the pillars and wove around the bases. Not too many at the moment, a smattering around the various oases I''d carved into the floor, but they would grow. Not all of the spores would go to armour; doubtless I''d have a proper force on my hand before long. And each hound would wear a suit of defense against the threats. I wanted an apex predator on this floor before I would begin to consider it done¡ªwhether that was an evolution of the scorch hounds or magma salamanders or hells, even the bounding deer, I didn''t much care¡ªand the hounds would need the armour to keep from becoming its prey. Evolutions would come for them soon, I thought, but that wouldn''t be enough. And that wasn''t even the last of my evolutions. Though it had taken some time for this one, the others were lesser creatures¡ªscuttling bugs. A handful of days was plenty for them to shed their Underranked forms and join the threats of my halls, far above in the Fungal Gardens¡ªmy many points of awareness I''d layered over the ring ever since, ah, completely forgetting to refill the mana rang the alarm, and my consciousness darted up to meet the new arrivals. First was the edgewing dragonfly. I''d been entirely correct that its previous form, with its cracked chitin and gangly motions, had been an aquatic larvae¡ªa nymph, I thought, why in the hells was it stealing the name of so many greater creatures¡ªbut the excellent thing about evolutions was that it could skip right over that step if it was so inclined. Which it rather was, as the glow over its transforming body died and a new beast emerged. Long, perhaps a foot from bulbous eyes to curling tail, with four wings unfurling from its back with lacey veins and buzzing anticipation. Immediately they flung outwards, mana sharpening and strengthening them; from its schema, I could see that its previous form could shift and fold them back, but not this one. These were harder, more akin to blades than wings, for all it looked flight-ready. The edgewing dragonfly, unseen and unstoppable. Uncanny mobility, its schema had said. And it certainly seemed to be living up to the standard; even now, in Nuvja''s darkness, its set of four wings flicked up and picked it off the ground, swooping up as energy bled off its curling tail. ¡­still not a dragon. I would never understand why it thought it had earned that name. But I would allow it down to the Skylands for now, and the eighth floor when I had the mana to continue growing the heart tree¡ªalready I could see it as a flying set of throwing knives, darting through the air to detach heads from shoulders at its leisure. And, beside it, another glow faded as a further evolution took to the stage. The cleaver ant. My first second bug evolution, and I could already feel the power; it emerged from the light with a clicking hiss, clawed feet gripping onto stone, bulk pulsing through the air as mana snapped and ravaged through its channels. A monster proper, something that would serve as a proper threat instead of the ideal of one. There was a part of me that wanted to immediately dig a tunnel down to the Skylands for it, get it to the colony that it had searched hard enough for it had evolved even without a drop of mana to feed on, but I stopped. I watched it, instead. It was a beast of a thing, even as a bug¡ªtwo, three, feet long, low and stocky, with the same earthen-brown carapace of its previous form but now with mandibles that belonged in a blacksmith''s shop more than its face. Fierce and indomitable, powerful enough to punch through the armour of anything that dared stand against it. Even now, it clicked its mandibles together, and air rippled outward at the lazy motion¡ªfrom a glance at its schema, I could see that it could use it as a repelling attack, generating enough force in a wave to push away prey and predators alike. A little monster. Born from soldier ants separated from their colony, it lives a solitary and hungry life. Its namesake jaws cull all prey in its path as it devours more and more, searching for the power it needs to return to its queen. I had evolved it erroneously¡ªseparated it from its colony, abandoned in the Fungal Gardens. It had developed a form that would allow it to survive the journey down. I wouldn''t deprive it of that. Oh, there would still be tunnels to get it around the Underlake instead of forcing it to try to learn to swim, but the adventure it would make for itself. Cruel, perhaps. But it had evolved for this, and I had simply let it be for too long. Guiding it down easily, removing all of the struggle it had fought through, would be the height of an insult. No, it would become a master by itself. Had Akkyst not grown more powerful by striving through the mountains, and Seros grown to hear the Song by venturing into the cove? Yes. This groundbreaker ant had evolved into a cleaver ant because it wanted to fight its way down to its queen¡ªand I wouldn''t make its journey an easy one and remove the reason it had fought. I would guide it in terms of direction, but it would have to survive. Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site. I pushed a map into its mind, a twisting path through the Drowned Forest and Jungle Labyrinth. It clicked its mandibles again, another rippling wave of force, and clambered its way out of the gladiatorial ring of insects. Almost immediately, the numerous luminous constrictors narrowed in on it, shadowthief rats eyeing the gleam of its carapace, lunar cave bears licking their fangs¡ªbut its mandibles were more powerful than the Fungal Gardens, and the inhabitants knew it. If they tussled with it, the chances were not in their favour. Almost in unison, the edgewing dragonfly darted overhead, a gleaming blade in the darkness, and swept into the tunnel at the end. Fast as all hells, and twice as agile¡ªI barely had time to give it a map of its own before it was halfway through the Drowned Forest. Once it hit the Skylands and the mess of clouds there, it would be unstoppable. The Skylands, where one final evolution pulsed through and completed. The one I had been most excited over¡ªthe one that had completed much faster than I thought it would, actually. So long had she been gone from my halls that I had almost forgotten her presence, though never her¡ªand now a new form awoke to wreak havoc. The stormcaller sprite. My wolf-wisp¡ªhells, I couldn''t call her that now, could I? But it worked so well¡ªcoalesced, from a glowing cloud to a creature again. Elementals were strange beasts, ones born entirely of mana and rather unknown to me, and seeing her go from wolf to cloud to wolf again was, ah, odd. Interesting. Unique. But not as much as her new form. Larger, a true wolf in size, and no longer limited to mist and steam. Still amorphous, changing and ephemeral, but with ice for claws and frost for fur. Cloud-command, mist-master; she erupted into the Skylands with a howl like distant thunder. She had, apparently, decided four legs was a pathetic number to limit herself to¡ªsix at moments, eight at others, stretching up to ten whenever she hit a straightaway. She ran like a beast from the Dear War, faster than thought, existence; the entirety of the Skylands melted away as she awoke and took straight to the chase. She howled, and Khasvar''s lightning surged to her call; it crackled through her flowing tail as twelve claws dug into the air and hurled her up, snapping fangs¡ªactual fangs¡ªinto the wing of a greater pigeon. She didn''t kill it like mortal creatures; instead, the bird shrieked and warbled and hung limp in her jaws, colour bleaching from its feathers. Its mana disappeared into it, a live current, and she dropped its corpse once she was done with it. Vampiric, almost, just with mana instead of blood. A monster. Gods, I loved her. Her howls called storms, her fangs brought death. Oh, the little thief who thought himself important enough to strike an alliance would be safe only so long as he provided¡ªthe moment he slipped, the moment he failed, she would begin her hunt. First a creator, whipping up the currents needed in my Underlake. She''d settled into a canine form just for running, just for carrying herself forward. But now she had claws, and now she had hunger. The other cloudskipper wisps would have someone new to learn from. Four beautiful evolutions, all humming with power and potential; already I was imagining my heart tree alight with buzzing dragonflies to harass any who thought to climb its heights and prowling packs of scorch hounds with impenetrable armour. New ideas, new dreams. It was a very welcome distraction, considering I was sheltering a brisk five points of mana in my core, even after the invasion this morning that hadn''t made it past the Underlake before being spooked out. It turned out that digging some three thousand feet straight down and then widening it into a tower large enough to fill a faux jungle was, to put it lightly, difficult. Particularly so when the bulk of my mana couldn''t stay with me and had to instead go bobbing after Nicau, still winding their way through the Al¨®mbra Mountains in hunt for his little Overlook. Hard to concentrate fully on a task when I had to traipse after a bumbling human and make sure he didn''t impale himself on a stalagmite when I wasn''t looking. There was a suspicion in his thoughts, not at me, but more at his circumstances¡ªthe tiredness was returning, now that he walked free through the mountain, but he remembered its absence. Remembered how Abarossa''s boon had felt, stripping away basal instincts to create a hunting power. I couldn''t wait to see what he''d do without needing to waste half the day away unmoving. Sea-drakes had the habit of sleeping for decades when they got peckish, letting their hoard refill their mana, but in my opinion, we''d bloody well earned it. Nicau, as a human, had not. Further into the mountain, further into the fourth entrance to my dungeon, one that would stay hidden. I needed more schemas and I needed more information, and I had precious few Named to risk. And precious little time to utilize. Nenaigch''s presence curled around me. Her side of the bargain, spooled free and nearly finished, and mine still unanswered¡ªthe webweavers were priests, in the most technical use of the term, but not up to her standards. Which was understandable. They were barely up to my standards, and I had no use of followers. But in the depths of digging my eighth floor, I''d come up with an idea. My points of awareness swarmed back up to the fourth floor, to the tunnel carved off into its side, to the sarco crocodiles lazing in the center and lunar cave bears snacking on whitecap mushrooms. To the ghosts in the far back, settled on the needle-point shrine they''d woven in the back. All the creatures in the Haven were toothless; they had to be, in order to keep from devastating all those mercurial beings I rather needed to reproduce. That meant that the webweavers had only so much to feast on, more surviving on mana than meat, considering only the weakest of bugs could be allowed. They were subsidizing themselves on mostly gnats. A rather pitiful existence. But I had done this before, and I had seen what happened when I fed small creatures smaller ones and hoped for the best. So my plan was something parallel. The webweavers were, to my conniption, actually rather smart. They operated under a hivemind, no identity beyond the one they served, and though I had built the idea of using dead vampiric mangroves as traps they had been the ones to execute it. Their flaw lay, inexplicably, that they saw me as their leader¡ªand I was much too vast and powerful to bother directing them. So they walked in the same well-worn paths of my previous commands never struck out for anything bigger. They would worship Nenaigch, as I told them to do, but they would never innovate. Never expand. Unless they had a larger voice to follow. Not as large as me, but larger than what they had. A leader. I''d gotten the idea from Veresai, because she was a budding gold-drake under the veneer of an empress serpent; though she was cruel and callous, it was impossible not to see the devastation she wrought over the Jungle Labyrinth and all the creatures under her command. Her horde had the most consistent evolutions of my dungeon, particularly with Kriya there to heal those injured. So all I had to do was pick a webweaver and elevate it, make it smart enough to think for itself, and then extend that thinking to my commands and Nenaigch by proxy. A priest, without having to worry about kidnapping some pious fool from Calarata and just hoping they would convert to the goddess of weaving without any real say in the matter. I trickled my points of awareness over the webweaver''s shrine, the twisting mess of ghost-pale bodies and quivering threads. There¡ªone near the center, larger than the others, currently digging its fangs into the twisting body of a gnat. This one. This one would be the leader. Chapter 150 - Revelations She peered through the gap of stoned branches, a macabre reimagining of a forest, or at least something resembling it. It could have been a fairytale kind of story, maybe, the one she''d delight in with her sister reading it through hissed syllables and rippling hoods, but it wasn''t, because it was right before her and she could see it. Kriya Acadaiss, on the day she was to finally reach Silver, untangled her mind from the easy, gentle persuasions plaguing her for just a moment. There was a cobra before her, coiled in on itself with pain, and Veresai¡ªam yours, she is leader, she is empress¡ªhad told her to heal it. Mana thrummed through her chest. Two years had she spent at Bronze, and today was when that would change. But she couldn''t go back from this, she knew. That was the manner of deals¡ªor deals, really¡ªand magic listened. Her father had been a wild man, never mentioning their mother or how he didn''t have scales to match her and Sarissa, but he''d taught her well on bargains and offering. Magic was a living thing, as he described it, something more than a tool by which mages threw out destruction; it hummed and sang and watched. That was half the reason Kriya had chosen to attune herself to healing. Most would call it stupid¡ªanyone could get a piece of rose quartz and carve a healing power into it, or make simple enchantments to take the edge off. They wanted the fire, the lightning, the fury. But if magic was really listening, then maybe it wanted to help. So Kriya had chosen healing. And that healing led to her now, standing in a dungeon''s floor with psionic power flowing through her, mana channels full, crouching over the body of a crowned cobra. Attuning herself to healing had given her more than the ability to take away pain¡ªit let her sense, let her learn. Few other humans could sense when their ability was about to change, needing an Adventuring Guild of some discipline to declare it, but she knew. Mana thrummed and thrashed beneath her, lighting through her fingers, and magic was listening. Always listening. It was ready to elevate her to Silver, to finally raise her to the power her sister had reached and she hadn''t, only now it was just her, because she was in the dungeon where her sister had died and she was still here. If she chose to soar into Silver by healing a dungeonborn creature, a technical enemy, then magic would hear that. Magic would see. Magic would decide what that meant for her power. Kriya looked at the serpent. It hissed, coiling in and up on itself; she''d already pried the thorns out of its scales after the mage ratkin had beaten it away with commanded strands of green, but the wounds were still there. It was in pain. Magic listened and magic heard and magic helped. Kriya had become a healer because it was who she was. Kriya set her palms on the cobra, pulsed healing energy through its wounds, and ascended to Silver. - Climbing was an act of fruitless desperation, but those lesser did it anyway. The old hunter¡ªthe stalking jaguar, as others called her, unknowing, always unknowing¡ªsank her fangs into the mantis as it tried to escape her. She tore it down from the green-root walls and shattered past its skin; ripped off its head in one elegant motion as it clicked and chittered and died. Another death. Another victory, to eat her fill and drag the rest down to Akkyst. In the endless darkness of the tunnels, these beasts were the only real threats that could fight back without devastation. Oh, there were the platemail bugs, those that shambled around in armour, but they didn''t fight, just endured. Serpents fell to her claws no matter glowing blue eyes. Rats with morsels. But the mantises were enough for now. Not forever, as the mana built in her chest and staggered out through her limbs, but enough for now. She would satiate herself on their lesser bodies until the time grew that she wanted more. So she crouched over the corpse and bit her way through its limbs, click-click, her rasping tongue shredding the meat underneath. Another meaningless one, not strong enough to hurt her, not strong enough to matter. Young, perhaps. Not all of them were young. Because there was one mantis she hunted for, that she searched in the darkness for it to emerge and challenge her, to begin the hunt once more. Partnership was not a word in her understanding. Oh, it was a word, one of the many she''d become aware of when the Growth had spoken into her mind and called her its, but that did not mean she would allow its meaning to taint her. She was an old hunter, no matter what the Growth called her, and she hunted alone. But this beast. The others kept their dark green skins, no fur or feathers, but just hard surfaces like claws. But the eldest, the largest, had started to soften; the greens to blues to rippling iridescence. They were insects, her new knowledge told her, and they fought with claws much longer than hers and a brittle body that did not survive one bite. The largest, however, danced around her¡ªagain and again had they fought and both emerged alive. That was not hunting anymore than it was victory, but it was clever, and it was fast. Her claws against its claws; her fangs against the air left in its wake; her tail lashing through empty space. A challenge. One that never slept, never rested. She had only seen it when it came to her¡ªmuch as it did now, fading through the darkness, lingering on the edges of her peripheries as she devoured the corpse of her making. Perhaps she had summoned it. Perhaps it had heard her thoughts. But what mattered was that she looked up and saw it, standing at the very back of her awareness, scuttling body raised high and full of teeth. It watched her, blue-green-iridescence, and waited. Its claws came up, near imperceptible through the darkness. She growled, low in her throat. Her belly full, a corpse to be taken to Akkyst. More tunnels to explore and mana to gather. Its black eyes flashed. She lunged. - The shadowthief rat was a creature of, fittingly, shadows; she liked darkness in the way it coated her, drowned her fur beneath its shroud, hid her away from all the keen eyes of predators. It had led to her hoard, long ago, and it led to her survival now¡ªthough perhaps not as much as the moon-pale flower she''d consumed. She felt it, still. It hovered somewhere in her stomach, heavy like a good meal, one that never went away. Not a thing like the Mind-Voice, the thing that told her where to go and what to do, but something deeper. A part of her, as much as bones and meat, but colder. Wind, to guide her when she ran hot. But it was rather difficult to run hot when the darkness she normally adored was drowning her. The Mind-Voice had given her a mission, and not only her¡ªNicau, the human, the steal-target, the price-mark, had plucked her from her comfortable den and deposited her on his shoulder, as they had made a perch for her on, and wandered off through the tunnels. A wretched kind of walking. No prey or treasure to be seen. Mana overhead and watching, half-thought-bit of the Mind-Voice, and a path she didn''t understand carving through the darkness. There was a mission, yes, something guiding, but she hadn''t been told. A rat still, to them. Strong and powerful and clever and with a star in her chest, but not told. Even Nicau, so soft, so subservient, didn''t say anything. This was why she had never been one to join a colony, not like her brethren, high up on the first and second floor. They had wanted the security of multiple eyes¡ªbut eyes never looked out for others as much as themselves. All the better to be safe in yourself. All the better to only trust the one you knew was protecting you. But there was something to be said of being trusted by others, even if she planned on betraying them eventually. There was no point in being cold and biting when they wanted to believe you; better to hold her teeth back until she could steal all their treasures to take for herself when they least expected it. Even the Mind-Voice thought she was perfect. Kept putting her on missions. She would maintain this trust. Which was why, when the moon in her mana lurched, the shadowthief rat hesitated for only a second before following. Nicau walked with plodding, hesitant steps into the darkness; she scuttled over his shoulders, ignoring the yelp of surprise from her steed, and wrapped her ridged tail around his neck for support. Even with his fumbling awkwardness, there was plenty to lean down and tap his arm. Nicau blinked at her. "Um." Overhead, the Mind-Voice paused in its digging, the stone grinding away back to pressing silence as they both focused in. The attention, the awareness¡ªit went against her shadows but did go to her pride. Truly nothing better than being seen when she wanted to and not when she didn''t. The weight in her heart shifted. She tapped his arm again, then flicked her nose in that direction. "Go¡­ left?" Nicau said, hesitant. He squinted at the wall she indicated, nothing setting it apart from the others. "Is that what you''re saying?" She squeaked. The Mind-Voice reached out, a faint tendril of awareness; she opened her mind to let it see what it wanted to. The thoughts circling around the tugging sensation in her chest. The moon-pale pull of something powerful. Nicau winced, skittering backwards, as the Mind-Voice abruptly dug into the wall where she directed; stone billowed outward in a plume of grit and dust, choking the air, shattering deep within the mountain. Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. And there, past the rock¡ª Something white. Something sharpened and jagged, gleaming through the stone, a break unlike the cold grey around. A prize only her intuition had achieved. With no small amount of pride, the shadowthief rat returned to her perch on Nicau''s shoulder, and began grooming her ears. Served them right. They''d trust her, because she would only give them reason to, and when she claimed the greatest treasure of all, no one would know enough to stop her. - In the cold marrow of a forgotten tunnel, he hungered. The others slept and rested and lazed but he was ever-moving, the weight of his mighty defense carrying him to the bottom when the goddess'' currents did not suffice. The armoured jawfish was one of teeth and trial, rage wrought into destruction''s form, and he did not allow things like exhaustion to hamper his ability. For he was Old, and precious things were, in this world. Sometimes, he was the only one. And still he was here, in the land he had known since his first change. Lower, lower, lower¡ªmana called to him in the way of prey and flesh and meat. Things to sink his armour-fangs into and tear open. But the water was heavy and the path heavier. Lesser beasts crawled through tunnels on their way down, guided by the Reawakener, but he had not received such a call. Twice changed was he, from prey to prize to predator, but still did the lower floors elude him. Did the Reawakener think he was not strong enough? He ruled the Underlake more than those with scales but sunlight callings, and the blood-fang thing that could only pester his armour. They were¨C What were they, truly? Squalling infants to his mana, bright and untested, who puttered around with delusions of impossible strength ripe for the culling. He could not even call them young, because there wasn''t a word for it¡ªonly Old. Only him. ¡­he remembered another Old thing. It had been on the night of blood, where bodies fell from the surface and a storm exploded in the outreaches; he had sunk his fangs into mana fresh and ever-flowing to emerge satiated. All except the one thing that had swam before him, staring at him, bronze scales and fleshy limbs¡ªand mana that sang of Old magic. Something before; something beyond what this world had to offer. The armoured jawfish was a wretchedly hungry beast. But he had let that thing go. He hadn''t much thought on that decision, distracted by corpses to devour and victory to revel in, but the truth was that he had swam on, and the thing was alive. It hadn''t been killed by anything else, considering he hadn''t found its body, nor its mana. Instead, it had left, and he had been hungry in its absence. There were other Old things, he knew. He remembered them from back when he was still prey; when he swam through canals instead of lakes, and trees with ancient mana trailed thorns in the water. And the scaled beast that was sometimes here and sometimes not was also Old, though less so, more adapted to this world. He was Old, he knew that. He felt the song in his marrow that had never been sung by living creatures. Old, twice reborn, and still stuck on the floor so high above the others. The mana thin, the power lesser. He wanted to go beneath. He wanted to be unstoppable. Deep in the tunnel, he gnashed his fangs, water billowing through his armour. The Reawakener hadn''t called him below, but perhaps that was because it wasn''t looking; he would give it something to look at. He would give it something to choose. - Teeth. Teeth! Bylk stretched open his mouth, tapping at one of the canines dulled by age. "Teeth?" Before him, quicksilver letters drifted like smoke. They twisted around Akkyst''s exhale, wavering without losing their form, bobbing stars in the darkness. But, of current interest, was one that they had been studying for some time, a jagged thing with four prongs and a slash through the center. Akkyst bit at the air. Another one of that shape appeared. "Yes," Akkyst said, eyes bright. "I believe so." Bylk sighed, leaning back. He rubbed at exhausted muscles holding his ears up. "Rock ''n'' rubble, that takes bloody time, don''t it?" "It is something new," Akkyst said, raising his head to nose at another of them. The runes were amorphous beings, made of pure light and entirely ignoring most characteristics of existing things he was familiar with, but they had managed to figure out what some of them meant. The simple ones, for the most part, like goblin and fire and wound. Handy, in a way, to have so many other creatures in the Skylands to study. With each discovery, Akkyst grew brighter¡ªquicksilver glowing, no longer a lunar cave bear but now starwrought, and all the stronger for it. The act of learning was almost more important to him than the learning itself, because he was a beacon for sages everywhere. Bylk remembered, quietly, the first time they had met¡ªin the wake of a massacre on both sides. If Akkyst hadn''t reacted to his voice, hadn''t revealed he could understand them, would they have still become this? Would the Magelords have died to the War Horde, never more than a memory for those who weren''t goblins? Would he still be here? But you didn''t get to his age by frenetic worryings over times long past. What mattered now was that they were both here, and they were learning, and there was a piece of archaic stone that soon they would discover the meaning of. It was the goal at the end of the thicket, really. Because anything Akkyst touched or did or interacted with made runes flicker into the air, full of knowledge, and all they had to do was decode them. Bite the air¡ªsymbols for air, bite, teeth, power. Scratch the stone¡ªrock, claw, wound, dust. When he touched the ancient, moss-covered rock that was the only saved thing from their previous home, runes came to the light. Still undecipherable for now. Oh, they were close, so close¡ªalready they''d figured out that one meant heart¡ªbut it was coming. Akkyst was a right proper genius, the kind you didn''t dig out of rock but had to come down from above, and Bylk made up with age to offer. The Magelords were settling in, the Skylands were secure, and progress was coming. Soon, Bylk would have more to offer his people than survival. Soon, they would become the Magelords again, rather than the scuttling fears that they still were. Soon, they would be what they had been. But for now, he leaned back with Akkyst, and worked to learn more runes. - Chieftess squinted up at the quartz-lights overhead. Though she was well-prepared for it, the urge to yawn didn''t emerge. The world had changed, recently. Tiredness lurked only in memory, in the empty hollows of the den that used to be filled. She had woken a day ago and though the quartz-lights never wavered, she had prepared to lay down, and just¨C didn''t. There wasn''t a need. Her mind was as sharp as it had always been. A wonderful boon, which felt like the sharks swimming outside the lagoon with teeth bared. Every kill came tinged with those fangs, a faint taste that cut back her hunger and exhaustion and distraction until she bared her own teeth in response. But for all she was ready to fight, there was nothing to fight. Past the lagoon, water lapped and thrashed against the sky. A roiling mess of devastation¡ªthe great monsters, those adapted to water and woe. Too strong for her tribe. They had only just perfected swimming in the lagoon; adventures beyond were few and far between. Too dangerous. Too few returned. Chieftess warbled a quiet command, the strongest of her kobold warriors joining her side. They were tall now, crimson scales bright and battle-hardened, and they wielded claws and spears in equal measure. Able to swim through the lagoon, the heavy currents; proper champions. She had become strong, too. She had made the bargain so that her kills were those of her tribe; so that their mana was given in share to her for her strategies. And then they had all awoken, been reborn in light and new bodies, and then come to a lower floor full of mana, and the threats had stopped. The humans had stopped. Oh, they had grown¡ªcoral adorned the staffs of her kobold shamans, they''d successfully sent hunts beyond the lagoon, their den towered with stored food¡ªbut their enemies hadn''t. Small fish to feast on and those too great to challenge outside of the lagoon; their world had grown and their prizes had shrunk. Because the lagoon was the only place they could hunt, but they were not the only hunters here. Sharks, kraits, fish, serpents; and something else. Something bigger. The dryad. They were not to kill her. The Great Voice had made that very apparent. The twisted, warped thing with too many joints and not scale but bark instead, that feasted on blood and hissed at contact¡ªprotected. Not to be killed. No matter how many sharks she dragged from the water or fish she skewered upon the mangrove at the center of the floor, she was not to be attacked. Even as she killed kobolds. Even as she slaughtered them. Chieftess didn''t like that. The Great Voice decided their creation and destruction, speaking of their growth like it wanted it; but then it forbade certain targets and trapped others in stagnation. The dryad could kill them, but she could not kill the dryad. Chieftess flicked her tail, lashing it through the white sand¡ªat her command, the twin kobold warriors dove into the water, disappearing beneath the blue as they rose up to the surface. They were still not as agile as Rihsu, who swam out of the lagoon, who never sheltered in the shallower waters without predators; and they had kept their scarlet scales. Rihsu had deep purple. Water. She wanted stronger fights. She wanted danger. She wanted fairness, so that she could rend the dryad claw to claw instead of forced to watch her kill. The Great Voice had led her tribe below, to a land of water and woe. It had made her think things she had never known to exist before; thoughts so much bigger than she had thought possible. Rihsu had her own big thoughts, and she got them from following the lord-beast of iridescence and scales. The other kobold that had been born alongside her had traveled below, following the hounds he had seen. Of the original, she was the only one who had stayed with the tribe. The tribe was hers. It was what she wanted. A leader was she, forever more. If the Great Voice wanted others to survive at the cost of her tribe, then she would find a way to make her tribe strong enough to never be hurt again. - Something was wrong in the weave. The web, untouched, untainted; the endless march of those devoted. A new world apart from the old, without dead-trees far above but instead twisting stone to hold up their webs, their mission, their purpose. They had been chosen. Others were left behind, stuck without the power to relish in, without the intimacy, without the words. They hadn''t been spoken to. They would continue weaving their meaningless webs and striving for devotion that would not earn them attention anymore than it earned them change. Only this web had been chosen to go below, and to complete the task bestowed upon them. The Great Spider had given them a vision; a shape in which to weave his dream. They were but the many claws on his many limbs; the incomprehensible power that filled his mind and drifted down to join them when they were chosen. Just them, their ghostly bodies, their threads selected for the worship. Only them, only the Great Spider. They had no concept of personhood. Why was it necessary, when they were but tools for a greater purpose? A mandible did not consider itself separate; it merely was. And the Great Spider that wielded it was the creature, the thing. So they would sink their understanding into greater treasures and become to him, to this power above. But there was something wrong in the weave. The shape they made was by decree of the Great Spider, his shape their purpose, but the needle did not match his power. No mana from his gift to them had been formed like this, nothing more than a shape without devotion. What did that mean? What did it want? Why had they been told to make this shape, when it was not of the Great Spider? Blasphemy was death and, truly, unthinkable. No part of them could disobey or hold the idea of it. But questions were lesser things, irritating things, a shiver in the stability. The shape was wrong. The shape was wrong. It was¨C a gnat, scuttling over the web. Too small for a meal but large enough to pluck at the strands, to make noise and rippling movement without the promise of prey. A gnat, instead of anything with meat. The one that they were¡ªold, large, with thoughts that had grown beyond their shell¡ªcurled their limbs in, staring over the world with glassy eyes. Perhaps it was a test. Perhaps the Great Spider had given them this shape so that they might bite into it; so that they could follow this loose thread until they discovered the web at its core. Perhaps there was a path for true devotion just waiting to be walked, and they were the first to discover this. The Great Spider demanded obedience. They would not fail. Chapter 151 - Plans Set The half of my mind I''d rather tossed to the whales came spluttering back to my consciousness. I pulled away from the webweaver, who had taken to my mana''s attention with a kind of fanatical clarity I¡­ was a mite concerned about, really, and shifted over to where it was calling¡ªthreading through the Al¨®mbra Mountains, deep in the twisting paths and all the madness there. Nicau, holding the shadowthief rat and looking rather put-upon, and my mana, paused in grinding through the stone. Because through the stone was something else. Fucking fantastic. A fitting distraction. I hadn''t even had invaders to hold my attention¡ªthe last two groups had been large, enough of them I''d felt a stir of actual focus instead of letting my creatures handle themselves, but they''d both behaved oddly. Hardly poking their head into the Fungal Gardens, gathering a few creatures, before retreating. They didn''t even get their blades dirty. Useless humans. I needed their mana. And they''d been very rude to deprive me of it, considering what I had to my core wasn''t much, with how much was going into carving this path to Calarata. But I had a steady ten points to spare. There were plenty of other things to be doing¡ªnamely with whatever the fuck was going on with Kriya, her mana trembling through a new influx and my tertiary connection to her humming with pride¡ªbut I rather felt the use was worth it. New schemas. Gods, how I loved them. Stand back, I murmured. Nicau nearly tripped over himself in his effort to move further back into the tunnel, clutching the shadowthief rat to his shoulder. My mana swirled around the stone, the jagged prongs of white-ivory gleaming through the rock; I brushed against the surface and then pushed in. I was far below where the sarco crocodile had been and the distant memories of tropical jungles were gone; what met my core was cool stone and deep blackness, identical to what I had now, the marinating depths of old mountains. Mana pulsed through the bones, through what had been calcified in its tomb, and pushed marrow to move again¡ªplucked memories and ideals and shapes from the rock¡ªfound the identity within the corpse¨C Click.
Cavern-Mouth (Exotic) The end of all things is patience. It has entirely adapted to the life of ambush; it will spend eons digging caves large enough for its enormous body, fitting itself inside. When it opens its mouth, it appears as if a normal cave¡ªbut where prey think to find a haven, they instead find a stomach.
What the fuck. These existed? This was a thing? Gods, the oceans were at least up front in the numerous ways they''d kill you. It was easy to rest assured you''d get a glance at the thing rending your head from shoulders before passing from this mortal plane. I prodded around the schema newly-settling into my core; an impression floated back to me, something large and grotesque and uniquely suited for murder. Nearly all of the creature was mouth, enormous and, well, cavernous, four stubbly legs underneath and pale eyes. Jagged, unsymetrical teeth¡ªmimicking stalagtites, maybe?¡ªand a tongue like a boulder. Hells, that thing was a nightmare. My nightmare, though. Already I could feel the potential. It really, really wouldn''t fit in my planned eighth floor, at least not as a showcase; I could litter a few around the bottom, but I was already predicting that the mana cost on something large enough to pretend to be a cave was going to be more expensive than I wanted to spend on testing. I''d hold off on this schema for a moment before sinking my fangs into it. Excitement still flickered through me. Maybe it could be one of the last finishing touches on my Scorchplains, with the darkness that would hide the beast from even the most perceptive of invaders; or perhaps my ninth floor could be based around them, a maze of dens armed with teeth. I hadn''t added a single tree to my eighth floor and I was already daydreaming of the ninth. I was nothing if not consistent. But for now, I consumed the last of the fossil, breaking down the beast frozen in the walls for the trickles of mana from the bones. Nicau watched, eyes wide, as the enormous shape of the thing revealed itself; its mouth was wider than the tunnel, sloping down for edges and teeth, basalt locking its maw in place. I imagined Nicau would be a little more wary before entering his den back in the Hungering Reefs from now on out. Good. When next to Seros or Veresai, he still hardly acted as was befitting one of my Named. Even Akkyst was working with Bylk to claw out understanding from his blessing faster than Nicau had. But insults aside, I couldnt let myself get too distracted here. I still had to finish the tunnel and heart tree, preparations nonwithstanding. So very much to do, and none of it ending. I left half my consciousness back with my Named, the shadowthief rat squeaking at shadows, and flew back up to the Haven. That webweaver, still twitching through thoughts much too large for its insipid head, was going to evolve into something worthy of Nenaigch, and by the gods, it was going to do it soon. If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. - Deep in the shadows, Shoth peeled his lips back from his fangs. It had been a particular kind of misery to dress himself up as a passing adventurer¡ªto shave away recognizability when his attunement made for a martyr. His fangs, garish and extended, always visible no matter how he closed his mouth. Nails grown as claws, clothes dripping with crusted scarlet¡ªthrown aside for leathers and a purposely-overgrown beard to hide the contours of his face. But that didn''t matter. What mattered was that he stood on the wooden dock of the beach outside Calarata, and he looked up to the mountains before him. Because it had worked. Because it had worked. He didn''t remember whose idea it had been. Something shared over pints of ale, when the Dread Pirate seemed very far away indeed¡ªbecause Shoth wasn''t a fucking idiot, thank you. For all Varc¨ªs Bilaro could say that he was allowing anyone to make an attempt at the core, you only needed to be Silver for so long before you learned no one ever gave power up easily. Shoth''s attunement was a sharp thing, one he was very proud of, and he''d torn the secret of how to achieve it from a dead man''s throat the second before he killed him. No one would ever be allowed to follow in his footsteps. To offer up a dungeon core was a fool''s belief. But what happened was that three adventuring groups, bound together only by Calaratan standards, had decided on a plan that seemed uniquely foolproof and fantastically rewarding, and now they were enacting it. The first step¡ªeasy. Gather the crews, the supplies, all the various things necessary for certain miseries. Lock down three sequential days of delving the dungeon. The first group went in. Poked their head into the dungeon then left immediately, no risk, and drew straws for who would stumble out of the mountains, covered in blood and shaking, tale of a massacre on their tongue. While the others stayed within the mountain itself. The second group went and followed the pattern. Another group as large as they could manage, another solitary survivor with woe and fear. And in the end, what happened was that there were some eight adventurers hidden within the mountain, a combined party stronger than Guildmaster Lluc would ever let inside the dungeon, and now the third group was set to join them. A total of twelve, thrice what the Adventuring Guild said could delve, ready to carve through the heart and claim the core at the center. Already that was a plan for creative minds, but Shoth was smarter than that. Or at least he would say he was. There was some discontentment in his gut in how he couldn''t¡­ really remember who had come up with the finer details; why there was only faint memories of pints and taverns and a plan scraped from hangovers. But it was fine. What mattered was that there was a plan. And the plan was safety. Shoth wasn''t wet behind the ears. Though he hadn''t had the privilege, he knew the stories of High Lord Thiago''s dungeon¡ªand the gods that roosted in its floors. The divine intervention, the prayer-places, the mana found in the depths. Which was why in his party, a ramshackle bunch of equally-hungry fighters who took blood as an answer, there was a new face who decidedly did not fit in. Tall, thin, and layered in nature, standing on the pebbled beach like a king''s throne room and rotten dungeon combined, was Aedan. A priest of Rhoborh. Aedan tilted his head back, hair tumbling over his shoulders. There was a kind of serene clarity in his face¡ªfitting, that a priest would marvel at clouds and giants and death with the exact same infuriating calm. Moss grew over his robes, bracers with tangled greenwood, a diadem of seeds. Shoth couldn''t have found a more perfect pacifist if he''d tried. But of the three deities known to inhabit the dungeon, Rhoborh was decidedly a better choice than Nuvja or Mayalle. Bit less bloodthirsty, that one. All Shoth had needed to do was spin some bullshit about protecting the priest in his descent to honour Rhoborh, and he''d been plenty ready to trot along. So¡ªif the dungeon got snippy with them before they snatched up its core¡ªShoth would neatly kick Aedan forward and make him do some godly fuckery to keep them from getting killed. Twelve adventurers and a priest to boot. The core was as good as theirs. And because he''d made Aedan do the talking to Guildmaster Lluc, they''d been allowed to delve, the First Mate none the wiser. And he''d stayed unknowing up until the dungeon rose beneath new leadership. The idea was more delicious than ale or wine or blood. Shoth stood a little taller at the thought, let it trickle over his mind even as he completed the last of his preparation for the delve. Lluc had already cleared them to enter, but there was nothing under checking for supplies. Particularly with someone new to adventuring in the party. At his side, Myra kept Aedan fixed with a lukewarm apathy. Shoth''s group was strong, brutal, and gnawing at the bit for power. As his second in command, Myra had teeth enough for them all. It was only the dream of the plan that led her to allowing untested Aedan in their midst. His attunement made him very good at barely moving his mouth. He leaned down under pretense of adjusting his armour, whispering out the corner of his lips. "Does he suspect anything?" Myra raised an eyebrow, a dark and bullish laugh echoing in her throat. "Not a chance," she murmured back. "Right fucking idiot, that one. We''ll get in fine." Shoth grinned. The plan. Enter the mountains, meet with the rest of the stragglers within, and then break upon the dungeon like a hurricane. Shoth flexed his attunment¡ªhis fangs rattled, sharpening, mana coating their surfaces to turn them into flying daggers. Myra''s own mana lurched to follow, a strengthening call of an eaarthquake; even Aedan''s, the smell of a forest after rain. The Al¨®mbra Mountains before them, and the dungeon beneath. No longer would he scrounge for scraps in the cobbled streets and miseries there. It was time to become more. - The rasp of many-segmented claws against stone¡ªthe hiss of pale breaths in the dark. Spears and garbled tongues. Something rising beneath the mountains, caged by mercurial madness. Caged for years beyond reckoning. Something being woken up. Chapter 152 - Even, Equal Encased within stone and ancient mountains, the fresh air hit him like a blow to the face. Nicau stretched out a hand, pushing through the dust and grime as if he could touch the moonlight, silver spilling over his palms. Warmth, brisk and summer-fed. Clouds ringed the top of the Al¨®mbra Mountains, cast like seafoam. After almost an entire day of pure darkness and dust-choked air, even the night over Calarata was something to behold, gleaming bright and white-tack walls. This high up, the quartz-lights gleamed like miniature stars above the glassy water of the cove, ink-black and lapping at the beach. Too far and too dark to make out specifics, but Nicau knew what clusters of buildings and tangled paths would lead him to safety, to back alleys, to open-air taverns. He was a man without a home. First, the fishing village both his parents had died in and the ship he''d become a stowaway on just to free himself¡ªthen Calarata, clambering out of the cargo hold into a dashing new life as a starving pigeoncatcher¡ªnow a dungeon, earned by murder and three-day-old corpse. But oh, he would always love this. The awe of looking over a city that had fought its way into existence. Not a streetrat, not anymore, but with the grime of hunger still lingering over his bones. He was more a product of Calarata than anything else. And it was him that had just shown the dungeon had to better access the city in order to fight it. Well. If anything, that was only more indicative of his personification of Calarata. It was a city of backstabbers and betrayal, even against itself. The dungeon''s presence curled up like a soothed cat, the rumble of mana deep in the stone. Already, he could feel it reaching out to the tunnel they''d just carved through the Al¨®mbra Mountains, smoothing over the rougher passages and beginning to straighten the whole thing out to avoid long travel time. Considerate, especially considering how he''d have to walk the whole way back just to get to the floor that would take away his exhaustion. A path of my own, the dungeon hummed, a spark of excitement lingering under its tone. Excitement and wariness, almost, like a storm-bell; something was coming, like it could sense when danger approached. Handy. Nicau did not have that sense, which was why he was blindsided when the dungeon turned its attention back to him. To the jungle, it said. Gather. On his shoulder, the shadowthief rat squeaked. Bully for her. Nicau shifted, pulling at the edges of his coat. The Overlook was high enough he could see the jungle¡ªthe dungeon still hadn''t named it, why¡ªand then back up, like he could see the dungeon. "Gather more, ah, schemas?" An answering thrum. Trees, it specified, so politely. Large and powerful. Trees? What in the hells was it making? More than last, it said, a mild note of annoyance under the mana. Bring more. Trees. Um. Nicau hesitated, glancing over Calarata far below, all the bloody switchbacks he''d have to sneak down just to get around the city and then back up. He knew there was a path to do it without garnering much attention, considering he''d spent the entire time before his meeting with the Marquesa de Wolf panicking about everything and anything, but it was a lot of height, and minimal nighttime hours to do it in. Last time, he''d managed to make a leaf-bag to carry things back, and he''d limped in with a scorched, bitten leg and agony crawling its way down his spine. For some strange reason, he didn''t imagine he''d be able to make the climb if he was on the hunt for specifically trees. "Ah," he said, cautious, "could I first go back to the Hungering Reefs to gather supplies?" A pulse. Supplies? "For carrying," Nicau said, still tucking himself in like the shadows weren''t deep enough to drown in. There was the odd sensation of mana moving, flickering over him like flickering eyes. Arms, it said, in a half-annoyed half-patronizing tone. He was very used to this tone. "Apologies," Nicau said, because he''d long-since learned that subservience would leave him in a better place than ever defending himself. At least the dungeon rewarded him instead of only not killing him. "But I am¨C limited to two arms. And trees can be. Large." The dungeon did what he could best describe as a click of its tongue, some unsurprised disappointment. What supplies? "Chieftess has been making gourd pods," he said, tugging up thoughts about them so his Otherworld connection would send the images to the dungeon. "Storage, so I can collect small samples and bring back more than just what I can carry." A pause. "And, ah, I can hide better than if I were to just try carrying them back myself." The dungeon hummed, riffling through his thoughts like strips of parchment. Yes, it finally settled on, power thrumming through its voice. Go. Then gather. Well. That was as much an acquiescence as he was possibly going to get. "Of course," Nicau said. "I will do so." He looked over Calarata, over the home that had been his until it wasn''t, until the loyalty that had never been rewarded until he betrayed it. Somewhere out there, Gon?al was talking about the Pirate Lord named Romei who had gotten separated from him in the dungeon, and the Marquesa de Wolf was planning on tricking the Scholar of the Adventuring Guild to take down the Dread Pirate, and the bastard Lluc was pawing through a stack of gold won from a dungeon he thought he controlled. Nicau nodded. To the Hungering Reefs, then the jungle, and then back to Calarata. He''d started the dance of a lifetime with Gon?al, and he was going to complete it. It was time to be more than he was. - The one nice thing about walking through a twisting path in the mountain was that the return trip was much faster when he didn''t have to wait for the dungeon to carve through stone. Still pitch-black, still choked in settling dust, but a pleasant-enough jaunt through that particular kind of hell and the stone switched to the algae-threaded tunnels of the fourth floor. Marvelous. Then, with the dungeon overhead and guiding creatures away from the new tunnel so it didn''t lose one of its Named to a peckish crowned cobra, he popped out of another tunnel onto the sandy beach of the Hungering Reefs. This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. Nicau yawned, then stopped, then sighed with something nearing euphoric as exhaustion slipped away from his grasp like water through a sieve. Gods, whatever deity had given the Hungering Reefs their blessing was his new favourite, all the others be damned. The dull pangs of tiredness became little more than memories, two days awake and no worse for wear than if he''d merely woken up a little earlier than normal. Another mission, and he was ready as he could be for it. The dungeon had even taken him on a tunnel directly to the lagoon, rather than forcing him to find his own way through the first room; even now, it lingered overhead, mana pulsing at his heels. Hurry, the dungeon said, and there was something¨C off, in its voice. Need to prepare. For what? Nicau frowned¡ªand deep inside, his Otherworld connection flickered. Though it didn''t seem the dungeon''s intention, he caught a reflection of caution. Wariness, almost. Huh. He''d wondered, in the part of him that wasn''t consuming itself in fear, how the dungeon had gotten this far. Oh, he knew where it came from, ever since using his defunct mana abilities to follow the trail of mana left by dragon scales, but that didn''t answer the question of how¡ªbecause this was Calarata, ruled by one man and his obsidian fist, and there were no monsters that were allowed to crawl in the shadows without his say so. But the dungeon hadn''t just crawled. It had thrived, and grown strong, and now was settling its fangs around the whole of Calarata in preparation for a bite. That wasn''t a draconic strategy. Wasn''t for the beasts that terrorized the sea. It was a far quieter thing, the grind and pull of ancient caverns; the only explanation for how the dungeon had made it this far, when everything it did seemed to go so far from its origins. Instincts from something grander. Nicau thought that was the case. What other reason was there for why it had been so confident, so prideful, as it dug through to the Overlook, but now was urging for speed and caution? Hells. Whatever it was, he didn''t want to encounter it. So he bobbed his head, reaching down to extend an arm over the beach. "Off you go," Nicau said, with far more kindness than he thought he really should have for the creature that had essentially used him as a steed over the past day. The shadowthief rat squeaked, grooming one last lick behind her ears, and scurried down his arm. Her ridged tail flashed as she darted over the white sand, disappearing into the den before anyone had a moment to look at her. A perfect match for him, really. Although maybe for this adventure he would take his other animal companion, the parrot flying high over the waves¡ªshe could know a better way through the jungle, since he had a wonderful history of getting lost¨C At the entrance of the den, a scaled snout poked out. Golden eyes, gleaming ringed horns, and a familiar intelligence. Chieftess. Even just from looking at her, from preparing to talk, he felt the mana in his throat pick up; switch and change form, becoming reptilian, made for hisses and churrs instead of words. He still dreamed, sometimes, of his Name granting him firebreath and flight and lightning. But then he wouldn''t have had these friends. "Hello," Nicau said, a rumbled half-purr of a sound. "Good hunting?" Chieftess barked a meaningless affirmation, shaking out her twin horns. "Enough," she said, tapping her chest. "Food is good." The kobold language was developing, piece by piece. Infinitely better than it had been, but not quite to where he could lament poetry and describe the outside world. They were getting there, though. Soon, he''d be able to properly explain just how miserable it was to pretend to be fancy in Calarata. Chieftess tilted her head to the side. "Need food?" She asked. "Sleep?" Unfortunately, he couldn''t bargain for a night''s rest before heading out, considering the Hungering Reefs had erased his exhaustion as if it had never been. "I''m leaving again," he said, sighing. "But I''ll be back soon. And with new things." She straightened up like she''d just sunk her teeth into a full meal. "Wait," she warbled. "Plan. See?" Nicau blinked. "What?" Chieftess'' golden eyes flicked over the lagoon, over the crystal blue waters lapping peacefully at white sand. A little paradise of their own, full of fish and fry for the eating, everything for the teething kobolds just now learning how to swim, to the¨C To the island in the center of the second room, large and sprawling. To the mangrove sat in its center, ghostly leaves spread far, thorned roots threaded through the water. To the dryad that stalked around its trunk, claws up and barked back bristling. "Her," Chieftess said, ivory teeth gleaming through her hiss. "Cannot kill." Well. Nicau would admit to being fully biased in the kobolds'' favour, ever since they had welcomed him to their den and listened to his fumbled teachings with wide eyes, but he''d still put his silver on the vampiric dryad winning a fight. She moved like an ancient thing, completely separate from both the mortal world and also every single other dryad he''d ever encountered, and he knew it was only how he had the good sense never to get close to her that kept him from becoming one of her latest blood sacrifices to her Ancestral Tree. Cheery one, that dryad. The dungeon knew how to choose its defenders. Nicau winced, looking away. "No," he said, because kobolds hadn''t really figured out whinging around topics instead of saying the facts, and he desperately appreciated that. "You couldn''t beat her. Better not to risk it." Chieftess shook her head. "Cannot kill," she said, nearly snarling around the first word in her emphasis. Oh. Nicau squinted, mana thrashing through his connection. The dryad wasn''t Named, not like him, but she was unique and she was powerful. She was protected. "She kills my tribe," Chieftess hissed. "Cannot kill her." Well. He wasn''t too surprised at that, to be honest, however unfair it was. The dungeon made a paradise, an ecosystem, but it was still a dungeon; it wanted its strongest creatures to survive, and it had put time and effort into building up the dryad. It would hardly be a successful dungeon if it let its silver kraits pump Seros full of venom and kill him in some meaningless battle, no matter how much mana they''d get from that. But Chieftess didn''t seem interested in logic like that. No, she seemed hungry. She lashed her tail against the sand, some unspoken signal, because three more kobolds emerged from the den. Two hunters, spears raised and gourds slung over their bodies, and a warrior, standing tall with his claws drawn. Ready for anything, their eyes aglow. "You go," she said. "With us. Together." Nicau stared. "I''m sorry?" "Not sorry," Chieftess said, since that particular turn of phrase hadn''t fit itself amidst the kobolds yet. "To the world." She tapped her chest with the ring of scales. "We grow stronger. Even. Equal." Oh. Hells, she''d thought about this. Really, really thought about this in the days he''d been absent, the kind of thinking that had led Rihsu to Seros'' side and brought Veresai to her tyrant''s throne. Ever since coming down to the Hungering Reefs, she''d learned the world was larger than the one she had been born in, and Nicau leaving had only brought confirmation there was even more. She wanted to see it. She wanted to leave the dungeon to come with him. And, with some strange certainty, Nicau knew the dungeon would allow it. Of course, it would be deprived of Chieftess for the moment, who spun plans and strategies from thin air and commanded her tribe with an expertise her scant months alive didn''t warrant, but it wanted schemas, and Nicau was unfortunately pathetic when it came to defending himself against creatures that he couldn''t scream at before they killed him. Chieftess and three other kobolds would make for a strike force to take the jungle for all it had. By the gleam in her golden eyes, she knew it. And she knew just how much attention that would garner her from the dungeon¡ªfor her, for her tribe. Not enough to allow the dryad''s death, because the dungeon protected what it had worked on, but enough to get her something. And for Nicau, who would bring back a king''s bounty. To the jungle, then to Calarata, then to whatever the dungeon feared. The beginnings of a plan, small and shadow-flecked, grew in his mind. Nicau nodded, stretching out a hand¡ªChieftess'' claws were too sharp to properly mimic the human gesture, but she could tap palms with him, their own blend of cultures. "Okay," he said, mana sharp over his tongue. "Let''s go." Chapter 153 - Show Your Teeth Shoth bared his teeth at the darkness. Even through adjusted eyes and a flicker of mana he grabbed for in the burgeoning beginnings of his Gold-sense, the caverns of Al¨®mbra Mountains were far from hospitable, and those in the path of a dungeon even less so. But it meant progress, when the shadows broke; because, after fighting through the darkness and the stone and the lingering fear past the pride that his lies to Lluc hadn''t been successful and the First Mate was about to descend on them with all fangs drawn, Shoth had finally emerged into an opening and found eight souls waiting. The two other groups for their big invasion, the shaky truce that would last all the way until they got to the core, and chivalry descended into who struck first. Adventurers for a dungeon''s core. His party made an impression honed to as sharp a point as it could have; him in the front, head high and shoulders back, even past the performative cohesion of a normal adventurer instead of who he was. Myra at his side, lips pursed and arms crossed. Therr¨®n, always moving, hands twitching at his sides and sapphires swinging from his ears. Even Aedan, threatening as a beaver cub, moss ever-fluctuating down his robes. Silvers all, and some on the cusp of more. Quartz-lights came to greet him, crackling through the darkness as soon as it was revealed they weren''t Lluc Cardena Ferr¨¦ tromping in to carve open all their throats. Remarkably polite, really. But it was half the reason they were trying this. The dungeon was new; the Adventuring Guild, moreso. Calarata was ruled by the Dread Pirate but it was still a lawless place, layered over with incompetence and scoundrels who cared more for gold than order. Soon, the Guild would be hammered out, all avenues snapped shut¡ªthis was the only time such a blas¨¦ scheme could work, and it would only work once. So Shoth had gathered what he thought was the best. Four of the souls served in the party of Tier de Azkhal, a monster of a man who likely would have cut for quite the figure if he hadn''t left his wilderness home to join a legion of pirates and raconteurs. Umber skin wrought with scarlet tattoos, locs drawn and bound with bones, a bitten snarl that matched darker creatures. Likely some woebegotten past, if Shoth gave a shit, but he didn''t. Three stood in his side¡ªa tall, thin woman with blue lines over grey-tinged skin, ears sharper than most humans; a pale man wrapped in streaks of black, not quite tattoos but embedded depths, looking at home in the shadows and drifting from the quartz-light; and an outlier insofar as personality, with a half-nervous half-agreeable smile and brown eyes softened at the corners with crow''s feet, though the twin rows of throwing daggers over his chest did some work. The other four belonged to Alda Thrudkurbiz, a dwarven exile from Ath¨¢bakhan¨² who''d taken to Calarata much like a fish to the alcohol she drowned herself in. Shoth''s memories of this whole plan were stained in the air of taverns and a worrying sentiment that he couldn''t quite remember who had come up with this, but little doubt this was where he had met her, tankards piled high and barkeeps kicking her out when she sold her own brew under the table. Her party was stout to match her: a short man with oddly bulbous nose and inhuman quicksilver eyes, clutching two axes and legions of rage under his bitter brow; a lanky woman still littered with a streetrat''s gauntness, shadows curling and wrapping about her hands, and¨C ¡­and a child. Small, slight, with ratty clothes and a rattier face. Even next to Alda''s stature he was short, shoulders curled in and an unsettling quiet lanced over his face. Shoth remembered him, because it was more a laugh to see such a miserable tyke in a tavern, but he''d rather thought Alda had been using him as a mule or some shit. Not a member of her party. You didn''t bring someone still in bloody nappies on a quest to claim a dungeon core. "That''s a kid," he said, in lieu of greeting. "Stars and fucking morrow to you, too," Alda said, smile carved into her ruddy face. "Had a right cheerful trip over, then?" Shoth squared his stance. "Until I got here," he said. "Why the hells is there a brat?" Alda elected to ignore him for a moment, pawing over her chainmail to tug out a flask and throw it back. Something strong enough it scorched his nose trickled through the curls of her beard. "Insurance," she said, patting her stomach. "If the dungeon wants to bare its little teeth, he''ll put in a good word." Gods, this prissy fucking bastard. Shoth wasn''t much a fan of grudges. Hard to have them, in a city that demonstrated with crystalline clarity that they were all beneath the boot of the Dread Pirate, no matter if Bronze or Gold hugged their larders and kept them warm. Just Varc¨ªs fucking Bilaro, no idea of his strength or his intentions, other than the gore that littered open-air docks whenever someone got too far in their cups to keep their trap firmly shut. Everyone in Calarata hated the Dread Pirate, because of course you did, when his taxes made bedfellows of the Underdark and the Dread Crew had an annual competition for how many poor bastards they could shake down for the greatest prizes. All''s fair in love and war, and he had learned to cut love from that conversation long ago. So no, Shoth didn''t particularly keep to grudges. Piss on someone when they''re below you and weave lovely poems of their death when they were out of earshot, but live your life angry at everyone, and survival won''t have room to poke its head into the gap. Better to simply be a cynical bastard and hold a grudge against the world instead of its peons. But it was rather hard to ignore that she''d copied his fucking strategy. At least Aedan was a near-competent priest to make up for his inexperience. The pale child blinked up at him, wide eyes dark in his empty face. Something under his lips twitched. Make no mistake, Shoth knew what kind of corpses he''d be leaving once he got to the core, and he didn''t care for foppish fears of karma or soul retribution. Just that he was expecting to have an army at his back, and a prat not yet up to his waist wasn''t in the cards. "That''s a bloody child," Shoth said, because she seemed idiotic enough he had to point that out. "Risk your own neck bringing an infant, but I''m not going to have the entire plan crumble because of your sentimentality." Alda snorted, scratching at the singed hairs of her beard. "He''s plenty strong, you rat bastard," she said, not without cheer. "Keep poppin'' a nose into shit and wonder why you stink. Settle that head on your shoulders, allqucha, and let me bother up the storms." Allqucha? Gods, he hated Ath¨¢bakhan¨² types. At least with the countries and city-states sprawled around Calarata and Le¨®ro, he could guess the word by its similarities, but he got nothing from their harsh tongue. Easy enough to guess it was an insult, at least. Across the way, Azkhal just shrugged. Not a Calaratan native himself, though he''d been here for long enough that child endangerment wasn''t so much an element but a fact of the universe. Aiqith wasn''t kind, and Calarata even less so. And he''d had a day to adjust to the idea, considering they''d all been waiting under the mountain for Shoth''s group to come through. So he was fine with it, then. Shoth was the only fucker here with any sense, and yet with these idiots he had to play. He glared at the child and thought of only the dungeon and the prize that lay golden at its center. "Fine," he said, like he was conceding only because he didn''t care enough to argue. "I''ll have the dungeon make you a pint-size coffin when we get to the core." "You''re polite as a street whore, qanra," Alda said cheerily, taking another swig. "And so we''re pretty and content enough to weep eulogies, who''re you walking with?" Right. Introductions. The others had a day under the mountain with nothing but company; likely they were familiar with each other, while Shoth only had blurry memories of a tavern to guide him. He grimaced around his name. Myra flicked a hand up alongside, short and sharp, because her attunement meant she could be as bitter and cruel as she liked and people would still pay a premium to keep her at their sides. Therr¨®n was a shade calmer, tugging a bead of water from his sapphire earrings to demonstrate his powers. Aedan¡ªthe blind idiot¡ªwas squinting with some confusion at the eight others, because that hadn''t exactly been the deal they''d brought to him, but he was a polite motherfucker and didn''t say anything. Shoth was still going to kill him the moment this was over, but he did appreciate these spineless fools that took everything offered to them at face value. Made his life immensely more manageable. He did try to introduce himself with Rhoborh''s name, all the fanceries of priesthood and asking if any were here to offer worship to the God of Symbiosis, but Shoth coughed a dozen times to drown the meaningless words. There. Introduced. Now their turn. "Azkhal," the man said, with a voice deep as the mountains they were in. He nodded to each member of his party in turn¡ªNolla, the grey-skinned woman with blue wrapping around her eyes, twin blades bright in her hands. Hulimat vas-Yohua, whose shadow lurched when he spoke. And Pau, who made up for his entire party''s gruff viciousness with a bobbed greeting and warm smile. "Alda Thrudkurbiz," the dwarf said, scratching at her throat. Ossega, with the quicksilver eyes and rage of a champion. Lanc, who called up puppet illusions woven of shadows. And the infant in their midst, who said Gnat to the ground instead of them. Fucking marvelous. But that was the group. Twelve strong, ready for a core, ready to fight. Entirely unaware of how the others functioned or how they could work by each other''s side. And glorious to know that problems already simmered; Lanc¡ªlight, how uncreative, did adventurers know that not every single one of them had to change their name into something with branding¡ªmet Hulimat''s eyes with something like derision. Two shadow users, separate schools, both Silvers. Right. They could fight it over on their own time, which might be nothing, because he was far and above willing to cut through anyone in his path to claim the core. "Move," Shoth commanded, because he''d be damned if any of these other fuckers were going to be taking leadership of this adventure. Alda laughed¡ªgods, he hated her¡ªand with twelve as one, they moved into the dungeon. Immediately, the air warmed and coiled, awareness like mana slithering over his skin; there was something there and alive, and it saw him. Eerie shit. The floor, at least, was what he expected¡ªa long, shadow-drenched place filled with flowing straits of mushrooms and algae. Gold and silver gleamed from every wall, stalactites littered with gems and jewels a-plenty, but that was how dungeons got you; slowed you down with lesser treasures to keep you from their depths. Once Shoth got his mitts on the core, he could command it to make him a legion of diamonds big as his head, and he''d never struggle again for anything. His gaze did linger on the clutch of fist-sized brilliance right above, but the fantasy dream pushed him onward. The Scholar had told them of five known floors, and likely one or two unknown below that¡ªthey had to move quickly, before their energy waned and problems rose in their wake. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. And move they did. Shoth was a hardass and proud of it¡ªhis party, as such, was honed. Therr¨®n played for defense, calling up water from some distant pond to coil around all their heads and feet, defense from those unseen, and Myra pressed a strand of mana into his back to feed his concentration so he didn''t even have to think about maintaining it. She was a gift any party would kill for¡ªthe ability to hold entirely separate tasks, so that Therr¨®n could still wield great whips of water for those that got too close; a walking defensive wall, held intact by only one water mage. The others were hardly slacking, either, even in the unthreatening realm of the first floor. Ossega had a viciousness to him that was only matched by twin axes; Silvers were they all, where lesser things were just that¡ªlesser¡ªbut he didn''t give two shits. Anything that came close was carved open, bone to metal, their corpses tossed behind. Hells, Alda and Lanc barely did anything, tossing up shadowed puppets to distract larger groups or stomping over those stealthy, and Gnat was a ghost at their heels. Whatever ancestry Ossega had with his quicksilver eyes and short stature, axes were his real strength. Azkhal''s party, regrettably, was strong enough Shoth kept on his toes. The man had an animality to him, something fierce and claw-bound, and the edged club he carried did a remarkable job of crushing prey into gore before they had much a chance to fight back. Nolla was a dancer fierce as ocean currents, twin blades, though she did hold herself to more poise than the toothed Ossega, only focusing her energy on those that needed it. Hulimat stayed to the center, but his shadow reached out with these terrible long claws, sinking into the deaths of those that got too close. Pau had a reason for being on Azkhal''s team, beyond his agreeable personality that likely kept them from being kicked out of every building they entered¡ªhis throwing daggers were never wasted, because his mana suffused through the room like a living thing. It wasn''t just awareness, the way that Gold-sense was; he could feel eyes, he described it, the pulse of sightlines on his skin and others. So if ever there was a beast in the shadows looking to make a snack, he could feel it, and either throw a dagger or alert the rest of them. Such as now, when his finger drifted over to a flash of pale white scales tucked in the grey hollow of a den near the ceiling. Invisible under Nuvja''s protections, beyond Pau''s attunement. Not one to waste a dagger, considering the height to claim to retrieve it, he didn''t move. But it was there, and none of them were in the mood to be blinded. Shoth felt the simmer and pulse of mana. The thing under the surface of his own skin, the waking awareness of a body that had drowned itself in mana, and sent a command. From his lips, his left incisor launched forward and slammed into the luminous constrictor. Scales were scales and bone was bone but his was mana, and his fang punctured through its skull before it had but a moment to realize its impending death¡ªa half-martyred hiss and it slumped over dead, the flash of its scales ended before it could begin. There, a thread between them; Shoth tugged, mana coiled like a web between his hands, and his tooth shot back into his mouth. Settled right in, and injected him with a pulse of mana from the scarlet coating its surface. A bloody kind of attunement. One unfamiliar and unwanted. Everything he preferred to be, and he did nothing to hide the pride in his eyes as he turned back to the group. Alda had hesitance scrawled over her lips, enough her beard couldn''t hide the expression. Shoth preened. "Well?" He said, eyebrows raised. "Have you anything to offer for yourself, or am I to defend both you and the child?" The hesitance drained for ire. Alda raised a hand to her waist, where numerous vials sat in anticipation; but rather than pop one open, she turned to the side, to the slight thing that trotted at her heels. "Oi, Gnat," she called, though he wasn''t much more than a foot away from her. "Get us a lead, will ya?" The boy nodded and dropped to his knees. Azkhal almost stepped on him. He stretched out his arms to settle them on the algae, cushioning his wrists in the green. Alda took a step back and Ossega took up a stationary guard, apparently used to this, though the boy couldn''t have been more than ten summers old; however long he''d been in their party, he''d made quite the impression. And he certainly made one now. "Hush," Gnat murmured, soft as morning mist. He uncurled his hands and there, sat in the pale skin of his palms, were clustered spots of black; they twitched and moved and were almost like eyes, which was enough bullshit Shoth was willing to take the risk to just kill him there, until white bled through the holes. Silk. Hells, the little bastard was spider-woven, or some shit. Enough that every cave spider, less than a problem, less than a concern, immediately scuttled over to him with beady eyes upturned. The walls, the dens; they bled through their previous shadowed disguise to swarm at his sides. From under his lips, his teeth moved in a way Shoth¡ªwho counted himself as knowledgeable of teeth¡ªknew they weren''t supposed to move. Mandibles, pressing against his skin. He clicked. They clicked back. "There," Gnat said, and now that Shoth was looking for it he could see how the boy''s mouth moved, how something lurched under eloquence and traded instead for a lingering bite. "Follow the fourth stream to avoid the beasts." The beasts? Ealdhere had mentioned lunar cave bears, tucked in dens in the back. Had he asked the spiders for a path through the floor? "Right," Myra said, dubious. "That''s your fucking attunement?" Gnat blinked at her. Pale skin, black eyes. You didn''t make it as far around the block as she had without learning to shut up and accept some things. Myra sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. "''course. Lead on." The boy pawed over the algae, spiders clambering away now that his¡­ rain dance summons had finished, and indicated the fourth stream they were supposed to follow; it was a thin thing, dancing through the algae and mushrooms, tight in the center and unwavering. Good as any. Alda had a grin on her face. Shoth wanted to tear it off. But the path was fast enough, and the critters no larger than those they''d already encountered¡ªup until the end revealed a rock pond, matching Ealdhere''s maps, hiding the back tunnel from them. Myra pressed a new strand of mana into Therr¨®n''s back as he dropped the overhead shield, and instead reached into the pond to pull¡ªit wasn''t terribly deep and he didn''t have to drain his stores to tug all the water to the side, silverheads flopping pathetically in its wake, so they could walk over without incident. No one thanked him, because they were all caught up in a pissing match to prove which party was strongest, but Therr¨®n was likely the favourite at that point. Adventuring in sopping wet armour was a unique kind of irritation. Off they went down a tunnel, deep and deep and deep, winding around itself with little more than Pau''s quartz-light as a guide, until they emerged into a new room full of light and wind and gurgling canals. And trees, scarlet-barked and white-leaved, towering overhead. Aedan exhaled like the air had been punched from his gut. Immediately, he began a near-silent prayer, words bouncing and ricochetting off each other as he wove them into the air alongside knotted fingers¡ªand in answer, the breeze carried with it the smell of redwood trees ripe in the summer sun, green through the mist. Well. A bonafide priest they''d found, then, though Shoth had half-expected Aedan to turn around and betray them the second the time came for him to speak to his deity. Sometimes it paid to be cynical; you got polite surprises more than those that blindly believed everyone around them. The tree definitely wasn''t Rhoborh''s, though. Shoth wouldn''t call himself pious, but he knew enough to go snatch up a priest on his way to the dungeon¡ªand Rhoborh had already introduced himself with redwoods instead of whatever these fuckers were. Mana, pulsing through his mouth. Shoth fired a canine at the tree. The white slammed into the bark, a panicked yelp from Aedan, and immediately pulled out to return to him; it settled into his mouth coated in mana and depth. Well. Despite the Scholar being a twitchy little fool with the pale skin of those that saw Calarata as a place of exotics instead of murderers, he had been correct in this manner¡ªwhere Shoth''s tooth sunk into the bark, scarlet bubbled up in its wake. Blood. That explained, at least, the tug of kin he''d felt in the Adventuring Guild; blood-attuned mana was rare to find and rarer to wield, considering it had minimal benefits beyond adventuring, and for all he hid his attunement under mere control of his teeth, it was impossible to ignore that answering pulse of resonance. Little Baron Ealdhere Darlington had a sapling tucked away in his room, and he was feeding it what it desired. Curious. Alda, who had been brutish and bullish and entirely uncaring, snapped towards the tree like it had just spoken. Her eyes tracked the sap spilling down its side, scarlet-thick, bleeding over the ground with the tang of iron. "Urqukunapan mamam," Alda breathed, soft and reverent. Hells. If she wanted to stay down here with the tree-hugger, he''d normally be glad to let her, but he wanted twelve to guarantee reaching the fifth floor. "We''re not here for collecting," Shoth hissed, low under his breath. "The Scholar won''t parlay when we come out with three times the group and a dungeon core in our pocket." "Don''t matter," she said, waving a hand. "M''talking right now. Can you even imagine the kind''a shit I could make from that? The fucking intricacies?" Shoth frowned. "Blood''s not exactly fermentable." Alda fixed him with a look of such derision his teeth rattled in his skull. He was going to burn this entire dungeon down so long as she was in it. But arson didn''t match the fantasy dream, and victory did, and victory only came when they traveled deeper. Aedan was still twitching a bit¡ªcut one nick into a tree and nearly startled him into passing out, gods was he useless¡ªso Shoth reached out, finger curled, and rapped him neatly on the shoulder. "Pick it up," Shoth said, bright and jagged. So far, Gnat had been a picturesque little adventurer even as a shrimp not yet large enough to be caught in the nets, and he wouldn''t have Aedan embarrassing him in front of Alda. A priest he was, healer of some renown, and they had many more a floor to go. "We''re going." Aedan''s brow creased. The moss, spidering over his face, crawled further down his cheekbones like his god was speaking straight through him, the smell of redwoods redoubling. "There is no need to go," he said, still perfectly fucking serene, but with confusion lingering on the edges. "I am here." What a marvelous walking idiot. Did he honestly still believe they were here to escort him to speak with his god? Did he not understand what was happening? Or, more accurately, what would happen? Shoth didn''t feel anything resembling pity. Priests had a golden path through the world, lit up with this farcical understanding that the divine itself was on their side. No need to train your own powers, your own abilities, when your deity wove through mana through you at whatever strength they wanted to grant. Aedan was a Silver, but strip away Rhoborh, and he''d plummet right back to Unranked. He hadn''t been born with a silver spoon, but he hadn''t exactly had to look that hard to find one. "Sure are," said Myra, cheerful as the ironback toad corpses littered at her feet. "And soon you''ll be even lower, yeah?" Aedan, for the first time, seemed to realize the position he was in. That perhaps the three adventurers who had come to him with an offer to meet his god, guards included, wasn''t quite the divine intervention he''d likely imagined it as. And then they''d met up with eight more souls, all of the hungry variety instead of the pious, and the only way out was alone in a dungeon that seemed bursting with teeth. Shoth smiled at him. It wasn''t a polite smile. "This-a-way, your priestliness," he said, and for all he and Alda hated each other''s guts, she appreciated a good jab enough to let out a snorting laugh. "Much further to go before you''re going to leave his presence." Aedan hesitated. Drew back. And Shoth saw a lovely little opportunity. He''d worried that Alda or Azkhal might snatch up leadership while he carved himself to fit the so-say of a normal adventurer¡ªthat he had made himself seem so harmless to Lluc that they looked past him. That they thought their own attunements were enough to walk on. But no longer. Shoth reared back, sunk his heels into the stone, and held out a hand. Everyone''s eyes flashed to his teeth, readying themselves for more launched incisors, the flashiest of his powers¡ªbut he was a Silver. He''d torn the secret of this attunement from the man who became a corpse faster than he could escape. That was not all he was. Aedan twitched. He opened his mouth to respond but broke off, a wet sort of wheeze spilling up his throat¡ªand more alongside, because from every gum, blood beaded over the pink. Drops of it, then rivets, then streams; pouring from his mouth in a scarlet slurry, gagging, choking on it. Shoth tightened the mana, enough Aedan croaked, and then pulled back. The blood slowed to a trickle, red over the green of his robes. Everyone was looking at him. Wariness hung in the air like the sun. "Let me explain in more detail," Shoth said, sibilant and soft. Myra and Therr¨®n were stiff with anticipation, used to his tricks, the reason they ran beneath him instead of splintering off as they grew stronger. "You are coming with us, or you are feeding your god with your corpse. I don''t much care for which you choose." Aedan swallowed. Moss, crawling up his fingers. And he turned away from the tree. "Wonderful," Shoth said, still smiling. "Let us go on." Chapter 154 - The Boy Shoth wasn''t here to pick favourites, in no small part due to how he was looking forward to killing most everyone here if they dared stand between him and his dungeon core, but he would perhaps allow Pau to swear subservience to him. Of the twelve there, half were silent, half were bitter, and only one was both helpful and kind, because Aedan was currently a shivering wreck as his impending morality descended on him. Pau walked in the center of the group, head raised, and his hands constantly flicked about to indicate any predators in their mix. Much the same as the previous floor, though with some evolutions¡ªironback toads, shadowthief rats, and all manners of aquatic beasts lurking in the canals. Cheery fucking place. Pau held his weight and didn''t bitch about it. Shoth would be pirating him from Azkhal''s side the moment this adventure finished. Gnat had done his spider-fuckery again, this time with a collection of pale-bodied things lurking on a dead tree. Once more they came scuttling up to him like he was a spider himself, all black eyes and ghostly legs, and then the twisting maze of canals and mangrove-filled rooms was revealed to them. Helpful, maybe. Shoth didn''t trust the little bastard. Gnat just blinked at them with black eyes and an impassive face. He was as opposite a boy of ten summers as he could be. But on they went, Ossega clearing any who got close but not taking the time for proper investigation, no matter how Ealdhere had urged them to collect more samples for him to finish his first round of dungeon-made enchantments and alchemic solutions. They''d have all the time in the world for that when the core wasn''t wasting away beneath the stone. Alda raised her head. "Two more," she said, fingering a cork of her vials, taking command like she wasn''t just parroting Gnat''s lead. "Left, I s''pose, then straight after¨C" "Not that room," Aedan said, very quietly. Oh, was he now being helpful? So polite. Alda cocked an eyebrow, glancing over. "An'' why not?" Aedan''s pale face was drawn, the moss crawling over his cheekbones and down his braided hair like he wanted to hide beneath it. "There is¡­ something there," he said, with obvious hesitation. "A tree, but not one connected to Great Rhoborh''s voice. Separate." Gods, what a coward. Blood-sucking thorn-wielding trees, yeah, but trees. Hard to fear the stationary things. Even the borwood tree in the center of Calarata that only the fear of the Dead War kept from being cut down wasn''t all that terrifying. Maybe. There was something about its dark blue-black bark and silver leaves that made him look away; something older than him. Shoth had survived as long as he had by not being an idiot, even when faced with exceedingly idiotic things. He sighed, meeting the eyes of both Alda and Azkhal¡ªif Aedan said not that room, then they wouldn''t go to that room. They were only on the second floor, after all, and making good time despite it; a small detour wouldn''t hurt. "Then left instead," Pau said, and on they strode. Aedan looked feverishly grateful. Why any god wanted him as a priest was truly beyond Shoth. Their detour did lead them past a scuttling tribe of kobolds, who lived up to all their reputation as Shoth impaled the braver ones through the eyes until they fled, hooting and warbling, and left their path clear to the end. Pau peered around a corner, gaze snapping a few luminous constrictors hanging by the ceiling and a den of burrowing rats guarding something shiny, and, most importantly, the tunnel entrance in the far back. The one with a pit in the center, filled with water. Well. Forget what he said about Therr¨®n earning everyone''s grace by keeping them from soaking their armour through¡ªseemed they''d be doing that anyway. Shoth remembered Ealdhere talking about it, shitty maps pulled up, but there was something different for thinking about it and then really confronting you were going to have to drag your waterlogged ass through the fight of a lifetime. All twelve of them circled around the hole, keeping Pau in the back to make sure no one crept up on them. Everyone had an identical curl of irritation to their jaw. "Right," Alda said, patting at her waist. With deft fingers, she traded around the various vials she had there, uncorking a few to sniff at their contents before deciding on a new place for them. "I''ve got shit that burns underwater better than air, and Ossega''s not kept down by anything." The man muttered something in a tongue Shoth didn''t recognize, quicksilver eyes narrowed. His grip on his axes never loosened. Alda nodded. "And he''s willin'' to keep playing group defense, so you lot don''t lose your fat ugly heads to something coming up from behind. What do you have to offer?" Azkhal beat the butt of his club against the ground. "Strong anywhere," he said, the longest sentence he''d managed since introducing himself. Right verbose bastard, that one. The blood-stained tattoos over his arms seemed to twitch. Hulimat vas-Yohua didn''t add any ringing endorsement of himself, but from what Shoth had seen of his attunement, water likely didn''t matter. His shadow lurched and crawled like a living thing, battering back approachers with jagged claws and pale holes where eyes would sit¡ªhells of an attunement, really. There was a wariness in how he treated it, always commanding it to stay at his heels despite how it reached out like it wanted to split from him and chase distant prey, and Shoth had been around the mortuary in Calarata enough to know a rebelling attunement when he saw one. Hulimat was Silver, so he''d clearly come some distance, but if he wanted to reach Gold he''d have to figure out how to put the shackles on his shadow. Half the reason sentient attunements weren''t worth the trouble. Get powerful enough, and sooner or later they''d start wondering why they were the one getting commanded. Pau shrugged, tapping near his eyes. "Much the same in air or water," he said, offering a grin. "Can''t say the same about my daggers, though. I''ll serve better as a guide." "And I will lead," Nolla said, a lyrical tune in her voice. Elven ancestry, maybe. "Water is my domain more than air." And then she crooked a finger, and the three blue streaks beneath her eyes moved¡ªthey rippled and reached up, twining peaks, the call and pull of ocean currents. The twin blades she carried lit up, revealing sapphires set in their hilts; and as she kicked up a palm, blue trailed in its wake. A wave-dancer, one of the famed elemental enhancers¡ªusing a typical wizard or mage attunement internally instead, so she danced and moved quick as the water she called home. She''d been holding back, then, letting Ossega''s brute force clear through the first two floors without revealing her expertise. Clever. That had been Shoth''s strategy, and it would''ve stayed so, if Therr¨®n hadn''t stepped forward with stars in his eyes the moment he saw Nolla reveal her attunement. "We shall lead together," he said, chest puffed up. "Water answers my call, much like it does you." Ah, fuck. There was a painful moment of silence after his declaration, which did nothing to wilt Therr¨®n''s burnished optimism. Shoth fought the urge to punch him. Water attunements and Calarata went together like pirates and ale, and there was no short supply. But Nolla wasn''t Calaratan, so maybe she wasn''t used to other water mages, and she was, in the part of Shoth that wasn''t just repeating dungeon core in the back of his mind, extremely beautiful. Tall, slender, with those rippling blue lines over her face and arms. Therr¨®n kept staring at her. Gods, he was going to be showboating now, wasn''t he? Therr¨®n was a newer addition to the party, one who didn''t much care about Shoth''s attunement or Myra''s chronic foot-in-mouth approach to life; a Calaratan native who came with a perfect defensive skill set to round out their spread and the hunger that was a necessity to keep up. He was a mid-range Silver who''d been stuck there for nearly as long as he''d had it, and rather than going the way of the fairytales and butting his head against the mountain until it broke, he''d joined with a party in hopes of finding a large enough deposit of rare water-attuned mana to crash into Gold. Clever, really. But while he was mature there, his personality left more for the squalling brats underfoot. One of those that became an adventurer for the bravado and popularity it granted. And Nolla, powerful, quiet, and dashingly gorgeous, had made the unfortunate error of existing in his presence with a shared attunement. For her part, she caught onto his intention, because she wasn''t fucking blind. "Together?" Nolla asked, like she was hoping he would correct himself. "Together," Therr¨®n repeated, and twisted his head just so that the sapphires dangling from his ears caught the light¡ªmuch like those embedded in her blades. "While others flounder, the water will not impede us." Bloody fucking hells, this wasn''t the time to drop your skivvies and find a bedfellow. Shoth glared at him hard enough his attunement would switch to firing from his eyes instead of his fangs. But Therr¨®n just stepped forward, mana rippling from the corners of his eyes, and called. From the hole rose a spiral of water, large and encompassing, and it swirled to meet them¡ªwrapped around them, weaving together like a fisherman''s net, all loose coils and empowered demands. It kissed the stone at the bottom and swirled overhead, forming a perfect sphere to surround them, air in, water out. A shield against the world. Alda raised a single eyebrow. Shoth felt her judgment blanket over the dungeon. Therr¨®n was merrily unaffected, digging his heels further in to tug more mana from the air, replenishing his stores as his gaudy, ostentatious, useless display drained him. With a muttered curse strong enough to singe the hair from a baby''s head, Myra stepped forward and slammed a palm into his gut¡ªhe winced, but her mana joined with his, holding the concentration so that the shield could hold itself perfectly stable. Not hiding any of his strength or skill. In fact, overdoing it, just to show off for a woman he''d met maybe twice in the middle of the most important mission he''d ever undertake. Fucking children. Even Gnat was behaving better. To Shoth''s extreme enjoyment, Nolla only nodded, taking in the change. She looked neither pleased or displeased. Better for them all. A bit of a hassle to all jump down the hole in a way that kept them in the bubble¡ªbecause again, it was a terrible strategy¡ªbut Shoth took up the rear, Ossega in the front, and Pau firmly quartered in the middle, and then they were all landing on the sandy bottom of the third floor in a perfectly dry circle. Therr¨®n looked much too proud of himself. Shoth was going to shake him until his neck snapped. But as useless it was to waste all his mana on this without confirming that they were close enough to the core for its mana to refill, the third floor was made a leisurely place. Everywhere they walked had fish flopping uselessly in the sand if they were stupid enough to charge or swimming fruitlessly around the edges if they weren''t, kelp sagging in miserable gold-amber piles to the ground as they walked around the edges. Larger shadows, those of sharks and sturgeons, kept to their distance but watched them with wary eyes, Pau going into overdrive with how exposed they were. Shoth kept his teeth halfway detached, almost vibrating with their readiness to launch, but there truly wasn''t a need. Therr¨®n kept all of the floor''s denizens from harming them. Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work! Up until he stopped walking, confusion flashing over his face. "Wait," Therr¨®n said, still with the stupid gravitas he was injecting into his voice. "I sense a powerful water-attuned presence here¡ªsomething to investigate." Shoth smiled tight enough every fang was bared. "Plenty of time to explore after we claim the core," he said, incisors rattling inside his skull. Azkhal shifted, a growl under his throat as Therr¨®n didn''t account for his height and water spilled down his locs. All around, more silvertooths swarmed against the edges of the barrier, hunger lighting up their blood-hued eyes. "Later," he gruffed, tightening his grip on his edged club. Pau bobbed his head. "The Scholar said crocodilians and armoured beasts lurked here," he added, ever so polite. "Likely that''s what you sense." But Therr¨®n stayed frowning. Some of the bravado left as unease entered his face, digging into the crease of his brow. "No, it''s more," he said. "It''s¨C searching, I think. Not what Ealdhere described." Nolla hummed, a gentle, lilting sound that matched with the sharpened points of her ears. "Yes," she agreed, and Therr¨®n''s worry couldn''t keep him from puffing his chest out as she acknowledged him. Myra''s palms redoubled their glow as Therr¨®n turned fully away from his spell, leaving her to hold concentration for him. His back to the water, he faced them with a frown drawing his face into ridged lines. "We should investigate," he said. "If I can use it to break into Gold then we''ll have no problems claiming the core¨C" And then he didn''t have problems anymore, considering a pair of jagged fangs cleaved his chest from his legs. - Invaders. The armoured jawfish moved, because he felt the raid-frenzy fill him, the insight of foreign mana and the promise of battle; all things which awoke him in the way lesser prey never could. That was the world of the Underlake. High where the mana was thin; high where the invaders were plentiful. The world he had fought so hard to reach¡ªthe world he was now trapped in. Prey to prize to predator to forgotten. The Reawakener had not called him below. He knew his weakness. He knew the world was not made for him; that his armour dragged him to the sandy depths, if the goddess he tasted all around did not lift him. He was made for strength, for power; he could not swim any faster if he wanted to keep his bite, his fangs. And now, entering his territory, were those with mana. Not old. Not Old. But mana he could recognize¡ªwater, fast and sharp, used to hold up a shield and control its movements. He swam overhead, even his shadow hidden in the pull of the goddess'' whirlpool, and watched it; watched the one with the mana move its odd, fleshy fins for the water to obey. Like the wave-runners overhead, those that trailed mist in their wake and guided the currents. But mana. But tangible. The Reawakener had not called him below. It wanted him here, where he could freely swim, where the goddess had to hold him up so he didn''t fall. Here was one with mana to move the waves and water. To control. He lunged. - In a welcome break from the panic of expecting another weak invasion and suddenly finding twelve invaders armed to the bloody teeth marching through the Fungal Gardens, I got the privilege of watching my armoured jawfish shred an adventurer to mincemeat without a heartbeat''s hesitation. Neither of us saw it coming. One moment they were walking through the Underlake as I seethed, unhindered by predators or water, courtesy of this bastard Therr¨®n''s mystical water bubble¡ªI hated him¡ªand then he was missing the most vital part of his body. Vindication. Regret came quickly for both sides¡ªin lunging through the shield to get to the invader, my armoured jawfish had found himself quickly out of the water he so relied on for life, flopping to the ground with the shudder of ancient civilizations. Luckily for him, he''d rather vivisected the mage holding back the water, and it came rushing in. Unluckily for the other adventurers, that meant they were once again underwater, and now with a predator in their midst. With a bubbling roar, Azkhal slammed his club into the back of the jawfish¡ªhis bone-armour kept him from even thinking that would be enough to kill him, but water or not, Azkhal was a monster of a man and his grip burst with power. The armoured jawfish spun away, his bulk thrown off, twisting around as he tried to regain balance. Mayalle''s whirlpool tugged at his weight, tried to draw him up and active, but the short man with quicksilver eyes kicked off with a burst of sand and slammed both axes home in his back. Myra''s mana lit up like a thunderstorm, holding enhancements in place, and then they were all moving¡ªfleeing Therr¨®n''s corpse, diffusing scarlet into the water, following Pau''s frantic gesturing. But the armoured jawfish wasn''t the only predator here. Roughwater sharks surged from distant tunnels as scarlet filled the water, greater crabs scuttling off the sand to snap for any concept of prey; Nolla¡ªa wave-dancer, the perhaps single human attunement I''d known as a sea-drake¡ªlunged forward, twin blades tugging her up like current. The royal silvertooth, his horde of fang-pierced silvertooths swarming, darted for her; she was made for single targets and he brought an army. Like lightning, twin fangs sprung through the water. Shoth, mana bleeding from his eyes, commanded them to crash through the silvertooths, impaling each through their miniscule brain. The royal silvertooth ducked and wove around the attacks, too clever by half for something slowed by water to catch him, but his numbers decimated around him¡ªand then fell further, as Nolla descended on those too far from his protection. He wasn''t one to give up. Blood-attuned mana boiled from him¡ªenough Shoth''s eyes widened in surprise¡ªand as one, his horde surged forward. And Hulimat answered. The pale man scoured through with black lines roared¡ªbubbles exploded from his mouth and his shadow tore itself upward, a macabre mockery of him, stretched and jagged in places it shouldn''t be, and the claws it wielded were truer than shadows should be. The last of the silvertooths fled in its wake. Then Lanc, whipping together a horde of false shadowed baitfish to spill through his fingers, threw them all to the south¡ªa rippling cloud of distractions, fast and frantic and limping in the way all predators loved to see. Alda tore the cork off a bottle with her teeth and slammed her palms together; two rings of flint and steel caught, even underwater, and she hurled the spark at the billowing liquid mixing with the water. Boom. An explosion behind, a swarm of distractions all around, and no less than four melee combatants piercing through the western veil to hurl them to safety. They swam like their lives depended on it, because it fucking did, and my creatures were useless in their raid-frenzy to see past the petty illusions¡ªthey chased the wrong prey. They chased the wrong prey. And so, gasping, all eleven hauled themselves out of the water and sprawled on the ledge lit by flickering quartz-light. Out. Alive. I seethed overhead. This party was wrong enough it raised every intangible hackle I had. Not only were they thrice the numbers of any invasion I''d had since the day of fifty men, they moved with a deliberation and unease with each other that didn''t escape my notice. And there was Aedan, whose mana rang with a familiar redwood scent, the first actual priest of the gods who had become patrons of my halls. Seemed Calarata wasn''t a particularly pious place. What a surprise. One of their number was dead from a failed mating call so blatant even hatchlings would shy from embarrassment, and it seemed there was a division¡ªthree groups, four each, one now reduced. Shoth, I thought, blood-attuned mana lurking under his skin, had been the leader of the water mage whose corpse was now being snapped down by a peckish armoured jawfish, hunger crackling through his thoughts. And where in all hells had his charge come from? While he certainly hadn''t been a pacifist, I was used to him choosing his prey with more deliberation. What about Therr¨®n''s mana had he been so interested in? Why had he chosen that time to attack, instead of waiting for a more opportune moment? Gods. Too many questions. And no time to answer them, considering I was rather more focused on the fucking invaders in my halls. The dwarf, whose mana reeked like Ten-Fingered Bil and the alcohol he''d replaced his blood for, stood up and stretched, though her blas¨¦ cheer didn''t fully cover her wariness. "And then there were eleven," she said, bright. "Not bringing much of''a power to the tavern now, eh, Shoth?" The man with a beard and fangs and boiled leather for comradery just growled, low and irritated. "He was useless," Shoth snapped, shoulders bristling up to his ears. "We don''t need him." Alda hummed. "So your party''s useless," she said. "Any reason we shouldn''t cut you out here?" Both Shoth and Myra looked ready to murder her. Aedan looked ready to melt into the ground. "Pick your pissy heads out of your arse, it''s a jape," Alda snorted. "Llullakuna llullakuna hina kachun. We''re still going." Shoth bared his teeth, a drop of scarlet trickling over the white. Oh, she''d played it off, and while I didn''t know the intricacies of what had brought this party together, I could see how the tides were shifting. Azkhal stayed silent¡ªthough it seemed he always did¡ªand his group of four didn''t poke their head into the mix, but where Shoth had been the one to march with directions, now their gazes went to Alda. She''d cut off his leadership not quite at the knees, but at least down to match her height. A volcano fit to burst. Maybe they''d all kill each other before I had to lift a claw, and I''d both get their mana and some quality entertainment. But nothing perfect came quickly, and instead they all picked themselves up and faced my Jungle Labyrinth, the endless dark with only floating spores ahead. Already the thornwhip algae sensed their presence, its many arms flicking and coiling in; and since it didn''t exactly have eyes, I was very curious to see if Pau could do anything against it. Ossega took the lead, spinning his axes over his wrists. Azkhal to his side, Nolla light on her feet, Myra snapping with mana. The dwarf lingered behind for a moment. She watched the others move forward into the darkness, only the quiet drift of spores to guide their path. But she waited, the last of the quartz-light from the Underlake over her back, until it was just her. Just her, and the child at her heels. He was a small thing who hadn''t done much of anything beyond ask my spiders for guidance, and they''d actually answered, like the useless beasts that they were. Anyone came a-crawling up with a spider attunement and they forsook their loyalty in an instant. I didn''t like that, and I liked him even less. But something about this gathering sent ice over my core. The dwarf and the child, alone in the dark, watching their party move on without them. Gnat stepped forward so he was even with her, arms curled in, ragged hair dripping water over the stone. "Did you get some?" Alda murmured, quiet enough the others wouldn''t hear. Gnat nodded. From underneath his ratty shirt emerged three hands. Two of which were his own, pale, with jagged fingernails and multi-faceted spinnerets carved through the center of his palms. The other was torn from a human''s corpse. Therr¨®n''s, to be precise, with blood freshly dripping from the stump at the other end and fingers twitching through the last throes of death and removal. All my mana sharpened. I''d experienced quite a variety of adventurers, all their own flavour and discipline. There were common denominators, because it required a certain level of avarice, overconfidence, and hunger to want to claim a dungeon''s core, but the way they went about it was often unique. I''d learned more about humans in the past months than in all my time as a sea-drake. But I was not prepared when Gnat raised the hand and bit. From under his lips came mandibles; these twisted, warped versions of teeth clawed forward and dragged the meat to his gullet, bones and skin and nails, larger than it should have been and with his eyes gleaming black. Click-click, awakening, the last of the water mage torn and removed. Two bites. Gone. Hells. Whatever he was, I wanted him dead. Alda watched this active act of cannibalism with a strange expression of horrified fascination¡ªI got the idea that she''d seen him in action before, but still couldn''t look away. The wrongness dripped from him like venom. Gnat scrubbed at his face with one over-long sleeve, gore and grime on the dripping edge. His pale hands disappeared back beneath and then he looked up at her, unmoving, entirely unconcerned with the bullshit he''d just done. For her part, Alda was tense as a wire. The jovial, insulting bastard she''d been around the rest of the group was gone for wariness in its wake, this inherent understanding that she was juggling fire but unwilling to drop it, "Keep to the deal," she said, just as quiet. "Not challengin'' you nor your bastard overseers. Get me down there, and rockfalls couldn''t beat the truth outta me." Gnat nodded again. His lips rippled again, like he hungered for more, and then he was padding into the darkness of the fourth floor. Off to rejoin the rest of the group that clearly didn''t know what he was. Alda exhaled, pressing a palm to her forehead. After a moment''s deliberation, she tugged a fresh vial out of the many adorning her belt and downed half of it; something sharp and bitter filled the air, enough her pupils dilated to pinpricks, and then she shoved it back in its sheath and stomped after the party. Overseers, deals, and a boy that didn''t seem much like a boy. Fucking hells, though I''d known I was in trouble when I saw their number enter my halls, I hadn''t expected this. Twelve down to eleven¡ªthey weren''t defanged yet, and while the water mage hadn''t been weak, he''d certainly been the most unserious of the bunch. They had four more floors to face, and all the monsters I could summon in their path. They were here to do something. I wouldn''t let them. Chapter 155 - Twin Enigmas Shoth was going to slit someone''s throat, and at this point, he didn''t particularly care whose. This fourth floor was a nightmare, and it didn''t have the decency of letting him wake up. Right beneath the flooded hellplain above, it was humid as anything he''d ever felt¡ªthe heady water-sickness that did its best to drown men standing on dry land. Every wall was an enemy, stretching out with lurching arms just begging for them to lower their defenses, spores just bright enough to keep their eyes from adjusting but never seeing through the darkness. Shoth had the terrible instinct that the tunnels were moving, too, shifting under his feet in the laborious deed of the dead. He hated this fucking dungeon. Pau, who had originally been so helpful, was now being regulated to keeping the group together¡ªquartz-lights would weaken both Lanc and Hulimat, which was dangerous, which meant they had to paw through near-complete darkness and just hope that they were moving in the right direction. Ossega still in front, Azkhal still taking up rear, as they cleaved through luminous constrictors and crowned cobras and platemail bugs There were spiders here, which Gnat called to like a clicking monstrosity, but they were slow, bulbous things that wove webs of iron and stone right where a human''s neck would walk through the tunnels. They could offer some direction, and did, but they were stationary enough they didn''t know a complete way out of this miserable maze. Even the child-wonder was useless now. Lovely. On and on they traveled, searching for an ending to the endless; the only real thing they had to follow was Pau''s mana-sense, a side product of his situational awareness. Whenever they killed something, he could feel where the mana was going as it raced to the core, the smallest of trails in the air. Hardly enough for a proper guide, but enough that they were more confident on picking left or right when the tunnels forked, which they did frequently. Unendingly. What a mess. At least until they turned down another identical path, and the smallest member of their hesitant truce stopped. "Wait," Gnat whispered. Damn him, but Shoth immediately drew short, the rest of the party freezing in place. A miserable existence, listening to a tyke still undropped, but he hadn''t led them wrong through the dungeon yet, and he was loath to fight what he didn''t have a second response to. They all looked at him, eyebrows raised, Alda stepping back. In the darkness, the black of his eyes was like the sea. Gnat reached up, and one of the bulbous spiders crawled down to his palm, a thread of pure iron left in its wake. It sat over his spinneret, looking up at him with its multifaceted eyes, near invisible in the darkness. Click-click went its mandibles. "There is something ahead," he said, quiet. "We are going the right way, but a threat lies at the end." A threat? No, really? They were in a fucking dungeon. The whole place was made of threats. For once in her pitiful life, Alda seemed to agree with him, a frown creasing her brow. "We''re right drowning in threats," she said. "What''s different about this one?" Gnat held the spider higher, clicking to him with echoing repetition. "Strong," he said, pausing again. "Holds¡­ many. Blue eyes." A serpent, killed some tunnels ago, with blue eyes instead of habitual black. "She is¡­ controller," Gnat settled on, like he couldn''t find the right word to put in place. "Greater than those around. Chosen by the dungeon." Oh. Ealdhere had mentioned the dungeon had Guardians. High Lord Thiago''s hadn''t had any, because he was a gormless twat without creativity, but legends aplenty told of them¡ªcreatures bound to the dungeon by soul and spirit and mana, fierce and clever, more than their making. A brief spark of joy¡ªif the dungeon was putting Guardians on its fourth floor, that meant it couldn''t have had many floors in total¡ªbefore wariness overtook it. You didn''t fuck around with Guardians. Ealdhere had spoken only a little on them, because a group of four Silvers who had only spoken of going to the second floor to commune with a god wasn''t expected to go any deeper, but a psionic snake and draconic lizard weren''t things to be taken lightly. Especially not when they were choked in an endless darkness and lost in a maze. Alda grimaced. "What option do we have?" She said, brusque. "You said we''re going the right way¡ªno other option but through." Gnat shook his head. The spider clicked its long mandibles in his palm. "The dungeon is made to go down," he said, and something stretched in his voice. "But its creatures need their own paths. There is another." In Gnat''s palm, the spider hesitated. All around them, mana sharpened to a dagger''s point, the dungeon looking in at the active betrayal happening¡ªbut tough luck. If it hadn''t wanted them to learn of its secrets, it shouldn''t have left them around for its creatures to partake in. And for a boy that wasn''t a boy to discover them. Shoth found himself vaguely curious if the spider would be smited for its actions later. Maybe he''d force the core to keep it alive in a bit of petty entertainment. Gnat nodded, lifting his hand so the spider could skitter back onto its web. "Go back," he murmured. "And take the left instead." Wonderful. Reversing progress. But their other plan revolved around hope, and Shoth hated that more than he hated Alda, so on they switched around their positions and loped back up the path they''d already come, clambering over corpses and smoking sections of algae. The sharpened mana followed them¡ªfollowed them closely, really, in the most the dungeon had ever been explicitly tangible in their presence. Never enough to do anything, because that wasn''t how dungeons worked, but enough that the hairs on the back of Shoth''s neck stayed permanently raised. It didn''t want them taking this path. An excellent point as to why they should be. Gnat moved slower with this path, pausing at each fork to trace back his thoughts, but they were moving, and picking up less and less kills as they went. The lack of enemies sparked each of their excitement¡ªnothing was ever truly random, no matter how much the twisting maze of tunnels seemed to be. If a dungeon didn''t want them to reach its core, it would place obstacles in their path. Encountering less meant they were going on a route less traveled. At least until Pau took a half step and faltered. Safely sequestered in the center of the group, surrounded by shorter members so he could keep his head on a swivel, he seemed the most hesitant he''d been since the start. "Something is following us," he said, glancing back. "Not close, but fixed. Not a bug or serpent. Its eyes are higher off the ground." Fucking lovely. And the mysterious monster wasn''t the only thing¡ªthough the enemies ahead of them kept decreasing, more serpents with blue eyes kept appearing from behind, gleaming through the darkness. One in a side path they didn''t go down, and another behind, and a third slithering up until it almost reached their heels before Ossega cleaved its skull from its spine¨C No. Trying to lead them back. Shoth lived life by a very simple ideal¡ªif someone tried to stop you from doing something, the chances were that something was worth doing. The air grew thicker, more water beading over the algae as it lurched for them with sluggish arms; mist in the air, drifting through the stone, weighing down the glowing spores until the darkness was enough to drown in. Pau stayed achingly aware, their only sentinel unless they wanted to hamstring Hulimat and Lanc''s abilities, Ossega''s quicksilver eyes bright at the front. Shoth''s fangs vibrated in his mouth. He had never been more ready in his life, which was helpful, because the dungeon wasn''t going to let them avoid its Guardian without a fight. From the darkness came the click of claws. Not against stone, because that was drowned and buried beneath algae, but against each other. The hiss and chitter of insectoid voices. Pau went very still. "A dozen," he said, fast and grim. "No, two¡ªa swarm¨C" Unfamiliar they all were with each other, but adventurers first. Before he''d even finished talking, Alda tore the cork off a vial with her teeth, clapped her rings to produce a spark, and hurled both behind the group. Fire, orange and blinding, erupting into screams¡ªhurtling through the smoke and flames were mantises, tall as a man''s chest, claws long as sickles and black eyes full of hatred. Ossega howled a battlecry and lunged to engage. By Alda''s side, Gnat fully emerged from his ratty clothes, dead eyes gleaming¡ªfrom the holes in his palms emerged silk, thick and thrashing, spun as webs and nets and lashes and leads. Whatever was in Alda''s alcohol wasn''t normal, and the fire leapt for the webs greedily, suckering to them like tinder. Every web he spun was a bomb waiting, sparks blowing holes in the approaching swarm, feeding Ossega and Nolla a thin stream to bully off. But not all. Too many, too fast, and capable of climbing upside over the walls to reach those past the twin dervish fighters¡ªShoth picked them off with an assassin''s precision, culling numbers to collapse with legs curled in, the tunnels cramped and only growing narrower. One, with pink-white chitin and the sinuous grasp of a snake, lurched up from the side with its claws extended¨C Aedan reared back and punched the mantis. Mother of mercies, he''d actually done something. From the moss over his hands, thorns emerged, wicked and bone-pale¡ªa scatter of chitinous armour went wide as his hit connected, the insect whipping back. He choked on a yelp and punched it again, throwing it back, stumbling back himself. Shoth could hear how fast he was breathing from here. Pau froze, throwing dagger going wide. "In the middle!" He cried, stumbling back. Shoth snapped to cover him, fangs rocketing through the eyes of the mantis sneaking up on Lanc, and nearly froze himself when he saw it. Fucking hells. Because in the middle of the mantis horde, a perfect disguise if Pau hadn''t felt the difference of its gaze, was a new kind of predator¡ªone enormous and rippling with muscle and perfect for these jungle halls. A jaguar, with rosettes through its emerald fur, a long, lashing tail with iridescent blue feathers at the tip, golden eyes bright at Alda''s fire. It snarled, and even past the madness, the sound was loud enough to thunder into Shoth''s ears. He''d certainly never seen the like around Calarata. Where the fuck had the dungeon gotten this? The jaguar was a new threat. A new distraction. In the wake of its discovery, as they all tried to figure out how to kill an ambush predator in near-complete darkness and when swarmed by other attackers, one of the mantises slipped through their defense and slammed its claw into Nolla''s leg. The wave-dancer took the hit like a mountain for all she immediately spun and cracked her blade across its eyes, tearing out one and hurtling it back¡ªbut she wasn''t Azkhal or Ossega, whose attunements helped with defense. She was built to move like water and avoid everything, fast and lithe, and this struck her like she was still a Bronze. Blood, rippling and bright, poured over her grey skin. Everyone moved to cover¡ªHulimat surged forward, shadow snapping at the bit in his twisted reflection, Lanc throwing a false shadowed human to pull the mantises'' attention, Myra pressing more mana into Azkhal for a fierce returning blow¡ªbut the mantises were dull and simple. Their charge stayed the same. The greater predator saw the weakness and hunkered down¡ªlet the mantises swarm around its side, covering its enormous form until the shadows drank it down entirely. Nolla stumbled back, seeking shelter behind the other enhancers of their party, but¨C Shoth saw it coming with a wretched kind of helplessness, trapped in the middle of the group as he was. His fangs sprang forward, racing, but he couldn''t hit what he couldn''t see, and the jaguar stayed within the swarm until the very last second. Pau shouted something wordless¡ªNolla stiffened, blood dripping from her knee, blades rising to her chest. The jaguar lunged. It was nothing but a blue-green blur in the darkness; Nolla, tall, stark, lit up from behind, had no time. She screamed as it slammed into her with a crash of shattering bones and splattering blood¡ªhigh and piercing, still lyrical, still musical, bloated with agony. She went down. They both disappeared in the tangled net of algae. Azkhal roared, springing forward¡ªhis club clipped only its feathery tail as it leapt off Nolla''s body with an impossible grace, pushing off the stone to disappear back into the shadows. A mocking snarl echoed around them. In its wake, Nolla trembled. Her throat wept scarlet through grey skin, pulsing out in tune with a fluttering heartbeat¡ªPau choked and leaned down, reaching for healing potions, clothes, bandages, tourniquets¨C Nolla croaked, twitched, and slumped. Her blades slipped from pale fingers. Shit. One member down on his and Azkhal''s team¡ªonly Alda''s was at the original four. For a group teetering on the edge of mutiny, that was dangerous. Not as dangerous as the massive fucking cat in their midst. "Up," Shoth barked, incisors vibrating as they crashed into two more advancers. "This isn''t over!" Pau lurched back to his feet, eyes clouded. A hunting mantis swung at his torso and he slammed a throwing dagger into its neck, stumbling back, grief fanning his fury¡ªa heart on his sleeve, bleeding all over the place, but it made him dangerous. Shoth bared his teeth and kept up the fight. One death wouldn''t make ten more. Pau''s prediction of two dozen had been woefully optimistic¡ªcorpses littered their wake like a fallen empire and still more came from the tunnel, lunging in with claws raised and chittering madness. Ossega was a whirlwind in the front, Azkhal introducing exoskeletons to innards with the force of his blows, and they could have kept going against these relatively weak opponents but the problem was numbers. A Silver could fight against Bronzes all they liked, but mistakes were still fatal. And there was something more dangerous than mantises hunting them. "Left!" Pau hollered. Shoth fired a fang before he could think about it¡ªivory snapped into the distance, so fast it whistled, but the jaguar lunged out of the shadows and pressed itself flat to the floor. His tooth rocketed overhead and slammed into the stone, bouncing off with a shudder of pain racing back over the mana to jab into his mouth like a series of daggers, muffled around his curses¡ªit slotted back in place when he called it, missing the flat edge of its point. Fuck. Fuck. Alda hurled another vial at the wall, lighting it up with an explosion of smoke and sound¡ªshe slammed a palm into Lanc''s back, more false hounds spilling through his fingers, and shoved him towards the side tunnel. "Go!" She roared, eyes burning. "Follow Gnat!" Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings. Because indeed, in the chaos, the boy had stopped weaving webs and instead ran to the darkness¡ªLanc cursed in seven languages and charged after them, throwing up more shadowed distractions in his wake to give them cover. Azkhal bellowed a wilderness cry and shifted his grasp to the base of his club¡ªless effective but now he could do wide, sweeping blows that filled the entire tunnel, holding the mantises at bay while Ossega fell to cover the other side of their retreat, shoving Pau in the middle and letting Myra switch her mana concentration to Azkhal. His eyes burned scarlet. Another hit¡ªanother shriek from a crushed mantis¡ªand then they were all down the side tunnel, Shoth firing his teeth fast as lightning in their wake. Beneath the insectoid chitter, he could still hear the growl of the jaguar, and Pau never once relaxed as they ran. At some unseen command, Ossega spun to the side, battering at the whips of algae with his twin axes¡ªa perfect distraction as Gnat slipped underneath and pressed a hand into the wall. Through the wall, as he sunk up to the shoulder. Ossega reversed his grip and cleaved downard¡ªthe algae twitched and writhed away from his blows as he tore whole sections from the walls, blade biting into stone only half the time. And when he was done and Gnat successfully scampered back to Alda''s side, there was a new tunnel that had been hidden under the algae, stretching down in the distance. No time to wait for risk assessment. "Go!" Shoth barked, and shoved Aedan forward as an unwilling test¡ªthe priest dropped to his knees and crawled through the smaller gap, robes leeching colour in the darkness. Through the vines, the algae, still lashing for blood¡ªbut Ossega and Hulimat beat it back as Alda threw herself through, dragging Lanc alongside. Shoth waited a moment to call both his fangs back before following, popping into a still-dark still-cramped tunnel but without algae on the walls. Hulimat next, Myra behind, Ossega crawling through backwards as he kept lashing out with his axes. Azkhal was last, and he almost didn''t fit with his enormous shoulders¡ªbut before Shoth could truly think about abandoning him, he dug his fingers into the stone, growled, and slammed his way through. Dust rained from above. But then they were all through, and the mantises and jaguar stayed firmly on the other side. Fucking hells. Shoth sagged against the wall, breathing hard through his teeth. His mana was curling around his mouth, pushing healing into the nick in his incisor¡ªgods, he was going to find that jaguar just to wring its stupid neck¡ªand every muscle he owned shook, lacing exhaustion into a body that could not afford to feel it. Four floors down, and an unknown number still to go. The core at the bottom. He couldn''t be tired now. Even as his heart beat a pauper''s dance in his chest, he knew this was not the time to falter. But gods above, what the hells had that been? It was easy to be pampered in High Lord Thiago''s dungeon, which was as uncreative as it was surmountable. The bastard resting on his golden laurels didn''t do shit to elevate his dungeon beyond the fact it was a dungeon, and the Kingdom of Le¨®ro kept him fat and well-fed for the service of merely providing a place of mana to adventure in. Little wonder that Calarata''s dungeon had gained such interest, even with the Dread Pirate overhead. People wanted more than what relics of a lazy past could grant them. But that creativity came with creative deaths as well, and of twelve, they were now ten. Nolla''s corpse, blue-lined and incredible, lost somewhere behind them in the darkness. Therr¨®n, bloating in the mountain lake. Shoth bared his teeth against the darkness. Difficulty meant nothing more than higher peaks to climb, and he was still alive. They were still in the dungeon, but not where adventurers were supposed to go¡ªwithout the algae or mantis horde, they could take a moment to breathe and recover. Shoth was going to milk that for all it was worth. Aedan clasped his hands together, moss crawling down his face, bloody thorns disappearing back under the surface. He was ashen pale and shaking, murmuring constant prayers to a god about three floors up, sounding sick even when whispering. Rhoborh was the God of Symbiosis¡ªnot warlike in any meaning, and his priests likely followed his example, if Aedan''s understanding of healing and plant growth meant anything. Maybe this was the first time he''d actually had to fight, to grow thrown instead of fresh blooms. Wonderful. At least he''d had the stick in his ass forcibly ripped out. Azkhal murmured something in a foreign tongue, sounds curling around each other in guttural sounds and animal-like croaks. A eulogy, maybe, which was perfectly adorable, but they were still in the thick of it, and such fanciful things could wait until after. Pau was still stiff-jawed and furious, Hulimat curling a fist drenched in shadows, Lanc peeling illusions from his palms, but they seemed ready. Time to go. Myra pressed a finger into his side, mana soothing through the connection. Shoth sighed, using the boost to heal his tooth faster, a Silver''s advantage over Bronze. She nodded and didn''t offer the help to anyone else. At least someone in his party understood keeping advantages to themselves. For her part, Alda hummed something under her breath as she readjusted all her vials, filling the empty pockets and switching around what she had in the fast-twitch draws. A readiness danced on her face, the desire to keep pushing. They only had so long before the dungeon would be invaded again, and they needed to finish this before then. "Oi, Gnat," Alda said, sounding remarkably unaffected. "Got a lead?" The boy hummed, hands grasping on air as he shook strands of silk off to flutter over the ground. The hunger lurked in him, his gaze, his existence¡ªimpossible to find any humanity alongside it, tucked in his black eyes. He stretched up, palm to the sky, and clicked the teeth beneath his lips. No response. A few distant echoes, but nothing that came clambering over the stone. Gnat frowned, reaching out again, but this tunnel wasn''t for living, and it had nothing to give. Alda clicked her tongue. "All''s the shame," she said, like it was an extra copper for a pint and not a complete lack of understanding for the death trap they were walking into. "But we can keep fast for¨C" Gnat looked at her. Alda stopped talking. She was short and he was shorter, weaker, more frail¡ªbut there was almost something subservient in her eyes, keeping her mouth shut as she waited for his response. Ice shot down Shoth''s spine. He''d made a fair number of assumptions today. You had to, when delving a dungeon¡ªspending your time muttering over possible connections or lack thereof was time he didn''t have when jaguars with massive fucking claws came loping out of the darkness on a course with his skull. Alda had brought Gnat and called him insurance; then used him to find paths through the dungeon. After he''d spun little webs to trap the mantis in, Shoth had reasonably shuffled him into the near-useless-but-team-member category he''d designed long ago. But that didn''t explain why Alda was looking at him like this. "Back up," Gnat murmured, soft, but in the suffocating silence of the tunnels his voice echoed around the group. "She is above." She? Yeah, she sure fucking was, as long as the she in this equation was the bloodstained jaguar or the mysterious Guardian they''d managed to avoid. "Not yet," Alda said, in a tone of voice that was likely meant to sound convincing. "We''re makin'' it to the end first. You can go pick her up after." "Different," he said. "Not food. Other. The presence." She blinked. Shoth blinked alongside. "Right," she said, more hesitant now. "But still a ways to go before you can do that." Gnat furrowed his brow. "Are you challenging?" "Course not," Alda said, with a disturbing lightness that didn''t cover a flash of fear. "Just stickin'' to the deal, is all. You''re s''posed to get me to the bottom, no?" For all those two seemed to be existing in their own world, they weren''t, and the surrounding eight people went very still. Ossega''s quicksilver eyes flashed with something unreadable¡ªHulimat curled his fingers into a fist as his shadow thrashed¡ªMyra raised her head, jaw set. Shoth stood there, and felt the ice redouble. "Deal?" He asked, before the part of him determined to play dumb could win. "What deal is that?" She opened her mouth, ready to spill lies so sweet he could practically taste them, before she was interrupted. "Between her and Mine," Gnat said, like woven apathy. "Food for protection. For discovery." Alda sighed. She only seemed half disappointed. "Well, the kid''s laid it out. No need to worry your ugly head over it, qanra. Just a gentlemen''s agreement." Shoth looked at her. At her smile. He should have expected this. She was from Ath¨¢bakhan¨²¡ªan exile, not a willing adventurer. Ath¨¢bakhan¨² was a land of desolation past the corners shelter curled up beneath, and fragility wasn''t allowed. For an exile to survive banishment and make it to the outer world, she would be more than the typical Calaratan mark he was used to fighting. In isolation, this deal didn''t seem like much. Food, discovery¡ªmaybe Gnat wasn''t a typical member of her party, and she''d needed to bargain to get him alongside her. Hells, that was likely what the rest of the group was thinking, if how they''d turned away meant anything. A normal adventurer''s extortion. Perfectly in line for Calarata. But Shoth wasn''t green behind the ears. He looked at Alda''s face and saw what was written beneath her empty smile. "You''re going to betray me," he said. Alda laughed, a dark, mullish sound. "Betray," she parroted. "Are you mad I''m doin'' it before you could?" In a word, yes. Shoth had a rather marvelous plan that ended with her head on a pike and him standing tall with core in hand. Even if he didn''t make it to the end, a final petty revenge would be instructing Aedan to only pray for his party''s protection¡ªletting her and hers die while they were unharmed. He imagined that would have been a nice balm over failing to obtain the core. But she was speaking like she had something else. Something tangible. "See, you got some big talk in your teeth," Alda said, shrugging. "Grab a priestly bastard who the gods will fall over backwards to save. But that''s hopin'' on hope. Clutching that delusion like a babe on a teat." Her grin was sharp. "I''ve got one a little more real. Wa?uymanta atipay¡ªand plans big enough for it." Shoth stared at her. At the boy by her side, the not-boy boy with spiders in his soul. Calaratan was full of those who would serve a better time on a stage than in reality. No reason to be so proud of your plan you shouted it to the rooftops instead of keeping it tucked away¡ªfor all the many moons he''d traveled with Myra and Therr¨®n, they still didn''t know the full power of his attunement. Oh, they suspected, and likely the rest of the party did as well, with how he''d made Aedan bleed through his fucking gums at a hint of disobedience. But there was a reason he''d felt a kinship with the mangroves of the higher floors. He kept his secrets in his mind or in corpses. And here was Alda, prideful enough she''d tell him to his face of her planned betrayal, and think he would just play along. He''d told her the essence of his plan, let her fill in the gaps where he hadn''t said anything. Gather a group of twelve, trick Lluc into letting them in piecemeal, then make a charge for the core. Little guess she could imagine that he planned to fight all the others to be the one to claim the core himself, because of course he was, they all were¡ªand it seemed she thought that was it. It wasn''t. Shoth let his gaze slide over the cramped cavern they were waiting in. Pau would be useful, but not enough. Especially if Shoth''s plan worked to perfection. Not a threat, either, considering he was mostly support for Azkhal''s party. Hulimat stayed much to the shadows¡ªtoss a quartz-light in his direction to weaken him, same for Lanc. Not enough. Too different from his attunement. Azkhal himself was dangerous, fast-twitch and paranoid¡ªeven though the blood in his tattoos was promising, Shoth didn''t trust he could finish what he needed to before the man would gut him to his grey masses. Ossega, too, considering the man didn''t speak Viejabran and was a whirling dervish with his axes. Gnat? Shoth didn''t trust the spider in human skin, particularly not with whatever deal he''d made. Not worth risking it all. Alda raised an eyebrow when he looked at her, arms crossed, smile shining through her singed beard. Fully fucking content in the delusion she''d won, and he was just trying to find a way around. Oh, he''d love it to be her¡ªbut her attunement was useless. Alcohol, brewing, fermentation¡ªintricate knowledge of effects and calculations, yes, but not enough. He''d kill her later, when everything wasn''t on the line. When the world was in his grasp. That left one, considering he wouldn''t risk Aedan when Rhoborh could still be arsed to interfere. He looked at the only remaining member of his party. Myra was a horrid bitch who used her attunement as an excuse for keeping herself as bitter and biting as possible. Oh, he''d enjoyed that for quite some time, fencing insults and blasphemy with the understanding that they still had each other''s back¡ªbut there was another reason why he let her join his party. Why he kept her around, even as she scared off all other prospective members. A plan he''d kept in the back, hoping for a more conventional path that held the potential of developed power, but never one he''d discarded. And one that was critical now. Shoth stood fully. He shook off the fa?ade of normality he''d shucked over his shell for this whole adventure, for bowing before Lluc as a normal Silver on the pursuit of impossibility. The mana, sparking through his chest, through his eyes, through his teeth. With hindsight he could see in the moment, it would be safer to wait. To pull the weeping coward''s act, promise to help if only so she wouldn''t leave him behind, wouldn''t make him have to fight through the dungeon alone. Wait until her back was turned, and then act. But Shoth fumed now, steaming, seething, and the risk would be worth the expression on her face. "Aedan," Shoth said, dragging the shivering priest''s attention back to him. "Can you run?" Alda laughed, all teeth. "Run, run, little ukucha," she purred, like he understood the insult. "And where will you run, beyond straight to the death?" She had an odd way of phrasing it¡ªthe death. An Ath¨¢bakhan¨² understanding, perhaps, a more spiritual take on a soul traveling the world beyond. Fitting, for the dwarves that burrowed into the marrow of mountains and never poked their heads above the stone. Shoth didn''t bother with a response. To his credit, miniscule though it was, Aedan just nodded, arms still tucked feverishly tight to his sides. "As much as I am needed to," he said, quiet. Acceptable. Shoth wasn''t one who kept all his ships in one harbour, and as much as they were many floors below Rhoborh''s territory, Aedan was the kind of spineless pious bastard that could still plead for protection. Shoth would have to work with it. "Myra," he said, because as much as he wouldn''t go laying out his intentions for Alda like he wanted critiques, he wasn''t above some dramatics. "It''s time." She grinned, sharp. Mana crackled under her skin, preparing for what she thought was a miraculous sort of thing, grinding Alda beneath their heel and claiming the core. The hunger that had led her to searching him out, though she didn''t understand quite what she was partnering with. No one did. There was a reason he had killed the previous master of this attunement in order to learn it. There was a reason he had stayed at Silver for so long despite the years that were crawling up on him. There was a reason he had worked so hard to disguise himself as a normal adventurer when he met the Guildmaster Lluc. Something like caution entered Alda''s eyes. She hadn''t expected him to do anything but roll over and show his stomach. "Don''t tell me you''re that foolish," she snorted, flicking an impassive finger at his chest. "Take certain death in the dungeon, or a chance of survival with the core in my hand." Shoth didn''t respond. Myra laughed, this vicious mix of hyenas and thunder-screams. "We''ve got our own offer," she said, sneer firm in place. "Bow your head to the true masters of the core." Well. Shoth was polite enough he''d let her die with a final retort on her lips. He rather imagined that was how she would''ve liked to go. But her opinion didn''t much matter as he stepped forward and sank his fangs into her throat. Myra screamed¡ªeveryone did, this panicked exhalation of surprise and fear. Shoth wrapped his arms around her and pinned her to the wall; slammed her skull against the stone with a satisfying crack as he drank. As he drank and drank and drank, filling himself, emptying her, scouring power and death in turn. He was adept at this and all it took was a drag of his canines to tear open her windpipe¡ªdrain blood and air at the same time, forcing her mana into trying to heal her body instead of retaliating. Myra clawed at his sides, pulses of mana snapping and billowing against him, but more sank through his fangs¡ªinto him. The reason he kept her around. By its very existence, her mana was attuned to help others. Even if it wasn''t blood-attuned, it was compatible with him. He drank it down like the finest wine at a feast. Mana thundered through him, this shrieking tidal wave and monsoon and earthquake ripping around his channels¡ªand then outside, bouncing off his surroundings, filling his awareness until the world paled in comprehension and the walls of the cavern became known. A sense. A Gold-sense. Myra struggled, faltered, struggled, fought¡ªand slumped in his grasp, head spilling over his shoulders. She pawed weakly at his hands, gasping nothings to the dungeon, and the last of her blood¡ªof her mana¡ªsank into him. Dead. Shoth stumbled back, mana crackling through him, and laughed. Gold. Shoth, greatest of his attunement, stretched out his hands and let mana burn through him in ascending purity. The tunnel heaved and shuddered in wake of his power. Much like he''d thought, everyone was too startled by his actions to retaliate, giving him the precious moments he needed to show the last corner of his attunement he''d never shown anyone else, at least not without them being on the receiving end. A martyr''s attunement, he''d called it once, with a kind of laugh no one at the time had understood. They never would. A thief he was, and a Gold-ranked one at that. Finally. Finally. Alda was stiff, frozen, hands over the vials on her waist. Oh, where was her deal? Where was her precious little betrayal and the plan she''d wanted to bash over his head? Gone. Just like she was about to be. Ever pragmatic, Azkhal turned to him¡ªthe war-like man was built for fighting and little doubt he could have raised his club in the mere moments Shoth was distracted by his ascension, but he didn''t, because all Silvers were bound by this intrinsic fear of Golds. Prey versus predators, no matter how much they could slaughter Bronzes. Golds were above. Golds were beyond. He felt like he could take on the Dread Pirate. He felt like he could take on the world. But Shoth wouldn''t let the euphoria control him. The death of all great things, heaving their weight up to categories stronger than them¡ªno, he knew his mission. Claim the core. Don''t waste his time pattering about with lesser fights to test himself when instead he had to leave them in the dust. Let them try to claim the core. Let them distract the dungeon with frivolous fights¡ªhe had something else in mind. "Aedan," Shoth said, and smiled around teeth that were all sharpened¡ªthat were all threats. "It is time to run." Chapter 156 - Meteoric I watched a brand-fucking-new Gold sprint through my dungeon. This invasion had been teething at terror I was unfamiliar with feeling. Sea-drakes were paranoid beasts, because they were invested in living, but that paranoia was for larger things and monsters beyond comprehension. Other sea-drakes, sea serpents that encircled archipelagos, understandable threats. Twelve bastards strolling through my Calaratan entrance were not that. I''d killed one, and felt comfortable¡ªkilled a second, and felt even better¡ªand then they''d torn secrets from my spiders once more, and instead of walking neatly into the trap Veresai''s entire domain existed as, they''d found one of the lesser tunnels I''d woven through the Jungle Labyrinth as a way for my creatures to pass into the lower floors without fear. Hidden behind the algae, no living souls within to sense, a perfect disguise. Up until the miserable cannibalistic brat had stuck his arm into the hole and gotten them out of the way of my mantis horde. Then, not to feel left out, the one with blood-attuned mana¡ªShoth¡ªhad eaten another invader, drank her blood down to the last drop, and reached Gold. Well, at least I knew what had happened to Kriya some days ago when her mana went haywire. She''d ascended to Silver. Fascinating. Wonderful. I was not one to partake in fear, for all I became its master when invaders entered my halls. But there was something cold in my core¡ªsomething wretched¡ªas I watched them. As the four floors they''d passed and left behind, and the fire in their eyes as they pressed on. Shoth, laughing, cackling, thrumming with mana so bright and blood-stained it lapped at the air like fangs, grabbed Aedan and ran¡ªtook off down the tunnel, cramped though it was, sprinting away from the rest of their group. He left choked shouts and confusion in his wake, since apparently this had not been the plan, but Shoth gave less a shit about them. Just racing down through the darkness. Rhoborh''s presence redoubled, the scent of redwoods peering through my halls as he tracked his priest with cautious apprehension. They''d had a half-managed conversation, Aedan murmuring precocious things, before the more hungry of the others came to a head, and Aedan was left floundering. Silver, yes, but decidedly non combative¡ªI had no otherworldly idea why Shoth was bringing him along. Why any of this was happening. They were skipping the Jungle Labyrinth in its entirety and going to the Skylands. An invader had raised from Silver to Gold within my halls and left his group behind, despite the safety in numbers¡ªsomething was happening. Something was happening. I wasn''t prepared. Ghasavalk and Sy?alia had been my latest death approaching¡ªtwo Golds, the strongest I''d ever faced, and they''d fought and bitched and griped at each other but progressed with terrifying speed through my halls. I had, mentally, set them at the peak of progression. This was what I was up against. This was what I needed to prepare for. But I''d been an idiot. Because they weren''t. Ghasavalk had held to a strange internal code I wasn''t privy to, enough that when faced with Seros, whom his grasp of the mind couldn''t control, he''d cut his losses and run. And Sy?alia had been vicious and fierce and ultimately treated as fodder for Ghasavalk to leave. What if she hadn''t? What if she had come in alone, or ran from who was at her side? What if her goal hadn''t been merely survival, riches, gold¡ªbut instead my core? Well. I imagined it would go much like it was going now. My floors, perfect in their brilliance, completely avoided and dodged by two fucking bastards. All of my attention locked on Shoth and Aedan. Some part of me knew that Alda and whatever her fucking plan with Gnat was were still up there, still scheming, still digging through my dungeon to reach my core¡ªbut I couldn''t focus on them. If I looked away from the Gold racing through my halls, he would reach me. And if I stopped him, struck him down before he killed me, then maybe I would open my points of awareness and find Alda with her hand two inches above my core. I wanted to laugh, almost. They''d fucked me. They''d fucked me so thoroughly I hadn''t even noticed until I was drowning. Down through the tunnels they ran, Aedan tripping and stumbling as he tried to keep up with Shoth''s mana-enhanced speed, the moss blanketing his face so securely I could barely see his eyes. The tunnel they were in was one I had made for the original kobold¡ªas such, it was large enough to run in and dropped them right by the entrance of the Skylands. Of course. Of fucking course. I couldn''t afford to give two shits if the invaders sensed me reaching out to my creatures with commands¡ªforsaking the element of surprise for anything to block their path. My mana snaked through the endless clouds of mist and thunder, the booming echo of Khasvar''s presence and lightning-touched mana. The raid-frenzy roared in my wake, the ancient hunger of the Otherworld racing through all my creatures; the defense of those who cultivated it. My storm eel raised her pitted head, sparks crackling around wicked fangs¡ªhalf a dozen mist-foxes emerged from sheltered burrows to trail illusions in their wake¡ªswarming wasps by the colony took to the air with the demented buzz of murder on the mind¨C All waking. All rising to my command. All slow to react. Because Shoth wasn''t taking to this floor how he had to the others, when they sat in the entrance and dithered and formed a plan off their party''s abilities. I''d watched them take their time, plan out actions, divide up who would charge and who would defend the back; it was the reason they''d gotten as far as they had, unlike the blind massacre that had been the fifty-person raid. Parties worked together. It was how they survived. But Shoth wasn''t. He kept his grip tight on Aedan''s wrist, ignoring the moss crawling up his arm, and never broke his stride as he sprinted out of the tunnel onto the first island. A latent familiarity in his face¡ªhad Ghasavalk told the Adventuring Guild of my fifth floor?¡ªbut more present was hardened determination. Stopping meant giving me time to catch up. To kill him. So he just wouldn''t stop. That was why he had abandoned his group¡ªwhy he had reached Gold and immediately changed his plan¡ªwhy he was surging forward with this bitten kind of excitement¨C He wasn''t trying to beat me. He was trying to outrun me. Beneath the islands, the Magelords took to the endless rope bridges and stone ladders they''d constructed all over the floor¡ªa thousand winding paths hidden from sight that led them all over the Skylands to gather materials and harvest food. Bright lights lit up their fingers, mana sparking as they prepared to launch spells at¨C At nothing, because by the time they''d reached the top, Shoth had already raced over that island and made it onto the next. His attunement was perfect. Every tooth in his mouth circled around him like a matching swarm of wasps, firing at anything directly in his path¡ªmottled scorpions nestled in rock-like disguises, greater pigeons swooping in, even deflecting fired feathers from the bladehawk. He didn''t focus on the goblins below, the shrieks of the baterwauls, the distant roar as Akkyst felt my panic reflect through our connection. He pierced through the line over the islands and ran. Halfway. A cut on Shoth''s cheek from a loosed feather and Aedan nearly getting stabbed by a hiding mottled scorpion. Two-thirds. A brief delay to crush a thrashing colony of groundbreaker ants. Three-fourths. The stormcaller sprite howled as a flurry of fangs battered back her ten-legged form. He kept running. They were going to make it past the Skylands. A horror deep as the oceans sank into my core. They were going to make it past the Skylands. Freshly finished, powerful, arching with creatures¡ªdesigned to be a threat. All of my floors were. I counted their potential off of the monsters in their midst, how many bodies I could throw at my enemies. I had laughed as I built the Skylands, imagining invaders tumbling off the islands as my flying beauties picked them off, or being struck underfoot by those hidden in the clouds, or merely getting blasted with lightning before they could make themselves nuisances. What about the eyeblight butterflies, whose psionic hypnosis could trick invaders into falling? What about the mist-foxes, weaving illusions of floor for those unknowing to walk on? Shoth ran, pulling Aedan behind him, and never slowed down enough to encounter any of them. All my points of awareness lit into volcanic fire¡ªI raced overhead, tracking them, gathering my mana, but there was nothing I could do. My floors were built like iron traps, teeth closing around hapless prey; but only when they were there to be bitten. All I could think of was my Fungal Gardens¡ªthe time I''d spent to painstakingly hide the lunar cave bear''s dens, keeping them tucked away so only invaders trying to make it back out would be stopped by them. A way to keep those from escaping with information. Why the fuck did that matter? Let them leave, let them scream my name from the mountaintops¡ªwhat I needed to build my defenses against was letting them get to what mattered. Shoth had eyes only for my core. With the grace of avalanches, they charged into my hoard room, alight with gold and silver and jewels and a tiny, quartz-light fed growth of moonstar flowers. The bounty for any adventurer, ripe for the plucking. Luck-attuned mana hummed over the air. Aedan''s eyes, hidden behind moss, widened to fill his face. Surprise struck him like a meteor. His free hand reached out, trying to reach one of the delicate blooms¨C But on they ran, because Shoth didn''t stop, because he knew that his advantage was time and even a second''s pause could push the bait back in my net. So he didn''t stop. He laughed instead, a piercing, half-mad thing that echoed up his throat like magma. "Soon," he shouted to the ceiling even as he ran, because he could feel my mana, because he knew I was listening. "Soon I''ll make you grow a field for me. I''ll wear them like a crown!" Like fucking hells he would. I roared, my mana thundering through the rocks¡ªhe laughed louder and ran on. My entire dungeon quaked in face of my rage, but it could only smother the fear so much. Ghasavalk had made it to the Skylands and turned around¡ªShoth and Aedan went further. Kept going. A Gold and Silver, willing and unwilling, and my potential death lay gasping in their hands. Because I hadn''t yet moved my core down to the eighth floor, given there was nothing living there. I was still in the Scorchplains. Shoth and Aedan were a single fucking floor above enslaving me. Composure was for those not about to die. I slammed my mana into the Hungering Reefs like a hurricane, sharp and heaving with raid-frenzy¡ªAbarossa''s boon kept all awake and alert, and they thundered to my call without a second''s hesitation. Back at the den, packing supplies and gathering food, Nicau and the kobolds raised their heads, confusion warring with understanding¡ªthose that had come from the Drowned Forest found familiarity quickly, but Nicau''s thoughts rippled with shock. The sixth floor was he on, and rather content that he wouldn''t have to face another invader unless he went higher. Even two Golds had only made it to the Skylands. Not anymore. They''d exposed a weakness I didn''t know I had. The rest of my creatures rose to the bit, ceasing all other useless hunts as my mindless terror dove into their minds. They were a floor above my core. They had made it further than any invader before. They were still coming. Go! I shrieked, pouring every point of mana I had into the call. Kill! Defend! Destroy! Everywhere, water lurched and thrashed as life erupted beneath it; an explosion of everything clawing out to find what needed to be killed. And just in time, as footsteps pounded over the stone and two figures emerged onto the white sand of the first room. Shoth stopped for the first time since ascending to Gold¡ªhe stared over the pristine blue waters currently thrashing with life as everything in my halls raced for him, rapids lurching and hunting cries filling the air. There was no sprinting over islands here, not when I''d flooded the entire floor beyond a few scattered islands, and I watched him consider that. His water mage was dead, and both their attunements weren''t meant for aquatic combat¡ªa brief spark of hope bubbled up inside me, though the fear dragged it down again. Maybe I could stop him. Maybe I could save myself. Shoth hissed something wordless, shifting his weight between his feet. His fangs encircled around his head, dozens sharpened to a blade''s point, blood splattered through his beard. He was far from dungeonborn, but I could almost see him thinking, searching for the fastest way forward. At his side, Aedan heaved for air, ashen and drawn. "We should turn around," he said, half-babbled. I didn''t have to be tangible to feel the panic he oozed, a viscous sort of thing that would little doubt truly endear him to Rhoborh. He was shaking in his priestly robes as he looked over the madness ahead of them, panting hard from the run. "Back to the others¡ªstrength in numbers¨C" "Getting cold feet?" Shoth sneered, fangs on full display. "And here I thought you were so fucking happy about getting to meet your god." The water lapped at the sand beneath their feet. Aedan stared at the blue of certain death. "We are not made for fighting underwater," he said, grasping for arguments like smoke. "We should wait for Therr¨®n and¨C" He stopped, paling. Not one used to combat, it seemed, if he couldn''t remember the corpse bloating up in the Underlake. I''d killed Therr¨®n, Nolla, and I would kill them. They wouldn''t reach my core. They couldn''t. Shoth''s sneer didn''t die so much as deepen. "Tough fucking luck," he barked. "We go to the end." No time for thinking. My mana encircled him, a whirlpool, a hurricane¡ªstill holding onto Aedan''s wrist, Shoth leapt into the water. All around them, the Hungering Reefs erupted into action. Abarossa''s boon crackled to life, hunger and hunter entwined, this ancient awakening as blood dropped into the water. Shoth splashed into the reef and sunk like a stone¡ªAedan floundered down with him, dragged by the hand around his wrist, eyes wild with panic. They slammed into the sandy bottom with a burst of white, dusting through the currents, mana swirling over their lungs as it held air in their throats. A Calaratan perfect fucking defense against my aquatic floors. Was this better for me? Worse? Easier to get them in an aquatic world they weren''t honed to fight in, but every frantic stroke from Aedan or mana-boosted kick from Shoth pushed them closer to my core. Too close. A floor above enslaving me. Go! I screamed again, hurling my mana in useless spears through the water. For many creatures here, this was the first time seeing an invader, but my raid-frenzy filled them with a rage that couldn''t be smothered by confusion. Triggerfish, yellow-black stripes cutting through the water, boiled up in disquieted schools; the gold-edged parrot shrieked overhead as she darted through the cloudsire palms; roughwater sharks, grey shadows traveling like ghosts to the entrance; the reefback turtle, normally quiet and content to let the world drift by as she carried coral-life on her shell, rearing back. Hundreds of reasons to stop the invaders. More. I needed to kill them. Nicau, back in the lagoon, paced with a reckless energy that hummed and crackled through our connection. All around him, kobolds dove into the protected waters, scarlet scales beneath blue, heading for the threat I screamed into their minds¡ªhe and Chieftess hung back, barking orders, sending the rest in. They were still too far away. Shoth bullied past the first room fast enough my mana ratcheted up to terror loud enough for Calarata to hear¡ªhe just held his breath and sprinted over the sandy bottom, dragging Aedan behind, kicking up clouds of white as he ducked and wove around predators and coral alike. The first room, still absent a roaming predator I had been relying on Abarossa to bring me, but she wouldn''t, because she couldn''t, because I was going to be enslaved¨C But for all the kobolds were just making it out of the lagoon, my roughwater sharks were faster. Abarossa''s blessing made them sharper than before, made them starve¡ªa female with brutal scars from a narrow escape from with the sea serpent dove, mouth agape. Shoth snarled and threw a flurry of fangs at her, bludgeoning the flat of her face; but he was still gripping onto Aedan, tugging him through the bottleneck I''d carved between the first two rooms, and her charge was only thrown off enough to slam her fin into his side. More boiled out to match, half a dozen, full, the entire population of the Hungering Reefs. Shoth only had so many teeth, and water made him too slow to run past. I watched him choose. "Up!" Shoth roared, more bubbles than words. Caught between death by adventurer and death by shark, Aedan flailed to get his feet underneath him and kick off. Water, swirling, another shark ricochetting past¡ªbut a Gold was exponentially more powerful than the majority of my creatures, no matter how much mana I shoved into them, and he kicked the approaching shark in the fucking nose and made it to the surface. Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. And luck of all lucks, they''d drifted enough during the fight to be near an island, one of the dredges of sand I''d tugged up to have a place for my trees¡ªand Shoth hurled Aedan forward and swam to it like his life depended on it. Both of ours did. Aedan splashed into the surf, dragging himself up with shaking limbs. The ambient mana suffused around him to replace what had been lost but he was a wretched miserable shape of a thing still, deep in my hell-paradise, fraught with hysteria. "We must go back," he croaked, digging his feet into the sand. "This is not safe." In another time, I''d have found his utter terror at adventuring entertaining; humourous, almost. But not now. Not in the Hungering Reefs. Not a floor above my core. And I wasn''t the only one ignoring the gibbering priest¡ªbecause Shoth wasn''t looking at him. Shoth was looking at the denizen of the island they''d just clambered up on. The vampiric dryad. This wasn''t the isle of her Ancestral Tree, that being safely sequestered away in the lagoon, but she hunted free across the Hungering Reefs and this pocket of land was blood-splattered in her wake. Elation. She''d murder them. She''d strip them down to the marrow and drink what was left. Three on one island. Two that needed to die. The dryad cocked her head to the side¡ªthe last time she had interacted with humans had been when she was only a tree, albeit one with Rhoborh''s blessing of almost-sentience. But now she stood in a form that matched theirs, if a macabre reimagining of limbs and joints and claws. But past the hunger, the desire to feed her Ancestral Tree, I sensed a curiosity. She wanted to learn about these creatures. But not more than she wanted to kill them. Shoth stared at her. At the matching tones of her bark and thorns, so similar to the mangroves of a floor above and those dotted around here. He wasn''t an idiot, no matter how I wished him to be. He could guess what she was. And unfortunately, he''d also caught her fresh off a hunt, with water dripping through her bark-like skin and around the points of her crown of thorns. He knew she could swim. He knew the water wasn''t safe. And, wretchedly, he knew the longer he waited, the less advantage he had. Shoth bared his fangs, half floating around his shoulders and all dripping with scarlet. A plan, ramshackle and boiling, spat itself into existence; one of his incisors darted forward and settled itself in the hollow of Aedan''s throat, pricking blood when he swallowed¡ªthe priest froze, moss crawling over his robes in patches of sickly green. "Swear to your god," Shoth snarled, hands outstretched warily towards the dryad. "Get us protection from it." Oh, I didn''t fucking think so. Aedan clasped his palms together, eyes so wide I could see the white in a perfect circle around the brown¡ªhe tried to bow his head but remembered the fang at the last second, more crimson dripping down his throat. A prayer hit the air. Rhoborh''s scent flooded the floor, mist over redwood forests. Because of course he was here. How polite. He''d get to watch me kill his priest with a perfect view. Aeden stiffened as his god floated down around him, what would have been soothing if not for the situation. Even Shoth seemed aware, eyeing the water and circling shark fins with his fangs twitching. The dryad sensed the change, and took it with all the lovely murderous tendencies she''d had well before she''d sprouted legs. Through the high-arching terror that stained all of my thoughts, I felt her notice the scent, notice who it came from, and move. Shoth immediately threw half his fangs at her¡ªshe wove and bobbed around them with a willow''s grace, limbs clicking and switching. I sang a song of murder overhead, driving her on, spreading intangible wings wide over the floor. The island was small and her speed made it smaller¡ªshe leapt at them with a warbling snarl and claws extended¨C Stop, Rhoborh murmured. High above in the Drowned Forest, the canals thrashed. Excuse me? If Aedan made it to my core and enslaved me, Rhoborh would lose his floor, his blessing, his mana on Aiqith¡ªit was therefore in his best interest I killed these invaders before they got the chance. I did no such thing as stopping. The dryad kicked up, slavering, blood dripping from her fangs as her prey got closer. Aedan managed half a shriek around Shoth''s fang. All around, the star-burn crackled, picking up like lightning about to strike. He is not here to claim your core, Rhoborh said, echoing and jagged. What fucking confidence. I didn''t care how pious priests were, any human would be overcome with avarice when they set eyes on my core. If Aedan made it to my seventh floor, he was going to enslave me, and this stupid motherfucking god was trying to stop me¨C Shoth lurched back and slammed a kick into Aedan''s back, hurling the priest forward, a blockade between him and the dryad. The longer she spent killing Aedan, the longer she was distracted, the more time he had to reach me. The closer he got. Panic drained me down to a basal thing. My dryad, unnamed though she was, felt the reflection and reached out¡ªher terrible claws arched over Aedan''s face, fangs bared¨C Mana, freed from some unseen shackle, crashed into the dryad. She shrieked, thrashing, but whatever had been unleashed into my dungeon was invulnerable¡ªit pinned her in place as Aedan breathed terror into her bark-covered arm. I lurched and spiraled around, digging sharpened mana into the blockade, trying to free her, to let her defend me, to help me survive¨C Redwoods swarmed me. They sank into my core and grew roots like chains. He is not yours to kill, Rhoborh boomed, terrible in his wrath. Our deal was signed before the God of Magic¡ªyou will not break it. I babbled like a baitfish between a hunter''s fangs, throwing myself with useless repetition at Rhoborh''s mana. I didn''t fucking care he was a god, it wasn''t his life on the line, it was mine¨C Rhoborh''s voice softened¡ªnot soft, but more gentle. I will not allow him to take you, he said, and once more his mana wrapped around me, snaking past the jagged edges of my terror. But the other is not under my control. Go! Defend! He released me like a fire-drake''s breath¡ªI crashed outward, slamming back into my dungeon. Aedan stayed frozen beneath the dryad, waiting for a death I wasn''t allowed to give him, but much like Sy?alia before he had been changed from ally to distraction. In the time Rhoborh had taken from me, Shoth abandoned the priest and dove into the third room of the Hungering Reefs. Gone. Going. Faster. The vampiric dryad snarled, wrestling with invisible bounds, unable to attack Aedan but unwilling to leave him¡ªI fled from the scene and followed the Gold, the monster, the killer, into my third room. The last of the Hungering Reefs; my room of predators. The sea serpent was here, twisting through the false pirate shipwreck I''d sunk in the center, and Seros, bracing himself beneath the quartz-lights in the far back. Two monsters, fast, lethal, dangerous¡ªmy greatest defense against those that sought to consume me. To control me. Eldest was Seros, and he had felt my fear when Romei had stretched her hand out to grab my core¡ªever since Shoth had drained his teammate dry, ascended to Gold, and my terror sang through my mana, he had been alert and hungering. Even now, he watched the water before him with bristling tension, iridescent frills extended and mana lapping at the air. His tail whipped against the stone. He was guarding the tunnel down a floor, down to where I was, to where I waited, defenseless, exposed. But his true strength lay in the water, in the Song he had only just learned to sing¡ªI coiled through our connection, pouring plans into his mind. He needed to press forward. He needed to fight. Shoth hurled more fangs at a swarm of greater crabs, puncturing emerald carapaces and sending those younger drifting down to the sand in lifeless heaps. My fear ratcheted higher. Seros hissed, a rumbling curse straight from his budding draconic legacy, and dove into the water. Half a room away was Shoth and still the water was instantly no longer his to partake in¡ªa melodic roar and currents sprang into existence, weaving through the tower-reefs, a labyrinthian nightmare for any that didn''t know the Song. Seros lashed his mighty tail and created something to rival Mayalle, every drop of mana spun into maelstrom all creatures of the deep oceans feared. Even the sea serpent bucked and swerved against it. And made himself weak. It happened too fast to stop. Seros wove a trap, a perfect prison, an impossibility to defeat the invader¡ªand changed the sea serpent from ally to hindrance, fighting against the new currents he whipped up. He was used to the Hungering Reefs as it typically was, the only currents from the temperature differences I''d woven through rooms; what Seros created was far beyond that, and he didn''t know how to deal with it. How to swim around that which tugged and pulled at his enormous length. That was how my dungeon worked¡ªI kept my stronger creatures from killing each other, because I needed them, because I wanted their strength; but a lack of murder didn''t mean companionship. Seros and the sea serpent dueled, fought each other, sharpened their fangs on each other''s scales¡ªand when they approached death, they pulled back and went their own way. They never hunted together. They never worked together. And as Seros changed the Hungering Reefs into a death trap, something to stop Shoth from ever getting close to my core, he both stopped the invader and my sea serpent. Shoth saw that. Free of Aedan''s dead weight, he moved with a deliberation and agility that suggested a finer control over his body than even his Gold strength should have provided; over the white sand he ran, heading straight for them both and heedless of the water, eyes burning. Shoth opened his mouth¡ªa gummy maw bleeding scarlet¡ªand fired every single fang he had at the sea serpent. Impossibly great though he could be, he was still mortal. He shrieked and fell back in a cloud of crimson, unable to dodge, scales torn free and frills shredded and¨C And one eye shattered and popped, spilling gore into the water. Gone. Destroyed. Just like that, the two-pronged approach of two of my fiercest creatures was missing a side, leaving an opening in the gap. Shoth''s mana lurched and all his teeth returned to him, slotting into his mouth, and I watched him almost fucking glow¡ªthe sea serpent''s blood filled his mouth and funneled mana into his channels, bright and impossible. He kicked off the ground in a false enhancer''s move, no precision or intention beyond just shoving mana into his body where his attunement didn''t normally put it, and he exploded upward with all the strength of a volcano. He shot out of the surface of the water high enough his feet cleared the waves¡ªa perfect arc high above all danger¡ªand slammed back in on the other side of the sea serpent, who thrashed through half-blindness and pain. Seros whipped around, our soul''s connection lighting up like a storm, but while Shoth would never win in a fight against him, his plan didn''t rely on that. Didn''t need strength, didn''t need clever tactics, didn''t need everything I''d spent months of my new life devoting myself to. He just needed speed. And with the mana boost from brutalizing the sea serpent, Shoth kicked through the third room of my Hungering Reefs faster than Seros could dispel his own currents and make new ones. His plan had been to create a funnel, to shove anyone in the floor directly into his fangs¡ªbut his grasp on the Song was still new, still tenuous. Stronger than currents, stronger than the cove outside, but Shoth was a damnable fucking Gold; the mana he held was loud and shrieking and powerful. He pushed through the currents, kicking off the ground with a blast of white sand, right as Seros'' fangs snapped through where he had been. My mana screamed. Shoth clambered out of the water, laughing. Laughing, a deranged, astonished kind of laugh¡ªhe hadn''t expected that to work, to escape nearly fucking unscathed, to make it through an unknown floor with no more loss than a man he''d dragged alongside him. Behind him, the water boiled, Seros'' fury as he dragged himself up to the ledge¡ªbut Shoth just picked himself up and ran blind into the tunnel, never stopping, never slowing. There were no words in draconic, Viejabran, runes, or anything else in the world to explain my terror. The sheltered world I''d existed in, waiting for invaders just for the mana they''d provide; the paradise I''d made for myself, creating Havens, shipwrecks, hoard rooms. A thousand things for comfort. Not enough for survival. Seros was already plunging his way down to the Scorchplains¡ªbut he was behind, and Shoth ran faster. That was it. I had no one else to speak with. All creatures in the Scorchplains were unnamed, untested, little more than those I''d wanted to fit the fiery place. I shared no connection to the Otherworld with any of them. No Named. No Seros. My strongest creature, my first, my most precious; left behind. In the water, he was lightning¡ªpulled by the Song and the currents and the miraculous abilities he''d woven from understanding¡ªbut on land, he was limited by four limbs and weight. Shoth ran like the hells bayed at his back. Seros wouldn''t be able to catch up. An invader on the floor of my core, and nothing before him. Panic spread over survival like an insidious infection, but I lurched past it¡ªgrappled for a plan past anything, everything. I hadn''t stopped Shoth, but I had gotten him to pause; broken his concentration, if only for a second. I just had to do it again for longer. For fatally long. The Hungering Reefs had slowed him down by sheer presence of something he couldn''t just run over¡ªthe Scorchplains would have to do the same. Choked in darkness and omnipresent smoke, it had something¡ªeven the strange awareness that Golds had only extended to mana, sensing living things and what they wielded, not environments. So perhaps he could sense the bounding deer and scorch hounds charging for him, but not where my core laid. Unless he could sense the mana spilling out of my core and follow that. I didn''t know. I didn''t know. There was no subtlety, not anymore¡ªmy mana roared over the plains with no heed given to whether Shoth would hear it. Deep in their lava pools, magma salamanders raised their bulbous heads, skin cracking and weeping molten rock. Spined lizards flecked their detachable darts and skittered forward, following my cry, snaking through the darkness on clever limbs; scorch hounds by the litters, the packs, the dozens, came trotting out of their hunt with their ears raised and eyes lit with embers. And¨C The kobold. One of my first creatures, from so long ago when I''d only had two floors, never evolving, never following the others of his creed¡ªhe''d come down here to stay with the scorch hound he''d chosen to tame, for what little progress he''d made. Bestial he''d become to match, hunting with claws and a fledging smoke-breath, eyes wide and black in the darkness. In the eldest group of scorch hounds he came running, loping over the basalt with his claws near dragging and horns thrown back. All of them. So few evolved, so few tested; the problem with lower floors, where the mana was more dense and the invaders non-existent. All they had ever fought was each other. Strategy. Strategy. I didn''t have anything¡ªmy raid-frenzy was a blanket thing, a summoning cry for all dungeonborn to defend. But I relied on my Named to spearhead the charge, to lead those with lesser intelligence into clever twists and backshot attacks. No longer. They weren''t here. All I had was those that were. The magma salamanders were slow, hideously so. Shoth would make it to my core long before they got out of their lava pools. The spined lizards were fast and ranged, but not enough for someone with a Gold-sense. The bounding deer were beings made of fear and built for running away. The mottled scorpions stayed for stationary, hidden attacks. The scorch hounds. It had to be them. They raced forward, clawing up grit and dust, an echoing charge past the din. Fire choked in their throats, these burning bites to latch into unknowing flesh. Their hunger. Their drive. Shoth''s plan relied on running. On speed. No matter the death lurking in every corner, he wouldn''t stop to examine it, to come up with tactics through the dark; he just ran blindly on. But he had a Gold-sense. My scorch hounds reached him, a thundering charge over the stone; the eldest, the largest, the one the kobold was determined to train, ran to him, ears pinned back and fire in her throat. Her claws pushed off the uneven pillars, maw agape, death in all of her thoughts¨C Mana redoubled, bouncing off Shoth''s awareness. His head whipped in her direction. He snarled at the smoke. Three fangs burst from his mouth, snapping through the air like ivory thorns, thudding into her chest¡ªthe scorch hound yelped, thumping to the ground, and¨C And stood back up. She seemed as surprised as I was¡ªbecause instead of gaping holes pouring blood over the basalt floor of her home, she was just flinching from budding bruises. Yelping, whining, but clambering back up to her paws. I wasn''t bound by the darkness and smoke that filled the Scorchplains; my mana saw more, saw all. And I was the only one to see what had happened. Shoth''s fangs were just that¡ªfangs. Small and sharp enough to pierce through most creatures, because the vast majority of creatures only grew enough armour to the point that it didn''t stop them. It was the reason my armoured jawfish had died out; too much weight, too thick, and the creature couldn''t hunt enough to support it. In much the same vein, my scorch hound only had fur. And the houndspore mushrooms. Those strange, bristling masses over her chest and back¡ªorganic black-grey growths, with a hardened exterior and spongy interior. Thick enough she''d had to figure out how to walk again, how to hunt, how to move¡ªand thicker than any other creature would have, because it was two creatures in one. Thick enough that Shoth''s fangs sank into the mushroom flesh and got stuck. I didn''t know what I was thinking. I didn''t know if I was thinking. All I knew was that there was something to stop Shoth from enslaving my core less than a thousand feet away, and it was all I had. Go! I howled, a canine warcry¡ªthere was no time for packs fighting against each other for territory, for prey, for food; there was just the monster in their midst, and the death that hung imminently over us all. The strategy came to me and I plunged into each of their minds, tearing through their memories, their understanding¡ªthose with the houndspore armour lunged to the front, becoming as shields to those without, a legionnaire of protection. Shoth ran on, stumbling and tripping over the uneven pillars. He fired more fangs; scorch hounds fell and stumbled as fangs embedded in their armour tugged them in the opposite direction, some pulling free, some firmly stuck. But my plan, fledgling though it was, held¡ªthe shield hounds protected those without the mushroom, giving them opportunities to lunge around the back and cut off Shoth''s charge, force him to change directions to avoid running into them. With his Gold-sense, he could feel them, but not the terrain. Slowly, slowly, they started to push him away from the dead sprint towards my core. But it was a stalemate. They couldn''t attack before he would fire on them with his fangs; and for all their armour protected them, it wasn''t infallible. Already two had died, and the scratches one had struck over his calf hadn''t stopped him. He kept running. He kept running. Shoth, blind, missing half his fangs, stumbled over the halfway point in the Scorchplains. And suddenly I was young again, trapped in a mountain with a single room as my halls, the den of a lizard that had no reason to help me, and there was a human named Romei with a torch that burned my spiders and feet that squashed my mushrooms, and she saw me, and she knew what I was, and what that meant, and she reached for me, and she tried¨C I roared. It wasn''t like before. What I''d had wasn''t a dungeon¡ªjust a room a dungeon core lived in. Shoth existed as an untouchable mass, a siphon for any mana that couldn''t raise a stone tomb or hurl stalactites from the ceiling or spawn a sarco crocodile right on his toes. I couldn''t. But I had creatures now. And they heard my desperation. The Scorchplains awoke. A truce that had never existed and likely never would again surged as the bounding deer charged, fast and impossible¡ªtheir towering leader, twelve points along his antlers, led the stampede with a throaty cry. Prey they were, but not when their very existence was threatened; not when I needed them. At their feet, darting around hooves and baying murder, the three packs of scorch hounds became one. Those that had armour, those that didn''t; pups and elders and hunters and everything. Everyone. Shoth flinched, the stampede erupting through the darkness. I felt his Gold-sense go wild, screaming of the dozens of lives racing for him, all directly ahead. His choice was to puncture through or turn back. His plan only allowed for one. He dug his boots into the stone and ran. They met him with the crash of a storm against the coast; blood against blood against blood. The leader of the bounding deer died¡ªgurgled around a punctured throat, hooves scratching at the basalt to kick up sparks. A scorch hound clawed through the wound in her lung to snap her fangs into the muscle of his leg, fire and burnt flesh crackling between her fangs, before incisors spilled her guts over the stone. Spined lizards, skittish and small, answered his swarm of weapons with a cloud of their own. Darkness for all, but his progress slowed¡ªslowed¨C And then, from the darkness, deep scarlet scales and twisting horns, my kobold slammed into his back. Down in a thrashing pile of limbs¡ªfar from the whelp who shook rats to fight his battles for him, he was built by hunting alongside the scorch hounds in the unforgiving world of the Scorchplains. Shoth was taller than him, and stronger, but he was caught unawares and blinded by the smoke¡ªthe kobold crashed them both into the ground. The invader bellowed fury, twisting around to lurch back to his feet; but my kobold weathered the blows, tangling through his legs to keep him down. To struggle around to get on top. We didn''t have a connection through the Otherworld; no soul singing alongside mine. But I felt the victory burning through his thoughts regardless. Shoth was dangerous. Impossibly so. He''d found a weakness I didn''t know I had, evolved to Gold, and made it less than half a floor away from my core¡ªbut he had gotten there by being fast, by being untouchable, and I had finally slowed him down. When I was a sea-drake, I had been immortal, every time except one. Shoth was unstoppable, up until the beast-tamer kobold sank his claws into the Gold''s throat and tore it open. Chapter 157 - Split Tines In the wake of that fucking nightmare, they all stared at each other. And at the corpse. Myra, the poor bastard, was sprawled flat and bloodless over the ground¡ªher long hair tangled into the crevasses of stone where she''d been dropped like a depleted vein, nothing more than a memory. Bloody figured how Shoth made a team. Alda Thrudkurbiz gave herself half a second to hate a shadow. The issue wasn''t the corpse, which was an issue in of itself. No, the issue was what had made the corpse. She wasn''t scared of many things. Hard to be, when the world outside Ath¨¢bakhan¨² functioned like canaries in open fields. Water was safe to drink; paths were safe to walk; skies were safe to admire. Hells, even the cold was the kind for wool blankets and hearthstones, not death. A perfectly soft existence. But she knew she was Silver. She knew the strength of Golds. Shoth had been an understandable evil, the kind she''d been familiar with long before coming to Calarata. Make a plan, find a group perfect to slip under the radar of the Guildmaster without being dead weight, drip some of her brew into his drink while they talked specifics, and then set up for a proper launch. He''d played his part in her stageplay with lovely precision. Up until he''d killed Myra, ascended, and ran. From twelve to eleven to ten to nine to seven. Not odds she favoured, even when Shoth had been little more than an irritant and bastard. She didn''t have much a fear he''d win¡ªyou couldn''t claim a dungeon core with two people, especially with one of them useless as sand deposits¡ªbut his running meant their lack. Seven wasn''t a comfortable number. She didn''t need comfort, not in the way high-water nobles plucking their pick of the alms needed it. But she needed a guarantee¡ªbecause she''d gambled more than she wanted to say on this thing. On the delve, on the numbers, on Gnat''s presence. Shoth noticing her betrayal hadn''t been a problem. But what spurred it might be. At her side, quiet as ever, Gnat stared at the body. His fingers twitched under his rags. Oh, she''d keep this truce right as rain, so long as Gnat didn''t start nibbling on a corpse like that was a normal fucking thing to do. Tier de Azkhal was down to three. She had four. The cards, though cheated, still kept the ace in her grasp. So Alda exhaled, shaking out her arms. Myra was dead, they were down to seven, and there was still a dungeon left to conquer. "He''s a right bastard," she said, with a deliberate bite to her words. "Poor fucker, though. Wouldn''t wish that on anyone." Myra, eyes empty, bloodless neck against the stone. Azkhal murmured something under his breath, another eulogy in that animalistic tongue of his. Lanc plucked and wove a wreath he blew from his palm; his own kind of death-speech, maybe. They''d only known Myra from the start of the delve, and she''d been a bitter little asshole the whole time, but death like that wasn''t something you deserved. Not a fair fight. But Shoth''s party was now gone. Dead or running. He''d been the biggest threat as a leader, considering Azkhal was quiet and hungry for the core in a way that smaller things didn''t matter¡ªbut it also meant they were all silent, staring at each other, standing over a corpse. She''d watched entire walls of warriors get cut down in situations like this. "Our alliance stands," Pau said, purposefully light, like there wasn''t a dead member of said alliance sprawled around their feet. Then, just to outdo his faux confidence¨C "Right?" Phenomenal. Someone else had done it. "All the better to me," she said, glancing around. Her hand never quite left her vials. Ossega bared his teeth. "They are not trustworthy," he said, thick in the gnomish tongue grown from the shadows of Ter Asla. "Searching for backs and tendons instead of eyes." Right dramatic bastard, that one. Lucky his skill with axes outweighed the poetry he seemed determined to spew. At least she was the only one who had to suffer it. He could''ve learned Viejabran, or Le¨®renthan, or any of the languages found outside of Ter Asla, but he hadn''t given a shit. Just joined with the first adventuring party that spoke his tongue and called it square from there. He understood them fine enough, time and danger beating it into his skull, but talking was far past his interest. "He agrees," she said, perfectly blithe. What was Ossega going to do, correct her? He wanted the core as badly as them all. Hadn''t told her why, hadn''t told her what for; didn''t matter. Anyone with a heart to beat and a mind capable of crashing two thoughts together like a drillshaft wanted a dungeon core. She did. Gods, how she wanted one. The dream that''d lived in her skull since she''d lost her ancestral helmet¡ªget a dungeon core, take it to Le¨®ro, demand a territory¡ªsure, be a High Lady and play by their rules, but to a point. The core gave her power. Gave her everything she could want. She''d claim her land, sprawl it over the mountains ripe and unmined, and make it what Ath¨¢bakhan¨² should have been. Already she knew what she''d call it¡ªAt''aba Qanu. The original name, before it''d been grinded down for the wider world to speak without its true meaning; the sword rejoiced. Named for the victory they''d finally scraped from a land so unforgiving all others had failed and given up¡ªbut not them. Not the dwarves of At''aba Qanu. Not the conquerors. Then they''d grown fat and lazy and content, and changed their name so others could know it, and brought in rules from the outside world, and forgotten that it was supposed to be just them in the mountains, the only ones who had surmounted it. Alda reached up to her hair, to the braids she''d woven down the length¡ªthe specific placement of knots and beads through the coils, the one element of her language that had never been known by outsiders. The promise she''d threaded into her very being, since she''d been exiled and had the previous strands cut from her head. Let Shoth drink scarlet and run away. Let them squint suspicion at her back and ready their blades. Let them try. "There''s nothing to it," she said, shrugging. A grin was easy enough to give life to. "S''either pushin'' on or goin'' back, and I know my answer." Shoth was too bitter to be needed, and Aedan was dead weight at best. Twelve or seven, she''d get the core. At her side, Ossega matched her stance, the leather of his axes creaking. No words necessary for the fire in his quicksilver eyes to be answer enough. Lanc gave a similarly silent nod, plucking more shadows to gather between his fingers in preparation. Gnat didn''t respond, but he didn''t need to. He followed her. Azkhal glared at the surrounding stone, waiting for Shoth to come try and bite someone else''s neck, like the same trick would work twice. Hulimat reached down to his legs, a coil of his shadow lurching up to press against his palm, pale white blotches where eyes should have been. Nasty fucker. Alda didn''t trust that attunement any more than she could blow it up. Pau exhaled, rubbing at the back of his neck, dust fluttering off his boiled leather armour. Still cautious, since he was an oddly paranoid beastie for being so open, but he nodded. "We''re ready," he said, fingering the hilts of his throwing daggers. Speaking for the group, it seemed. How lovely. Decided and declared. Alda spared one last glance behind, just to make sure Gnat was following with his miserable dead eyes, and strode on through the tunnel. Though it could have been similar to the floor they''d just escaped from, it wasn''t¡ªno more of that reaching algae, ridged for nothing more than a better grip around their throats, and the mantis count stayed firmly at zero. The mana was softer even, no more the dungeon focusing on; though likely that was just because it was chasing Shoth and Aedan, wherever they were. It left them walking with a near quiet through the shadows, only Pau''s gaze and her stone-sense to guide them. It hurt more than she thought it would to be underground. Even in this baffling array of pathways and switchbacks and not a hint of symmetry, cold stone and darkness sung to her like a mother''s lullaby. The outside world saw her as an amalgamation of dwarf, laughed at her height and demeaned her beard, but they didn''t understand what that meant, not really. Ath¨¢bakhan¨² could exile her, but it couldn''t remove the roots it''d grown in her soul. She''d fled for, and from, and to¡ªbut still she traced a hand over limestone changing to basalt, over amygdaloidal deposits of epidote, calcite, agate. She''d have this again, one day. She''d remake what the others forgot. The tunnel was longer than she thought it would be, a twisting maze through the darkness; no more algae meant their guards could be lowered, but now there wasn''t even the drifting spores to light their path, and Hulimat was still too tetchy to call for quartz-lights. Alda kept clicking her fingers together for sparks just to make sure she didn''t fall flat on her face and blow the entire group up. Could be considered a bad look. Standing in the center of them all, foot raised to take a step forward, Pau went very still. A little too quick after the jaguar¡ªAlda uncorked her vial of cthonian russets, her only, and readied her rings for a spark long before she consciously realized it. It paid to be alert but hells, she was bordering on jumpy. "Oi?" She snapped, twitching a finger for Ossega to keep his axes up. They weren''t having another Shoth poke his malodorous head into the mix. "What is it?" Pau swallowed. Unease dripped from his eyes. "Ah," he said, dithering on the spot. "We''ve¡­ lost a member, I think." The fuck? A headcount, fast and practiced¡ªAzkhal towering overhead, Lanc the next highest, Hulimat slouching with his shadow crawling up his ankles, Pau with nerves crevassing into his face, Ossega''s bared teeth, her own unimpressed expression. Her own empty heels. No Gnat. No lynchpin. Alda slammed her fist into the wall. He was a clever brat, with how he''d found her, convinced her, dragged a promise that seemed too good to be true to lay at her feet like carrion. Slipped away right as their attention pointed forward; only Pau''s ability to sense sightlines, used to make sure the party didn''t get lost in the dark tunnels, meant his escape was noticed. Too late by far, though. They could see he was gone all they liked, but he wasn''t coming back. He''d found what he was here for. She hadn''t challenged him, not the way he''d assumed; no intentions to meet Gnat''s overseers, whoever or whatever they were. The deal stood. He protected her down to the core, and then she''d feed him eleven corpses and bind the core to give him what he wanted. The presence, he called it, with a startling reverence in his dead eyes. Then he''d found his bloody presence much higher than the last floor, and disappeared off to poke his nose into it. Of course. Of fucking course. From twelve to eleven to ten to nine to seven to six. Just one above a group Guildmaster Lluc would have allowed in anyway¡ªand none of the trust and certainty that would''ve had. All of them waiting for the next Shoth to emerge, hands on their blades. Gnat, gone, which meant she no longer outnumbered Azkhal''s group. "Fucking hells," she bit out, casting a mighty glare around like a brat with bones in his teeth would come a-crawling out of the darkness. He didn''t. What a surprise. But weakness wasn''t an acceptable outcome¡ªso she swept that glare over the rest of the party. "Anyone else want to run?" Wonderful blunt Ossega just shook his head; Lanc, a moment after. Azkhal fixed her with a dark and heavy look. She met it right back. Gnat was gone. So? He''d been protection, a connection to this mystical presence; she''d been perfectly content to throw him to the dungeon so they could chat and she could go deeper, but that had fallen through. All plans did. Not everyone had to go bite someone''s neck just because they got pissy about being betrayed. Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. Gnat was gone. Fine. She''d let the others weep over it. They seemed like the sap-souled gentlings who did that. "Didn''t need him," she gruffed, turning her gaze back to the path ahead. "Spider tricks won''t get us to the core. We push on." Azkhal didn''t say anything. She took that as confirmation and kept walking. Slowly, the others followed. The tunnel bucked once, diving down, before straightening out; humidity slunk through its entrance like a living thing, heavy over the air, and light flickered in the distant turns. Alda tightened her grip on a particularly nasty concoction. Pau, stepping to the front, stuck an arm around a turn¡ªwaited a second, then pulled it back. "We''re here," he said, shaking his hand like he could still feel the eyes on it. Tetchy kind of attunement. She''d leave it to him. But blessedly useful. If he survived the delve, she''d allow him to serve in her dungeon. Ossega bristled with axes drawn, Azkhal thumping his club to the side wall like it had personally offended him; Lanc dismissed his few gathered shadows, waiting to gather more information, and Hulimat let his reflection lash out with jagged claws towards the entrance. Then, as one, they strode around the turn and emerged into the fifth floor. It made quite an impression. Like a myriad path of stepping stones, islands snaked off into the floor, clouds boiling right up against the edge of bridges spidering between. A storm reversed, almost, mist below and half-clear skies overhead, all the way up to green-choked stalactites and rusted iron veins. Through the grey swooped arrows¡ªcreatures, birds with dusty white feathers and bats of brown-black leather. Everything crackled and hummed like a mountain-peak in monsoon season; lightning, or something close, raising the hairs on her arms. So this was the fifth floor, madness and storms. The dungeon kept them on their toes. If the fourth had been a copper mine, all snaking pathways and double-backs, this was more a karst cavern¡ªlimestone dissolved by constant water and steam for sinkholes, streams, poljes, enormous fucking monstrosities that''d take a joint cabal of mitmaq a full month to carve into stable, symmetrical paths. A nightmare in of itself. Almost at once, Lanc and Hulimat bared their teeth¡ªwhile cloudy grey kept them half covered, quartz-lights were a rampant presence here, and already their shadows twisted and weakened beneath it. Bloody wonderful. At least Azkhla seemed unaffected, even less than her¡ªhis thin armour meant the humidity didn''t hug to his skin like a scorned lover. Lucky bastard. They herded out onto the first platform, cautious, bristling with nerves. What the Adventuring Guild''s Scholar had mentioned of this floor was little, considering they knew little; just that it was a land of storms and flying creatures, choked in mist and unseen projectiles. And that another Guardian had been seen here. Alda doubted the dungeon was too pleased they''d avoided its first. Avoiding its second might not be an option. Ossega switched his grip on his axes, pushing the blades flat, and swept his arms out¡ªsize over strength and his attunement helped him kick up a solid wind, pushing the clouds back even for a second so they could see. More limestone underfoot, the bridges much less wide than the mist made them seem, and the bases narrowing as they went down¨C Narrowing. Every instinct she''d ever had lit up like a coal-burst. What she''d thought were islands were more akin to mushrooms; thin, stretched stems blooming out to wide tops. The bridges between weren''t supported, not by the bases, by the sides. She could see veins of iron threaded through the limestone, additional load-bearing, but nothing invulnerable. Nothing trustworthy. She''d been right on one thing¡ªthis was a karst cavern, unpredictable, constantly dissolving and eroding. The problem came when you shoved a mind behind the thing instead of a mountain; she doubted a dungeon wanted to keep its islands stable. Not when adventurers would use them to cross. With the storm overhead and clouds lapping against the bridges¡ªbridges without support¡ªall they''d take was the sneeze of a half-weight to go toppling. And there''d be no way to know that, because the dungeon could just rebuild them back up to pretty perfection for the next party. Hells. Whatever mind was behind this thing, she''d beat the fucker into the ground to make sure it obeyed only her. "Slow down," Alda hissed, hackles up. "This isn''t good stone." Hulimat mouthed good stone? to Pau. A true prissy idiot. Whatever half-noble or noble-dressing vas-Yohua family he came from, they would be better for the loss when she killed him. Azkhal was less stoic. "Explain," he said, voice gruff as an avalanche. Explain? The fuck was there to explain? Were they honestly asking a dwarf to prove her distrust of stone? She smiled wide enough to peel her beard from her cheeks. "Stone bad," she elucidated, dragging the sound out. "Not good. Some might even call it unacceptable, but if that''s too long a word I can go back to ''bad''." Azkhal''s brows furrowed to meet in the middle. "Explain why," he said, like it was her that had been confused. Hells, she''d never say it, but she knew Shoth would have laughed. There was no point in insulting people too thick to understand the excellence she wove. At least that bastard had been appreciative of her cracks. "Llantuykunamanta ninata tapuy," Alda hissed¡ªtrust her to know stone. She''d been raised in it. "Walk on ahead if you like, ch''usaq uma, but I''ve more a mind to go careful." Well, that got through the thick bone he had for a skull, at least. He kept squinting. "What is wrong with the stone?" In any other world, she''d leave them free to plummet to uphold her honour, but she did want them alive, unfortunately. Alda sighed. "The bridges," she said, gesturing, though the clouds had swept back in to cover them. "No supports, and I''m guessin'' the dungeon''s ready to let them collapse so long as we go down with them." Azkhal nodded, because apparently he hadn''t just trusted a fucking dwarf on stone. "I see," he said, a master of verbosity. "Then you should test." Alda smiled. "No, you should go first," she said, sweet as butter. "Maybe they''ll see your gob and be so disgusted they won''t attack." Looked like if she was more direct, he''d get it, judging by how Azkhal dropped his face into a mighty scowl. She''d get her entertainment somehow. With Ossega in the back, a whirling dervish of protection, Pau took the front alongside Azkhal¡ªthe taller man tapped ahead of them with his club, pressing weight down to check its stability, and Pau kept his head high to sense any approaching. Clever enough. Alda clicked her rings together and cupped a spark between her palms, hissing against her skin. Smothered it. Followed them into the mist. The first platform had been remarkably deceiving; the second they stepped into the clouds proper, they were swallowed. Grey in every direction, coiling like a living thing, and stability didn''t much matter because now they needed Azkhal to check if the floor was even before them. Gods if a Gold-sense wouldn''t be lovely here; though it didn''t work well on terrains, it could at least cut through the worst of the mana-storm surrounding. Maybe Shoth had made it past the fifth floor. Alda thumped her feet into every step of the island, half a jump; it held without cracking or creaking, which she''d expected. The dungeon had too many creatures to risk crumbling down to rubble whenever they needed to hunt. The bridge was a different story. The bloody thing groaned when they all stepped on it; party of one, two, it''d be fine, but six was a nightmare waiting to crumble away. Hairs she didn''t know she had stood on end, every muscle tense; she only started breathing once they made it to the next island. Hells above hells. She hated this place. Hulimat exhaled, shadow lurching at his ankles. Azkhal clicked his tongue, another bestial calling. The tattoos on his arms twitched. They were crawling on like cavern-moles, blind in the clouds and cautious; so far there''d only been the distant swooping figures of winged creatures, always on the peripheries, but not yet striking. How soon until¨C A chirp, like the call of a young bird. More came twittering through the clouds, low to the ground, peeling through the mist as if bells. Not a subtle hunter, whatever it was; it wanted their attention. Pau flicked the tip of his dagger to their left¡ªthe edge of a bridge, wavering right over a very unfortunate drop. There stood a fox. Alda actually recognized it¡ªdespite the name, mist-foxes weren''t from the Mistlands, because very few mortal things could acclaim to that. But they were from the surrounding lands that had survived the fallout but kept quite a percentage of the danger, adapting to similar styles as the mind-fuckery that went on in that ancient battleground; which she knew, because that was what Ath¨¢bakhan¨² was. There was a reason it had been so hard to survive in. The mist-fox yipped at them, a bright, cheery little sound as its tail wisped away into writhing illusions. Its clever black eyes never moved from their faces¡ªused to humanoids, or at least familiar. Either Shoth, if he had even made it this far, or the one other adventurer that had made it to the fifth floor. Alda switched her grip to a vial that had a marvelous reaction when thrown into clouds. Pau hesitated. He dragged up his shoulders, eyes fixed on the distant mist-fox, apprehension crawling over his face. "It''s¡­ real," he said, with as much confidence as the pebble holding back the landside. "But not all of it." Because it was an illusionist. She''d thought that was pretty clear. Lanc twisted his hands¡ªa mirroring fox slipped through his fingers, grey-black instead of grey-silver, and trotted out to the edge of the island. In the thick of the clouds, it blended in like the shadow it was, ears perked and tail wagging. It wanted to be seen. Why? "Careful," Alda said, never removing her eyes from the thing. It tilted its head, an illusion of four tails spiraling around its back. Pau fingered a dagger like he wanted to split its head open, but he knew better than to waste it¡ªwhile he could feel where its eyes were coming from and strike past the illusion to hit where it was, they weren''t particularly dangerous on their own, being about the size of a normal fox. Better to save his daggers for more appropriate targets, particularly when there was a lack of guarantee about getting them back on this floor. "Onto the bridge," Lanc whispered, more foxes spilling through his fingers. Pau jerked his head to the left one instead of the right, one snaking deeper into the mist but opposite the fox; it''d do for now. You didn''t trust anything that wanted to be seen. Dungeons didn''t do that. Azkhal growled, a rumble deep in his chest. He took up the back as Ossega and Alda switched positions to the now-front, eyes pinned on the mist-fox. It wasn''t even dangerous, not to a group of Silvers¡ªbut something about the way it watched them made her skin crawl. Intelligence it shouldn''t have. The bridge was thinner than the last; Pau went first, cautious, head on a swivel. Azkhal followed, thumping his club over the stone ahead, Hulimat murmuring things to his shadow as it scrapped and slavered at their wake; Ossega flinched as a bird swooped in overhead, the buzz of distant wasps picking up with a frenzy. Even without the dungeon''s mana surrounding them, the floor was sensing their presence. And doing more than sensing. "Down!" Pau barked, leaping back¡ªand there, right at his feet, from an innocuous rock that was no longer innocuous as it uncurled claws and legs and a tail longer than her leg; a scorpion, chittering, lashing through the mist. Ossega moved with the violence he''d become; one axe deflected its stinger and another battered it back, pushing it to the edge as its chitin splintered under the metal. The thing hissed, bleeding black ichor, scuttling back¡ªAzkhal lunged back to avoid its frantic charge, club raised high. He overcorrected. All it took was one step further onto stone of the bridge they hadn''t tested yet, one wobbling step too far in an effort to move from the beast, and Alda felt more than heard the crack. Instincts older than she was crashed through her limbs¡ªAlda threw herself forward, vials dropped, rings clattering. Hands met stone and she clutched to it, hauling herself up, hair tangling in front of her eyes and beard dragging on loose chips. Her party was attuned and moved when she did, Ossega thundering on frantic footsteps and Lanc windmilling with a bark of surprise. The others weren''t as lucky. Azkhal roared¡ªthe blood tattoos on his arms moved, lurching up, lashing beyond his skin. It dug deep through the scarlet to slam into the stone, but that wasn''t anything to hold onto. The iron veins threaded through its length snapped and splintered, false security broken away for less than rubble. There wasn''t a bridge, and soon there wasn''t an Azkhal. Hulimat''s shadow erupted, jagged claws and blank eyes and hissed fury. It swiped at the sky, at the stone, at the island; but for accolades deserved, Hulimat had done quite a magnificent job tethering it to his ankles for fear of it getting free. It struck out for anything, failed, and tipped the man right over into the clouds. Poor Pau, so devoted to others his attunement was mostly for their benefit¡ªhe''d been leading the group onto the bridge, searching for more hidden scorpions, and hardly had a moment to realize the danger before he was gone. The bridge finished crumbling away, stirring up grey, and left a lingering echo of a crash far below. The clouds never parted enough to see to the bottom¡ªthe other adventurers disappeared. In the distance, the mist-fox yipped with laughter. Alda panted, wanting to back up but unwilling to move her feet from land she''d at least fucking confirmed as stable. Two vials had shattered and the brew seeped into her armour, cloying and cold; but though her heart imitated a rabbit in her chest, it was still beating. She was still alive. The bridge, gone. The other half of their group, gone. What had she said? Stone bad. From twelve to eleven to ten to nine to seven to six to fucking three. Her original party, beyond the scab they''d hired to crawl outside and spin stories of a massacre, but now five floors deep and still not at the core. Lanc groaned, pressing a palm to his forehead, grit encrusting his face. Ossega bullied his way up to his feet, axes clenched in a deathgrip. His quicksilver eyes were wild; not the kind of death he''d prefer. No fight, no battle, just a fall. If the others were even dead. Alda had a sinister kind of sense that the dungeon didn''t rely on the height killing adventurers; doubtless there was something else down there. But that was Azkhal and Hulimat and Pau. It wasn''t her. Four floors conquered. The dwarves of At''aba Qanu had done so much more. "Up," Alda bit out, clawing to her feet. The scorpion was gone, scuttled back to whatever burrow it hid in, and the mist-fox wasn''t visible; but they were stuck on an island halfway through the floor with one bridge broken. Their pathways shrank further and further the more time they wasted. "Lanc, surroundings." Nothing. Alda cocked her head to the side hard enough her spine resettled. "Lanc," she said, firmer now, though she kept a beatific smile. "Surroundings." He twitched¡ªthoughts returning, how lovely¡ªand spread his hands; half a dozen shadows sprang from his palm, skittering over their territory with the wild, jumpy movements of injured things. Any predator worth their salt wouldn''t pass up such easy prey; but they went unhindered, even as the clouds swept back in to cover them. Temporarily unhunted. Perfect. Alda grappled for her waist, tossing aside the broken vials and adjusting her current set. Ditch the weak ones, the ones she''d been using while the others were around; no point in hiding her true power, not anymore. She had a legacy to claim. With only a moment''s hesitation, Alda uncorked the vial of cthonian russets. The pungency struck her like a blow, fetid potency¡ªdestruction for whatever met its flames. Like hells was this dungeon keeping her from its core. She hadn''t come this far just to die. Chapter 158 - Blood-Trade Alda glared at the darkness. From twelve to eleven to ten to nine to seven to six to three. The party she''d already had, now five floors deeper, caught in the middle of a storm with thunder rumbling all around; and now without the numbers she''d allowed herself to grow comfortable with. Fucking figured. That was why she never lowered her guard. If you did that, you got adventurers who took nibbles of their own bloody party and cannibalistic children disappearing like they''d never been. But survivors didn''t bitch at the hand they were slapped with. They just slapped back. Her heart was still slamming against her ribcage, boots scuffed to the stone¡ªthe clouds had swept back to cover Azkhal''s fall, the thunder all around covering up the crash of their hit, but she had Lanc and Ossega. And a vague, nonsensical understanding of the dynamics firmly stomped underfoot, thanks to Shoth and Gnat. You got what you wanted by biting. Shoth had taken that literally; she''d settle for figurative. But she would not be leaving this dungeon without the core. She adjusted her vials again¡ªsetting those specifically made to counteract Azkhal, Pau, and Hulimat to less-accessible locations. She wasn''t an idiot, no matter how much she enjoyed playing one with biting words and agreeable smiles. Long before she''d slipped a brew into Shoth''s drink and tricked Azkhal into believing they had the same goal, she''d prepared if they turned against her. But she''d thought Shoth had just been a tooth-based caster. And she''d thought Gnat would honour their deal. Calarata wasn''t Ath¨¢bakhan¨². Damningly, she forgot that, sometimes. Still a vial to counter Lanc, a flare of brilliant light that stuck like oil to anything it touched; and one for Ossega, a heavy, globulous liquid that would seep through his hardened skin and get him drunk enough he couldn''t stand, much less fight her. Alda knew how to brew things people wouldn''t think of. And now she stared at the fifth floor and all the illusions that swamped them like mud. Fucking hells. "Water up," Alda barked, eyes fixed on the surroundings. "I''ll give you somethin'', but it''ll settle like a shaft collapse unless you''ve got something in your gob." Ossega, the hammer that he was, immediately tugged a waterskin off his waist and downed half of it¡ªhe''d tasted her brews before, from those for good nights and those for bad nights, and he knew what to expect. Lanc was a touch more hesitant, being newer to join her party, but he fumbled at his sides for something to whet his appetite before she punched a hole through it. The vial was one tucked on her back; she popped it off, held her breath, and cracked the cork. Yeast like a thunderclap hit the air, fetid and over-fermented; tough as he was, she was tickled pink watching Ossega force past hurling as he downed a mouthful. Lanc barely avoided spitting his out by the skin of his teeth. For her part, though she''d prepared herself, you really couldn''t ready your mouth for twice-batched ginger root and autumn berries. One half numbed the mouth, the other inflamed it, and everything shot straight to her brain. Fucking nasty¡ªAlda nipped a swig from a different vial before dropping the empty one on the ground, just dead weight. But already she could feel her mind sharpening, lighting up like someone''d stuck mine-salts under her nose; it''d keep them up and alert for a while, enough to look past the illusions. It didn''t really work like that¡ªshe was a brewmaster, not a miracle-worker¡ªbut play with alcohol enough and you could find workarounds to anything. Overblow the mind, wake it up like air and fire, and illusions didn''t tend to hold. That had been her job, long ago, when Ath¨¢bakhan¨² still remembered itself enough to keep her; brew this to let those who traveled to the border of the Mistlands keep their minds. The dungeon wasn''t near as bad, but she''d be a fucking idiot to keep the brew back and wait for a better opportunity. The effect swept over her immediately¡ªof course it did, this was a battle-brew, she wasn''t a fucking ameteur¡ªand Alda hissed, biting back pain. "Aya q''os?i," she snapped, because expletives often helped, shouldering herself up. "Alright. On we go." Ossega nodded, quicksilver eyes already twice as bright, and on they went. Abandoning the bridge that Azkhal had been so generous in breaking made them off course, but there was another bridge that took them closer to the mist-fox, and that was their only option beyond turning back. Which was not an option. Alda bared her teeth and took the lead. The mist-fox swept its tail around, clouds kicking up around its paws; but though she saw the fake body spin out alongside it, though she knew its eyes weren''t real, she was existing in a state of perfect heightened paranoia. The illusion couldn''t trick her to trust it, because she didn''t trust anything. Ossega shattered no less than four rocks beneath his boots as they walked, seeing everything as another scorpion waiting to strike. Lanc kept twitching at his own shadows. But the butterflies with their gossamer wings didn''t entrance them off the edge¡ªthe mist-foxes played and darted in their peripherals but never got them to give chase. They stayed huddled together, a mess of wound nerves and raised blades. The fifth floor moved more quickly; Ossega lashed out at everything and anything, battering away bats and wasps and birds and these horrendous rust-red feathers that darted through the sky like loosed arrows, only his attunement keeping him fast enough to keep up. Lanc spilled more shadow illusions to combat those all around, scorpions revealing their positions much too early and the piercing shrieks of bats aimed at distant foes. Light bloomed beneath the island before them, a jagged crash of red-orange¡ªit splashed through the clouds like a beacon, sharp enough her eyes ached, before fading away. Another, this one green, off to the left; purple lancing under the bridge¨C Then a roar, deep and bestial. But human. Azkhal. Fuck, he was still alive¡ªif him, likely Hulimat and Pau as well, somewhere deep below the clouds. Fighting with something by the sounds of it, the flashes too coloured to be lightning; she didn''t know if there were ways up, if the fighting would stay contained at the bottom, but hope was a miserable mistress who''d cut your balls off long before she''d kiss you. Beneath her boots, the island trembled. They had to move faster. Lanc hissed¡ªone of his shadow illusions disappeared. He was still sending out these awkward, jittery things, playing pretend of injured animals to see what predators were around them, and they started to die off as she watched. The mist swirled more and more. Getting closer. Then, from underneath, came a boom. Something rising. Ossega swept his axes wide and kicked up a wind¡ªthe mist pulled back, blustered from the sheer force of his fury, and peeled away from the base of the tower. Revealed paths, made of carved stone and mushroom-woven ropes, damningly intelligent-made bridges winding their way up to the top of the islands. And a bear. Even in the brief glimpse of moving mist, it filled her vision; silver-studded fur, bristling as illusions spilled off its enormous shoulders and flanks like living lights, crowned beneath its silver eyes. Eye, with a scar taking the second, its ear a matching mess of tissue, blood already splattered up its face. A warrior tried and true. The clouds swept back in to cover it, but not before it peeled its lips away from ivory fangs with a growl. The pathways extended upward to the top of the islands; a way for the dungeon''s predators to kill all those trying to descend. Something that big would likely weigh enough to shatter all of the stone bridges¡ªso it needed another way up. And it was coming. Fuck this. If Azkhal hadn''t managed to kill it, she wouldn''t take her chances. Alda hefted her vial of cthonian russets, pungent enough to make her eyes water, and aimed. Half a dozen years she''d kept this bottle, letting it ferment, letting it bloom¡ªfrom dangerous to fatal to more. Her expertise had always been bombs, explosives; alcohol to drink, of course, to let smooth over fears and frustrations until they ran smooth as distillation, but the punch and power was her strength. Her potential. Stolen from Ath¨¢bakhan¨² upon her exile; her last true connection to home, considering it couldn''t be found elsewhere. All that there was. She''d make the dungeon grow her a field of cthonian russets. This wasn''t a loss but an investment. Alda clapped her hands, pinched the spark between her fingers, and threw both at the island. Arching through the air, a spray of deep brown-gold, glint of fire-red in the midst¡ªthe mist, parting around¡ªthe flames striking the brew¨C They hit the island at the same time. The world roared. Explosion after explosion howled from the heights and depths, an earthquake, a maelstrom; it punched through stone like wet paper as the air screamed, island collapsing, all thundering down to dust. The shockwave hurled her back, Ossega sprawling and Lanc rolling nearly to the edge of the island; Alda slammed into the stone hard enough to pop stars behind her eyes and punch the air from her lungs. Smoke flooded all around. But there, in the distance, a faint bellow of pain and surprise. The bear, stopped. An opportunity she''d paid for with a legacy. She clawed her way up, past a headache and ears screaming through the afterblows¡ªOssega and Lanc, so woefully untested, so unprepared for the realities of mine-living, still floundered on the ground. They''d never felt anything like that before. And they never would again. "Up!" Alda roared. All around them, the fifth floor still shook like a shot beast¡ªtaking down an island wasn''t an isolated catastrophe. Already she could hear the cracks spreading, limestone of a karst cavern splitting and warring and dissolving as her explosion bit through the marrow of its stability. Ossega popped up first, knuckles white around his axes; Lanc next, clutching his forehead with a whimper. So fucking soft. "Go," she demanded, and hauled ass in the opposite direction¡ªback into the clouds, no Pau to search for combatants, but she didn''t want to stick around to see how much her blast would destroy this floor. Taking her time meant death. They joined her¡ªfear was stronger than pain¡ªand together they ran, heedless of threats, as stone wailed and shattered behind them. Another island fell, she could feel the boom as it struck the ground, dust choking out the storm until the air was thick and brown before her. No threats. Looked like the denizens of this floor didn''t much react well when she blew up their home and choked out the air. She''d try that strategy again further on. Alda lowered her shoulder and bowled straight through the last cloud, trusting the echoes her ears fed to her¡ªand through the creak of untrustworthy stone and bridges purposely degraded, her boots slammed into stable rock. The final island. The end of the fifth floor. No draconic Guardian. Worrying. A second later, Ossega popped out, shaking off axes and snarling his gnomish tongue under his breath; her illusion fighting brew was starting to wear off but he was even more tetchy now, bristling at the bit. A habitual reaction. It was little wonder Ath¨¢bakhan¨² had stayed so isolationary for so long, at least until they forgot their way. Then Lanc, shaking, mist clawing at his heels like it wanted him to stay¡ªand then hesitation was for cowards and failures, so Alda spun and marched onward. Deeper than anyone had gone before, with Shoth and Aedan''s corpses being devoured somewhere below the islands, into uncharted territory. Uncharted territory that started with a room swelling out from where a tunnel normally went, large and filled with stalagmites and treasure. Gold, silver, jewels, artefacts, carvings; a glimmering mess of a hoard, bright at the ready. Hells. Alda felt her heart skip a beat. But she''d survived her exile long enough to know you didn''t take proffered gems without checking for poison. Not a chance a dungeon would be so forthcoming. There was something else. Gods, it hurt, though. To walk past all the gleaming wealth sitting politely at her heels. The runes, all over the ways, vaguely draconic in form¡ªwas this the home of the Guardian, then?¡ªand even a patch of greenery, a bed of small flowers in one corner. Lanc inhaled like someone''d punched him in the gut. "Gods above," he murmured, thumbing a finger over the hollow of his throat. "Those are moon-star flowers." Alda smiled with all teeth. "Pretty name," she said. "Any reason you''re stopping?" "They''re luck-attuned," he said, even more quiet. "Eat one, and the gods themselves will smile on your fortune." Marvelous. Anyone who''d grown up with a hare''s awareness of the Mistlands knew that the gods being aware of you was far from a good thing. The only safe option was worship in a temple, a cabal, a gathering; some faceless thing where you were no more than a drop in the pitcher. The second she''d been exiled, she''d given up her previous devotion; no point in drawing a god''s attention without masses to hide behind. Alda kept her smile and its sharpness. "Lovely. Get them after." Lanc cast a look behind like a lover he was loath to abandon but kept going. Ossega moved like a man possessed, breath rattling in his throat and fire in his quicksilver eyes. The fifth floor had been their last level prepared, for all Ealdhere''s muttered ramblings could be counted as preparation, and now they were in unknown territory; only the drive for the core kept them pushing. Down the tunnel went, a twisting, knotted thing bristling with mana. Alda''s breath hit the air and immediately floated, resting high on the current of power snaking around them; deeper, deeper. The core must be pumping out mana like a wellspring. And it looked like it used it where it counted, judging by the sixth floor they emerged onto. Alda drew short on the beach, boots skidding in a spray as the suffocating silence of the tunnel died for the lap of waves and rustle of trees. This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. White sand, blue water. An endless expanse of perfect coast, picturesque, the kind someone would paint for a noble; but this was real, and this was before her, and this had teeth a picture wouldn''t want. Half a good reason she used her cthonian russets, then. While they burned like the hells made incarnate, they didn''t play nice with water. This floor was looking to be a nightmare. But you didn''t start with the last cut; you worked with the first. So she set her heels into the ground and looked around¡ªtracked the glimmer of colour and light beneath the water, likely coral, currents dashing around with twisting bodies. Baitfish, or something larger, pockets of fish moving around predators in their midst. A few sandy islands out in the middle, never larger than a home, more of the sand she could see was all quartz¡ªexpensive and beautiful. Seemed the dungeon had a taste to it. Even the sand she was standing on was pure, beyond the¨C Beyond the footprints. Footprints. Alda stepped back, squinting down¡ªthere, before her, was the imprint of boots over the surf, leading into the water. Two sets, fresh enough the faint wind hadn''t smoothed them over. Shoth and Aedan had made it to the sixth floor. They were too new to be anyone else. Well, fuck. Alda clicked her jaw shut and kept looking out. No point in dwelling on that cadaverous fact. There were only two, and Aedan was worse than dead weight. They''d meet their end before long, especially considering there was still the draconic Guardian to encounter, since the bear certainly hadn''t been it. Here seemed more likely, with all the water and creatures without. Still similar to the last ones, at least in products and material, but she could see where the dungeon had poured effort and care into this place. Really shaped it, rather than just made it dangerous. A near cavernous approach to the floor, to sprawl beneath the mountain like size was inconsequential and time unnecessary. How long would it have taken for a proper gathering of mitmaq to carve this out? To make it symmetrical, stable, secure? With her planning and a dungeon''s power, At''aba Qanu would far outstrip the previous holder of that title. She would make it more. As soon as she got to the core, without an unknown amount of obstacles in her path. Judging by the last few floors, she doubted the entrance at the far side was the actual exit; likely another room beyond it. Coral, creatures, currents in the water¡ªnothing to travel on above. And no Therr¨®n to show off with a bubble to travel in, so she''d have to waste mana on holding her breath. Fucking lovely. "Surroundings," Alda murmured, tapping fingers over her vials. Lanc nodded, spreading his hands¡ªhalf a dozen rats leapt through his fingers, all dragging faux broken limbs and trembling bodies. A moment later, he dumped some dozen baitfish into the water, twisting through the blue with panicked, jerking motions. One was immediately snapped up as a silver snake-like streak arrowed through the water and slammed fangs into its side, disappearing underneath as its hunger was unsatiated. A few pigeons, larger and fiercer than normal, circled overhead, but didn''t get close to the ground. Nothing more. Interesting. So far, the floor had been remarkable, but not fatal. Nerves crawled up her back¡ªmuch like the mist-fox, she trusted that less. Dungeons didn''t play fair and pretty. "Be careful," she said, stepping forward. Waves lapped at her boots. "I doubt this is the only room." Ossega nodded, eyes storm-bright, and readied his axes. Lanc called back his shadows, pressing them between his palms. All they needed was¨C The water lurched. Fucking hells¡ªplans fell by the wayside when the dungeon moved before they had a chance to talk about it, Alda scrambling back through the sand. Ossega reared up, axes at the ready, Lanc tense. A monster came from the blue. It dragged itself onto the shore with many-jointed limbs that popped and cracked and twisted as they shifted alignment, front-back-side-front, anything to haul it from the water in a cloying reversal. What should have been skin was bark instead, scarlet-brown, clustered up around joints and protruding through with breaks. A muzzle snapped from its face beneath a crown of thorns, pure white eyes locked like twin suns through the air; limbs edged in four jagged thorns scarred through the sand as it moved. As it stood, taller than Alda, taller than Ossega, taller than Lanc. Dryad, her brain hastened to say, seeing its thorn-bark appearance. Monster, she corrected. It stalked forward in a grotesque, shambling walk, weight snapping between limbs and claws, bark catching against itself with groans. Alda wasn''t breathing. It towered over them all with a leering fury. But it didn''t attack. Back to the tunnel, facing the surf; if they weren''t cornered, they were damn near close, and Alda had already switched to water-efficient brews in facing the floor they were on. Her others were tucked on the back of her waist, not far, but she got the sense any quick movements would draw the beast''s attention in unfortunate ways. Even Ossega kept his axes perfectly still. But it didn''t attack. It stood before them, limbs bristling, the bleach-wood white of its teeth cracking through the scarlet bark of its skin. Less than twenty feet from them, sand kicked up, mouth continuing to open and close. A hiss. The rattle of breath. It was trying to talk. "Stop?" Stop? The fuck did that mean? Was it asking if it should stop killing them? Because the answer was yes. But it wasn''t quite looking at them¡ªits white eyes were fixed up on the ceiling, to where there was nothing. Or, rather, where there could have been something; but the dungeon''s presence was still absent, just ambient mana and the raid-frenzy sparking through their veins. It wasn''t listening in. The not-dryad tilted its head to the side, eyes narrowing. "Stop?" It asked again, in this ragged, garbled tongue. "Connector will stop me?" Alda was going to burn this thing down to the kindling. It was still twitching, still moving, waiting for a response from something. An answer, rather than just attacking and getting this over with, rather than behaving like any monster they''d encountered so far. And it was speaking, which was a decidedly non-monster thing, even if it absolutely wasn''t a dryad. What was it talking about? Why was it asking this? And then realization. Connector. That wasn''t a very dungeon-esque term, even though she was talking about a grimy bestial thing that spoke through a mouthful of gravel. But it was the term that something wearing the bark and thorns of the mangroves would say. Rhoborh. The God of Symbiosis, Aedan''s sworn patron. One such deity who lived within the dungeon and granted mana. One that represented and bound the mangroves. One that had, apparently, stopped the not-dryad before. Alda dug her nails into her wrist hard enough to draw blood. It''d seen Aedan. Likely tried to attack him, by the sounds of it, but hadn''t been allowed to; seemed his god had done something in the end of it all. Hells. He''d been more useful than Gnat. Shoth was a fucking asshole. Whatever had happened, it made this sentient pile of thorns and murder stop long enough to ask permission. "Rhoborh will stop you," Alda said, before she could think this over more. The dryad tilted its head further. "Rhoborh," it said, and each of the r''s dragged in its throat like a bed of nails. It seemed¡­ pleased to have the word, like it was learning. Like it wanted to know more. Alda gritted her teeth. "Yes, Rhoborh," she said. "He protects us." White eyes gleamed. "Protect," it parroted again, so fucking happy to learn. Its claws flexed against the air, like testing invisible chains. Nothing stopped its movement, and the atmosphere changed¡ªgrew sharp and humming, potential vibrant on the edge of the cliff-face. Alda wrapped her fingers around a vial on her waist. The dryad dug its feet into the sand and lunged. Ossega barked a roar, axes swinging¡ªit ducked and wove around them like a dance, limbs snapping and resetting, crown of thorns bristling. Swept left, right; Alda popped two smaller vials and hurled them, only managing to catch one in a spark, a plume of fire devouring the air between them. The dryad snarled, skittering back, red reflecting in its white eyes. Not a fan of fire, it seemed. Up until it charged directly through the center of the flames. Blood-sap, just having gotten out of the water, moving too fast¡ªwhatever kept it from igniting didn''t matter, because Alda had stopped to take a breath and Ossega had pulled back from the flames and they didn''t have time to react before the dryad pounced on Lanc with its fangs bared. Down they both went, a tangle of limbs and fury; it crouched over him, a jagged mess of hunger, and snapped its muzzle around his throat. Shadows spilled through his fingers, a flood of rats and toads and foxes and birds and fish¡ªits white eyes were only for him. Its fangs sunk into his neck as it tore back. Scarlet sprayed the sky. Lanc gurgled, lashed out, and died. Alda hurled another vial. The dryad didn''t savour in its victory; it threw itself back, kicking off his body, letting the blaze splash over the sand with belched clouds of toxic smoke. It laughed, this chittering, howling sound¡ªits limbs popped and cracked as its legs reversed, hauling it up from its crouch. There was genuine delight in its white eyes. "No," it said, muzzle splitting into a vicious snarl. "He will not protect." Ossega roared, and his attunement splashed to his grip like the misty waters of his home¡ªbut the dryad had adapted. Had learned. It skittered left as he cleaved through the air where its torso had been, still laughing, limbs popping and reversing as it fell to all fours and dug its claws into the surf; racing around them, circles in the sand, water blurring into blue as they tried to track it. Alda ripped a cork out with her teeth and spun¡ªspread a circle of it into the sand, just large enough to keep her and Ossega in, and chucked a spark. It caught with a roar, leaping up at the stalactites with orange-white tongues and noxious smoke. A prison of her own making. The dryad paused. It stalked on the outside of their ring of fire, but in all Alda had done to protect herself, she''d fucked herself, too. Hard to throw flammable things through flames, and Ossega was limited to ranged. This strategy worked all the fucking better when Lanc could use the smoke as cover to weave shadowed illusions for their escape. Fuck. Fuck. Alda bared her teeth, feeling around her waist¡ªher thumb brushed where the cthonian russets had sat, gone and used now, still not at the core. This dryad wouldn''t kill her. It wouldn''t. But whatever had kept it from burning before worked again. Crouching, crown of thorns raised high, the dryad dug its claws into the surf and rushed through the fire. Its charge carried it far, fast, straight into Ossega''s side¡ªhe clipped it strongly with the cut of his axe but it ignored the pain, ignored the agony, and just bit into him. It howled as his axes descended on it from all sides, cutting away its left arm, tearing through the bark and blood-sap¨C But for all he broke it, it broke him first. It battered past his defenses and plunged its fangs into his throat. Ossega died. And then Alda went from twelve to eleven to ten to nine to seven to six to three to two to one. It pried itself off his corpse, white eyes flashing and flickering¡ªit stared for a long while at its discarded arm, hacked off with raw bark and heartwood exposed, blood-sap tangling in the sand. It wouldn''t survive much longer. But it looked at her. "Blood," it hissed, like a fucking nightmare. "Blood to give." Alda reared up, bellowing. The first fire died and she replaced it with a dozen more, a hundred, a storm of flames lashing out at what should burn easily but didn''t. But didn''t. And then she was on a beach in a dungeon against a monster with two corpses on the sand and she had nothing more than what was on her. The dryad shoved past Ossega''s corpse, leg snapping in and out to propel it over the fire still flickering in the sand, loping towards her. Its crown of thorns bristled like a reminder. She roared wordlessly and chucked vials, chucked alcohol, threw anything she had¡ªbut she was made for a team. Made for a group, dwarves mining together against an unforgiving world, against a dying light from an ancient battleground of the gods¨C And she didn''t have that. Not anymore. Alda Thrudkurbiz, so far from home, so far from exile, died as the dryad stabbed its fangs straight through her throat. - What was wrong with the weave had come here. Through the endless they scuttled, many-limbed and many-eyed, but a body for the Great Spider to command. Out of the Haven, of the paradise made and shaped for them, filled with lazy things so opposite the perfect form. The shape they had woven by the Great Spider''s command, the mandible threaded with silk, the power that lurked in every corner but wasn''t the right power. The life presented to them, but with a strand left open to discover. The webweaver did not follow where the prey was, where the bugs were. Something deeper pulled them along, far through the darkness, through the tunnels. The weave, the web beyond, the wrongness plaguing its greatness like disease¡ªthat was what they followed. Where they went. They were small and inconsequential. Nothing but a claw for the Great Spider to wield. Anything in the tunnels could kill them, out of the Haven where their safety was guaranteed; but they trusted the Great Spider, and he would not lead them astray. Which is when they turned a corner and came to another being. Upright, four limbs instead of eight, no chitin in sight beyond the skins of other animals; no carapace, only two eyes, no claws. A sad thing in a sad existence. It was crouched over the corpse of another, feasting on the gore and guts seeping through a cut in its stomach; not a sacrifice. Just eating. That was not worship. The webweaver came closer, silent in the halls, but the thing sensed them¡ªjerked upright, mouth pulled out of the cut. Blood over its face, pale tones spattered with red. It looked at them. And the webweaver understood. It was what was wrong. This was it. The thing that had upset the weave, landed on its expanse and shaken the balance. The devotion they had not been able to give yet. Spider-sworn, spider-woven. Wrong. Wrong. The thing¡ªthe boy, the mind, the body¡ªtilted his head to the side, eyes black and glassy. From under fleshy lips came mandibles, came understanding, as he crouched and spread his hands over the stone. Exchange-trade, he gave, mandibles clicking back and forth. Mine-to-yours. The webweaver flexed their many legs, mana lashing around their web-connection. It wasn''t talking, what they did, not like how the Great Spider spoke into their mind; something lesser. Something basal. But they were communicating over a chasm¡ªthough it wasn''t understanding in the typical sense, the webweaver found themselves gnawing over one of the concepts. The one of ownership. Yours. Mine. What-yours? What-mine? The boy paused, drawing up. Thing-of-mine, he spun, placing a flat, clawless hand on his chest. Exchange-trade. Thing-of-yours. Curious. Perhaps giving a larger prey to a larger webweaver who would require more sustenance in exchange for a smaller one. He was here to make a trade with the web. And instead of prey, the thing he had that was mine-his-own, was himself. The memory of a sacrifice, so long ago. Ripping apart the largest and most powerful of their brethren so that the Great Spider might learn of their making and create more. Great-Spider, the webweaver wove. You-give-self-to. The boy flicked his hands. No-give-self, he imbued. Word-speak. No-give. Here-talk-Great-Spider. The webweaver wasn''t much concerned with thoughts of ownership, but they knew to read emotions, to feel the pluck and call through the weave. And they could feel discomfort from what they were saying; that the boy wanted to exchange-trade, but did not have anything to trade but himself. And he didn''t want to give himself. The idea was almost interesting. Did a claw speak out whether it wished to climb or not? Did an eye send complaints of being used to see? No. They simply did. The boy did not understand. He thought it was a matter of choice and consequence; that there was a personhood and piecemeal collection of mattering. He was wrong. The Great Spider had given them a shape to weave, a vision to manifest; but they did not have the tools proper to do it. And so the Great Spider had sent them a tool so they might complete his task. Claws and eyes and mouths did not disobey. Those in the web of the Great Spider did not disobey. If they did, they were cut loose and repurposed. They were sacrificed. They were made anew. The webweaver took a step forward. The boy sensed their intentions. He stayed low, stayed crouched, but his mandibles flexed. Am-messenger, he gave, with the click of careful precision. Here-talk. Here-exchange-trade. The Great Spider wanted them to be more. To find meaning within the shape he had given them. And they were the one who had understood the mission, more than those who simply wove the shape without knowing why. They were different. Their thoughts had grown beyond their shell. The largest of their web, the most developed, the only one to follow the wrongness in the weave to find the wriggling thing of its source. The wrongness was the boy. The boy was not supposed to be here. The boy was wrong. Communication failed, the boy stood, hands pressed back to his sides. Gore and blood, spilling down his front. Looking to leave, to run away. To make an exchange-trade with the Great Spider. To try and spread his wrongness through the web until he destroyed it. The Great Spider had delivered a path for true devotion. The webweaver lunged. Chapter 159 - Final Feelings Deep within the Skylands, three invaders thundered to the ground like falling stones. Three more died, cut down by my vampiric dryad; but still three more. Still a threat. I roared; Alda''s soul swept through me, sparking with potential, Ossega and Lanc only a moment before. My Skylands crackled in response, Khasvar''s boon tinting everything with lightning. A storm bursting at the seams. Hundreds of words scrawled over my core in golden letters, mana pouring through me, my Otherworld connection howling like a caged beast; Shoth was dead and the Scorchlands exulted in his death, Aedan abandoned to gibber on the sand, Alda''s concoction crashing an island to the ground. But right this second, three miserable fucking invaders picked themselves up and shook dust from their hair, so that was where I went. Up, up, up, I crooned, softer now, no longer driving my creatures into a frenzy to protect me; I guided their heads towards the humanoids in their midst. Damnably, I was still shucking off instincts from the frantic delve; my obtuse mana use meant all three invaders snapped upright, feeling my wingspan spread over my creatures'' minds. Fuck. But my creatures were still coming. And the invaders no longer had a way to sprint through my halls, not on the ground as they were. Trapped, like prey chased into a shallow cove. They were mine. All around, already boiled out from their failed attempt to catch Shoth and Aedan, the Magelords emerged with fingers burning bright. Some weeks, months, had they been in my dungeon, and they''d mapped the environment out to their liking. A spider''s web of mushroom-rope bridges and carved hollows, an ant''s colony so far above what their previous home had been, at least from what I''d gleaned from their memories. Two dozen of them, all battle-ready and determined to fight down to the last drop. They already had a¡­ brood? clutch? was there a goblin word for these things? that they were very invested in protecting, given there was some age of majority before they could properly learn how to manipulate mana. Similar to dragons and gravitas, but unlike them, hatchlings had venom to protect themselves before the world itself bent to their will. Goblins didn''t have that. Another addition to their regrettable nature. I was calmer. Gods, I could think again¡ªcould give myself the leeway to mock goblins instead of dissolving into dread as a Gold thundered towards my core. Azkhal and his group were still a threat, yes, because all invaders were; but I trusted I could stop them. I was able to pull back from the mindless terror. To think. So close to death. Not even to death but enslavement, a destruction of my self and ego and identity. It was only now I was able to concentrate on anything past that. Magelords came tumbling out, mottled scorpions readied their stingers, mist-foxes weaving illusions by the dozens. From the largest carved room, still guarding his little rock piece, Bylk emerged¡ªstooped and wearied by age, that meant nothing to the constellations glimmering over his fingers, flecked fire-red and stone-grey. And also nothing compared to the beast alongside him. Akkyst. My newest Named, my speaker, my learner, my returner; his silver fur streamed with intelligible runes as he padded forward, ear perked and eye narrowed. More runes swept off him as he sized up his targets, huddled together and still woozy from the fall; particularly to Azkhal, largest of the bunch, his club slick with gore. He stood, helping Pau up alongside; Hulimat''s shadow lunged and snapped at the end of the chains around his ankles, hungry for action, but he reeled it back in with a muttered curse. His eyes were different sizes; the fall had hit him hard. Being a Silver didn''t mean you could prepare for the ground falling away beneath you. But they were still alive, just on the ground and surrounded by mana-wielding goblins and a bear large enough to outweigh them all together. Azkhal snarled. Akkyst snarled back much, much louder. I felt his thoughts, thrumming through our connection like a maelstrom. For all he was an enormous, bristling monster of a bear, wrought with the stars and burning with power, this wasn''t necessarily what he preferred. Fighting in defense, yes, but not fighting. He''d run away a coward and come back a scholar. Sometimes, I wondered just what had happened to him out in the mountains. Akkyst started the advance, growl rumbling through his chest like bellows. Azkhal kept his club up, teeth bared, but I didn''t have to read his mind to feel his apprehension. Hulimat''s shadow lurched and snapped at his ankles, Pau readying his daggers, and¨C From far above, the bladehawk loosed half a dozen feathers each aimed for the jugulars, and the battle commenced. Azkhal surged forward, a flash flood, club raised¡ªbut instead of scattering a Magelord''s skull over the stone, Akkyst slammed into him. The bear bellowed, loud as a mountain, back claws digging in; Azkhal''s tattoos glowed crimson with the stench of old iron, lips peeled back, club gleaming. He leaned in and grabbed Akkyst, ducking around his claws and fangs; wrapped up his bulk in his enormous arms and ground his charge to a standstill. Hells above hells, what was his attunement? In the back, Pau hurled daggers every which way, slamming mottled scorpions to the ground and forcing Magelords back; but with such a horde, he had no time to retrieve them, and his supply ran more and more dry. Panic seeped into his face. Beside him, Hulimat was a one-man army. His shadow hungered and destroyed all those in its path, just a writhing mess of black and grey; it leapt further and further for targets, dragging Hulimat behind it, even as the man grit his teeth and heels in. "Back," Hulimat snarled, half under his breath; at his ankles, his shadow rippled like a stone over a pond, ragged tatters of his silhouette with pale white eyes. It gnashed black teeth and sunk them into an approaching mottled scorpion, puncturing through its carapace with ease, but the chains at Hulimat''s ankles stretched taut. The man reeled it back, muscles straining. And it didn''t go unnoticed. High over the battle, perched on one of the mushroom-rope bridges and raining death from above with a piercing accuracy, the eldest of my creatures raised a bushy eyebrow. "Oh!" Bylk croaked, grin settling over his snaggled teeth. "Got a li''l biter, dontcha? Not too good a handle?" Hulimat didn''t understand him, because why would anyone willingly choose to speak the goblin''s tongue, but the address was clear enough. He sunk his fingers into the shadows bristling around his feet and barked more commands¡ªit reached out with terrible jagged claws, parsing through clouds of mist and launched attacks. But Bylk flicked a hand up, drained enough mana one of his earrings went dim, and threw a blast. Or, not a blast¡ªit certainly looked like one, and Hulimat flinched like it was, but once the burst of light finished what ended was a thin, narrow beam of concentrated mana that sniped over Hulimat''s ankles. The man yelped, leaping back, smoke bleeding from his armour; and Bylk hit him again. Same spot. Azkhal kept hammering against Akkyst, trying to get to the weaker Magelords, but Akkyst had taken down a stone-wurm and a man was nothing. He fenced off, using his massive bulk to push them further back, closer to the others, hemming them in¡ªPau was getting cornered, dancing and weaving around the web Magelords were weaving for him, already half a dozen pitfalls as they tried to drop him into the stone. Hulimat was quite alone, and Bylk snapped at the offensive like the finest meal. Even I felt the mana grow sharp, grow bright, as he drained it faster than it could refill on those narrow, biting beams of pure light. The invader fell back, again and again, trying to find some crevice to hide in¡ªbut Bylk, loathe as I was to admit it, was too clever for that. He spidered his way over the bridges in constant pursuit. It didn''t have a voice but I watched Hulimat''s shadow wail as he struck it again, tatters of intangibility flapping around his ankles as it thrashed and writhed. Hulimat, past the black lines over his face, went dreadfully pale. Catching on, then. Realizing what danger he was in. Bylk laughed throatily. "Tha''s it," he said, and snapped his hand down again; one last beam, even brighter than the last, shot forward and cleaved through Hulimat''s chains. His shadow, freed. It took all of two seconds for it to spin around and eviscerate him. It sunk its jagged claws into his guts and tore them out; spilled steaming grey intestines over the stone as Hulimat screamed, tumbling over with his fingers tangled in scarlet. It pounced again, ripping at him, his skin, his chest, his face¡ªsoundless it howled, furious, fury incarnate, and split its master in half. Then, right as it killed him and his mana exploded through the air, it twitched, shook, and disappeared itself. Consequences. It hadn''t developed enough of its own soul to stay alive past its host; just enough of a soul to be angry. I could respect that. Bylk laughed again, last of the mana flickering around his hands. But his eyes were different¡ªa surge of regret, seemingly out of place. Curiosity got the better of me and I peered into his head, into the thoughts tucked up under a surprisingly organized mind¡ªhe''d learned those tactics, how to separate beast from master, back when he fought the War Horde. He had used them against Akkyst. The ever-present lingering fear of what if he had killed Akkyst, so long ago. Hm. I still didn''t like him, and I didn''t like the attachment he had over Akkyst. As if he thought he could ever kill my bear. Down one, the other two invaders floundered. Hulimat''s shadow had been taking the brute of the smaller crawlers by the feet while Azkhal was busy with Akkyst and Pau dodged the Magelords, and now they came swarming in; mist-foxes, hopping down the bridges with their tails high and their illusions higher, greater pigeons swooping in with shrieks and flashing talons, and, mostly damningly, the bladehawk. He came in from on high, rust-red wings spread wide; in the choking cloud and mist, no one really saw him, not since he''d started the battle with his launched feathers. But though he''d tried again, the others had been dodging him; keeping themselves light on their feet to jump out of the way. Specifically by Pau''s commands. The bladehawk wasn''t particularly tested, unlike my other creatures. He''d only ever lived in the Skylands, high above the rest¡ªbut he''d come from the War Horde, and he knew how to kill. How to adapt. A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. Pau could see his eyes; could sense them, even through the mist, through the choking storms that had disguised him into an untouchable monster for so long. That was an established fact. So the bladehawk changed. I watched him tuck his wings, study the field, and look up. His mind, racing, complex equations and calculations and every breeze taken into account; without seeing Pau, he let himself fall back, gravity hurling him down, until he knew he was at the right angle. No eye contact. No sightline to notice. Nothing but four feathers skewering through Pau''s chest. He croaked, air punched from his lungs, and couldn''t dodge; an older Magelord caught him over the thigh with a twisting bolt of fire, boiled leather hissing and smoking, Pau choking out pain and blood. Froth to his lips. Falling. The clouds swallowed him, mist-foxes moving in, but the bladehawk high above got the last blow with another loosed arrow to the throat. Two down. Mana, singing a victory''s cry through my halls, bursting to full with potential rampaging around my thoughts. Just one left, the last leader of the three-pronged group, the strongest but still no match for my entire floor, not when I knew how he worked, not when my Named was so close to killing him¨C And then Akkyst, his ear perking up, pushed Azkhal away. What? My lovely starwrought bear reared to use the flat of his claws on Azkhal''s chest, not an attack, not a second vivisection, but merely a shove. Azkhal stumbled back, readying his club, but Akkyst didn''t pursue. Just stayed back. Excuse me? Was he giving up? Our connection thrummed, and I felt a strange pride; satisfaction, in a way. And I watched him look to the others, to the Magelords, who now were two dozen to one vastly injured invader. Ah. He was giving them the kill, so that they might get more mana and learn from it. Cooperation, more than any of my other creatures, excluding the kobolds. Helping everyone improve, instead of just my Named, just my favoured. And learn they did¡ªwhile Azkhal''s brow pinched in confusion and he wavered, the Magelords were seemingly used to this strategy. Each raised their hands, at least those who weren''t healing others, and launched a starfall of attacks. Azkhal was a physical beast, able to shatter any Magelords that got close to him. But he was exhausted from wrestling with Akkyst, and confused, and alone. He dodged the first nine. He didn''t dodge the six after that. Fire swallowed him whole, blooming scarlet-crimson against the grey mist; he screamed once, a howling dirge of a sound, and his mana exploded through me¡ªfilled the air like a hurricane, like a storm touching down to undisturbed water. And then, in wake of that, the Skylands quieted back to normal. Okay. Okay. I''d survived. Twelve invaders, armed to the teeth with weapons and mana and a plan beyond what I thought they could do, left as eleven corpses and one fool. Mana, bright and soul-rich, flooded through me and lapped at the edges of my awareness; golden letters, godly focus. I''d survived. I''d survived. Some part of me bemoaned the loss of my physical form. I wanted nothing more than to curl on my hoard and block out the world for a decade; to rest and refill my mana in the comfort of dragon-dreams and undisturbed peace. To let the terror that had consumed me fade away like just another memory. But I wasn''t a sea-drake. Not anymore. And dungeon cores didn''t rest, didn''t stop, didn''t leave themselves defenseless. Instead, they recovered. They cleared away the rubble. They grew stronger. Shoth had almost enslaved me. I wouldn''t allow that again. So instead I shook myself free of the stupor, letting the mana diffuse around me as I opened my consciousness beyond my points of awareness. Immediately, my core snapped to the forefront of my thoughts as it lit me up with messages, with golden runes; little doubt I''d have had evolutions after that, but even I wasn''t quite expecting as many as were floating around my core. Although it made sense¡ªthe death of one Gold and ten Silvers, all further down than most other had reached. Even if they''d avoided Veresai, they''d given the Skylands, Hungering Reefs, and Scorchplains a feast the likes of which they''d never had before. Lands untested, now tested. Tested and hurt. I glared at the shattered island of the Skylands, where Alda''s mysterious concoction had burned hot as a star and twice as deadly. The limestone, my fanciful iron veins, half a dozen creatures crushed underneath its collapse. That''d be a pain to remake. ¡­wait. My islands, snaking over the Skylands; a pathway of interconnected bridges all poised to collapse with too much weight or to entrap others off. Shoth had ran right over it before anyone had been able to make it to him. If this island was broken, no bridges to connect or build off of, wouldn''t that force invaders to find other ways across? Wouldn''t that slow them down? I was going to have to sit on my dungeon and think about it, massively restructure things so that a lowly fucking Gold couldn''t sprint through and make it to my final floor, and maybe this was the first of the new changes I would be bringing to the hunt. Already my mind rang loud and true with ideas; coordination between my creatures, something better than the raid-frenzy, blockades, alliances, assessment, testing, keys, traps¡ªbut no. Not now. I needed to recover first. But maybe I''d be leaving this island broken. Later, later, later. Right now, I could feel the mana surging at the limits of my pool, too much absorbed for my capabilities to hold; I needed to evolve my creatures right now so I could use some of that mana and then find other pockets to hurl the rest. On my last massive adventure, I''d come up with a strategy, and there wasn''t a reason to change now¡ªI went to the highest floor and parsed through the messages there. Better to save the more explosive changes for the end, in my opinion, which was naturally correct. The Fungal Gardens didn''t have much¡ªOssega and his axes had made quick work of anything that had gotten close to them, leaving any hopeful evolutions as little more than corpses to dissolve into mana. The first floor was in an odd place; it would never be strong enough to defend me, because any creature that was strong enough to defend went below for more mana. What could I do with it? Later. I shoved the few evolutions into shadowthief rats and ironback toads and guided them to the second floor. The Drowned Forest had more, if only because there simply was more; all those twisting tunnels, slowly grinding away under Nenaigch''s influence, thousands of pockets and crevices for my creatures to tuck into. And, well¡ªin a completely unexpected but painfully obvious conclusion, it turned out that having creatures other than Veresai''s serpent horde fight invaders meant others could get evolutions. Curled up in the empty alley, claws bristling, an entire legion of hunting mantises lit up in brilliant white-gold; so long ago, evolving from the Fungal Gardens, and now a plague upon my Jungle Labyrinth with their jagged claws and relentless hunt. Fascinating.
Congratulations! Your creature, a Hunting Mantis, is undergoing evolution! Please select your desired path. Mantis Hordeling (Common): In learning from its neighbors, this creature loses most of its sense of self but sharpens to become a claw to serve the Horde, great roaming packs that devour all those in their path. Iridescent Mantis (Uncommon): Bright of scale and mind, it stalks through the darkness and readies its wings for unsuspecting prey; with but a flash, it can blind any before it, and feast upon their remains. Bladesong Mantis (Uncommon): There is no need for defense for those who kill first. Growing tall and upright, so as to mirror its preferred prey, it fights with arm-like claws and dances away from anything that could strike its brittle body.
Their evolutions, even moreso. The iridescent mantis threw memories back to my luminous constrictors, whose evolutions mostly lost the shine of their past and focused on more deadly abilities, but I could see it working well for a creature with the speed mantises wielded. And the bladesong¡ªtaken from Nolla''s attunement, no doubt, though without the water aspect. They would be coral, then, prone to breaking if touched but devastating in all other circumstances; rather perfect for my Jungle Labyrinth. The horde did speak to me, because I had seen how easily it overwhelmed invaders so long as there was a chink in their armour¡ªbut no. It was just shitty luck that they had found a way around Veresai, and I didn''t want to rely on the same trick twice; more styles of hunting than hordes. Even if I wanted to see a massive, crawling wall of sickle-bladed hunters. There were some dozen of them awaiting evolution¡ªI selected bladesong mantis for all and let the light consume them. Hopefully it would be fast. I wanted them to quickly establish themselves before Veresai could kill their indisposed bodies. And then, far away, hauling Nolla''s corpse in preparation to bring it below, the jaguar. She was grooming herself, licking away gore and dust to reveal her rosetted coat to the world once more; a purr, deep in her chest, and pride throughout her thoughts. Her first time facing human invaders, and she''d killed one. She knew that meant power. From power came evolution.
Congratulations! Your creature, a Stalking Jaguar, is undergoing evolution! Your Title of Resurrector bestows a path. Boundless Jaguar (Exotic): This creature will hunt and forgo all else; with six legs and incredible agility, it is not bound by wall or floor or sky in its relentless drive to consume its prey.
Well. That was unexpected. Six legs and boundless agility; it wasn''t the perfect evolution for the Jungle Labyrinth, and she''d likely have to move below, but oh, I could taste the potential. She was already the most effective of my ambush hunters, able to stalk and move and destroy, and this added power would do nothing but improve her capabilities. ¡­it was curious, though. She was my first evolution that wasn''t dungeonborn, excluding Seros, though I''d Named him so he hardly counted. And I remembered one of Akkyst''s memories, where she called herself one of the old ones, so perhaps there could have been a touch of ancestry in her; but this didn''t feel like that. My armoured jawfish had earned his evolution by going against his passive nature and becoming a predator. But the stalking jaguar had done nothing but be what she was; so why did she have a resurrected evolution? Why do this? I didn''t know. But I had a feeling that it was a thread that I would one day have to face. For now, I selected boundless jaguar and let the silver light wash over her, thoughts smoothing out to peace and anticipation; she knew what it meant and what would change when she woke, and I could feel how badly she wanted it. Beyond her and the mantises, nothing had truly evolved; a couple more cave spiders into shardrunner spiders, a burrowing rat into a mage ratkin in what felt like a coincidence for timing; and then, between the floors, two bodies. One humanoid, dead. One arachnid, alive. And glowing. The webweaver who had killed Gnat. Mana so thick and spider-tainted I could practically taste it flooded the air, sharp and coiling; whatever Gnat was, he wasn''t a normal human, and he''d tried to do something here. But my webweaver had killed him, and earned an evolution instead. I reached out, hovering my awareness right over their glowing body, and then paused. They were crouched over the corpse of Gnat, twisted and contorted with venom still pumping sluggishly through his veins¡ªand their thoughts were downright exultant. They had killed what they thought was upsetting the weave, in what they thought was a mission from me, and were hoping this would grant them the ability to understand the shape I''d shown them. The mandible, the needle; Nenaigch''s object of worship. My near-failed attempt at turning a bunch of spiders into priests. But now one of those spiders had gone and killed a spider-woven invader and reached evolution off his mana, and I was suddenly very intrigued as to what their options would be. Because I rather thought that there could be a solution to my answers there. So I would come back to this later. I had a feeling that their evolution would take a more deific touch¡ªand I had spent far too long bemoaning a lack of arachnid priests to simply waste this evolution on a stronger webweaver. It needed delicacy, and I was currently being bombarded by messages draining half my consciousness, so after it would be. Damn. Instead I traveled down to the Skylands, where my creatures were picking themselves out of their daze. I felt a surprising shock of regret as I watched them; my raid-frenzy had been so strong it had essentially shredded their strategy, turning them into beasts and bodies, at least until Shoth had been killed. I needed to be better. I couldn''t become so scared my creatures were useless. Three more floors; three more groups of evolution. Then my dungeon would stop being a sea-drake''s lair and it would become a dungeon, where everyone worked together to take down the real enemy and I stopped faffing about with fanciful dreams of bringing invaders further in so as to claim their mana; no. They came here, and they died. That was it. I was a dungeon now. It was time I acted like one. Chapter 160 - Half Split Throughout the Skylands, light bloomed. Fitting, really¡ªthree deaths and plenty of combat, enough for my creatures to sup their fill of mana and experience. All over, evolution hummed and crackled with ready anticipation, potential wrapped up inside bared teeth. The corpses, already being stripped away and repurposed; the mana form that consumed. My own core was bursting at the seam with excess, too much already flowing into the ambient air. Hells, that sucked. But no matter. I dove into my creatures. The first was high above on the islands, head raised and black eyes bright¡ªthe mist-fox who entrapped Alda and illusioned them right into proper paranoia. She was an elder thing by my standards, part of the original pack I''d created when I''d gotten their schema, much larger than her nestmates with burnished silver fur and a tail that was never in less than five separate forms. Evolution dulled her mind, tugged her towards sleep, but I could feel the pride of watching invaders tumble off a cliff by her doing. A lovely beast.
Congratulations! Your creature, a Mist-fox, is undergoing evolution! Please select your desired path. Cloudcaller Fox (Rare): In a land of storms, it fades to become one alongside. With every step or shift of its tail, new clouds come roiling to the surface, all laced with illusions and impossible to discern where the right path is to go. Smoke-fox (Rare): To choose mist is to choose passivity. This creature takes for a choking approach, weaving its illusions through the grit and grime of smoke; prey is entranced deeper within, following its lies, until they succumb to suffocation. Phantom Fox (Rare): Illusions of self become illusions of existence. Fading from the world, it hides its physical body from all around it, becoming a spectre in the living world¡ªbut the bite of its hidden claws are always felt.
So many evolutions, all of them new. My mana purred around me as I studied the various options. Cloudcaller fox was fascinating, entirely so, but I couldn''t help but think of my cloudskipper wisps and stormcaller sprite¡ªmy Skylands were already a land choked in clouds, and I didn''t need more. In a similar vein, the smoke-fox tried to fit a hole I''d already filled. The Scorchplains were drowning in smoke, from the magma pools and the coal pits, and while they would blend in perfectly, it was also dark enough that her illusions would be ineffective against invaders that were already not using their eyes. Unfortunate. But all it meant was that the phantom fox seemed all the more enticing an opinion. No longer just a siren''s call, now she would attack invaders; a ghost, lunging from the mist that her unevolved brethren would still twist to their intentions. Similar to my spectral serpent, actually, though without actually disappearing from the world. But very powerful. I selected phantom fox and let the evolution carry her away, eyes slipping closed and light overtaking her form. She was already tucked away in a corner of the Skylands, blanketed by storm, and I spent a few points of mana dissolving the stone underneath to hide her in a burrow of some sort. Protection enough for her evolution. More messages, popping like explosions over my consciousness; it tugged me down next, beneath the islands, to where a tribe gathered and recovered and spoke. The goblins. Several of whom were glowing with a pale luminosity. It seemed Akkyst''s plan to have them kill Azkhal had been successful; as much as a dozen of them were sparking with solidified mana, bright and effervescent. Even if I would have been happier with Akkyst evolving. But the eldest of the tribe were already being led back to their carved homes, with an odd preparation I didn''t know what to think of¡ªlike they knew what evolution was, even if all of them hadn''t evolved yet. The younger goblins guided them, seemingly aware that their minds were fuzzy in preparation, and took up guard outside the openings with their mana prepared. Except for one, who was being led by Akkyst. Bylk, oldest of all my creatures, let the enormous bear take him up the stone bridge and into the cavern they shared, with the stone rune in the back. He was smiling, snaggleteeth protruding, as Akkyst nosed him into the moss bed in the back. Fitting, really. He''d killed Hulimat, though his shadow had done the bloody work itself, and that was a full blooded Silver whose mana was now his. And a dozen others¡ªI dove into the messages with glee.
Congratulations! Your creature, a Highland Goblin, is experiencing evolution! Please select your desired path. Boneshard Goblin (Rare): A crafter and collector entwined, this creature shapes itself in the mountains it calls home. From ore to prey to stone, it creates mystical things its fellow goblins can only dream of, ever practicing its gift. Goblin Mage (Rare): A harnesser of mana, it chooses one element to attune itself to and perfect. Amidst a world of sloppy deliverance, it hones its abilities to rival that of the outside world, swearing to be more than what it is seen as. Hobgoblin (Rare): Brute and brawn, this creature has forsaken its lowly roots and become a beast to be feared. Its reach is long and indomitable, particularly with its regenerative capabilities, and there is no limit to the size it will eventually grow.
So that''s what they were¡ªhighland goblins. I vaguely remembered that as an Otherworld schema option when I had last evolved, though I hadn''t selected it. Of course I hadn''t. Against kobolds, what were goblins? Well. Mine, I supposed, though I didn''t have their schema. But a part of my dungeon now. Crafter, mage, warrior. Similar options to the kobold evolutions¡ªrather than a dramatic change, more a honing of what they already were. Bylk was already a mage; now he would be a proper one, with mana channels to match. A touch boring. I''d allow it. Curious, though. From what I''d gleamed from Akkyst''s memories, there were three goblin tribes within the Al¨®mbra Mountains¡ªthe Magelords, the War Horde, and the miners, far below. These three evolutions matched them perfectly. Why were there so many goblins here? My sea-drake memories were hazy for terrestrial things, but I remembered goblins as pests, as vermin, but not common. And certainly not strong enough to survive in inhospitable mountains, let alone command three separate divisions deep within. Another mystery. It seemed I was handling many of them. But there was less than a choice here, not really. Perhaps I could have chosen boneshard goblin, if I really wanted, but I knew that would be antithetical to all that they were. They had not sworn themselves to mana just for meaningless enjoyment; even if I picked that evolution for them, I had little doubt that they would still pursue mana. No, they were the Magelords, and this was what they wanted. ¡­still likely better to check, though. Half mocking, half sincere, I poked into Bylk''s mind, dreamy though it was with evolution, and pushed the options to him. Bylk hummed, eyes already closed and limbs slack. His thoughts spun with potential, with more power to defend and build up his people. Becoming the Magelords in truth, rather than simply goblin practitioners of mana. He wanted more. He wanted to be. I''d take that as a yes. I selected goblin mage. Akkyst shuffled back as Bylk was consumed in a gentle silver, a dozen other goblins falling to the same glow. But within their dens, they were safely tucked away and sheltered, no need for me to protect them in evolution; their tribe would handle that. Frankly, that was very appreciated. If more of my creatures could step up so I didn''t have to waste mana digging burrows and tunnels just to have to unmake them once their evolution was finished, that would make us much stronger as a dungeon. ¡­that would fall to me, then. If I wanted to teach my dungeon to be more cooperative, I needed to show them why. I distracted myself from that with the rest of the floor. The goblins and mist-fox were the only exciting options, considering few others had involved themselves in the battle. I pounced through them quickly¡ªwhitecap mushrooms into lacecaps, burrowing rats into shadowthief rats, little pockets of mottled scorpions hovering on the edge of evolution but not there yet¡ªand then I dove down, deep through the tunnels and twisting mess, and landed in the Hungering Reefs. The first time any invaders had made it so deep. A floor, so far, untested¡ªand full of things to fix and adjust. Especially considering Abarossa had promised to be lenient with changes I made. Messages immediately flooded me as I focused on the points of awareness above the pristine blue waters, lapping against blood-stained white sands. There, in the first room, one of my saviors crouched over the body she''d rightfully earned. This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it. My vampiric dryad hissed at the air, grasping at the dwarven corpse with the only arm she had left. Ossega''s axes hadn''t given her the mercy of a clean hit and she bled sluggishly through the gap, bark splintered off and weight thrown off-kilter. I immediately smothered her in mana, closing off the wound and thickening the sap so it no longer bled, but I didn''t know if she could regrow it. Maybe, considering a dryad''s regeneration, maybe not, considering that seemed like it would take a new body to have. But she''d won, and better yet, she''d talked, which was something I was going to have to learn more about. And she wasn''t the only one needing attention¡ªin the third room, tucked in the farthest corner of his shipwreck, the sea serpent coiled in on himself. Blood seeped into the water from his missing eye, diffusing scarlet. I immediately poured points of mana to heal him, sending soothing thoughts, tugging away his pain¡ªbut he barely seemed to notice my presence. It would have taken a hammer to break past the shell he buried his thoughts in, drowning under a loathing and fear and misery wound up like chains. I poured more healing mana into him, smoothing over even old scales and a chipped fang. Anything to make him comfortable; keep him alive. Both him and Seros, stuck in the tunnel between the floors, his thoughts black and dark at his own failure. They needed me. But right now my consciousness was being bombarded with messages of evolutions¡ªthe second that finished, I would go to them. Tell them they were strong. Tell them they hadn''t failed. But for now, I pushed another point of mana into both of them, trying to reassure them, before drifting back to the second room of the Hungering Reefs, where the glow of evolution awaited me. Plenty of smaller creatures, old ones I already knew, but ten creatures in particular. Ten roughwater sharks, including the one who had charged Shoth and scared him up to the surface. Ten beautiful, enormous sharks, cutting through the water, blood in their wake. I''d been waiting for these. Particularly with Abarossa as the Goddess of Sharks, I''d hungered for what she could provide one of the oldest schemas I had¡ªand it did not disappoint.
Congratulations! Your creature, a Roughwater Shark, is undergoing evolution! Please select your desired path. Fishhook Thresher (Uncommon): A beast built for the open waters, it has upgraded ridged skin to thorned skin, curved backward for maximum lacerations and holding. Anything that is struck by its whip-like tail is stuck until dead. Rammerhead Shark (Common): It has learned frontward attacks are best. From rough skin comes armoured skin, gathered around the head in a battering ram''s blade; if its prey is not gored upon the first charge, they are quickly ripped apart by vicious fangs. Moray Shark (Uncommon): In a land of enormous predators, it has learned another strategy. It uses its sinuous body to twist and curl through coral reefs, armed with the double jaws of an eel and the power of a shark.
It seemed only fair that after a series of easy decisions that I would then be given an impossible decision. All of them were lovely and wonderful in their own regard; the thresher I remembered from my time as a sea-drake, enormous things with a tail as long as their body¡ªthey''d whip around and crack it over their prey, stunning them, then devour at their leisure. A perfect predator for those wide open expanses with swarming schools to pick and choose from. And the rammerhead; I didn''t know them, but I imagined enormous, bulky sharks slamming into invaders much like bulls on the rampage, either gored upon the horns or battered to death. Particularly in the third room, with dark waters and towers of coral; they would match and mirror the sea serpent''s strategy as a perfect surround. Moray shark, on the other hand, was a combination I couldn''t have said I''d have thought of, but it filled me with excitement. Sharks were powerful and straightforward in their destruction; a biteforce that few others could claim, and a strength insurmountable. Combining with a moray eel''s twisting, inescapable nature and ability to escape any grasp, it would be unstoppable. I normally tried to keep evolutions the same, focusing on building communities rather than individual reapers wandering my halls. But for this, considering I had some ten sharks primed for evolution, I would allow myself to build two different groups. Not the fishhook thresher, unfortunately. While my Hungering Reefs were large, they weren''t the open ocean, and threshers needed room to whip their tails around. They wouldn''t be the perfect devastators I wanted them to be. But the others¡ªyes. They were exactly what I needed. The original shark who had charged Shoth, the only one to land a real hit, would be a rammerhead shark. She had already proven that was her preferred strategy, and I selected three other larger, more brutish sharks to match her, two males and one more female. Enough to start a breeding population, considering I would be sending a pair to the Haven. The other six would be moray sharks. The second I saw that I wanted it; a combo of two hungry, vicious predators with double jaws and strength beyond them. I could see how devastating they would be, and all the death they would be to my invaders. Four and six. I selected it and let the light diffuse over their form, filling the Hungering Reefs with light; as soon as they finished, I would send a pair of each to the Haven, the better to allow more population, though I would be leary of only having two rammerhead sharks on the floor at the moment. But sharks tended to lay in litters, so with only a few I hoped the population would be up enough. And then I would have¨C A new message crawled over my core. What? I pulled back, reaching out with intangible confusion¡ªmaybe someone had eaten one of the mana-dense corpses and earned an evolution, or something similar? It didn''t make much sense to evolve so long after the battle, unless it was one of the bugs or lesser creatures, but¨C The evolution was in the Underlake, from a cloudskipper wisp currently caught between the armoured jawfish''s fangs. It had been a remarkable day of panic, and it seemed I still had more to give¡ªmy mana squawked, demeaning as it was, and swooped in to surround him. I battered into his mind, great shrieking demands to let go and stop biting and gods above, hadn''t there been enough death today¨C But he wasn''t killing it. He was filling it. Therr¨®n the water mage floated somewhere below, a bloated corpse missing a hand and studded with bites from silvertooths. The armoured jawfish had killed him, had separated his head from shoulders in a clean bite to end his attack, and as with all similar situations had taken his mana for his own; but he hadn''t absorbed it. Had fought against it, actually, ripping it from his own channels¡ªand pushing it into the cloudskipper wisp. It thrashed inside his fangs, battering against the impenetrable weight of his armour, but Therr¨®n''s mana surged into it like a thunderstorm. My wisps were entirely passive creatures, flitting about to kick up waves; even inefficient as this method was, I watched the wisp pulse and crackle with mana, more than enough to evolve, young though it was. What in all hells was he doing? His thoughts honed as he felt me look in, sharpening to a claw''s point. Evolve-evolve-evolve circled in endless repetition through his mind, a harmonious victory cry¡ªhe sensed the potential between his fangs, how much willpower it took to not only reject the mana but also catch a cloudskipper wisp, which was as antithetical to his hunting style as possible. I stared at him, every point of awareness swiveling in. What was this? Why did he want the wisp to evolve, rather than take the mana extremely attuned to his own growth? The message lurched again in my core. Against my better judgment, I looked.
Congratulations! Your creature, a Cloudskipper Wisp, is undergoing evolution! Please select your desired path. Cloudrider Sprite (Rare): Summoner once, wielder now. No longer are clouds only brought in its wake; it creates and directs them at its will. Entire field drowned in grey; entire mountains draped in silver, led by their powerful host. Tidewalker Sprite (Rare): From wind to water, it dives beneath the surface and welcomes an aquatic attunement. Currents are the lifeblood of this creature''s existence, weaving impossible pathways to carry it and others through the deep. Waveleaper Sprite (Rare): In a land with a whirlpool, it adapts to match. Dipping a half-coalesced form into the water, it crashes back and forth to summon mighty waves, beating against those both above and below.
No stormcaller sprite, which was unfortunately fitting considering this wisp had experienced no real hardship, but the new options leapt out at me. Waveleaper fit in with the Underlake, no longer needing to run on the surface to whip up the push-pull thrum Mayalle harnessed, and tidewalker would mesh with Seros'' abilities well enough I wanted to evolve it into that just to see what they would do together. But that didn''t explain the armoured jawfish''s actions. I untangled myself from the evolution and peered deeper into his mind, into the unorganized thoughts and rumbling hunger that never died¡ªand saw, stark as starlight, his drive. The awareness of the world around him, the Underlake, the rotating cast of companions who either died or traveled below, and how the option had never been extended to him. His armour was so heavy it had killed his ancestors. Up here, with Mayalle''s whirlpool, I had known he would be able to support himself. I had thought that the best option. It appeared he did not agree. He had specifically gone for Therr¨®n, aimed for him, just for the water-attuned mana he had; and then forced it into a cloudskipper wisp for the chance of a beneficial evolution. Something to support his heavy armour so he could travel below. I swiveled a point of awareness down, to where my roughwater sharks were just settling into evolution¡ªthe Hungering Reefs were an ancient, starving place, brimming with a paradise''s comforts and a hell''s unforgiveness. With a tidewalker sprite by his side, my armoured jawfish would thrive. Where he had apparently wanted to thrive all this time, but I hadn''t given him the chance. Another creature I had abandoned, much like the insects from the Fungal Gardens. How many more would I discover too late, until one day they abandoned me? I''m sorry, I murmured quietly, just to his mind¡ªand selected tidewalker sprite. The glow exploded between his fangs as the wisp dissolved into mist, trickling out to drift back above the water; he let it, falling back down to the depths, tail thrashing as his brief moment of inactivity nearly dragged him down. But satisfaction gleamed through his mind, burning bright; he knew that as soon as it evolved, he would be taken below. Like wanted. I left him to think on that, dream of it, as I went back to the Hungering Reefs. But there were no more evolutions there, considering Shoth had sprinted through and the dryad had taken care of all else, leaving the floor mostly normal. Beyond a certain someone, crouched, feet dug into the sand and hands wrapped around his head. Fucking Aedan, still alive, too scared to move or run or fight. My mana boiled around him, lashing out at the sand and surf; a million reasons that if he were to leave, I would destroy him, Rhoborh be damned. But I couldn''t do anything to him. Not yet. I sent a message to Nicau and Chieftess, still preparing to head out on their jungle trip now-delayed, to keep an eye on him as I moved on. One floor left. The one with the most happening; the floor where I had almost been enslaved. It was time to see what the Scorchplains had to offer. Chapter 161 - Twin Divisions Already the ruckus from my core had died to a less distracting level, easier to parse and peel through as I dove beneath the Hungering Reefs, letting the mana wash over me as the smoke filled my visions. The heat, the dry, crackling air; the nightmare I''d made that had served as the last bulwark of my defense. The Scorchplains hadn''t returned to normal¡ªbecause there wasn''t really a normal, not yet. It was still so new, its creatures only just figuring out their positions in the food chains, and then they had slammed themselves together into a truce and were now stuck figuring out what to do next. The herd of bounding deer, leaderless and injured, limped around Shoth''s corpse with their ears pricked and tails up. At their hooves, scorch hounds padded around, inspecting each other and tugging off sections of houndspore with their teeth to free up the injuries underneath. The kobold walked between them, slumped with exhaustion and missing a patch of scales over his chest, but still helping out his pack. At the fringes, spined lizards crept in for bites of flesh, dodging around paws and bristling whenever seen. And through them all, light burned. Their first invader; the death of a Gold. Something above and beyond what they''d ever encountered, even with Seros occasionally coming down here to check on me and the scorch hounds previous life in the Skylands. No, this was more. No, this was everything. I went for the smallest first, the spined lizards; four of them were ready to evolve, already curled up beneath outcrops of basalt as their eyes closed.
Congratulations! Your creature, a Spined Lizard, is undergoing evolution! Please select your desired path. Coalback Lizard (Uncommon): In a land of smoke and fire, this creature adapts to match. From spines grow veins of coal, heavy and protective, as well as protective; due to the coal growing over its scales, it can catch alight without harming the creature. Bristled Iguana (Common): Speed has not proven itself viable. Instead, this creature grows large and dangerous, covered in spikes to punish any who get too close¡ªparticularly those who are chosen to fill its ravenous stomach. Seekspine Lizard (Rare): It has watched and learned from the master. Its spines are no longer guided by aim; instead, its mana fires them directly to its target, regardless of difficulty.
It was truly fascinating to see where their evolutions came from¡ªsome as a natural progression, guided by the land or learned from brethren who had died too early. And some from their kills, stealing Shoth''s aim for their own. Hopefully not his betrayal. I didn''t need backstabbing lizards. I dithered over it for a second, weighing all the choices¡ªbut my Scorchplains were already drowned in coal and speed had very much proven itself viable in the darkness, so my gaze drifted down to the seekspine lizard. An aim from the Gold himself; a way to protect themselves and stick to safer distances. Four spined lizards faded under a silver glow, soon to be seekspine lizards. And then, straight up¡ªthe bounding deer, a fractured herd still skittish with leftover adrenaline, pranced and paced about in the darkness. I purred soothing mana into their minds, softening their fear, letting me guide them away from the center and to a more sheltered side of the Scorchplains, preparing for their long sleep. The herd followed my lead, light sparking up from their hooves. They must have been waiting on the very edge of evolution¡ªwhich made sense, really. Unevolved and dumped right into my lowest floor, and now helping to take down a Gold; little wonder there were some two dozen waiting to evolve, almost the entire rest of the herd left. A bounty of options. I waited impatiently until they were all settled, ears perked and heads flat, before diving into the messages.
Congratulations! Your creature, a Bounding Deer, is undergoing evolution! Please select your desired path. Bounding Moose (Uncommon): Size and strength rise higher. It towers above its previous form, poised to trample over any that could threaten its peaceful life. Cinderhoof Deer (Uncommon): Running is no longer enough. Its hooves spark embers as it runs, and its fireproof fur will carry the flames wherever it goes. Any predators seeking a large meal will find themselves caught in the blaze should they threaten this herd. Ahlk (Rare): The life of prey is a vicious cycle heading to death¡ªthis creature throws off the yoke and becomes a predator. Armed with fangs and sharpened antlers, it stalks through deep forests in search of anything to take down.
That was lovely. Three proper evolutions, all different, all powerful, all raring and begging to be chosen. The cinderhoof deer was as deliberate a choice to the Scorchplains as I could imagine; in a land of darkness, eyes went to light, and if the only thing invaders could track was burning wakes of fleeing deer and impossible targets they would get more lost than even the Jungle Labyrinth. The ahlk fascinated me by nature¡ªwhy take prey and turn them into predators, when it seemed they were so far from the proper body and form?¡ªand given how handily they''d kept Shoth busy while the scorch hounds worked, I could see it working well. But I already had hunting beasts on this floor, with a pack at their side; I didn''t know if I needed another, particularly without a deep forest to give them. But the bounding moose¡ªall around my floor, scorch hounds were lit up in the glow of poised evolution, something to strengthen them beyond. They had survived for a good while on the food I''d provided them down here, but as the pack grew larger and more powerful, they would need greater prey. In the competition of a deer versus a moose, one would provide the meat for a few; and the other would feed the entire pack. Well. I''d done it with the roughwater sharks¡ªI was willing to do it again. Of the two dozen waiting, I took eight females and eight males to become cinderhoof deer, the most lithe and quick of the bunch; the remaining eight became bounding moose, with two already selected to head off to the Haven to make sure I could always keep up on proper food. More supplies, more force for my halls. Perhaps I could train them to run in specific patterns, throw up walls of fire to keep invaders from merely running through. And still another group came to me¡ªthe last of my evolutions here, even more numerous. Much like the bounding deer, nearly the entire pack of scorch hounds was ready to evolve; they had all tested themselves against Shoth, and in the Skylands before this. I guided them to their den, tugging the kobold alongside, until they all curled up in slumbering piles of limbs and fur and horns; their thoughts ran slow but ember-hot, crackling with anticipation.
Congratulations! Your creature, a Scorch Hound, is undergoing evolution! Please select your desired path. Hellhound (Rare): A beast of fire and fury. This creature awakens a hunger for destruction, charging through the surroundings for anything to rip apart and shred. It knows no limits nor stopping point. Blazebane Wolf (Uncommon): It hunts alongside its brethren, using its blazing bite and smoky breath to choke out all challengers, taking great pride in protecting its pack and providing for them. Ash Hound (Rare): It has drowned in smoke and been born anew¡ªenemy strikes will only break it down to coalesce later, a blend between living and dead. It may not have strength, but it will outlast all those who come against it.
Now that was a lovely selection. Hellhound called to me, sung to me, my sea-drake spirit of vengeance and vitriol¡ªbut no. Not anymore. The scorch hounds functioned best as a pack, protecting each other as they took down prey as one; ceaseless reapers who only sought to destroy wasn''t what I needed. On a higher floor, maybe, where invaders were more abundant; but not here. The agony of passing up pure power. It hurt more than I wanted to say. Ash hound, in a similar vein, was another deeply tempting choice¡ªnot immortality, not for the mortal creatures of Aiqith, but a body formed and shaped of the refuse of fire seemed a mighty wonderful choice. But I had found, in my time as a core, that when a schema''s description said outright they didn''t have strength, it wasn''t lying. Maybe it served as an in-between schema, building up its power for an ever-remaking evolution that had both power and regeneration, but I couldn''t afford to wait for a distant sparkling future. I needed power now. You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story. And the blazebane wolf spoke to that. Still pack-based, still fire-attuned, with a boost to strength that didn''t make them solitary destroyers or vaporeous ghosts. Maybe one day I would pick either option¡ªbut for now, I let the entire pack fade away into golden-yellow light, wolves soon to howl at the darkened sky. But not all of them. Because the eldest scorch hound, the one that had been dogged by the kobold for so long and only just now started to work with him, had a different message; different evolutions. More potential.
Congratulations! Your creature, a Scorch Hound, is undergoing evolution! Please select your desired path. Blazebane Wolf (Uncommon): It hunts alongside its brethren, using its blazing bite and smoky breath to choke out all challengers, taking great pride in protecting its pack and providing for them. Spore Hound (Rare): A symbiosis taken to its peak. Houndspore grows over it in an ever-changing armour that can be spread to other members of its pack, growing down to strengthen its claws. Orthrus (Rare): Its mind has grown beyond its form; by splitting into two heads, it is able to charge forward with an intelligence past its peers. It sees the world around as something to understand and conquer, teaming up with all manner of species to be unstoppable.
I hesitated. Blazebane would slot her in with her pack, keep her on their same page, and I couldn''t be assured if I picked anything else they would be as welcoming¡ªbut oh, those other options. The spore hound, a perfect mirror to the houndspore, what had protected her against Shoth and kept me free, but¨C Orthrus. She was dreadfully intelligent, at least when compared to her brethren; working with the kobold had granted her a sharper understanding of the world around her, how it worked, how she worked in it. And unlike the two-headed bear of ages past, this wasn''t two souls grafted onto one; just herself, doubled over. She could use that to stay with her pack, to keep striving for new obstacles with help on all sides, and devastate in control. Well. I did have one thing to check before I chose for her. Because there, walking through the pack, scales scattered in his wake and a limp heavy over his left leg, was the kobold who had forsaken his tribe and traveled down to the fire den. He had been working with her, failing for longer than he''d been succeeding, never giving up even as she snapped and snarled at him. And now she had worked alongside him, taught him to hunt as she did, allowed him into their den; if there was a chance their evolutions would be tied, I wanted to give it to them.
Congratulations! Your creature, a Kobold, is undergoing evolution! Please select your desired path. Kobold Hunter (Rare): In tune with beasts and birds, this creature stalks through the undergrowth with raised claws and keen eyes. Either solitary or serving a greater tribe, they strike from the shadows and drag home corpses large enough to feed dozens. Kobold Warrior (Rare): In a world of dangers, one rises to match. This creature fights with a brawn well beyond what its body should hold, ending battles with the sheer strength of its will and an unwillingness to concede. Kobold Tamer (Rare): Its tribe is no longer its loyalty; instead, it thrives in the wilderness, teaming up with beasts of all types to hunt and fight alongside them, providing intelligence and earning a family in return.
Not even an option for lizardfolk¡ªit seemed he was, disgustingly, deplorably, sticking to his fire-drake roots. What a genuinely terrible decision. But of the three, there was only one to pick. He was a warrior, and a hunter, but it was him that had abandoned his tribe to join a pack, and only the kobold tamer showed and built off that. A guide for those that would give him family; a general for those that would fight by his side. And I could think of no better companion than a two-headed hound. He would bring intelligence; and she would bring it to match. A proper pair, quick enough to crush all others, but instead using that combined power to help the pack. For him, I selected kobold tamer; for her, I selected orthrus. They felt the evolution hit at the same time. I watched with a burgeoning glee as they immediately loped further back to the den, past other scorch hounds already slumbering under light, and curled up in some dark corner for protection¡ªteamwork again. Trust, that they would be safer together rather than apart. They''d do wonderful things, I just knew it. In the wake of that, the Scorchplains hummed with energy; dozens of evolutions waiting for time to crawl on, to elevate them past new heights. My core softened down to a whisper, letting my thoughts flow freely once more¡ªpreparation for the next steps. Still the webweaver high above, and a long, long talk with Rhoborh, but I''d worry about that after. Because there was one more evolution to choose. This message was the largest, stretching the edges of my core with golden runes; it was tucked in the back of the Scorchplains, out of direct line of sight, which was good because now it glowed, bright as a volcanic vent. The very air hummed around it. Because the final evolution was my own.
Congratulations! You have reached the threshold for evolution. As a reward, the gods have deigned themselves to offer you gifts, if you believe you are worthy to accept them. You may choose an Otherworld schema and either an expansion to your mana pool or regeneration.
I dug past the evolution message, peering at the center of my marbled core. The smaller runes, those thrumming with excess power.
Dragonheart Core
Mana: 75 / 75 Mana Regeneration: +0.8 per hour
Patrons: Rhoborh, God of Symbiosis; Mayalle, Goddess of Whirlpools; Nuvja, Goddess of Shadows, Khasvar, God of Lightning; Nenaigch, Goddess of Weaving; Abarossa, Goddess of Sharks
Titles: Resurrector, Welcomer
Well, those full seventy-five points hurt, considering I knew damn well that twelve deaths had been worth more. And that might have been an indicator for which option I should choose, to build up my storage to sculpt larger creations, it was still hardly a question. While seventy-five was a drop in the ocean as my creatures continued to evolve and their mana costs exploded, my Haven and defenses meant I didn''t want to rely on needing to create them from scratch. If I only made base creatures, their mana costs stayed small. But mana regeneration meant more Names. I selected that. The Otherworld¡ªdeep and cool, like an ocean current from a far-off land¡ªrushed through me, crashing into my core like a hurricane. An outpouring of new power, fresh, drowning me; awakening me. Strengthening me.
Dragonheart Core
Mana: 75 / 75 Mana Regeneration: +2.4 per hour
Patrons: Rhoborh, God of Symbiosis; Mayalle, Goddess of Whirlpools; Nuvja, Goddess of Shadows, Khasvar, God of Lightning; Nenaigch, Goddess of Weaving; Abarossa, Goddess of Sharks
Titles: Resurrector, Welcomer
Oh, that was lovely¡ªmore than lovely, really, considering how much I could do with it. I had enough for one, maybe two Names¡ªand I would take my time with them, think them over, choose not just those who deserved it but those who would use it. My creatures needed more; my floors needed leaders beyond me, someone whose commands didn''t come smothered in raid-frenzy. To help us all survive. And speaking of. I looked back at the other message.
Please select an Otherworld schema. Corpsefarmer (Rare): The split path of chosen deliberation; alchemists seek out this creature for its collecting nature, taking useful and rare trophies from any corpses around it. Whenever there is an alchemic breakthrough, it is lingering on the edges. Galactic Hoverling (Rare): Insectoid brilliance spread wide; it constantly grows and sheds wings, having no less than six pairs at any given time. It uses them for distraction, flight, and focusing its mana, while those in its wake use its shed wings for decoration, building materials, and alchemic properties. Terrorbird (Rare): A beast only found in the deep forests, it stalks through the underbrush with enormous talons and jagged beak. Their flocks control sprawling territories, fearing nothing and crushing all those in its path. Restorative Aloe (Rare): The best symbiotic relationship is one too useful to threaten. This plant gathers healing mana in its sap to help all those who consume it, guaranteeing that all those who live nearby will protect it. Myconid (Rare): For the thin line between life and death, this creature treads it. Amassed of fungal flesh and mycelium thoughts, it shambles about to build more of itself, creating a hivemind that spreads as far as it can go.
Well. Now it was all new options¡ªit seemed whoever controlled my power no longer was forcing me into picking something, twisting my claw so that I would dance to their wishes. Lovely. ¡­I had been interested in the lesser harpies they''d offered last time, though. They would fit particularly well in with my eighth floor. But the replacements were all fascinating. The corpsefarmer¡ªwhich showed me a vaguely quadrupedal body covered in coarse fur and wicked claws when I prodded at the schema¡ªwasn''t an alchemist on its own, which made an unfortunate amount of sense that I wouldn''t just be given that, but was a critical element to their development, supplying them with all the parts they could ever need. And in a dungeon, if they were fast and clever, they could have a bounty of choices to take from; a true feast laid out for the picking. And the galactic hoverling¡ªproviding beauty and materials at the same time, all with a kaleidoscope of beautiful colours that were somehow mana focusing. Not dangerous on their own, at least it seemed like, but an overall boon to my halls. In direct comparison, the terrorbird sounded like a lovely little nightmare; stalking predators of talons and beaks. Similar to my jaguar, but with a flock at its side; and for a towering heart tree home of my eighth floor, that sounded like a brilliant match. Something to truly be feared. The restorative aloe almost made me choose it immediately¡ªif Veresai had actively geased a human just to have a healer, then my dungeon would serve itself incredibly well to have more. Little doubt it was extremely mana-intensive, but its description served it well; everyone in my halls would protect it with their life, cultivating it all across the floors so that they would be healed as needed. And the myconids¡ªI remembered, with an odd certainty, back to the fungal-folk option I''d gotten from my very first evolution. Maybe this was the more sapient conclusion of that, since it certainly seemed better with its hivemind and ability to¡­ create more. That sounded concerning. And wonderful. Hells. That was an impossible decision to make. But one I would have to make. Chapter 162 - Furious Learning In the end, it came down to survival. I dithered and bit over the Otherworld schema options for far longer than I wanted to; this was my fourth choice, all new, and I wouldn''t let myself just rush into a bad choice because of how shiny it was. Shoth''s dead-man sprint had taught me that wouldn''t work. Not anymore. All of them were lovely and vicious and fanged and dangerous and, ultimately, similar to what I had. The corpsefarmer could be made from a shadowthief rat, so long as I obtained an alchemist to show the rodent what ingredients were critical to collect; the galactic hoverling provided mana and building materials, which I could devote more of myself to. Myconids were a shambling wreck of sapience and personhood, a force constantly building and growing, a combination of my thornwhip algae and kobolds¡ªwithout a home for it. In a similar vein, the terrorbird was lovely and wonderful and hurt me to my bones not to pick¡ªbut I didn''t have a floor for it, not yet. They hunted in jungles; maybe Nicau would find one, when I sent him out. But not now. The only option that I couldn''t make myself and didn''t require a specific home was the restorative aloe. Veresai had caught Kriya under a geas just to have a healer. And now I could provide one to all my creatures intelligent enough to use it¡ªand, perhaps, start one of my other goals; teaching them to work together. Considering how mana-intensive I imagined this schema would be, I would only be able to create limited amounts of it; and if everyone wanted to use it, they would have to coordinate. In another world, I could see it going like it had with the ironback toads and burrowing rats up in the Drowned Forest, creating a society of backstabbers and betrayal and extortion, but this time I would muscle in and make sure everyone coordinated. I had nearly been enslaved today, and if that happened, all my creatures would be either killed, broken, or cut down for mere gold. I would tell them this. I would show them how vital it was to play together. With that in mind, I allowed the schema of restorative aloe to flow through me. Its mana was dark and cool, filling my mind with the impression of emerald green spikes from pale soil, water beading on the edges, spines from the tip¡ªand potential. So much potential. To heal all my creatures not just when an invasion had finished, but throughout every day. A way to survive. A way to be better. A way to crush every stupid fucking invader who thought they could waltz into my dungeon and take my core. And speaking of¡ªwith all my distractions decided, mana thrumming through my core and straining at the edges of my pool, I let my points of awareness flick up and up; to a creature and a corpse, the last of the choices I had to make. Up in the Jungle Labyrinth, stuck between the grasping arms of thornwhip algae, what remained of a boy laid sprawled over the stone, hands outstretched and rumpled clothing cut loose by mandibles. Over him, with two broken legs and hemoglobin seeping through the cracks in its chitin, was a webweaver. The webweaver I had chosen to be a priest for Nenaigch; the one I had pumped full of mana, stuffed to the brim of its very channels, in an attempt to make it better than it was. And now, it was glowing with evolution, light thundering over its black eyes. Gnat was studded with bitemarks; little things, because webweavers were built for stationary combat, sitting on their communal webs until prey came to them. Their venom was strong, yes, considering how Gnat was twisted through death, but they weren''t built for attacking. If anything, that was more power to the webweaver, for overcoming its nature to kill him. I let my points of awareness spread over the tunnel, examining the scene; I''d been a touch distracted with Alda and Azkhal''s groups to focus on this death, but thankfully, the webweaver''s thoughts and memories flowed over its mind with a passion. It had felt what it called as the wrongness, a spider-woven person that wasn''t supposed to be, and pursued it; hunted it down, at great risk to its own life, and killed him. Gnat had been¡­ initially helpful? Or something, it was hard to parse through the webweaver''s thoughts, but Gnat had wanted to establish a trade of something. In return, my lovely webweaver had lunged at him, ignored its bodily injuries, and bitten him until dead. It had done what I needed; and, of course, with extreme devotion to me. While I was interested in what Gnat was here for, I couldn''t afford to just let him do it, when there was a chance of my enslavement on the page. Perhaps his soul would reveal things. And if it didn''t, so be it. I would lose that knowledge in return for life. Equally in return, for his corpse. I wanted a priest¡ªand I wanted one with more to do than feast on flies and nibble on stuck prey. A human''s intelligence and a spider''s loyalty. And much like my beloved vampiric dryad of time before, while I could just look at the evolution options available, I wanted to try my hand at something more deliberate. Something sharper. And so I pushed soothing mana into the webweaver, straightening out its broken legs and replenishing its hemoglobin, and then I reached out to the goddess whose power soared through these halls. Almost immediately, I felt Nenaigch respond, her iron-thread awareness spidering down to mine. She paused for a second¡ªmaybe sensing Rhoborh, who still hadn''t pulled his miserable mind out of my dungeon considering Aedan was stuck gibbering down in the Hungering Reefs¡ªbefore settling overhead, peering down at what I had to offer. Which, to be fair, wasn''t much, but I could spin a lovely story when it came down to it. I let my mana spread out over the tunnel, flickering over the edges of the corpse, his hands outstretched and froth through his lips. And the webweaver, crouched on top, its mind awash with satisfaction. A change, I said, soft and subservient and all other moronic things I had to be when interacting with deities. Would you accept them both as a follower? Nenaigch leaned in. She had a hunger to her, more than her making; I wondered, not for the first time, how long she had been the Goddess of Weaving. It felt like there was something more to her; an explanation about her origins that didn''t line up with her worship now. With Nuvja, far up in the Fungal Gardens, I rather understood her, as a goddess whose power had been stripped away from her; but Nenaigch was different. Something else. And whatever it was, she had asked for followers, and I was offering her something more. Yes, she said back, an iron-thread spool twisting over our connection. I accept. Phenomenal! Now I just needed her to do more than accept. With my mana, all seventy-five points and the excess I was shoving into my creatures as fast as possible to avoid losing out on too much, I draped it over the corpse and the creature; the webweaver shuddered as the full force of my awareness draped over it, sinking into the follicles of its mind. Gnat''s corpse and soul, still trapped under pale skin, waiting in death as I carved myself around him. The small child¡ªthe boy¡ªthe idiot¡ªthe mess that had threatened me, with the devotion overtop. I reached out and opened up my Otherworld connection, halfway through from a Name, a middle balance that my dungeon core memories showed me how to do. And through me, Nenaigch reached out; wove her mana, the Jungle Labyrinth humming in wake of her presence, over the corpse. Though he was long dead, Gnat twitched, so much power moving through him¨C Alongside, the webweaver brightened. The light over its carapace doubled in intensity, fierce as a storm, and the message in my core lit up.
Congratulations! Your creature, a Webweaver, is undergoing evolution! Please select your desired path. Bloodweaver (Rare): In death it awakens. This creature takes the corpses of its victims and uses them as silk, creating intricate webs throughout its territory. But a web made of blood isn''t normal; and how they act finds its way into horror stories. Thornweb Spider (Rare): It learns from its surroundings; each web it weaves grows wicked thorns, tangling and entrapping any in its path. This creature will even cover itself in them or fire it at prey, ensuring their slow and eventual death. Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings. Arachne (Rare): An amalgamation of spider and man, this creature carves a path through the world and lays waste to all those in its path. It spins webs into intricate patterns that it can then use as tools, building a society from the baseline.
Oho. I wouldn''t lie that I''d hoped it would be explicitly a creature of worship, but to take anything of the webweaver would be to make a priest. Perhaps I would have to beat worship of Nenaigch into its head instead of me, but with Gnat''s elevated intelligence, I had hope it would be done. Of course it would be done. Nenaigch had given me another path out of the dungeon and a Haven at my center; if she wanted a priest, by all hells, I was going to get her one. Nenaigch''s mana flowed over me, satisfaction, as she felt me select arachne¡ªwhile bloodweaver and thornweb spider were fascinating and I dearly hoped others would evolve soon so I could select them, there was truly only one option for right now. The webweaver disappeared under silver light, Gnat''s corpse crackling with excess light; a dream of some awakening. A hope that this would finally work. And with that, with a vague timeline I pushed through our connection that said she would only have to wait a few more days before the evolution finished, Nenaigch hummed with acceptance and drifted back up to her nameless world, where all the gods dwelled. All except one. I gave myself a second, let my thundering core relax now that all my messages had ceased, that my floors were once more stable, and I didn''t think of the fact that more adventurers would be coming tomorrow, that many of my strongest creatures were currently slumbering under evolution and thus couldn''t defend me, that my halls had revealed glaring weaknesses, that I was poised to be enslaved at any moment, that I had to be better, that I had to be smarter, and I let myself be furious. Down to the Hundering Reefs did I charge, to the priest and the bastard there. I roared over the first room, the glistening waves and pristine sand, to the second¡ªto the lagoon, to the collection of atolls there, islands scattered over the blue. One in the center, a handful of cloudsire palms throughout, and a gibbering, shuddering, menace of a moron in the sand. Aedan. The priest of Rhoborh. Moss over his face, his robes, his white-knuckled hands; what should have been a corpse if the vampiric dryad had her way, if someone hadn''t stopped her. Wasn''t still stopping her, actually, and all others on this floor¡ªbecause while Aedan was alone on the island, he wasn''t exposed. More chains. More shields. Protections punched through my ambient mana to swirl around Aedan, ringing him in like an embrace. I was so happy for him that he could feel safe, because he certainly fucking wasn''t. But for now, I dragged my attention upward, to the power hovering overtop of him like a miserable parent over hatchlings. To Rhoborh, the God of Symbiosis, the one who had stopped me. You, I snarled, putting the effort to form actual thoughts instead of just bellowing like a sea-drake of old. I was certainly acting like one, my mana sweeping up like intangible wings, a million consequences of betrayal caught between mana-made fangs. You dare threaten me? I felt his mana prickle uncomfortably¡ªthere was a sudden burst of pride that I was apparently powerful enough to make even a god leery¡ªbut Rhoborh didn''t retreat, didn''t back away. Aedan will not capture you, he murmured, quiet. Nor will any of my priests. Oh? Oh? That was so polite of him. And here I thought Aedan had just been merrily wandering through my halls on a fucking evening stroll. The miserable whelp in question hunkered further down as my mana thrashed, snarling like fire and lightning and ice. Death promised and waiting. The second these protections fell¨C the second I wasn''t bound by a god who thought the world was for him to control¨C We made a pact, Rhoborh said. That you would house my priests in return for my mana. Do not break it. I coiled tighter around Aedan, pushing on the edges of his protections. Maybe I didn''t want his mana any longer. I''d already gotten what I needed from it; already my vampiric dryad stalked through my halls with her claws out. Maybe I would dissolve our pact. Maybe I would banish him from my dungeon in return for slaying his priest. Rhoborh''s mana sharpened. Worried¡ªso that was a possibility, then. I could break pacts. I had that ability. Interesting. I stabilize your floor, he said, and reached out; let his mana flow through the Drowned Forest, showing all the crevices it pooled in, how it wove throughout and kept it together. Without me, you could not dig deeper. You could not expand. I stiffened. Hells, I''d forgotten about that. Dungeons could only go so deep on their own; as my core moved further below, so did my ambient mana, so did my power. My first floor would be a barren wasteland, all creatures starved, for all it was still under my influence; but Nuvja kept it supplied, kept the ambient mana full. Rhoborh did the same, as did all my other patrons. That was why they were worth it, even more than their boons. Why I had to keep fucking demeaning myself to offer floors to these wretched deities overhead. Rhoborh leaned in, pushing over Aedan, reaching out to me with a gentle pulse of mana. I am sorry, he said, with this dreadful apology that felt genuine enough I wanted to kill him. He was betrayed¡ªbut I have no desire to see you chained. As much as I stopped your dryad, I would have stopped him; he would not take your core. He was betrayed? Was Rhoborh taking all his thoughts and energy to focus on poor, sad Aedan, who had somehow trusted a pointy-toothed asshole in Shoth, and was so surprised he had been a traitor? That was who deserved attention? Who deserved mercy? I am sorry, Rhoborh said again. My mana roiled like a thunderstorm. I didn''t want sympathy. I wanted someone to attack. And considering Shoth was already dead, Rhoborh was my next best option. It was worse that he seemed to understand that, and even moreso that he accepted it. That he was allowing me to scream and shout and rage at him, because he knew that I needed it. I needed to be angry so I wouldn''t be scared. This asshole. I hated that. I hated being understood. He will leave, Rhoborh said, quieter now. Allow him to leave your halls, and he will never return; and know that any of my priests cannot claim you. Their power is my power; them I hold. Even if they betray me, if they forsake my name, then I will use my mana to end them before they take you. Well. That was so kind of him. So fucking merciful to just¨C say I wasn''t in danger. Say I wasn''t at risk of being enslaved. Let him leave, Rhoborh said, again and again, like I wasn''t getting it, and then disappeared from my halls. Faded away, the redwood scent of his power drifting up to that nameless world, back to the lingering awareness he only had in the Drowned Forest and over Aedan¡ªgone. Not threatening me, not stopping me. Back to normal. I slowly, slowly, allowed my mana to dissolve. To drift away, unthreatening, taking the strength of my fury with it until I could think again. Okay. Okay. I wasn''t happy. I doubted I ever would be, while the gods kept poking their wretched noses into my halls and pretended like they gave a shit about me¡ªbut that had been informative. Furious as I was and would continue to be, I had learned. Rhoborh was, in accordance to the pact we''d signed before that unknowable god, completely in his rights; he protected his priest, didn''t interfere otherwise, and made me agree to release his priest like a mouse from a trap. Did it matter that Aedan wasn''t in the fucking Drowned Forest when he played his cards? Apparently not. All my dungeon was the same when it came to protected priests. But he had also taught me things he likely hadn''t wanted to. The most important was that I could break our pacts. That if I wanted to, that if my relationship with a god ever deteriorated to an unsustainable point, then I could just¡ªwave them away. Pry their control from my halls and rid them out. And, more notably, that they didn''t want this to happen; they wanted their connection. And that made me think of Nuvja, of our changed agreement; and of Nenaigch, with our Haven and priest. So it wasn''t an established fact, an unchangeable thing to be obeyed. I could do more. I could demand more, in return for greater abilities. ¡­particularly from those who needed floors more badly. Nuvja was much dethroned from her previous strength. Abarossa had needed me to reconnect with her merrow. Mayalle had no priests compared to her more powerful brother. Rhoborh was unknown to nearly all. Nenaigch was followed by none. Only Khasvar was popular in any way, and if I tried to threaten him, I imagined he would just pull out and leave me rudderless. But the others¡ªthe others needed me. They needed me more than I needed them. There was nothing I could do at the moment, no deal I could threaten with them already safely in my halls; but for the future, I would not be accepting the basic, miserable deal that came with chains under the surface. I wanted more. I would refuse to have anything but more. And if that meant I had to go to weaker deities, like the goddess of fireflies who had been trying for floors now, so be it. I mostly needed them to hold my floors stable; I would take a weaker boon if they no longer could command me. Interesting. Very interesting. I took those thoughts and buried them; shoved them under the marrow of my mind so that no one else could read them, dissolved them down to little more than plans for my changing floors. Time to shove Aedan out of my dungeon¡ªperhaps Nicau could escort him out on his way to the jungle¡ªand then dig my fangs into the stone of my halls to remake them, to recreate them, to be better. But I would remember this. Chapter 163 - Thrice Set For the first time in what felt like centuries, my thoughts were finally my own. I wouldn''t even allow myself to get used to it, but it felt almost strange, after the panic from before. Floating overhead, my mana dispersing and core thrumming, I could finally¡ªwell, not breathe, given I was intangible, but pause. Take it all in. And then, half a moment after that, I shook myself out and turned my gaze back to my floors. Because the only reason I had this brief respite was because I''d fought and bled and damn near died for it, and I wouldn''t be allowing that again. Therefore¡ªrebuilding. My first mission was to prepare for tomorrow; though I could dream that perhaps this twelve-man invasion had blown up the Adventuring Guild to wonderful small pieces of bone and gore, I had to plan for another invasion. The endless cycle of which was my existence. And that meant sending out all those who needed to leave before they would run into anyone else. Luckily, I was already on the right floor. All I had to do was bob over the lagoon, where kobolds swam back in petulant annoyance that they hadn''t gotten to fight Shoth and Aedan before the bastards either ran or were protected, to the human standing awkwardly on the beach. Nicau stiffened as my mana draped over him, a soothing embrace over his wired self. No combat, because he could learn a lesson or two from Shoth about speed, but there wasn''t much to do about that beyond hope he would learn how to evolve more legs. Low chance of that, unfortunately. He straightened, stepping further out onto the sand. Over his leather coat were an array of funnel gourds, dried and hollowed out as storage containers. Maybe they would help him bring back more schemas; mostly, they made him look like an over-enterprising fool who hadn''t yet shed his past skin. I supposed everyone had their tastes. "Am I safe to leave?" Nicau asked the sky, shaking some droplets off his hands. Yes, I said, and filled out connection with my incorrigible dreams. Gather schemas. Bring many. He nodded, adjusting his gourds. Though he wouldn''t be shoving any scorch hound heads in there, I was focused on plants now, and they would be perfect for seedlings or cuttings. So long as he brought me more than pieces. I still remembered that gorgeous feather he''d brought back from Calarata, those iridescent blue-greens, but my inability to make it. Damnable rules. And with feathers in mind, as Nicau made an odd hiss-whistle to call Chieftess, another came to him¡ªthe parrot, fluttering down from her perch in a cloudsire palm. She squawked, almost politely, staring at him with a passive curiosity. "I''ll be back," Nicau said, because he''d apparently decided to treat her like any other sapient monster. Considering neither of us knew what she was, that might have been a safe bet. Chieftess emerged from the den, holding her crown of horns high. She churred with an ember''s brightness, ready as bared fangs¡ªsomething about leaving the dungeon was extremely exciting for her, more than even moving down to the Hungering Reefs. What was she trying to find out there? What prize was more than I was providing? She better not be trying to leave me. The parrot bobbed her head, still fixing Nicau with her black gaze. Awareness, but not in the way of him. Something else. Nicau noticed that, mana thrumming in his throat. "I''m leaving," he said again. "Would you like to come with me to¨C" he paused, then glanced upward¡ªhis thoughts skittered over a memory of me saying I would name the jungle, though he was wise enough not to directly ask me whether I had yet, because I hadn''t. Shit. To Myvnu, I said magnanimously, like I had spent many an hour debating and not like it had been pulled from nowhere like a loose scale. A draconic word, meaning the hoard of another dragon that was impressive but, obviously, not as impressive as yours. Dragons had many words for such things. "The Myvnu Jungle?" Nicau said. The parrot tilted her head to the side, preening a gold-tinged feather out of her wing. Deep in her chest, I watched that strange pocket of mana swirl, an ember unlit but waiting. Waiting for what, I didn''t know¡ªbut she merely ruffled her feathers and didn''t flit off the branch. "Jungle," she said dispassionately, without landing on his shoulder. "Leaving." Nicau wilted a bit, in some genuine sadness that she wasn''t choosing to go with him. But he had his other choice of companion¡ªChieftess, standing tall and strong, and three other kobolds, two warriors and one hunter. The last time he''d ventured out, he''d brought back my scorch hounds, mottled scorpions, fire-tongue flowers, cloudsire palms, and moonstar flowers; with five collectors, I imagined the prizes would be even greater. Either in quantity or quality, I wasn''t much picky. I just needed something. ¡­curious that she didn''t want to leave, though. That was where she had come from, guiding Nicau out, before abruptly switching from her previous route and choosing to come with him. Why didn''t she want to revisit it? Was she running from it? Gods, I was going to tear this kingdom down to the marrow so it would stop throwing things at me. If everything in my halls had a secret life of their own they weren''t planning on sharing, I wasn''t going to live long enough to discover them. Faintly, the scent of redwoods drifted over my core. Oh. Right. That little nuisance. Also, I said, and then immediately covered up any possible sense of confusion or forgetfulness with a blast of mana. You will escort the bastard out. Nicau blinked, first at the ceiling, then at Chieftess. "The¡­ bastard?" I jabbed a long, sharpened tendril of mana out of the lagoon, towards the island awash with miserable memories. Honestly, under the pretense of remaking my halls, I might sink it just for the principle of the matter. But for now, it housed a thornless, gormless worm of a man, and since I was not allowed to kill him, I wanted him gone. Go there, I pressed, then spread my voice so it bounced into the heads of the surrounding kobolds. Retrieve the bastard. Take him out of my halls. Nicau furrowed his brow. "He''s alive?" He asked, trying to look at the isle. "You didn''t kill him?" I was strangely offended. I left you alive, I pointed out. And Kriya. And Gon?al. I choose who I want to kill. It just so happened that choice was often everyone. "Kriya?" Nicau said, like he was testing the word. "Who''s that?" The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. Shit, had he never met her? I had vaguely wondered why he didn''t comment on the only other human in my dungeon; it made more sense if he didn''t know she was there. Which seemed likely considering how tight a leash Veresai kept her on. A question for a day where my imminent enslavement didn''t hang heavy over my core. Later, I said, pushing his attention back to the island. Take him out of my halls. Gather me schemas. The other kobolds, because they were wonderfully obedient, dove into the water; I swirled overhead with some burgeoning pride at their speed and efficiency, using their longer tails to whip through the currents and splaying their claws for better speed. They still weren''t sea-drake descendants, none of the ease and excellence that their betters would have, but they were far and above what they used to be. Hells, in another evolution, they might finally gain the blue scales they should have had from the beginning. Nicau, on the other hand, stared at the water like it had personally wronged him. He ran his hands over his leather coat, waiting a moment longer as if I was going to call Seros out to escort him once again. Not a chance. If he wanted a boat, that was on him to make. With a long-suffering sigh, he jumped in. Almost immediately, his clothes billowed around him and dragged him down, sinking him like a cut tail¡ªhis mind sparked with panic as he clawed his way back up to the surface, hauling himself forward as he blearily made his way to the noted island. Most of my roughwater sharks slept under evolution, and the other of my more aggressive creatures were feasting on Ossega''s body where it had rolled into the water in the first room. Maybe I''d shove Alda and Lanc''s in to join it for some mana-rich food. Either way, it meant that while even my kobolds lapped the struggling Nicau, he made it to the island uninterrupted. Mostly. He looked the part of the bedraggled rat. Hauling himself out of the current, he splashed onto the island with a watery groan, shaking out his sleeves and emptying his gourd carriers. Chieftess popped up alongside him, no worse for wear¡ªof course she wasn''t, that was the brilliance of scales, streamlined and perfect¡ªand warbled curiously at the other inhabitant. Who was currently crouched in the sand, head down, hands over the back of his neck. Lovely. I knew that Shoth had been the main demon baying at my halls, but Aedan had seemed like a threat alongside, insofar as his presence; now I saw him for what he really was. A Silver of mana, Unranked in body, entirely unprepared for invading. He needed a perfect temple with silken sitting cushions and attendants battering away anyone who would threaten him. This wasn''t that. And if I had anything to say about it, it would never be. Blood-stained sand crunched under claws as the kobolds stepped forward, Nicau padding up from behind. The dryad''s feet had left enormous scours through the surface, where she''d dragged herself away from Rhoborh''s chains to go hunt Alda. My dungeon was a tapestry in memorium to its previous battles. Aedan''s eyes, pale and drawn, glanced up; saw Chieftess, flinched, and then saw Nicau. Pure, raw relief flooded over his face. Still in the midst of the Hungering Reefs, surrounded by monsters, actively on an island with four other kobolds, he saw a human face and thought he was saved. Well, he was, but I was electing to ignore that in face of how I could use Nicau''s inherent trustworthiness to my advantage. There were reasons aplenty for a dungeon to use a human as bait. I smelled Rhoborh''s redwood scent curl around Aedan, tugging past the woven terror and panic in his moss-covered face, enough that his thoughts reconstituted into functioning beasts. Or something like that. I rather knew he didn''t have a single thought of his own, not if he had truly believed Shoth was inviting him to the dungeon out of nothing but the kindness of his heart. Slowly, Aedan clambered up to his feet; he flinched anew at every other kobold, like he hadn''t noticed them, but kept his eyes fixed on Nicau. "Rhoborh sent you to save me?" Nicau winced. At his side, Chieftess made a warble-hiss that couldn''t have been more of a laugh if she tried. "Right," he said, dubiously. "That''s¨C that''s what is happening, yes." Aedan slumped like coral pulled from the rocks. "Thank you, Lord of Symbiosis," he murmured, again and again and again. "Oh, thank you, thank you¨C" It wasn''t out of Rhoborh''s fucking kindness he was saved. It was my choice that it was worth more to have the god''s boon instead of one more corpse. My ire bled into the world¡ªone of the kobold warriors hissed, raising her spear, ready to strike down whatever was upsetting their Great Voice. But I was unfortunately iron in my knowledge we couldn''t kill him, and I doubted Rhoborh would accept me just leaving him to be murdered by all my hungry animals. No, he had to leave, before I was distracted enough not to tell my creatures off. On purpose or otherwise. Entirely on purpose. If I hadn''t given Nicau a boat before, I certainly wouldn''t be giving one to Aedan. He could find his one way across. Actually¨C I slipped back into Nicau''s mind, soft enough not to leak out to the world. Take him through the Overlook, I said. But knock him out before you leave so he will not see where the exit lies. A pause. Leave him wherever is least convenient. For all Rhoborh said Aedan would not claim my core, I wouldn''t give him any other leeway around it. Three entrances were already known by the Adventuring Guild; they certainly wouldn''t be learning of a fourth. Nicau nodded, a slight smile on his face. He did enjoy being vindictive. But I trusted him with Aedan, and for Chieftess with her honour guard to protect them all. They''d make it out, and I didn''t have time to watch them; I left a few points of awareness overhead, an eye in case of the worst, and turned away. There was a timer set, a waiting period for the Adventuring Guild. Half my creatures evolving, my floors flooded with excess mana that I couldn''t absorb with too small a pool, no idea whether tomorrow would bring a normal invasion or an armada. Cheery thoughts. But you couldn''t make gold out of sand, no matter how hard you wished on it, so all there was left to do was prepare. And build. And add. No longer would there be patient meandering wonder for the perfect idea to come to me; no, the second that Nicau came back with schemas, I would be completing my heart tree and starting my ninth floor. I needed more room between me and invasions; I needed protection far from where others poked their miserable fucking gobs into my halls. Did I know what I wanted the ninth floor to be yet? No. My eighth was going up, spiraling through a jungle''s brilliance and adding difficulties for invaders running through, but now I needed more. Slap a pair of fucking wings on Shoth, and he''d clear that floor just as fast as he''d done the rest. My floors would be upgraded to avoid that, and I would be adding more, and I would use my mana now, rather than waiting. And in that vein of things, my mana was freshly regenerated, and I was going to get more Named creatures. I had ideas for which, the dryad chief among them, but I wanted to at least think it over. Despite the fear that the Adventuring Guild was gathering right outside my halls. And that I was weaker than I thought. And that most of my creatures were currently sleeping. My mana twitched towards the dryad. I''d wait¨C a day. That was it. I had enough Otherworld mana for one Name minimum, and two if I lowered myself back to the mana regeneration of ages past. I called that worth it. My Named were more important than getting mana. Especially now, when I didn''t just need strength, but also cooperation. It was impossible to miss how Akkyst and the Magelords had killed all invaders they interacted with, including Akkyst actively fighting past my raid-frenzy to allow the Magelords to kill Azkhal for mana. In contrast, while Seros was little doubt one of, if not the strongest inhabitants of my halls, he had crippled my sea serpent and that let Shoth past. That wasn''t coordination. Hells, that was one step above wild animals, if only for how they hadn''t been actively trying to kill each other instead of the invader. My Named needed to be better. They needed to be leaders, someone to rely on, since I was learning with a fury that my raid-frenzy was only detrimental. If I commanded my creatures to attack, they did just that¡ªthey attacked, damn themselves or others. Kill or be killed. That wouldn''t keep me free. Gods, there were so many things to do. I had to start or else I''d be caught up in thinking them over for eternity. Two choices¡ªgo up or go down. But it wasn''t really a choice, or at least not one worth making. In a lovely contrast to my rampaging list of problems that I had either missed or ignored, the only issue with the Scorchplains was its youth; all its inhabitants were unevolved and untested, and while I had plans for adapting things once they reopened their eyes, that would have to wait to see how they reacted to it. Instead, I coiled, spreading intangible wings woven of pure Otherworld mana, and threw myself up. When the Adventuring Guild came again, they would hit the first floor, and I needed to have that be remade beforehand. Each floor was that¡ªa floor. Not a room, not a microcosm. They had to be their own entire identity, their own snap-jaw traps, their own cages. Twice I had remade the Fungal Gardens; this time would be the last. Chapter 164 - Repurpose I faced my Fungal Gardens, and made the first of many painful decisions. A land of death, yes, full of biting teeth and destruction; but wasn''t that the problem? There wasn''t enough mana up on my first floor to maintain those kinds of monsters, even with Nuvja''s boon. There had been a singular second evolution here, the reaper''s cap, and that had only come from Ghasavalk actively feeding it a burrowing rat. It wasn''t meant to be devastating. Burrowing rats, luminous constrictors, stone-backed toads, shadowthief rats; they could all survive here, thrive here, but there were three sleeping in their dens that couldn''t. The lunar cave bears. They were large, powerful, broad, and ultimately, wasted. Too strong for this floor, no opponents to test or train against beyond each other, and no reason to fight invaders when they weren''t strong enough to take down Silvers. They stuck to hiding in their dens, prepared to serve as backup; something to stop invaders who tried to leave. Shoth wouldn''t have tried to leave. He would have just enslaved me. Therefore, I needed to move them to where they would actually fight. Currently, the midnight bear was venturing through my Jungle Labyrinth, as he was wont to do in a realm perfectly suited to his abilities. And considering I doubted his offspring would get the two-headed bear evolution without a second soul to take into the mix, I planned for midnight, or perhaps bugbear; I needed to put them where they would be most efficient. And that wasn''t the Fungal Gardens anymore. Sorry, I didn''t say, because this was for the better. Instead, I pushed mana to them in carefully woven miracles, memories of evolutions and the power of other floors. Go below. Become strong. Become free. The eldest bear raised her head, ears perked; she cast a mournful glance back at her den, the rolling hills of whitecap mushrooms I constantly rebuilt to feed her, which I wouldn''t be doing any longer. Hard to have a Fungal Gardens full of diverse and constantly-evolving fungi when my bears ate their weight over and over again. Gods if that wasn''t the reason I hadn''t had a plant evolve in forever. I wanted more. I always did. And if that meant I had to remove the hungry eaters to give those behind a chance to grow, so be it. The bears would grow themselves in the Jungle Labyrinth, learning to harness the shadows like their father or moving to the Skylands to work with Akkyst if they got another evolution. And in the absence of lunar cave bears, I needed a new commanding species of the floor. Since I wouldn''t trust a higher evolution, considering they would need to move below eventually, so instead I would shoot for one that had already established themselves. One that was hungry and manageable; one that wouldn''t just be a plan for invaders leaving, but instead for invaders arriving. My points of awareness swiveled in, layering over the floor in drifting pockets of intangible eyes. The patches of shadows crawling over the edges, spilling down the limestone like the creeping vine disguising the entrance stone; the water, beading over the ground in endless rivulets, the delta studded with green algae and lacecap mushrooms. A haven for the insects and fungi and small, scurrying beasts; not for lunar cave bears, but something else. I didn''t want my commanding species to be mushrooms, despite the floor''s name; while I would be massively improving their number, I wanted something more intelligent to prepare. ¡­perhaps I should have picked myconids as my Otherworld schema. I ignored that thought. Fungi yes, but later. Now I needed to make the world better to hold them for when they came. It wasn''t even a remaking, in a way. The Fungal Gardens were too established for that; most of my floors were, really. It wasn''t like before, when I could tear out the walls and carve out a new shape, not with a god already attached to the mana. But what I could do was refine its purpose. The Fungal Gardens weren''t strong. They were never supposed to be strong. I had originally wanted them as a disguise, a faux perfectly normal cavern in a mountain to keep from excessive invasions; but with the Adventuring Guild dropping its fat ass directly outside my halls, that wasn''t an option. Instead, it was awareness. The shadowthief rats were just that¡ªthieves. And while some of them were demonstrably irritable in the way of the bastard who had eaten my moonstar flower, the vast majority were content to steal anything shiny and bright and filled with mana. Perhaps I could guide them to steal things with less substance¡ªnamely, knowledge. I pictured it; an invader entered my dungeon, awash in armour and weapons and unwritten specifications. And as they walked through my Fungal Gardens with bravado and suspicion, the shadows moved. Crept forward with clever paws and black eyes and took things, buckles from boots, coins from pockets, and information about fighting. Preparing my dungeon for what was coming. With a delicacy they didn''t deserve, I supplexed that dream into every single shadowthief rat on my first floor, sharp and uncompromising; I wasn''t forcing them, not really¡ªthey were still open to do whatever they wished. But I made damn sure they knew how powerful this would make them. A society tucked in the crevices. A young mother with six pups raised her head, mind bright; she was curled around both her children and a collection of jadestones, pulsing soothing mana through them as they mewed and waited to open their eyes. They would be the new commanders of this floor, no longer anything more than a nuisance for those that entered my dungeon; lull them into a false sense of security. What was I, but an empty hall full of rats and snakes? Don''t raise your guard. And in terms of other misleading creatures, I swept in lower, prodding through the green algae curtains and protruding rocks. The insect boiling pot; the drop of mana ripe for the taking, because I was beginning to understand that I had to have some handouts if I wanted my creatures to ever reach the peaks I wanted them to reach. In an ideal world, I would have a lifetime to slowly build them up, granting them decades to fight against the insidious slope down. But I didn''t. I had invaders outside my door constantly charging in. So I reached out and grabbed the various critters and insectoids and bugs crawling over the corpses of their fallen brethren, peering into their thoughts, seeing their schemas. And then all around it, four more, spreading up the walls and down into the gulley of green algae and cradled between the stalagmites. I dug my teeth into the stone, hollowing out little coliseums of hunger and growth. The groundbreaker ants, the eye-blight butterflies, the hunting mantis. All of them grown from supping on Otherworld mana condensed into perfect, miraculous potential. All the mana from Alda''s death kept me from even thinking about costs and I carved out five boiling pots in total, ready to elevate others. I was being perhaps a touch dramatic over what would likely manifest as ants and beetles. But if I could take anything, I would. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. The bears, gone, already beginning their long journey beneath as they plodded through had once been their home. And in their wake, my mushrooms would finally grow again, evolving and diversifying, and becoming anew. More insects, great buzzing clouds to pollinate and spread and die to my masses. Those that stayed, and those that went further below. Shadowthief rats, already primed for gathering, now to focus on collecting information. Finding armour, enchantments, attunements; anything I could tell to my lower floors to prepare for. If we had discovered Shoth''s attunement before, perhaps I could have stopped him earlier. My new floor. To the outside world, functionally identical; but not to me. Not to what it meant, now. Nuvja''s mana prickled uncomfortably overhead, those iron-teeth of watchfulness. I ignored her. She was a shadow; she didn''t need a floor made of utter destruction. The Fungal Gardens were going to be a warden, and by all gods was I going to keep it that way. I had learned from Rhoborh, for all I didn''t particularly enjoy the memories of howling at him; they could be annoyed and pissed, but they didn''t want me to break their contracts. They would allow more changes than I had previously been willing to do. The time, always ticking. I gave myself a last second to push a map into my lunar cave bears'' mind, showing them the route to the Jungle Labyrinth using auxiliary tunnels that I was going to be destroying the moment they made it there, and then moved below. The Drowned Forest; it hadn''t seen much wear and tear in Shoth''s delve, which was fine, because it did most of what I wanted it to. It bit the party, forced them to fight for the first time, but didn''t throw all my creatures into death. Didn''t make them claw themselves to ruin against Silvers they would never kill. I needed to remake my raid-frenzy. I didn''t know how, I didn''t know if I was even supposed to, I didn''t know if that was just a facet of my existence as a dungeon core¡ªbut fuck it, I needed something new. This mindless rage didn''t do anything to protect me, and it brought us all down. They needed to be able to think to defend me. Later. Later. Always later. I chiseled out more of the canals as I dove through my floor, building better bases for the lichenridge turtles to stand upon and force the invaders through the water. A couple more dens for creatures off the sides, wider openings for the ironback toads whose armour was quickly outgrowing the previous sizes, pathways woven through the mangrove roots for my electric eels to dart through, dead trees raised for webweavers to scuttle and knit false leaves for. Everything tangled, everything difficult. I was¡­ maybe moving past the Drowned Forest a little faster than my other floors. Now that the terror had died and I was working instead of dying, all I could remember was Rhoborh''s calm responses; he hadn''t even engaged in my rage. Just let me batter myself against him like a whinging fool. I wasn''t a hatchling. But that had been remarkably hatchling-like behavior. The damnable thing was that I had signed the contract, had agreed to house and protect his priests, and then lost my fucking skull when the tithe came calling. I couldn''t afford to just¨C piss off every deity in my wake. And gods, wasn''t that a phrase? Piss off deities in my wake, like they were a common bug scuttling around underfoot. I was a dungeon core, a hunk of red-black marble no larger than my old claw, a single scale of my previous self; I was locked in my halls, unable to leave. In every sense, I should have been watching the world shrink around me. Instead, it was so much bigger. Enormously so. And while a sea-drake could lay claim to an ocean and never demean himself to any standard, a dungeon couldn''t. My mana bristled, and I distracted myself in growing a new vampiric mangrove. That was enough self reflection. Yes, I knew I had to be different, that I couldn''t afford to swear vengeance against existence itself¡ªand I was succeeding, there was a reason Gon?al was still alive¡ªbut that didn''t mean I had to like it. Back to planning excessive deaths for all invaders. I''d worry about having to reinvent myself later. The den of kobolds chittered and warbled as I poked my way in, bowing their scarlet heads with honed reverence. I preened over it for a lovely second before dumping an immediate ten points into the stone; I hollowed out great pockets of stone and twisted the rock at the bottom into jagged blades. Then I pushed billowing moss over the top, weaving delicate webs that would never hold weight¡ªpitfalls. Then another, with fire-warmed coals underneath; another into a watery canal; a thousand ways to fall and all of them deadly. Dig these, I murmured, pointedly stabbing a sharpened lump of rock like a facsimile shovel. Protect your lands. Create dangers. The kobolds churred, contemplative; none of them were quite to Chieftess'' level, where she had made a mind out of a monster, but I could trust them to figure this out. And perhaps I would send up a few kobold hunters from the Hungering Reefs to serve as a guide for this new and improved nightmare. The Drowned Forest didn''t need to be much changed; it just needed more. More creatures, more traps, more things scurrying underfoot to take time. Considering the kobolds were still faltering in the wake of their previous strength, I wanted to guide them into a more trap-focused existence; those below would be strong, but these above needed to be clever. Doable. It would have to be. I carved a few more traps¡ªleft memories of the mana reward for killing¡ªand then dove below. The Underlake. This was where things had really started to show themselves; where my invaders adapted to me, rather than fighting straightforwardly. The first time I had made them act in a certain way, rather than being acted upon. Still my tidewalker sprite waited under evolution, a lingering cloud of mist watched over by the ancient eyes of my armoured jawfish; he would be leaving, damn Mayalle''s desire, and in his wake I needed more. Therr¨®n had died here due to his own incompetence despite his ability to get the rest of the party through untested, and in the future I had to presume more would come with that ability. Either that, or doing as they had in the past¡ªjust walking through. Invaders could use mana to hold their breath? Fine. There wasn''t anything I could do about that, short of using my creatures to hold them underwater until they ran out of mana; and while I wanted that, I couldn''t count on it. But what I could do was make that no longer be the simple route. Walking across the bottom was currently a mild deterrent; the sand slower, the currents difficult, that was it. Pain and annoyance, enough to push them to swim or go slow enough they were killed. And I already had a solution. The bloodline kelp was a tangled amber-gold mess of blindness. I had worked to contain it in the center of my floor, rather accurately knowing that it would devour my halls if I let it; and now I would let it. If my creatures couldn''t find their way around it, they''d die, and the strong would survive. I would hold their claws, but only to a point. My dungeon was not a paradise, only the Haven. But what for the creatures? I''d had a plan for the Fungal Gardens and Drowned Forest, but here I hesitated¡ªI began sweeping the silvertooth schools together, brute forcing past their insipid minds to shove them into one swarm, a glimmering, silver-scarlet cloud drifting through the space. Above all, the royal silvertooth swam. He was my first second evolution, his sleek body rippling with power, fangs sticking out of his mouth¡ªand into his followers, oddly enough. Half of his initial school listed from ivory spears in their sides, healed over but still present. Curious. Whatever it was, it was up to him. I was just increasing his army. Politely, I dumped the entire population of silvertooths under his command; he''d use them better than they functioned alone, driven only by their blood-frenzy and blind to any strategies beyond that. He wasn''t intelligent, because I had rather a high standard, but he was certainly more than them; already I watched him swim in tighter circles, dragging his followers in, creating a false whirlpool of teeth as he examined his newest additions. The roughwater sharks were still here, and armourback sturgeons, and greater crabs, and cloudskipper wisps, and¨C Movement. I could be called nothing but paranoid now, Shoth lurking in my thoughts like a phantom; my imminent enslavement hung heavy through my core as I entirely rebuilt my life in desperation to remain free¡ªevery point of awareness not actively chained to an evolving creature threw themselves towards the moving currents, where water splashed through the tunnel¨C Where bronze scales and gold eyes swam into the entrance. Gon?al. Chapter 165 - Third Voice Gon?al, the primeval bastard who had been the first to not receive the death he deserved, swam into my halls. I coiled up like a sea-drake, but instead of lashing out with fangs and claws and fury, I held myself. My mana, weaving throughout the Underlake, frozen partially through my repurposing of the sandy floor; Mayalle''s presence, her whirlpool tugging Gon?al further in. Time to behave much like my shadowthief rats in the Fungal Gardens. Assess. Gon?al was here¡ªand I knew he would be, because he had promised it, though some part of me was vaguely impressed he had actually returned instead of sprinting with all hells to any other kingdom. Whatever tether kept him to Calarata, that desire for denouncing his master''s previous position, was stronger than I had given it credit for. Curious. A simple progression wandered over my awareness. Attack him¡ªno. Trap him¡ªperhaps, but later, given we needed to talk first, which meant I needed him in a position to breathe. He''d come in through the cove entrance, likely to get around the Adventuring Guild noticing him¡ªbut I also couldn''t ignore that he was showing up less than a day after the twelve person party that had nearly broken me. Coincidence? Something worse? He wasn''t Shoth, presumably. But I also would not be allowing him lower than the Underlake. If he tried to go further, damn our parlay, he was dead. I reached out my mana, dulling the claws down to tugging currents; the opposite of subtle was I and Gon?al felt my interference immediately, bronze scales gleaming like sea-cliffs. Stiff as a corpse, that one. Half a wonder I hadn''t managed to kill him on the first go. But instead, I flattened out the swirling currents enough to drag him upright, avoiding the half-transformed I''d been in the midst of tearing up to avoid this exact situation. Gon?al caught on quickly enough, kicking hard as the silvertooth swarm began to spiral around the corners of the Underlake, a gleaming, rippling cloud of fangs. They stayed away, held by my glared command to the royal silvertooth, but their presence was felt. As they damn well should be. Gon?al flared out his arms, light sparking through his slitted eyes¡ªhe breached the surface with a ragged gasp, peppering the air with spilled-over mana. My presence thickened like salt-heavy water around him, making sure he knew just how ticked I was about his general existence, and then I hauled his attention to the far back. It wouldn''t work in every other situation, but Gon?al was being remarkably open to my mana. Most of the time I''d bounce right off, because humans were tetchy about foreign mana blundering about in their channels¡ªfor good reason, as I''d use it to shred them from the inside out if they let me¡ªbut he was actively allowing me in. Curious, both that he was and that he knew to do it. ¡­he''d been sent to make an alliance with me by Ealdhere, the Scholar of the Adventuring Guild. That implied a sense of understanding my sapience, knowing I was a thing that could be allied with, but knowing how I communicated was more than that. It was treading the line of knowing what I was. Not acceptable. I didn''t want anyone to know anything except my brilliance. I batted away a peckish roughwater shark, shoving her back to sulk by easier prey, and impressed on Gon?al the importance of haste. His arms and legs twisted as he cleaved through the water, in what surely would have been impressive to humans but was only inelegant to a sea-born¡ªfar below, the armoured jawfish tensed, scarlet eyes redoubling with an internal fire. But he didn''t try to attack, curiously enough. His thoughts echoed with a strange sort of remembrance. But then Gon?al clawed his last way forward, his shadow followed by a hundred vicious creatures, and hauled himself onto the stone. Boiled leather armour hanging heavy in sodden folds, long hair dripping over his face, he shouldn''t have looked intimidating, but he managed it¡ªsomething with the mana he wore like a challenge and the burnished ancestry crawling beneath his eyes. He had survived the night of death not by pushing forward, but by retreating; something very few of all the invaders I''d ever had could say. That already made him more intelligent than I necessarily wanted to deal with. But for all the word alliance was too strong, I could see the potential in working with him and the Scholar. Two who, from my bare gleams of their intentions, had no outright connection to the Dread Pirate, which was excellent, because right underneath my desire for survival was my desire to murder that man into the worlds beyond. It''d been quite some time since I''d made any progress on that front; and as soon as I finished protecting myself, I''d make strides. Gon?al could aid in that. "I apologize for the unannounced entrance," Gon?al said, shaking out more locks of waterlogged hair. "But I believed it was best if the Adventuring Guild did not learn of this." Interesting. Wasn''t he allied with Ealdhere? Or did he think the Guildmaster Lluc¡ªand, by extension, the Dread Pirate¡ªshouldn''t know? "I bring word from the Filla de Orgull," Gon?al said, with this stoic professionalism that would likely have made every buyer pull out their gold for the sale if not for how I could see his mana twitching through his channels, a ruby-red anxiety that his face never showed. Gathered around his eyes, oddly enough; I didn''t know his attunement, but with how he had handled himself in my dungeon, I would have thought it was something of strength or agility. Was his power only from his ancestry? Perhaps there was a reason he had been enslaved. And the Filla de Orgull¡ªthe Marquesa de Wolf¡ªwas a character I didn''t know but wanted to. She''d made an alliance with Nicau when she thought he was the Scholar of the Adventuring Guild, had arranged for Gon?al to guide him, and kept brushing her tail against my territory without fully breaching. The silence stretched as I thought. Gon?al coughed roughly into the palm of his hand and continued shaking water out of his hair. Right. He wanted a response. Which was a problem in its own right, unfortunately. Because like fucking hells was I talking directly to Gon?al¡ªI knew myself, and I knew my budding grasp on Viejabran, and I knew that if I tried to talk to him directly, I''d end up with a garbled mess of sounds and thoughts and complete illegibility. As much as I had to feed him the answers, Nicau was better at this than me. Gods, had I really just said that? I was going to kill something to forget it. And I didn''t want to talk to him, not after he''d opened his mana to me; for all both of us knew I could kill him, in the past I hadn''t, and that could have filled him with an undue sense of confidence. He could try to scrape something from my mind in return, and though I didn''t know if that was even possible as a dungeon core, I wasn''t willing to risk it. Which meant I had to go find someone else to do the talking. Shit. Gon?al shifted weight between his feet, mana prickling through his channels. "Is Romei not here?" He asked, hesitant but not willing to show it outright. Romei? Right, Nicau¡ªfrom a pigeoncatcher to someone juggling half a dozen false names, each more separate than the last. This one, at least, I knew; the name of the first human I''d ever killed. ¡­and Nicau had known her. How long had we been tied? How much fate had been written out so that he would end up sworn to me? I shook out my bristled mana, smoothing it down to apathetic currents once more. Again, I was trying to keep Gon?al from learning my inner workings. Not quite the time to wax philosophy on the influence of mortals to Aiqith herself. Well, Gon?al had felt just how much I''d been holding the Underlake back when he''d gone swimming, and I could probably trust him not to dive back in if I left him without an answer for a moment. I peppered the tunnel with points of awareness, enough to watch the thump of his heart through his armour, and dove down. An option was the parrot, with that mysterious ember in her chest, the intelligence she showed; it would likely work, but I didn''t particularly want it. I didn''t know what was up with her, with her history, her anything, and I rather doubted I would keep the fear of evisceration if I shoved a half-baked speaker before Gon?al. I''d call her up anyway, just in case. The parrot responded instantly, lovely creature she was¡ªa piercing shriek, echoing over the rippling blue waters of the Hungering Reefs, and she took to wing, a gold-red flame darting through the floor. A better choice¡ªBylk. For all he spoke a goblin tongue, he at least spoke; if I had to pry open his mouth and shape it into Viejabran myself, I would, but I''d get much further with him than, say, a burrowing rat that only knew how to squeak. Moderate issue; he was evolving. And for some reason, I doubted I could simply pause his evolution for him to chat with a thief. But in terms of speaking creatures, I had another in the Skylands; my Named, who spoke and learned and listened. Akkyst hesitated, given that he was apparently tremendously busy watching over the rickety old bastard, whose evolution was going smoothly and uninterrupted and would likely be complete in a day or two. And even if it wasn''t, there was half the population of the Magelords waiting in anticipation. He''d be fine. What was less fine was that I desperately needed someone to talk. Please, I said, though it tasted like knives on the way out. I will watch over him. But I require a voice. Akkyst sighed, air rumbling through his chest like an earthquake, but turned away from the runes carved over the sleeping form of his friend. Surprisingly morose about it all, despite his thoughts thrumming with excitement at speaking with someone new; was he that close with Bylk? Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel. As if to prove me right, Akkyst paused for a moment to carefully butt his nose against Bylk''s shoulder, barely visible under the light, before padding his way out of the den and into the Skylands proper. I settled in with patience; he wasn''t particularly fast. Gon?al, for his part, hadn''t taken the absence with grace; he kept shuffling and shifting, tapping claws over his leather and glancing back at the water like he was weighing whether to dive back in. If nothing else, he at least hadn''t made a single move toward the tunnel further down; an adventurer, yes, but one that wanted to return to his Silent Market. More predictable. Less likely to dive all the way to the bottom without a plan for escape. Though still an adventurer, considering how he tensed when Akkyst emerged from the shadows. For his part, the starwrought bear looked around the Underlake, remaining eye wide. Fitting, really; it was entirely separate from the Skylands, a world apart, mist-tossed waters and hanging stalactites heavy with ore and potential. His fur burned with silver here, constantly reflecting off the quartz-lights and kicking up runes with every step of his enormous paws; a spectre apart, his presence felt all throughout. Gon?al looked like someone had pressed his feet to a bed of coals, mana crackling around his eyes. An analysis attunement, maybe? Well. I poked back into Akkyst''s mind. Do not reveal your abilities, I murmured, nor your Name. Akkyst tilted his enormous head to the side, shaggy fur drifting off in motes of silver light. Hard to hide that, but as a whole he could be handwaved as a rare, unknown creature. I''d have to risk it. If Gon?al even thought about telling Calarata of Akkyst, I''d split him throat to asshole, schemas be damned. "What am I to say?" Akkyst asked, quiet for him, which was likely deafening in the enclosed stone quarters. A fair question, considering I''d be diving into his throat and twisting the sounds so they came out Viejabran instead, but¨C And then Gon?al inclined his head, one fist tapping his collarbone in a bow that probably meant something to the terrestrial races. "Greetings," he said, in flawless goblin. "I am Gon?al of the Silent Market." What. Akkyst rumbled, low in his throat but not threatening, after he''d finished blinking in abject surprise. "I am Akkyst." "Well met," Gon?al said. "Are you the liaison of the dungeon?" That was a nice and proper way of keeping the conversation moving forward instead of lingering on how Gon?al apparently spoke¡­ whatever the goblin language was called without issue. Hells, was that something to do with being a nightmarketer? Or did he just decide to learn it so he could thoroughly surprise all others whenever it came up? Both were options. Both were terrible. "Yes," Akkyst said, when I prompted him. "What news?" "The Filla de Orgull kept her bargain, and showed me the location of another nightmarket in Calarata," Gon?al said, head still inclined. He had as pretty a tongue as last time, this time polished with expectation for what was occurring rather than delving with what he thought was a normal adventurer and finding himself instead speaking to the dungeon. "As befitting my station, they have been taken into the fold of the Silent Market, and I am here to offer you the finest selection of their spoils." Out of the kindness of his heart, I''m sure. The imminent threat to his life had nothing to do with it. For his part, Akkyst perked up, his singular ear flicking forward. My thoughts melded with his through our connection. "Show them," he said. Gon?al reached to his side and clicked a buckle; there was a flash of protective mana, sparking out against his legs¡ªpotent stuff, it seemed, because everything he pulled out was perfectly dry despite how he could be wrung out to fill a lagoon. And the things he pulled out were¨C Well. First was a heavy coil of horn, coiling in and black at the tip; bristle and cartilage still hung from the end, which prickled my relief and discomfort in even amounts¡ªpleased that Gon?al had made sure to collect enough pieces of an animal for its schema, and worried that he knew to do so. But the horn itself was off-white ivory, not sharpened for combat but flat and broad to wrap around a head; defense, perhaps? Gon?al set it delicately on the stone. Runes floated off Akkyst''s fur by the hundreds. Next he pulled out a roll of fur, pale grey with incomplete rosettes peppering up the sides. It shifted to follow gravity and two long ears poked from the top, complete with tufts of fur extending to the ceiling¡ªjust the fur, but Gon?al quickly pulled out a glass sphere and set it on top of the fur. From within, a yellow-gold eye blinked out from its preservation. Last was the smallest, a wide tail made of creased leather, a hatch pattern throughout, extending to the dark grey fur and surprisingly hard bone protrusion from the tip, though it seemed entirely useless for defense or offense. It was large, the length of Gon?al''s arm, and every point of awareness I had swarmed in as he set it down. Sea-drake had I been, which made me quite familiar with the brisk, biting flavour of ice-attuned mana. All three of these creatures drowned in it, heavy and all-present. Arctic, perhaps, gathered from the same place. None of these would be found around Calarata¡ªhells, if nothing else, this was a ringing endorsement to Gon?al if he could keep bringing me exotic creatures like this. Calarata was a sub-tropical land, full of humid springs and blistering months, but never quite cold. I would have never gotten these in any situation other than Otherworld schemas. But now I had them. And I could use them. Pride, reflecting off Gon?al''s mana like a magma vent. He knew those were good selections, damn him. He knew they were impressive. And unfortunately, I couldn''t tell Akkyst to stop being so excited, because my own excitability was still slithering through our connection and influencing him. I kept looking at them, imagining them, trying to figure out where they would go and what they would do¨C But not while a human was still here. They will suffice, I murmured. Now make him go. Akkyst''s thoughts twitched¡ªhe didn''t particularly want Gon?al to leave, considering that was a wealth of information to be harvested¡ªbut for all I''d allow my Named to run rampaging over my halls, this was not it. I redoubled my thoughts. "Now leave," Akkyst said, with a rumble that sounded aggressive until you spent longer than a day with the bear and knew it was annoyance. Gon?al nodded, but didn''t actually make the move to leave¡ªmana prickled again over his skin, making his scales flash. "I thank you for your generosity," he said, and managed to make the lie sound nearly heartfelt. "What of our alliance?" Ah. The alliance. The fanciful trade he''d struck with Ealdhere; not Lluc, not the Adventuring Guild, but instead them and me. And Gon?al thought he could dump three corpses in my halls and achieve that? I hadn''t killed him. Frankly, for stealing my stormcaller sprite, that should have been enough. "You are alive," Akkyst said when prompted, though he seemed a touch put out by the phrasing. "And upon your return, you may bring the terms of your alliance." A pause. Our connection rose to a fever pitch. "And more schemas." There. A perfect deal, honestly. He''d come back with a list of things for us to discuss, I would find some fault in them and send him back, and I''d play bait for as long as I needed until the terms of the alliance were well and truly in my favour, and I''d be well-fed with schemas at the same time. And as much as Akkyst had a lovely commanding presence and talked with true eloquence instead of stumbling exhaustion, I would be using Nicau instead. There was no reason to put my unknown Named in the spotlight. Gon?al bowed even lower this time, near folding himself in half. "Thank you, o'' dungeon," he said, apparently copying Nicau''s form of address. Uncreative in the extreme. "I will return as soon as I can." Oh, he could wait. I was fine with that. Then, when Akkyst didn''t respond¡ªbecause I was holding back his questions with the force of will to move mountains, there wasn''t a chance I would be giving Gon?al anything to hold over me if he started trading information¡ªGon?al nodded again, straightened his shoulders, and dove back into the Underlake. I shuffled half as many points of awareness as I''d had last time, just enough to make sure he survived on his way out and never so much as turned around, but I kept my consciousness on the corpses before me. A second waited just to make sure Gon?al was at least out of sight before I dove in, reaching out with great tendrils to break apart the corpses to devour what was within, Akkyst leaning in to watch, the Underlake awash with pale light¨C ¡­the silvered motes when I dissolved something looked eerily similar to Akkyst''s runes, actually. Just what was his blessing? He could figure that out. He was already well on his way, and I imagined Bylk''s evolution would only speed things up. They''d get there. For now, I had schemas. I finished taking in all three corpses, going in their proper order; the horn came apart slowly, dense and rigid, the gristle splintering apart as I gnawed it down.
Lesser Muskox (Common) Inhospitality is its comfort. It lives in tundras and glacier-torn lands, plodding along in herds that can thunder over their surroundings should a predator dare to face their number and size.
The impression floating over my core was that of not so much herds but hordes, traveling endless over the land to scrounge up scraps from an unforgiving existence; and these were only lesser muskoxen. Though it wasn''t in the schema, I felt the presence of their proper form; a beast so unlike the prey it could be called. The fur fell to me quickly, each strand long and built for the cold; I paused over the eye, staring down as it stared up. It had been plucked from the creature and expertly laid in glass, kept for some purpose. Alchemic reasons meant certain pieces were often more valuable than others, but I wondered why eyes, considering they didn''t seem much larger than a human''s and without any specific characteristics that I could see.
Piercing Lynx (Uncommon) You do not need to see the glow of its eyes for it to see you. Silent of foot and quick of claw, it stalks through the world with nothing capable of blinding its sight.
Well. That was certainly a reason to keep the eye. A stalking hunter, built with dense fur for cold conditions and the lithe build of an ambusher. Already I could see where they slot in the food chain, not the apex predator but the one taking throne in the middle, handling those scurrying underfoot too small for the dragon of the land to eat. And, interestingly, my first concurrent evolution. While I had half a dozen spider species and more snakes than I could care to count, they had all come from cave spiders and luminous constrictors. But now, with the boundless jaguar and the piercing lynx, they came from separate lines despite being both felines. I wondered if that would do anything. The tail was a surprising pain to dissolve, with the bone spur on the underside; I chewed through, silver motes flecking outward, until it came to me.
Snowscape Beaver (Rare) Creator and carver alike; the world is its canvas, and its dream of chiseling masterpieces. Ice is nothing but its path forward to create enormous, sprawling homes for its equally large family.
That explained the bone spur, perhaps; it broke apart ice and snow then flattened it with the broad side of its tail, creating sculptures like mountain ranges throughout tundras to protect itself and finalize its territory. A creature I could deeply relate to. My points of awareness came back to me as Gon?al successfully left my halls, dragging his way through Mayalle''s whirlpool that I''d put a token effort into making it passable, though certainly not easy. I felt a brief spark of joy about that, but all my consciousness was stuck on the schemas, on the plans. Still I had more floors to finish repurposing, preparing for the survival that had to come first, but I''d said I wanted to start making my ninth floor, just to give me more room from invaders¡ªand now I had an idea. Chapter 166 - Chosen Leaders I let the schemas tumble over my core like tossed stones. Ice-attuned mana didn''t hurt, particularly since I didn''t have a material body to hurt, but there was an echo of it; I held the idea of their bodies in my mind and felt intangible aches in my fangs and rugged patches on my scales. Potent things, these creatures; while I didn''t have more than three, already my thoughts spun together great shining glaciers and towering mountains of nothing but ice. Muskox, thundering over the plains; piercing lynx skulking through the underblow; snowscape beavers carving palaces in the desolate. Unfortunately, I couldn''t find a place for them in my current halls¡ªthe lesser muskox needed room to roam and while they could potentially fit into the Scorchplains, I doubted their preferred tundra home would mesh well with choking smoke and flame. The snowscape beaver was in the name; I''d make them an arctic, but I didn''t have one yet. The piercing lynx could fit, and I could see them in my unfinished heart tree, climbing through the vascular vines and branches. Invaders who tried to hide couldn''t from their all-seeing gaze, and if the humid density of a faux rainforest didn''t work for them, I could simply send them down a floor. That would be the plan, and already my core thrummed with excitement to see those two widely separate ecosystems next to each other. There was so much to do. But for now, I chucked out one more point of awareness to make sure that Gon?al had left¡ªhe had, the tunnel stayed devoid of thieves¡ªbefore turning back to my Underlake and the changes there. Already the floor was divided up, churning up the existing sandbed into a mess of stone crags and bloodline kelp; not a peaceful walk. Though Gon?al had swam to the surface to let me guide him to a talking point, I had seen him clock the change; no longer would the only threat of the Underlake merely be defending attacks from above as you trotted on through. Considering I was about to lose my armoured jawfish, I needed that. I didn''t have a Named here, which was going to stay that way, despite the two Names I was preparing to create. The third floor was too high for me to be comfortable; I wanted my invaders figured out before they came traipsing down to stick a secret attunement through Seros'' ribs. So my commanding creature would instead be the royal silvertooth, whose horde had coalesced from all the silvertooth schools; he would be the main centerpiece through whom my instructions were communicated. Mostly. He was, unfortunately, a little single-minded on his silvertooths. Mayhaps I would also have someone else. And, as I dove through the murky currents and tug of the cloudskipper wisp''s waves, I found one. He was positively ancient by my standards, his carapace cracked and milky where it wasn''t a brilliant emerald green. His claws seemed to be constantly regrowing even around his molts, whereas his shell was oddly thick, built up like a castle''s defenses. He was old but not evolved; a greater crab, one of the rare schemas I''d collected that had evolved outside of my control, which unfortunately meant it took him even longer to evolve again than if he''d just been a baseline crab. But his channels were near full, filling up to near-totality; his evolution was coming soon. I slipped into his mind, into the chitinous understanding he had of the world; he''d migrated down from the Drowned Forest after encountering one of the lichenridge snapping turtles, watching their shells, seeing their power. Now he plodded over the sand, snapping out at anything that came near; he hungered for strength. For invulnerability. The royal silvertooth controlled the waters overhead, and this greater crab would command the sand. Commanding his siblings, working with the armourback sturgeons, anything that lived beneath the schools overhead. To him and the royal silvertooth, I attached a point of awareness in a permanent lock; though it wouldn''t be much compared to the thousands I had available, it would cement them as my chosen for these floors; and, considering how I remade raid-frenzy, they would potentially be my full communication with floors. The less mana I wasted on that¡ªthe less that the invaders could steal and listen to¡ªthe better. The Underlake, in its new form, would be a force for slowing groups down. Even if they had Therr¨®n''s ability to make water a non-issue, they still wouldn''t be able to walk across the bottom, not with the crevasses and valleys, and now with the greater crab leading a task force to crack and snap at their legs, they''d feel the urge to swim up, where the royal silvertooths would shred them into mincemeat. ¡­hm. I liked that idea¡ªif not Named, then leaders, creatures given a purpose beyond defense to guide the others. I split my consciousness into three pieces and left one each with my two chosen, pounding strategies and tactics and intelligent patterns into their heads. Not for the Fungal Gardens perhaps, considering I wanted that competition bred through the shadowthief rats as they hunted for information, and the Drowned Forest had the kobold tribe¨C Well, this was going to take forever, but I shattered my consciousness into some dozen pieces; off they flew to my previous floors, taking points of mana with them to build up proper lessons. Those in the Fungal Gardens would create a proper reward system for any shadowthief rats that discovered information about the invaders. Much like the chosen leaders of the Underlake, I permanently attached a point of awareness to that floor; I tucked it in the back of the den that had previously housed the lunar cave bears and was now studded with bug gladiatorial arenas, locking it onto an outcropping of jet. Beautiful, but hidden under Nuvja''s shadows. If a shadowthief rat discovered something, they could come tell the rock, and my constant point of awareness would hear it and give them a reward. Probably mana, maybe a jewel or piece of food. Whatever they seemed to want. Then, in the Drowned Forest, I flew up to the kobold den, where they were already beginning to dig fall-traps with sharpened spikes¡ªlovely, I knew they would do it¡ªand attached a point of awareness to the leader. Inevitably he would evolve and I would have to switch, but for now it would suffice. I started blasting him with my developing script of strategies and commanding, as well as spending a full point of mana to carve an intricate map into the furthest-back wall of the den¡ªwhile it could be usable by invaders, the kobold den was already in the last room of the Drowned Forest, so they would likely not need it. But now they could plan out traps, constantly check and reset them, as well as set up proper charging lines to counteract lesser invaders. Phenomenal. My core strained as I stretched myself so thin, but I took the bulk of my consciousness down to the Jungle Labyrinth, alongside most of my mana. Because Shoth¡ªmore of Gnat, really¡ªhad displayed that I wasn''t as clever as I wanted to be, and by all hells would I allow that any further. The auxiliary tunnels. The multiple passages I had created to move my creatures around, allow them to avoid the aquatic floors, to avoid danger, to traverse like ghosts through my boilpot. No longer. The single one I would allow would be for moving the lunar cave bears around the Underlake, which I would be collapsing the moment they made it to the tunnels of their new home. In all likelihood they could swim, and I probably should make them, but they were already on their way; I''d already closed it off from the Fungal Gardens entrance, and I would enlist Nenaigch''s help to make sure it was nothing more than a memory once they were through. Gods, the memory of Shoth just¡ªrunning around Veresai and completely ignoring one of the most dangerous creatures in my halls infuriated me to no end. The thought that I could build a death trap just for someone to use the fangs as stepping stones across was murder on my mind. Actually¡ªmidway through destroying one, I stopped, glancing around at the rough, cragged stone all around. Originally I had made it so the Jungle Labyrinth was a tangled mess of tunnels, one entrance and one exit, and with Nenaigch''s boon everything shifted and moved until Veresai was the only way out. Combined with the utter darkness and thornwhip algae, it was a hell unlike any found on Aiqith. All I needed to do was funnel them towards Veresai and the Stone Jungle at the end of the maze, and kill off as many as I could in the process. I finished destroying that tunnel which had previously connected to the Skylands, because of course it did, of course I had so many cheating pathways throughout my dungeon without a thought that the invaders would find it. The floor itself didn''t need much, beyond regrowing a couple of sections of thornwhip algae that Alda had so lovingly burned with her alcoholic fires, and I turned a few of the previously-existing tunnels into dens for the still-evolving mantises. The stalking jaguar had spent her time sleeping in the Skylands with Akkyst, though I didn''t know if she would still do so as a boundless jaguar; I carved out a den for her regardless. Through the tunnels I flew, silent and indomitable; over blue-eyed serpents and all the echoes of Veresai''s presence, untested by the invaders. Then, out of the darkness and into the Stone Jungle, that false collection of trees and moss-woven trees, littered throughout with serpents. Another prickle of annoyance; my mage ratkin and, more particularly, my forestfall ratkin, hadn''t fought anyone since Sy?alia. Already they were undergoing a territorial issue as Veresai''s horde grew larger and larger; they could defend themselves, but they couldn''t really compete, meaning it was an uneasy truce that ended with Veresai getting all the mana-rich food while the ratkin merely survived. Maybe I could move them to the heart tree. Into the den, past my empress serpent with her four eyes glowing and crowned head held high, the horned serpent waiting by her side for any further instructions. Serpents resting with full stomachs, jeweltone serpents gathering more gems, stockpiles of shed skins. Then, in the far back, Kriya was asleep, her scaled face pressed to a bed of moss beneath glimmering quartz-lights. She seemed¨C tired, in a way. Worn, not like eroded stone but instead sifted sand, too many minerals plucked away and leaving only grit behind. Veresai''s horde was a monstrous, enormous thing with a population ever-growing, and she was only one human, new Silver though she was. Still under a geas, still loyal, still controllable; but I felt the faintest stab of pity as I dipped into her thoughts, as shared memories of constant bleeding and pain and death that was on her narrow shoulders drifted back to me. She lived in a cavern where her only interactions were either those wounded and dying she needed to save, or the empress serpent who had taken her. I wanted her and Nicau to meet, both for understanding''s sake, and also to give her more. Geases weren''t invulnerable, no matter how much Veresai seemed to preen about how hers was, and if Kriya grew unhealthy or sad enough, she could shatter it without even knowing what she was doing. She needed more, in the way that Nicau had; to his mind, he was the lone human in a mass of monsters, but he had friends, had missions, had adventurers. He had a life. Kriya didn''t. I swooped overhead, to her curled-up form beneath gentle fronds and waving moss, and made the first of a new schema. It wove together slowly, piece by piece, sucking up my mana with a tremendous pull; almost immediately I backpedaled, digging through the schema to find a younger, more affordable age to create it at, but still almost twenty points disappeared from me in a snap. But there, right by her clawed hands, a restorative aloe grew. Small, it was made of pale green fronds lined with dull spikes, curving up and in to collect falling water. The mana in it was a blessed, honey-bright thing, exuding serenity and calmness even to me; it knew it was important and knew it would be protected, and thus had no reason to appear dangerous. It was what it was. And what it was, hopefully, was an opportunity for Kriya to recover. To take this as a way to give herself a break, do more with her time than simply heal serpents; I couldn''t afford to have her break her geas and betray me, not when she had figured out so many of Veresai''s strategies. No, I had to make her happy. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. Which was odd to think about, both in terms of merely thoughts and also actions. The sea-drake I had been would never have considered wasting twenty points of mana on a healing plant when Kriya was already a healer; but the dungeon core I was becoming knew that there were more important things than simply letting her burn herself out. Knew that keeping a human happy, even one with naga ancestry, meant survival. Gods. I was doing it, and in truth I''d already been doing it before realizing the implications, but the knowledge of how much I''d already changed was quite startling. But the Jungle Labyrinth was, mostly, perfect; without a doubt my most powerful floor of the top five. It was only my shitty choices that had led to it being avoided. The Skylands, though, needed some help. I left a few more points of awareness over Kriya¡ªI was curious how she would react when she woke up¡ªbefore diving below. The clouds greeted me with their typical blustering depths, Khasvar''s mana crackling through the ambiance with the distant roar of thunder; my stormcaller sprite with her amorphous canine form, galloping overhead, the storm eel coiling her sinuous form through the stalactites, the bladehawk swooping with rust-red feathers. And a massive desolated crater from a vial of cthonian russets that were just too destroyed for me to get the schema of. Forget everything else Alda had done; that was what made me hate her. I''d collected a few other crops from her vials, a handful of plants that would do nicely to fill in the gaps around my jungle heart tree, but I''d wanted that destructive potential. Alda had used that to level my island, sent it tumbling down¡ªactually crushed some of the Magelord bridges, terribly rude¡ªand while my immediate reaction was to save it, I didn''t. Shoth had sprinted through the clouds like a miraculous thresher, leaping from island to island until he reached the end. I''d thought of caution, when I''d made the Skylands; that the choking clouds and distant boom of thunder would keep invaders scared and slow. And it had, for everyone else; but Shoth had ran, and he had nearly enslaved me. So instead of forcing them to keep their balance atop spindly islands with narrow bridges, I would be forcing them to go down. I leeched my mana into the stone and dissolved it, careful not to hurt any more of the Magelord''s carvings; the limestone drifted away in peals of light until there sat perhaps a sixty-foot gap between that island and the next. I knew that enhancers could make the leap, but that was with sunlight and knowledge; my cloudskipper wisps and stormcaller sprite would make damn sure that other island was never visible through the mist. To invaders, all they would see was their perfect path suddenly disappearing, and their only option was the jump blindly through the clouds¡ªwhich had a much higher percentage of sending them spinning off to other abandoned crevasses¡ªor braving the climb down to the ground, which would drop them solidly into Magelord territory. Akkyst was the Named on this floor, no matter how he was still making his way down from the Underlake, rumbling appreciatively to the parrot who, for some inexplicable reason, decided to join him; I would give him the same knowledge I was giving my chosen leaders of other floors, though I would wait until the Magelords finished evolving. They were intelligent enough for it. The path, disrupted. The islands, unsteady. The air was still less full than I wanted it to be, which had more to do with how the many species I had were small themselves; greater pigeons and baterwauls and swarming wasps and eye-blight butterflies were numerous and powerful, but the largest was the bladehawk with an eight foot wingspan, and the others were much smaller. I wanted more. And if it had worked in the Fungal Gardens, my floor with the least ambient mana, I had little doubt it would thrive here. Already I had a template, and this I wove again; I made three of them, one in the corner of an island tucked between boulders so as to be hidden, one up in the rusted iron veins that littered the far walls, and one on the floor proper. Three points of mana each, a more-than proper reward for murder, plenty of moss and other food for those that needed to whet their appetite before diving back into the fray. There were already evolved insects in this floor, a mix of groundbreaker ants¡ªand the cleaver ant that had finally made his journey done, towering over all the others in his mix, a proper defender whose thoughts were only joyful at surviving¡ªswarming wasps, eye-blight butterflies, and other Underranked scuttlers that did little to nothing. That would change. And I had¨C Movement, overhead. My points of awareness, stretched thin, tugging at the edge of my consciousness as I pulled myself into too many directions at once; they lurched back as something appeared, swiveling in towards the Fungal Gardens. Oh. Well, if nothing else, that was a good indicator for how much time had passed, considering three invaders poked their heads into my halls. All humans, no ancestry or interest in sight; plain armour, a glowing amulet around one neck, hands clasped on halberds and swords. A typical party as to what I''d seen over the previous weeks, nothing more than mid-ranked Silver. Either looking to collect creatures or enslave me, hard to tell. But my plans were already working. As one, all the shadowthief rats turned to look, their clever black eyes lighting up with an internal glow. The two poking around my communication rock¡ªgods, I needed a better name for that¡ªpeeled away, slipping under Nuvja''s shadows as they encircled their new prey. For their part, the invaders seemed to sense them, though they couldn''t see; I watched their mana prickle uncomfortably as dozens of unseen eyes raked over them, searching for attunements or armour or hidden weapons. Glorious. I did want to use this for experiments¡ªthere was no group safer to work on reducing or remaking my raid-frenzy than three Silvers with middling confidence¡ªbut I needed to rebuild first. Later. Points of awareness littered over their form, I dove back to the Skylands. The gladiatorial arenas came into focus, already a shuffling thing with numerous legs and long, feathery antenna poking its head into the one on the ground. The island, crumbled; a way to go down and then up, walking the thin precipice between falling and overcorrecting. No longer would Shoth be able to just walk through. One more floor. I pushed another point of mana into the still-evolving Bylk and disappeared down the tunnel, the humidity rising and light gleaming around the limestone. My Hungering Reefs, my array of paradise; what had failed me. Or I had failed it. That was the problem, I was finding. I kept designing these beautiful, lovely, masterful floors¡ªbut without invaders actually invading it, I never found the weak points until it was too late. Perhaps, if I could show Kriya the benefits of working with me willingly, she could be persuaded to walk through my floors with the eyes of an invader; show me what I needed to change before I became enslaved because of it. But for now, I dove down into the splashing water, dipping in and around the tower-reefs and atoll and iridescent stretches of capturing coral. With Nicau, Chieftess, and three more kobolds gone, the remaining tribe was a touch hesitant, absent their leader and commander; but they would be fine. All I needed was to give them the chance for it. I needed to slow invaders down. The first stop was the lagoon, that peaceful stretch of pale waters over the rest; while it was far safer than anything else on my floor, excluding the kobold tribe it housed, it was made up of solid barriers to hold up its atoll. That I extended, carving more and more throughout as I dragged up heaps of capturing coral and limestone to wave a faux barrier across the second room of the floor; now invaders couldn''t swim across, forced to clamber across. A temporary delay. Then, between all the cloudsire palms and vampiric mangroves, I threw up pillars of limestone like bleached coral; all the pockets and holes and cracks of dried-up reefs, creating the illusion this place was ancient instead of merely created by me. And inside I layered moss, algae, all manners of green things¡ªand obstacles. No longer would it be open stretches of beach to merrily parade across. No, they''d have to pick their way around the rubble of a ruined reef, avoiding jagged stone and hidden predators, and then dive back into the water to make it past the second room. And into the third, where my greatest failure lay. He was curled up within the shipwreck, the rotten timber and decayed canvas I''d had so much fun shaping as a snubbed nose to Calarata; and now my sea serpent was within, missing an eye, missing his bravado. Shoth had dealt with him where Seros hadn''t stopped his attacks, and now he didn''t know what to do. Healed? I murmured, soft and soothing. The sea serpent hissed at the sky, frills flaring up, but he was more hesitant now¡ªnot scared, because it was hard to be scared when you were as dangerous a creature as him, but cautious. Nervous, maybe. Losing an eye meant more than partial blindness. It meant he had been touched; meant he had been harmed. Meant he wasn''t the undefeatable legend he had thought himself to be. I''m sorry, I said, and meant it enough it ached. I couldn''t regrow his eye anymore than I could regrow Akkyst''s or give the vampiric dryad her arm back; that went beyond my capabilities. But I could give him a choice. This floor I am changing, I said, pushing him images of the new atoll barrier and tangled boulders. The exit I will also change¡ªdo you want here to be respite or treasure? His thoughts wavered, confused. I sent over my murky imaginings. The exit for the Hungering Reefs was much like it was on every other of my floors¡ªa tunnel in the back, sloping down. But what if it wasn''t? What if instead, I carved a tunnel beneath the shipwreck the sea serpent lived in, forcing them to not only find it, but also make their way inside? But I could also see where the sea serpent didn''t want to lose his home to these invaders, to make it a constant battle to survive and fend, feeling like he failed every time they made it past. I would leave it up to him. His mind snapped onto that point, on the tunnel I presented to him, arcing down and winding through the stone. Of himself, strong and brilliant, coiling up as invaders tried in vain to enter but never making it within¡ªand, rather critically, never having to expose himself to fight. Always coiled through the twisting galleys of the ships, through the captain''s quarters, under the storage; the only part of him out was when they tried to fight him, and he ate them. Acceptance simmered through our connection. Thank you, I murmured, and hesitated, before pushing on. And soon, we will work together; we will train. You will not be stopped by Seros again. Because as I stepped back to carve a tunnel beneath the shipwreck¡ªignoring Abarossa''s tetchy star-burn, what was she going to do, break our contract? This was a minor change in the grand scheme of things¡ªI was going to be leaving the original tunnel entrance as a den for my other aquatic beast. Seros, pride of my core, first of my Named. He still preferred it here, I knew. The water, the quartz-light, the presence of Abarossa; he traveled below to defend me, but he was sea-bound, and he wanted that life. Perhaps my tenth floor would take me back to aquatic levels for him. That was just like me, to start planning the tenth when I hadn''t even started the ninth nor finished the eighth. Gods only knew how I could never truly change myself. But if he wanted to stay here, he had to train, and he had to train with others. A sea-drake he would become, I knew, but a sea-drake of a dungeon; that meant he couldn''t be the solitary, isolated beast of legend he had seen me be. No, he had to be cooperative. He had to be my Named. He had to be a leader. The tunnel rumbled as water flooded in, forcing me to wind it away and up and backwards just to make sure it wouldn''t flood the Scorchplains below, carving auxiliary tunnels far too small for even a burrowing rat just to feed it with air; the den I made large and sprawling, similar to the hoard room fo the Skylands above, complete with its own pool of water and quartz-lights for when Seros needed to shed. When Chieftess came back and my evolutions finished, the training would begin; I wouldn''t be caught unawares again. I wanted every creature in my dungeon to work together to defend me. And I wanted more creatures. I flitted off to the lagoon with my last points of mana held like treasures in my grasp. The lagoon was already a place of growth, allowing young fry to live without constant roughwater shark deaths or triggerfish punctures, but those were for established species; it could also prompt more, greater, more powerful creatures. Already I was growing impatient with how long Abarossa was taking to give me the schemas she''d promised, and considering Nicau would likely only find terrestrial beings, I would have to create my own. In the Fungal Gardens and Skylands, I had created gladiatorial rings to prompt evolution for those often overlooked. Here, I would do the same. I selected a crumbled piece of limestone as my canvas; half a point went to hollowing out the rock, littering it with tunnels and a cavern within, just small enough that kobolds couldn''t stick their unwanted gobs into the mix when they had other bounties to explore. I raised it slightly so that just the top of a tunnel poked out of the water¡ªif an insect wanted to become aquatic just to claim the mana, I would welcome them¡ªand then I dropped a full five points, more than any others, into the mix. Baitfish, aquatic insects, lesser crustaceans; anything of the myriad species that invaded my hall without me ever giving them a second glance would have the chance to prove themselves now. Five points of mana for an Underranked equalled evolution, there was no other way around it, and that meant power for me. And then I floated back, preparing to do one last sweep of the place before settling in, when my core flared twice. All around my halls, excess mana sparked and thrashed and thrummed¡ªI had seventy-five points I could absorb, and I''d taken that in, leaving the rest to fly free. And where it had gone, overwhelmingly, was to my evolving creatures, drifting onto their glowing forms as they changed to be remade. It meant that after only a day, nearly all were finished. I settled in to welcome my newly-reborn creatures with glee; because now it was time to pick my Names. Chapter 167 - Hunter, Hunted The first to awaken was the tidewalker sprite. Much like my other sprite evolution, it didn''t wake up so much as coalesce, dripping back together from the cloud-dispersal it had been. My armoured jawfish was still watching over it, swimming in as tight of circles as he could manage with fangs bared and scarlet eyes furious, waiting for it to finish. And finish it had. My stormcaller sprite took the form of a wolf, trading how many legs she had and how many teeth and whatever she wanted at the moment. The tidewalker sprite was¡­ different. It was entirely alien, no creature I knew¡ªit was formed of globs of water, woven together like a solid thing but flowing like water, and in lacking limbs or eyes or mouth it appeared to be made entirely of fins. Some dorsal, littered with spines, some bristling out the sides, a few circling below¡ªa twisting, writhing ball of water separate from the lake it was in. Hells. It was a wonder elementals were even on Aiqith; they matched nothing else out there. At least I could understand the thought process behind my lovely stormcaller sprite; this was a monstrosity. But a monstrosity with the power of currents on its side; already it began to swim, however odd that looked, and the water bended to its command. Propulsion, slow but increasing, as it skipped and pranced around the Underlake. The armoured jawfish followed it, eyes wide. His salvation; his promise to the lower floors. To the Hungering Reefs. Godsdamnit, I''d just closed all those auxiliary tunnels. But as much as I could make Akkyst walk through the Jungle Labyrinth, I could not for my armoured jawfish. A small mercy was the weight of his armour; I could dig a tunnel straight down and let him fall through it, leveling out once he was on the level of the Hungering Reefs; which was what I did. Already I could feel Mayalle looking in, that star-burn awareness of change on her mana-filled floor, and I''d rather nip that in the bud before she had time to grow properly incensed I was removing the armoured jawfish from her floor. It was my plan to introduce new monsters anyway, once Abarossa delivered her promised schemas. A win-win. My interaction with Rhoborh had both cowed me and made me bold. I was more willing to strain our contracts¡ªto push instead of only bow over. Neither of us wanted to break our deals, but I had more freedom than I''d previously limited myself to. And apparently, despite being newly born, the tidewalker sprite understood its position. As I began to carve a tunnel downward, guiding the armoured jawfish towards the entrance, it immediately swam to match him, circling around in a mimicry of Mayalle''s whirlpool. Lovely. Certainly easier than me trying to entrap it into a lifelong position of servitude. Maybe. Did elementals have lifespans? Were they immortal, or as close to immortal as things could become on Aiqith? Thinking about that too hard would likely shatter me down to crystalline shards or some variant of a gibbering mess. I dug intangible claws into limestone instead. It would take him some time to sink three floors down. I dispatched a few points of awareness and threw the bulk of my consciousness elsewhere, because more silver motes of light were fading away and new creations were being remade. Gods, what a period of genuine excitement, instead of terror. I could savour it. Deep in the Jungle Labyrinth awoke the bladesong mantises, clustered and tucked in the Jungle Labyrinth. My points of awareness swarmed overhead much like a mirror as consciousness entered multi-faceted eyes, a carapace of emerald-blue shifting through reawakening. There were a dozen of them, all various ages and sizes¡ªwhat progress they''d made for themselves didn''t match much against killing a Silver, and they''d all evolved equally. The minor upside of dealing with bugs, I could admit. It was a never-ending adventure of change when you started so weak. And now they were weak no longer¡ªthe first rose to its claws, its angular head bristling some six feet off the ground; still thin and spindly, never one to survive a hit, but with enormous, sickle-claws extending forward. No armour, no spines, not even a continuous carapace. They were bladesong¡ªstolen from Nolla''s wave-dancer attunement, if I had to guess¡ªand they weren''t supposed to get hit. If they did, curtains closed, show''s over¡ªbut that wouldn''t happen. They''d dance and spin and twist around every blow while dealing legions of their own. The iridescent mantises could have had their space, and I was still hoping for them, but I needed a stable population first. If I''d only made some six bladesong mantises, I already knew Veresai would have massacred them long before they could find their footing. I''d wanted a tyrant, and I''d certainly gotten one, but that didn''t mean she wasn''t vaguely annoying. And instead of Kriya softening her harsher tendencies, she''d settled for burning the healer out. Great. That was one of those problems that wasn''t actively hurting me now, but the runes were already written on the wall. It was coming. Across the tunnels, protected by swirling points of mana, the boundless jaguar awoke. I could have swooned. She was elegance condensed down to an iridescent body¡ªstill rosettes over her fur, still a feather-tipped tail in shining emerald-sapphire, but now she had tripled in length with another pair of legs to match, muscles taut under gorgeous colouration. She rose from her curled rest with an enviable ease, only a moment''s confusion on where to place her newly-formed fifth and sixth paws, but her tail flicked for balance and her ears perked and then she was crouched in the tunnel that now barely seemed to fit her. Amber-gold eyes, ivory fangs, claws like a promise of death¡ªa growl flitted through her chest, rumble deep as the enclaves. I poured encouragement into her mind. She flicked an ear back, rising to her full height. A grasping arm of thornwhip algae lashed for her side and she hardly seemed to think about springing away, she just did¡ªa lithe bounce that settled into a focused prowl, her still-waking thoughts consumed with hunger. She wanted prey. What about her was ancient? I knew several of my creatures were so, namely the vampiric mangroves and armoured jawfish¡ªbut I didn''t get that sense of Old from her. Power, yes, and intelligence beyond her capabilities; but not that ancient world with no further inhabitants. Why had she had a resurrector evolution? What was different about her? I loved her very much, perhaps the one creature beyond a dragon I could admire the build of, but that mystery set a coiling distrust in my core. I knew she had come here because of Akkyst, freed from her previous hell in the War Horde, but that didn''t explain her evolution. Why she seemed to operate on a separate system than I knew. But her thoughts knew nothing of it, and ripping her down to a corpse and schema wouldn''t give me anything but removing one of my stronger beasts. Not worth it. I pushed a thought of the new path down to the Skylands and moved on. Separate from her and the mantises, a third evolution stirred and shifted¡ªbut didn''t wake. My arachne, webweaver and Gnat combined, wasn''t finished yet. Curious. I wondered what that meant. But in the meantime, there were creatures waking up from their silver-mote cocoons, and I sped off to greet them. Down a floor, through the newly-remade Jungle Labyrinth without any damn auxiliary tunnels, thank you, and spilling into the Skylands¡ªwhere Khasvar was a distant memory and my other tribe of sapients lived. And where a phantom fox awoke. She was sheltered in a corner of the Skylands, having crept away as her evolution dissolved her thoughts, and now she raised her head in a den blanketed by mist. Her silver fur was muted, an off-grey instead of the luminosity of before, but I only saw it for a minute¡ªbecause the next, she dissolved. Hyperbole. But it certainly looked like that. The moment she was awake enough to function, the mist began bleeding off her, thick like clouds swollen with rain; kicked up like the cloudskipper wisps, but both lesser and more. She wasn''t controlling it but becoming it. In less than a heartbeat, she disappeared entirely. Just a pale reflection of two white-grey eyes in the mist. I''d gotten half a glance at her, but it was clear how her build had changed; larger, more bulk beneath her changing fur, and claws for true fighting rather than digging. Her eyes, the only part even partially visible in the swirling cloud of grey, exited the den as she moved forward; if I wasn''t tracking her, I''d never know she was there. Fascinating. Not the spectral serpent, who physically disappeared beyond the stripe of black across his back, but functionally invisible. Combined with the endless storm here, I found myself very curious how she''d hunt. Although her prey wouldn''t make it easy. Because down on the ground, tucked in burrows and dens carved by their own hand, my goblin mages lost their evolution-addled glow. A few points of awareness a floor up prodded at Akkyst''s mind, padding through the Jungle Labyrinth as he was. With the parrot on his broad shoulders. I had no idea why she wanted to go with him. Hurry, I urged. Bylk is soon to awake. For an enormous, lumbering bear, he could sure pick up the pace when he wanted. The first stretched awake, silver bleeding off her form. Annoying, they really hadn''t changed much¡ªtaller, yes, but still spindly, slender things. Not an ounce of muscle alongside their bones. Still green-blue skin interlaced with black stripes, still ears extending off their heads like parasails, still knobbly hands and jagged fingernails and snaggleteeth and¨C And tails. Long, sweeping things with tufts on the tips, the same grey as their hair. Did tails¡­ help mages? Was it necessary for their spells? Why in all hells would they grow tails? She dragged herself up, tail wriggling over the ground like an eel dragged to land. Already, mana crackled around her fingers, Khasvar''s boon lighting it up with muted flashes. It reflected in her black eyes like fire. I didn''t have to dip into her mind to sense her excitement. With the crash of an avalanche, Akkyst burst into the Skylands, nearly shaking the parrot off his back¡ªhe immediately thundered down one of the narrow bridges woven for his bulk, stumbling once or twice in his haste. A cluster of baterwauls fled his path with echoing shrieks. Subtle. The other Magelords woke, helped up by their peers; no one seemed to particularly know what to do with their tails, which did soothe some fear that I was supposed to know that, but already they chittered and laughed as mana jumped to their call, already looking around their carved dens with ambitious eyes. Akkyst padded between them, supplying his enormous sides as support for those struggling to stand¡ªhe rumbled encouragement and praise, runes dripping in his wake like moonlight. A dozen new goblin mages, ready to guide the others in their footsteps. All led by their leader, who pulled himself off the ground with a groan and twinge of pain¡ªturns out evolution didn''t feel nice when you had numerous earrings, though none of them seemed disturbed. The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Bylk shook his head, examining the points of his claws, frowning as a new muscle presented itself in the form of a slithering limb between his feet. Akkyst perked up, remaining ear flicking forward, padding over. "Bylk!" He called. Bylk, however, wasn''t looking at Akkyst. Or himself. Or any of his evolved brethren. Instead, his eyes were fixed on the parrot. She was neatly perched on Akkyst''s shoulder, which were massive enough the bear hardly seemed to notice her presence; she entertained herself by preening her gold-tipped feathers, occasionally squawking with some disapproval whenever Akkyst moved too fast, but otherwise easy to miss. For a second, I thought it might have been confusion about birds, considering Bylk was a highland goblin who had lived his entire life under a mountain, but no. He traveled with the bladehawk and lived with greater pigeons. She shouldn''t have been a shock. But he was just staring at her. "Do I¡­ know you?" Bylk asked. What. Akkyst seemed to mirror my confusion, thoughts brimming with concern that the evolution had stripped Bylk''s memories¡ªbut the goblin kept his gaze locked onto the parrot, who tilted her head to fix him with a beady black eye. "Know you?" She squawked, wings bristling. "You?" Bylk hesitated, gnarled fossil that he was. A profound unease settled over his pride at evolving. "Awfully familiar, you," he settled on, lips twisted in a grimace. "Got any secrets tucked away in those pretty wings''a yours?" For her part, the parrot seemed very offended by the question, puffing up. She deliberately turned away to pick at some of her primaries, not mimicking him again. Her tail swished. Runes floated off Akkyst''s fur like a tsunami, crowding the air and pooling on the ground when ignored. The starwrought bear rumbled, eye narrowed in concentration. "Escaped from the War Horde?" He asked, head tilted. Perhaps, but I doubted it. I dipped into the stream of our connection. Found in the jungle, I murmured. Outside the mountain. Bylk frowned, scratching the underside of his scruffy chin. "M''ybe," he said, dubious. "But I''ve a hell of''a mind, Akkyst. I don''t much forget things." Sure. Right. I believed that. My starwrought bear shifted, trying to crane his neck over to look on his back; the parrot squawked, disgruntled, but acquiesced to his study. She seemed, at most, mildly displeased. That unknown ember of mana in her chest flickered. Hells, did all my creatures have secrets I wasn''t privy to? Did I need to lay down a law on my halls so I could stop being caught off guard? But the parrot either couldn''t or wasn''t talking, Akkyst''s blessing was spitting runes undecipherable, and Bylk was still woozy off evolution¡ªso, seemingly as one, they turned away from the problem at hand. "Right," Bylk said, and when he spoke, I saw a faint mana crackling over his teeth¡ªfirst tails, now this? Just what was in their evolution? "Time''ta get organized first. Haggle details later." Akkyst rumbled a nod, though his eye was fixed on one rune, floating off the parrot''s wing, a circle with a myriad of lines like cracks spreading through the center. I floated overhead most of their rune studies and knew they hadn''t figured out what this one meant yet, but they''d seen it before. Notably, they''d seen it off the old stone Bylk had brought from the ruins of their old home. That was a fact that inspired no concern in me whatsoever. If Nicau had damned my existence by bringing the parrot here, I was going to¨C well, it wasn''t like I could blame him for bringing me creatures when I had specifically asked for that, but I would make a point of expressing my disapproval before my second death. Bylk grinned¡ªa uniquely horrible expression with his snaggleteeth and generally unpleasant face¡ªand plodded forward, tail flicking unconsciously to brush at the stone. "Later," he said, a scholar''s promise, considering I knew both of them would likely forgo sleep and all healthy habits in their attempt to capture this discovery. "Off''ta the others first." Akkyst shifted his weight, offering a mighty shoulder for Bylk to use, and padded out to greet the other Magelords. I had certainly made the correct choice in giving him a Name¡ªother than Chieftess, there were few such natural leaders in my halls. He had the Skylands operating by his word out of respect instead of fear. Veresai could learn a thing or two. She likely wouldn''t, but that was a problem for a later day. For now, I dove down, digging through the stormclouds until I popped into the floor below, the wash of rippling blue and white-quartz sand. Now, the damnable thing was that while my mana had overbloated to the point it took a day for those on the upper floors to evolve, the lower weren''t as lucky¡ªor, rather, they were normal, while the others were aggressively quick. Fitting, that all of them were first evolutions, too. But it meant I wouldn''t be seeing my new sharks or scorch hounds yet. Though the Hungering Reefs would be receiving new inhabitants, as the armoured jawfish finally plummeted far enough to connect to the first room. I immediately threw myself behind and destroyed the tunnel he''d traveled down. I didn''t care if there were no invaders in my halls, having retreated the moment they saw the descent to the Underlake¡ªnot a chance of anyone skipping through my dungeon again. The water rushed and gurgled as I forced it back into its previous occupancy, bleeding limestone until it was indistinguishable from the surrounding walls. For his part, the armoured jawfish sagged, no Mayalle''s whirlpool to hold him up¡ªbut with me beaming instructions into the tidewalker sprite, it immediately began to swim around him, circling underneath with its wide dorsal fins extended. His tail lashed and pushed him forward instead of down, sluggish at first but picking up; some kinks to work out, but already in tandem. His scarlet eyes burned. Likely best he remained in the first room; the lagoon was too large an obstacle, and the tidewalker sprite needed room to whip up the currents he needed. And here he could reign supreme, unchallenged¡ªmostly¡ªby Seros or the sea serpent. A much-increased ambient mana and a new territory to claim. But the last of my finished evolutions, for now. And an adventuring party cleared from my halls, retreated before they could do much but hassle my lesser creatures, but they had also confirmed a day had passed. And I had given myself a day before deciding my new Named. With my mana regeneration, I had enough for two¡ªand two I would be choosing. A day of frantic rebuilding meant I knew where my weaknesses and strengths lay, though I hoped beyond hope that I had removed many of the former. Now it was time to accent the latter. And, well. I was already in the Hungering Reefs. The part of me always hungry for bloodshed, damn the consequences, flicked a point of awareness over to the hungriest creature of all my halls. Veresai was power, Rihsu was loyalty, Seros was commitment, Akkyst was knowledge, Nicau was position¨C But my vampiric dryad was all hunger. Oh, she deserved a Name, some eight times over¡ªand hells above, she''d get one, but I''d have to make my stance clear. Collecting blood for her Ancestral Tree was well and good, but within reason; no longer culling my floors to feed an insatiable glut, but instead assisting. Training. Being a leader. ¡­was this the right choice? Would she use this power for anything other than destruction? I hovered overhead, staring at her. Even with her missing arm, she was a monster; joints popping in and out as she leapt from isle to isle, breaching the water like a porpoise whenever she needed to swim across. Her jagged crown of thorns, the milky white of her eyes, the fangs filling her muzzle¡ªshe wasn''t humanoid, not really. Oh, she fit the silhouette, so long as one ignored the digitigrade legs and bark-skin and many-jointed arms, but not in attitude. She hungered. She wanted more. She''d learned how to speak only because she wanted it, not because she wanted to speak to them. Just to speak. Maybe she wouldn''t be a leader in the way I knew I needed. But she could be an inspiration; proof there was power if one pursued it. And perhaps her Name would grant her more intelligence, the ability to cooperate with other species. I was putting too much hope on that, I knew. But watching her knife through the water, a triggerfish clasped in her jaws, I remembered the surprise at seeing one of my vampiric mangroves far from its original nesting point. Then, watching it move, learn, adapt¡ªand unlock an evolution to do it more. Her ambition was clear, and she''d wiped Alda''s entire party off the map by herself. She would get a Name. Damn the consequences that were surely coming, but she''d get it. I needed cooperation, yes, but I also needed monsters, and there was no doubt she could take that role. In contrast, my other Name would have to be a leader, a bonafide general to lead my creatures forward underneath my raid-frenzy. My first thought, still fixated on Shoth as I was, was of the beast-tamer kobold; or kobold tamer now, I supposed. A lifetime ago, shaking rats to trip up adventurers; now, hunting alongside the scorch hounds and slitting Shoth''s throat. But now. Not yet, at least. He had only just undergone his first evolution; I wanted to see him in his new role for a while longer before I granted him a spool of Otherworld magic. Not that I was expecting him to fail, but it was certainly a different beast entirely to get a Name; and one success didn''t merit that kind of power. Eventually, though. However much it tetched me to have him embrace his fire-drake ancestry, I couldn''t deny he''d gotten strong. At least I had Rihsu following Seros¡ªor, I had Rihsu, considering she had sworn herself away from me. Of the original three kobolds, there was another. Chieftess. She had a name, given by her tribe and cemented by Nicau, as a chieftess; a leader. Even before her evolution she had led her kobolds through the Drowned Forest, capturing Nicau so long ago, building traps, hunting, harassing invaders. Not strong at the beginning, but she''d evolved once, and was already making a dangerous legacy in the Hungering Reefs. She''d been commanding her tribe since the moment I''d given her one, and she''d earned their loyalty well over. A Name would only help. Her power would increase with it, whatever her blessing ended up being. She had ambition, though not as much as the vampiric dryad, and I knew she''d tackle the world if it meant her tribe survived. And her independence¡ªwell, it had been her asking to venture into the Myvnu Jungle with Nicau. ¡­where she was right now. Outside of the dungeon. Away from me. Shit. How lovely of me to decide to wait on Naming my creatures until I''d better settled; and now my preferred choice was galavanting outside with no timeline for return. The impatient part of me¡ªrather the majority¡ªwanted to Name someone else just to do it; maybe the stormcaller sprite, maybe the sea serpent, maybe even Bylk. All of them were powerful and deserving in their own way, but beyond Bylk, none had expressed the leadership I wanted¡ªand frankly, Bylk had Akkyst to help lead. Chieftess technically had Nicau, but even I couldn''t be generous enough to call him a leader. No. I''d wait. No matter how much it hurt, I would wait for her return, and then reawaken another Named to my halls. I didn''t have half a thought as to what her blessing would be; something for her tribe, hopefully, or perhaps some draconic awakening. The stars were for options. But there was one Name I could give, and give I would. I floated down to her, hovering overhead with the intangible coalescation of a stormcloud. She pulled herself out of the water onto a half-moon isle and cocked her head to the side, thorns bristling¡ªgently, I pushed the sensation of going to her Ancestral Tree for this. It was a suggestion she took gladly¡ªdiving right back into the water, maw still holding a triggerfish and remaining claws speared through two prismatic dartfish. She cleaved through the waves, enough of a threat even roughwater sharks turned away from her shadow, others fleeing from her presence. Gods, what a beast she was. In my heart I knew she was likely twice-evolved, considering vampiric mangroves were too powerful to be baseline, and I couldn''t wait to see where she went next. She''d tackle my whole dungeon if I gave her the chance. She hit the lagoon like a wave, cresting over atoll walls until she made it to the central island where her Ancestral Tree grew, identical to those around, merely another mangrove in the sprawling forest. It was near humorous to see them next to each other¡ªit, a familiar tree; her, a monstrous nightmare. She hissed to the air, half-crouched, weight shifted to her left side as her missing arm overbalanced her. I¨C hoped that maybe she could regrow it, being a mixture of flesh and bone and bark and leaf, but I didn''t know. Dryads had regenerative abilities, such as Sanguine who I had devoured so long ago, but she had attuned herself to it; my vampiric dryad was only for hunger. Maybe she would. Maybe she wouldn''t. Either way, she would devour. I pressed my mana into her, weaving the Otherworld connection like a lattice over her mind. She twitched and reared up, cautious and curious; I threaded myself into her until we were as close to one as could be. Her hunger, our hunger¡ªthe saliva pooling between our fangs¡ªthe blood trickling down our claws¡ªthe red-red-red world before us¡ªthe hunt¨C
Vampiric Dryad Svythe This Ancestral Tree is one of death and consequence, and so too is its servant. It stalks the world for blood to deliver back to its home, armed with piercing fangs and the loyalty that brings empires to their knees.
Blessing of the Hunter: all gateways are opened.
Chapter 168 - Bargain Met My lovely vampiric dryad¡ªSvythe, the draconic word for hooked claws, which fit, considering her¡­ everything. She made a deep, acidic hiss as Otherworld mana flooded through her, head tilted, silver motes drifting over her form. Her Ancestral Tree shifted, twisting its thorned roots until it almost seemed to open, carving a den within the sandy soil¡ªSvythe stumbled towards it, weight shifting like she wanted to raise her arm to nudge away the thorns. But her arm was gone. The thorns moved for her regardless, shifting back so she could curl up in the roots of her Ancestral Tree, the Otherworld mana diffusing overtop. It had only taken Akkyst a day or two to awaken, and Svythe was far hungrier than him. Oh, she would awake, and she would be powerful. All my Named were. I hoped Chieftess came back soon. It wasn''t necessarily that I disliked having more mana regeneration, but the piddling points from that were little to nothing compared to an invasion, or a wandering creature, or even just the standard fight-and-feast in my halls. No, it was there for Names, and the improvement to my mana pool was for creating more expensive schemas. That was the real point of it. A simple system, but one evolving. Back on my first floor, I had needed to wait for regeneration enough to build my room, to make any creatures. But that had been when I relied on an underground monitor for all my defense and a single human with a torch tried to enslave me. And already I was butting up against problems with my mana pool, my schemas growing larger and larger until they threatened to be too large for me to make. A threat for a future day, because every time I evolved, all I thought of was more Names. More Named to join my Otherworld mana. Which would happen, as soon as Chieftess got back. Eventually. Fuck. Why did I let her go before? All I wanted was more Named, more blessings. I was a wretchedly greedy creature at my core, this I knew. Svythe''s blessing fascinated me to no need, particularly since the language of the runes was never immediately clear. Seros had hydrokinesis, Nicau could talk and command all, Veresai could see through her follower''s eyes, Akkyst made the world speak in runes to him¡ªwhat would the blessing of the hunter mean? What would that give her? I was still a shade distracted watching over Svythe, even though I knew it would be at least another invasion before she woke up, when another creature got the jump. Rather, creatures. Woven throughout the Hungering Reefs, the shadows deep and heavy, my sharks awoke. I preened. Rammerhead sharks were, fittingly, brutes. Much like my armoured jawfish, the moment silver light drifted off their forms they immediately started to fall, the weight of their new enormous forms dragging them to the sand. Most of it was in their head, which had mightily tripped its way up from cartilage to calcified strength. Not armour, bone or otherwise, just strengthened skin¡ªsharpened skin. Like the roughwater shark it had been, where it let its skin grow sharp to dissuade predators. But now it was a weapon, combined with their weight, to tear apart anyone in their path. Battering rams, combined with teeth and fins and tail. In as strong a comparison as water and fire, my moray sharks were nightmares. Thin and twisting, they coiled out of the light and immediately darted for the island-reefs beneath them, threading themselves into the capturing coral and bloodline kelp. They were nearing twenty feet long but a fraction of their previous width, a perfect blend between moray and monster. They had the dorsal fin of a shark, but stretched the length of their body, ending in a shark''s tail, but missed the side fins. And their head¡ªgods, their head. A carnivorous maw, gills rippling down the sides, and fangs like a vampiric mangrove''s thorns, jagged and angled back to hold. And¡ªmost damningly¡ªtheir second jaw. Their second row of teeth, like the first wasn''t enough, snug in their throat, ready to lunge whenever they opened their mouth. What could snap down on anyone who thought they were safe. Oh, I loved them. Perhaps it was Abarossa''s presence strengthening the evolution of my sharks, perhaps it was how long they had gone without an evolution and only now obtaining the next level of strength, but they well-deserved it. And I deserved it. Let Shoth try and get through this floor now. The moray sharks, woven through the reefs as ambush predators¡ªrammerhead sharks to pummel anything in their path. The threat was still speed, but this was filling another obstacle in Shoth''s path, a way to hopefully throw him off. Just one bite¡ªjust one hit. The swarm would fill in afterward. Then, just beneath my awareness, deep in the Hungering Reef¨C The star-burn of a shadow overhead, lithe, coiled potency. The hunger of a creature unquenchable. The shark. Abarossa. I paused, my points of awareness swiveling in. She was settling into my dungeon from on high, the nameless world releasing her mind down like hail. All my reefs awoke when she arrived, lurching up like hatchlings with a meal overhead; kobolds leapt into the lagoon with renewed vigour and triggerfish fired shards of coral and greater crabs brandished their emerald claws. For a moment, I wondered if she was coming to look in on the newly-evolved sharks. But Abarossa didn''t stay there, not lingering on her chosen floor¡ªshe drifted up, moving like a wave of currents, clawing through the stone with ever-replacing fangs. I followed her, intangible wings flaring out. I didn''t particularly enjoy gods leaving their boons, but Abarossa was one of the less dangerous gods in my halls. She rose through the Skylands, the Jungle Labyrinth, and settled into the Underlake, her attention fixed on the cove exit. Mayalle''s consciousness prickled, star-burn and stone-teeth, but settled from some agreement I wasn''t privy to. Curious. Abarossa spread out her mana, hungering on the edges of the murky waters. Prepare, she murmured, this lingering steadiness mixed with blood. A peculiar combination. Not for the first time, I wondered how she had gotten the merrow city of Arroyo to make her one of their Thirteen Gods; what about her was so popular they thought she was necessary? What about sharks appealed to merrow? The hunt, in all likelihood. Merrow were hunters; they killed to eat, and they lived in a very unforgiving world that wanted to eat them back. A shark''s hunger was a prime bulwark to build themselves behind. Focus. Prepare for what? I asked, cautious. Abarossa''s star-burn sharpened. My end of the bargain. Oh? Movement, outside the cove¡ªthe swish of long, scaled tails and gleam of mana. One. Multiple. Oh! With Abarossa guiding my awareness, and her mana spilling out to call those outside, half a dozen merrow swam into my Underlake. Almost immediately, my creatures lurched over, baying for blood¡ªbut I heaved them back, clawing awareness instead of a raid-frenzy. Control, control; my new path forward. Preparation rather than reaction. The merrow, entering my halls, destruction and dangerous¡ªbut think. Think. A tormentous desire rose within me to destroy them all. I squashed it, though unwillingly, and instead examined my newest invaders. Six of them, arranged in a phalanx, one at the head. He was a pale blue, like clouded aquamarine, tail long and stringed through with fossilized kelp and jewels. White-ringed eyes, sharpened teeth. Merrow could have been an acceptable race, with their sinuous bodies and layered scales, but they had strayed too far into a humanoid body. Annoying. Still the effects of a leader, though. Tall, leading the charge, with his claws wrapped around a staff of current-smoothed stone, diamond on top. A familiar staff. This was her new Priest, then. The Thirteenth Priest, fulfilling Arroyo''s needs to be complete. Interesting. He swam into my halls with his white-ringed eyes narrowed, arms flaring wide. The one to talk. But there was one in the row behind, blending in with the others. Deep teal, a ring of jewels around his throat, coral clutched in his webbed claws. A shade of not nerves but near-unhealthy paranoia, although I supposed all paranoia was necessary when entering my dungeon. A typical merrow, the kind whose souls I''d eaten before. But not quite. Seros'' memories, pictographs of his attempted kidnapping by the merrow¡ªhe knew this one. The one who had led him on the merry chase down the bloodline kelp, leading to his unconsciousness and subsequent imprisonment. Neither of us were particularly pleased about this fact. I could talk to Abarossa who could then presumably turn around and talk to her Priest, but, well. Two would hardly level the playing field in their regard. Already Seros had raced up to the Jungle Labyrinth, gravitas pounding a straight path before him as he pushed his speed to the brinks, excitement and loyalty intermixed. I''d had Akkyst do it once, Nicau mostly, Veresai when I needed psionic communication. Why not Seros now that he knew the Song? I really needed to start warming Kriya to my side. Anyone who could open up conversation without me focusing on translating would help leagues above. Overhead, my royal silvertooth swarmed, streamlined body and fang-studded school rippling like morning mist through the cloudskipper wisp''s waves. Then, from the back, a roar of moving water¡ªand Seros sped forward, lashing the current to his bidding with a melodic trill. He swam to a stop directly before, towering over the merrow, strong and powerful and brimming with gravitas. They were already cautious, but Seros had a wonderful effect of making them scared. He, my draconic monitor, my soon-to-be dragon; here was a damned good reason they would never have made their way to my core. He would protect me. He would not be taken down by them. Seros rumbled, bubbles trickling through his fangs. Water swirled around his braced frills. Well, that was my answer to their invasion, play though it was. We sat in a truce brittle as fan-coral, though Abarossa and I would enforce it. But for all there was the floatings of an alliance, or at least peace, I wouldn''t see them get too chummy. No, I was a dungeon core, and I was to be feared. Seros was a helpful punctuation of that fact. His iridescent scales, ivory claws, the gravitas spilling from his scales like the peal of a bell despite his youth¡ªyes, they did not want to fight him. But they did have a mission. The pale blue one swam forward, not enough to get within fifty feet of Seros but enough to establish him as the frontman for the group. "Hail," he cried, in a warbling, bubbling voice. "I am the Thirteenth Priest of Abarossa, here to pay honour." I wondered how long he''d practiced that speech. If he were terrestrial, he would be sweating buckets. Overhead, Abarossa tilted her presence like a nod, which was fascinating to think about for an all-powerful deity deigning herself to my halls. Gifts, she murmured. Are you ready? Was I ready? For schemas? I was ready before I''d even finished falling from the Dread Pirate''s spear. Yes, I said back, and then, on a strange whim¨C him. Who is he? My mana, coalescing, pointed towards the deep teal one from Seros'' memories. I was nothing if not petty. Abarossa hesitated, startled¡ªor, rather, a lesser word. Perhaps mildly confused. It was hard to truly surprise a deity. But I felt her mana reach out, shifting past the Thirteenth Priest and into my chosen target, murmuring instructions I couldn''t overhear. That merrow hesitated, flicking out a webbed hand. His white-ringed eyes were narrowed, tense, mana crackling around the corner of the coral piece he clutched in his claws. Overhead, Abarossa swirled, half-annoyance. She wanted this to only involve the Priest, a testing point for him, a way to prove her newest delegate. But that was the luck of a parlay. I wanted Seros to stand strong before his attempted captor, and I also wanted to know just who this wretched captor was. If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. "Katharra below," the merrow murmured, a touch like a prayer. Curious. Was he not in the house of Abarossa? Why had she chosen him to come, then? "I am C¨¢ssio," he said, addressing the water, Seros, perhaps me. "I am here to¡­ present our chosen gifts." C¨¢ssio. Not a familiar anything, but fitting in with the typical names of the merrow-city of Arroyo. I could likely rule out an intricate plot to capture my Named other than the touch of destiny. He mostly looked like he wished he could be truly anywhere else. Acceptable, I said to Abarossa. Continue. With a touch of brimming pedantries, the Priest reached into a bag of dried kelp on his side, secured around the bend of his tail. It opened with a spark of magic, reflecting like Abarossa''s presence, and from within he drew a creature. That was the interesting element of receiving aquatic schemas¡ªwhile I didn''t know the exact one, I did know the species, not that this one was particularly difficult to identify. Perhaps three feet in diameter with seven arms arching out of a circular center, ghostly silver-blue flesh rippled with strangely angular geometries. A starfish. ¡­huh. One that was still alive. Was there a particular reason they gave it to me alive? It wouldn''t last the while¡ªI needed its schema, which only came from corpses. Not worth transforming it into a dungeonborn, either. It was certainly a choice to make. I would laugh merrily in my core for them making their job more difficult while I murdered it. Speaking of¡ªI nudged Seros forward, currents swirling around his claws like a volcanic vent''s power. He loped towards the Priest, who met his gaze with surprising determination. The merrow raised the starfish aloft and immediately let it drift away from him, the azure-white form twitching as Mayalle''s whirlpool tugged it further into my halls. One of the ground-stuck kinds, those that shuffled along the bottom and hunted for anything to fill its mouth underneath. A schema to fill the scavenger role that had mostly gone to Underranked creatures up to this point. I plucked the thread of our connection. Kill it. Seros lunged forward and bit deep into its core, fangs cleaving through its fragile flesh¡ªand, nightmarishly, it splintered, breaking apart like brittle skin into a collection of jagged shards. Uniquely terrifying, and also confusing; was that defense? Offense? Did it have to be injured in order to attack? Little matter. The shards digging into his scales hurt I knew, because I was listening to Seros'' thoughts, but he never showed it. He just bit harder, shaking his head back and forth until three of its seven limbs fell off in more splinters and mana burst through my halls, sparking bright and oddly earth-attuned. The merrow were all watching him, their white-ringed eyes impossibly wide as Seros made a show of it, devouring one of the legs, his fangs coming closed with a guillotine''s crunch¡ªbut watching him. Watching him closely. A twinge of worry. Was there a reason they had brought me a live specimen? Were they¡ªthe merrow, not Abarossa, considering there was no chance she didn''t know exactly how a dungeon core worked¡ªtrying to test my abilities, to see what it was like? Fuck that. I''d treat them the same as Gon?al¡ªtake their schemas and make them leave. I''d consume the corpses in my own time. I probably shouldn''t have killed the starfish in front of them to give them ample exposure to my commands, but I would treat that as a display of strength from Seros for the moment. For his part, my wonderful draconic monitor rumbled a brief stanza of a melody, something twisting and current-woven¡ªin the back, confusion flashed over C¨¢ssio''s face¡ªand the remains of the starfish, plenty for a schema, drifted away. He wasn''t going to turn his back to bring it to me, so he would trust his hydrokinesis, aided by the Song, to handle that while he watched the merrow with burning golden eyes. Oh, I loved him. Abarossa''s mana twitched, another unheard command, and that seemed to shock the Priest out of his comatose state. He flicked his tail and rose higher, a seafoam merrow mirroring him behind, pulling a bag off of her own body. Handing it to the Priest, she dipped back down to join the phalanx; it seemed the other merrow were here as bodies, serving for both guards and carrying the other schemas. A respectable precaution, considering what I was. The Priest unclasped the kelp-bag with another spark of mana¡ªsomething protective, if I had to guess¡ªand withdrew my second prize. Well, at least they''d only tried once. This one was dead. The body of a fish emerged from the bag, coiled up on itself in a way that had to have snapped its spine thrice over¡ªperhaps seven feet in length but less than eight inches in height, a narrow, knife''s edge predator. Even in death, its eyes glassy and blank, the ivory jut of hooked fangs protruded from its maw. A hunting-fish. Doubtless my Otherworld mana would tell me the exact name, but I knew the type. They were nothing but pests to sea-drakes such as I had been but they were devastating beasts in coral reefs, maintaining the population of anything that made such a foolish decision so as to leave the safety of their schools; or even for the crime of existing, depending on how hungry the hunting-fish got. I had the triggerfish, perhaps, but they were ranged attackers that died upon anything close, and my silver kraits preferred ambushing unsuspecting prey. This would slot well into my ecosystem. The Priest allowed Mayalle''s current to lift it from his webbed hand, its body twisting once the kelp-bag no longer kept it crushed in a transportable size. Already there wasn''t anything life changing, because I rather thought that even with Abarossa explaining I would not harm them so long as they made no attempts on my core, they still didn''t want to arm me with anything too powerful. Bastards. Which played true as the Priest procured his next schema. A squid. Or, what I hoped was one, because any lesser creature could have mistaken the rubbery, stringy mess of translucent pink-white from a bag for a long-dead corpse. I knew squids, so I did know its potential, but that didn''t mean the gelatinous glob of tentacles and flesh looked anything near powerful. The Priest released it from his grasp and let it drift over, where Seros stared at it with as much disdain as his presence could emanate. I wholeheartedly agreed. And then, from the back, two merrow busied themselves unclasping a sling stretched between both their backs¡ªa heavy wrapping of kelp, nearly as long as they were head to tail, doing its damnedest to drag them to the bottom. It didn''t have a securing spark of mana like the others¡ªand in fact, there was blood, ghosting out near one of the tied ends of kelp. A fresh kill. My points of awareness spiraled up, surrounding them, as they unwrapped the final schema to be brought to my halls. A dolphin. Streamlined, stone-grey, pure black eyes¡ªa powerful tail with all the strength of a shark but infinitely more mobility, fins out, extended snout lined with teeth. Just under ten feet, and absolutely corded with muscle. Dolphins were pirates in their own way. Enormous groups, knifing through the waves as they swam from sea to sea, eating their fill and allowing no threats to their pods. I didn''t have as much room as they would need, but I would give them food aplenty and mana galore, something the high seas often lacked. They would thrive here. The Priest didn''t even try to present it to me, considering it had taken two merrow just to haul the thing here¡ªhe simply bowed his head as if in prayer and, on the signal of a twist of his tail, all three let the dolphin sink to the bottom. A few of my silvertooths twitched at the trail of blood but I held them back with my typical iron will. Four corpses, scattered over my Underlake. Four schemas. The Priest straightened, mana thrumming through his channels. "Gifts from our mighty Abarossa," he said, puffed up with resonant devotion. She''d certainly chosen a shill instead of her more ambitious previous Priestess. "Let these mark the day of our coalition!" Yeah, I wouldn''t go that far. I swirled overhead, pondering. A good spread, all aquatic, and more versatile than Gon?al''s ice-bound beasts. Giving me the freedom to choose where to put them rather than guiding me to a new floor, though they would all end up in the Hungering Reefs regardless. Or, I would know that, as soon as I actually ate the damn things. They will leave, I said. There was no hesitation nor parlay in my voice. It was a fact. Abarossa''s mana flared, not in anger, but a curiosity¡ªshe didn''t know why I wanted that, which made me think she wasn''t as involved as I had previously thought. Maybe she had just told them to bring schemas, and it was them that had made the deliberate choice to bring one alive. The Priest blinked, imperious stance cracking; maybe he thought I''d use my precious mana to weave him an entrance hall, stacked with thrones and golden offerings? No. He''d fulfilled my trade with Abarossa, which meant I wouldn''t kill him, and that was where the contract ended. They had done nothing to make me want to give more; only what was expected. "Ah¨C" he started, and Abarossa''s retort went directly to him but was loud enough I heard the echoes through her mana. He winced. "Of course," he said, switching his tone to something far more reverent. "We shall leave at once. Please, think kindly upon our offerings." That would depend on the manner of their future offerings. The phalanx had hardly left the first hundred feet of my Underlake and it was simple for them to reverse and swim out, Mayalle''s whirlpool dying for just a second to allow them passage. I watched their green-blue forms through the murky waters outside my dungeon, Seros'' piercing gaze managing far past what my points of awareness could, until they were gone. Presumably. I would have the royal silvertooth patrol for the next few days, in case they got any bright ideas. But that was an encounter I wasn''t likely to forget. A deal completed, with me as rather the unchallengeable victor. Making myself stronger again and again. And stronger still, as I split my consciousness between the four bodies newly granted to my halls. I''d start with the freshest kill. The starfish, the shards of its body scattered throughout the Underlake. I gnawed it down to mana.
Crystalline Starfish (Uncommon) It is unkillable in the most killable way. Every injury only breaks it apart further into jagged blades of life, each capable of regrowing into their own form, ready to ever-expand outward.
I of course knew that a sea-drake''s defense wasn''t feasible for every creature in the world, but surely there was something more effective than this? Letting oneself be killed, be overwritten, just to grow elsewhere? ¡­it was probably fine that pieces of it were currently drifting through the Underlake. The water here was only brackish, not the concentration of saline needed for starfish. I wasn''t about to be planting an invasive creature of my own creation here. Surely. I distracted myself by moving on, going down the order of arrival. The twisted hunting-fish, glassy eyes fixed outward.
Razortooth Barracuda (Uncommon) Fast as death, it darts from sunlit shallows to sink its fangs into any prey, regardless of size. What it cannot devour whole it consumes in ripped chunks, fiercely defending its territory.
Exactly as I''d thought, then¡ªa ceaseless solitary predator, charging forward instead of waiting in ambush. A much faster variant of my sharks, it seemed, which was rather what I needed. I didn''t know how large of a territory they needed, but I''d force them to share, considering I only had so much to go around. Or that would breed competition and force a sooner evolution. Either option I would take. Next was the squid, the sad, limp pile of meat no longer than two feet long. I poked and prodded around the chitinous pen in the center, the support structure that was doing very little support now, the grasping arms. Other than some small barbs on the tips of its tentacles, there wasn''t much to look at, but I knew well of the potential of squids, which had been a favoured snack of mine in the deep.
Whiplash Squid (Rare) Hunters of the shallows and the unconquerable depths. It fights with hooked tentacles, releasing ink when threatened and always, always dreaming of growing larger than possibility.
Perhaps I could teach it some lessons from my thornwhip algae. And depending on how fast they reproduced or how cheap their mana cost was, I could see myself using them to show Seros more of the proper seas, the variety of prey he had to hunt when the dominion of oceans was his alone to claim. I didn''t know if my truce with Abarossa extended to all of Arroyo, though C¨¢ssio''s presence as a follower of a different god seemed to suggest so. Perhaps it would be safe to send Seros back into the cove to gather more schemas. And then the final, the largest, the creature I already could taste the brimming power within. Large, fast, social; everything I wanted my dungeon to be.
Shrieking Dolphin (Rare) This creature is kind enough to announce your death before it comes calling. Traveling in enormous schools, their shrieks can install either an unworldly terror or perfect paralysis, allowing for easy pickings.
Terror or paralysis? What kind of creature was this? Dolphins I knew, the traveling mercenaries that chased their own food and fun with no care for others¡ªrather perfect for a dungeon, in truth. The schema gave me a familiar impression, powerful grey bodies moving knife-fast through the water, but with mana woven around their throats and mouths¡ªa scream that echoed even through thought. Fascinating; was it for hunting or defense? I could already imagine a full school of them swarming, freezing invaders in place to be torn apart by either them or my other creatures. A cyclone of death. Hells, I had been so pleased with Gon?al''s schemas, granting me the option for a proper frozen terrain¡ªbut these would fit so well into the Hungering Reefs I was already slotting them in mentally. The armoured jawfish was making his way to the third room, the land of large predators, which would let the shrieking dolphins take over the first room as their undisputed territory. The crystalline starfish dotted throughout, perhaps as a nasty surprise in the lagoon¡ªthen the whiplash squid in the dark corners, plenty of prey to grow. And to fill the water with razortooth barracuda like a swarm, endless and biting. Shoth had made it through my running over the bottom. That would no longer be an option. Abarossa''s mana trickled down to surround me, a thrumming pride in her presence. There, she hummed, quiet. Is our bargain complete? I remade her staff¡ªshe delivered me schemas. Becoming the patron of my floor was an additive for us both. Four schemas; four paths of potential. A connection to aquatic creatures I had frightfully few ways to access, considering the last time I had sent Seros out he had been captured and nearly killed. And she was still granting me the boon of the endless hunt, a perfect home for my Named to function at their best. She had brought six merrow to my halls, had them give me schemas, and left. What I''d done to Gon?al, but more free. A power and promise. Yes, I said. It is complete. Chapter 169 - A Whole New World "Um," Nicau said. Chieftess didn''t reply, because she was a touch busy shoving her entire face into the dirt. The dirt of the Overlook, of the outside world¡ªsomething past the dungeon. Her first taste of Aiqith. Her first literal taste, because Nicau was pretty sure she''d just licked it. Overhead, the moon gleamed in a half-crescent between silvertine clouds, an eve of the approaching wet season. Warm air, kissed with a sea-wrung breeze, drifted through the altitude to settle on his shoulders. He inhaled, holding it for as long as he could. The dungeon gave him every shade of variety, a hundred different paths he could walk down and find a new environment around each corner, but there was something about familiarity that curled between his ribs like a family dog. Comforted, almost. For her part, Chieftess seemed less comforted and more losing-her-mind. Which. Understandable. If Nicau had been born in the dungeon, he imagined the sight of Calarata would cause something close to a nervous collapse. At least she seemed to be excited rather than frightened of how large the world actually was. Behind her, the lone kobold warrior hissed, irritation bubbling around his crimson-scarlet scales. Slung over his back was Aedan, nursing closed eyes and a welt the size of a rat upside the head¡ªan homage, in a way, to Chieftess knocking Nicau out when he''d been so lovingly welcomed into the dungeon''s fold. But Aedan was being taken out, dumped in Calarata, never to see the dungeon again. Nicau¡­ honestly couldn''t tell who had gotten the better deal between the two of them. Power, yes, and a Name alongside it, as well as the newly minted task to smuggle four kobolds through Calarata, a city more akin to a murderpot than anything with lenient infrastructure, which, well. That was his life. At least he''d chosen the Overlook for this expressed purpose¡ªit was a maze of switchbacks and limited vantage points, meant to overlook the city without being accessed by the filthy poors, up until the nobles that thought themselves kings had been taken out by an avalanche. He could go down a few layers, dump Aedan, and then go horizontal over the Al¨®mbra Mountains¡ªdisappear before Calarata ever got a taste for his existence, which was exactly how he preferred it. Though he trusted Gon?al not to go blabbing about his true power, he also didn''t want the Marquesa de Wolf to pop out of the shadows and strike another deal. Once was plenty. "We''re going down," he said, gesturing over the city proper. "Just enough to leave him, then go to the jungle." Chieftess churred, contemplative. "Many tribes," she said, staring at one of the distant houses¡ªprobably a den to her eyes. "All together?" "Not kobolds," Nicau said, with only partial certainty. "Invaders." She bared her fangs, eyes glowing. "Humans." It was¡­ maybe a touch worrying that the entire population of kobolds seemed plenty fine to feast on human flesh without ever truly acknowledging he himself was human, but Nicau was electing to ignore that. He nodded. "Lots of them," he said, shaking his head. "We don''t want to be seen. Or fight." Chieftess warbled disappointment. But, as the kobold warrior hiked Aedan''s limp body higher on his shoulders and the two hunters spread out to cover their flanks, it was time to move¡ªhe wanted to be out of Calarata long before the sun rose, in any chance of avoiding being seen. And he knew from unfortunate experience that it took far bloody longer than he wanted to climb down the mountain. On they went. After three switchbacks, they reached the upper echelons of the city, though not to be confused with wealthy subdistricts¡ªthis was still in avalanche territory, prone to falling or being fallen upon, and what buildings poked from the mountain back like snaggled teeth were just worn brick and mud-packed walls. Nicau crept forward with a spider''s hesitancy, ears pricked, eyes wide¡ªbut no one came out. Calarata''s nightlife was typically reserved for drunkards down at the docks or murderers, who also did not particularly want to be seen. "This way," he whispered, tugging Chieftess'' attention back to him. She dropped a piece of gravel and padded after, head on a swivel¡ªevery inch of her seemed to quiver with excitement, like traveling to a new world. Even something as mundane as the packed dirt of the road filled her to the brim. But thankfully, where came shitty buildings brought shitty alleys, and some four levels down from the Overlook Nicau turned a corner with his heart in his throat and found a narrow pathway, stuffed between the gaps of buildings that likely should have just attached to each other. Obscured, tucked away. As safe as one could get in Calarata. Nicau walked a little further in, kicking aside the rotted boards of a pallet just to confirm no streetrat pigeoncatcher was underneath. Nothing but paper, ink bleeding through a shoddy drawing of the Adventuring Guild. "Here," he said, gesturing at the back wall. With a rumble of relief, the kobold warrior let Aedan tumble off his shoulders and hit the ground with an unpleasant crunch. Shit. He was probably fine. "We''re leaving him," Nicau explained, as one of the hunters made a half-aborted gesture to extend her claws. "Not killing. Just leaving."Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original. She hissed in vague irritation but turned away, drinking in the alley wall¡ªthe bricks in particular, kiln-hardened, stable. Not just stone, carved and shaped by the dungeon; something created, something chosen. And the tiles overhead, protected from flying creatures and rain alike, layered on themselves like a kobold''s scales. The hardened path for ease of movement and transport. The gaps for mist-clouded windows. The metal braces. He would guess that the kobold tribe would be experiencing some changes in the upcoming future. Just as long as they got back. Nicau hesitated, looking around. No one to kill the priest. Presumably. But the dungeon wasn''t exactly the kind, sweet-souled thing that allowed for freedom without servitude¡ªhells, he was a perfect example¡ªand he imagined there was a reason Aedan was being released instead of slain. If his god wanted him protected, they could handle it. Nicau had brought him out of the dungeon, and he''d called that accomplished enough. Although, well¨C Nicau crouched, bringing one of his gourds forward. Chieftess warbled something curious in her throat as she leaned in to watch, amber-gold eyes bright. Having an audience made it a touch more awkward, but it wasn''t like she understood the situation enough to judge. Carefully, he took the hem of Aedan''s robes, the ones woven and dipped in moss, heavy and emerald-green. It scraped off easily under his nails, shredding apart into root and stem, and he dumped a few handfuls into one of his storage gourds for later. Hopefully it was a new species. "That is collecting?" Chieftess asked, head tilted. Her crown of horns gleamed in the twilight. "Creatures and plants," Nicau said, bobbing his head. Aedan slumped back to the stone, still blissfully unconscious. Nicau should¡­ probably wake him up to explain the situation, but with how vindictive the dungeon was, he''d hazard a guess the poor fucker had been threatened enough to keep his trap shut. "But of the jungle, not here." "Collecting," Chieftess repeated, curious. Behind her, one of the kobold hunters warbled a wordless approval. "To make more of us." "More of everything," Nicau said, then frowned. "Particularly trees. It wants trees." Her head tilted further. "More than blood-thorn and water-mist?" Vampiric mangrove and cloudsire palm, the only two trees she''d ever seen. Hells, Nicau had grabbed the initial leaf for the cloudsire palm as a backpack, something to store larger body parts in while traveling alone; it was likely one of the lesser trees in all of the Myvnu Jungle. "Dozens more," he promised, searching for proper words in their still-developing language. "Species you''ve never known, all running around. The jungle is unlike anything you''ve ever seen." Chieftess'' golden eyes gleamed. "Go," she said, a warble-hiss. "Go now. Fast." Hells if she wasn''t impatient when she heard of more¡ªher tail almost wagged as she looked over Calarata, the sea-swept walls, the spidered docks, the cobbled paths. Thousands of souls, slumbering or fighting or hunting, all waiting for the next day. And the next. A microcosm of an existence. Calarata, the Dread Pirate, his obsidian fist. The legacy of horrors he''d carved into what had been a fishing village, then a pirate hotspot, then a tangle of murder and madness. Home, yes, and any change he imagined would destroy what it was, but¨C The dungeon killed. But the dungeon also created, and Nicau could not remember the Dread Pirate creating anything other than terror in a very long time. "This way," Nicau said, and turned back to the switchbacks¡ªto the thin, ramshackle path that led alongside the Al¨®mbra Mountain''s flanks, rather than descending to Calarata proper. Their way to the Myvnu Jungle. "It''s time you see the world." - He had found himself. The jeweled jumper lived, because he did not die, but he was living again¡ªfinding excitement instead of boredom. A new world he''d found outside of the had-been-home, and once again was it bringing worthy prey to his fangs. To his venom. The grey-green-beasts died and they died easily, one bite, one snap of his fangs¡ªthough they were endless in number, they were never a challenge. Over time, he had grown to see them like the had-been-home, a land where death was never promised and he was little more than one spectre amidst many. A killer in the shadows, Ikiar. But not death. Never feared. The grey-green-beasts feared him, but they died easily. That was useless fear. It was fear that was inevitable instead of uncertain. But then he had killed the one at the front, that stood tall, that shouted its think-words to bite all those beneath it. Not a fight, not a challenge, dying to a singular bite like all others he left in his wake¡ªthen the others changed. Still weak. Still useless. But in their ranks were those more¡ªthose tall and broad, still grey-green but monsters instead of beasts, towering things. Their think-words rumbled like the mountain, heavy, pressing. They struck stone and broke it, carved things, made shapes. Bigger than even the scaled-beast he remembered from the had-been-home. And there were even more. Those with more limbs than two, walking down instead of up as all creatures should; no chitinous carapace but instead crystal, brightly coloured and impenetrable. He had walked over one''s back while it slept and found no purchase for his fangs, even its eyes covered by shards. Others were those that dragged themselves with dripping, bulbous skin, proving he still had more words to learn in an effort to describe it, maw large enough to swallow a grey-green-beast whole. A third that chittered and hissed like himself but towering overhead, armour instead of carapace, eyes impossibly large. Beyond the crystalline beast, none looked as though they should be in mountains, in rock and stone. All were threats. All were challenges. The jeweled jumper reveled. He allowed himself to slow down, to choose only targets he wanted¡ªan ever-present death, rather than destroying his fun too quickly. Ikiar, they shouted, again and again, but kept supplying more of these stronger monsters. Kept bringing them in from crevasses he couldn''t find. They were preparing for something, that he knew. Think-words were useless but they were saying them more and more, shouting, never standing in the spot where the one grey-green-beast had stood but surrounding it, surrounding its corpse. They were going to a fight. Challenging something else within the mountain, as though they believed another creature had been the one to kill their monsters. As though they thought he was just a claw on another beast''s body, acting to their will. No. He would follow them to this war, see who they fought, and destroy them himself. Prove his strength. Watch his venom wither away their challenge. The jeweled jumper did not lose. Chapter 170 - Empty Space The Myvnu Jungle was a bit of a hellscape, in Nicau''s opinion¡ªthere was a reason Calarata hadn''t named it, because there wasn''t a reason to go there. A starving land of encroaching trees and hungering beasts, where death was expected. Hells, the only stable job in Calarata were those hired to beat the jungle back from crawling too close to the cove. So no. Nicau did not particularly enjoy it. In direct opposition, Chieftess was having the time of her life. They''d crept over the flanks of the Al¨®mbra Mountains in a dizzying amount of time, seeking to avoid any early risers of Calarata noticing the plucky band of kobolds traipsing their way through, and then slithered down to make it to the front of the jungle. Still that semi-avalanche to clamber over, though already plants were beginning to sneak through the cracks, emerald green against the grey. In under a year, the entire thing would be swallowed. But for now, Nicau got to lead the kobolds up and over old stone and into a new land. Chieftess'' eyes were like twin suns, so bright and wide¡ªevery single thing she saw got her full attention, up until the next one, or the next one. The other three kobolds were equally amazed, trailing behind her, spears nearly slipping out of limp claws. The jungle didn''t start so much as swallow them; one instance he was clambering over rocks and the next it was moss-choked roots, underbrush choking all available space but for a thin path carved by small paws. Trees, flowers, greenery; an endless expanse of humid creation, the sweltering depth of a greenhouse. Nicau would never say it out loud¡ªhells, he wouldn''t think it, either¡ªbut the dungeon had a long way to go before it could create things like this. Before it would create worlds. By the kobolds'' wide-eyed shock, they agreed. A dangerous paradise, spread before them like all the world''s offerings. Chieftess crouched, claws raised to brush curiously over a fern. It was a delicate thing, wide fronds of a muted green, curling in at the tips. Wide, spreading out like a king''s crown. Nothing particularly noteworthy. She tilted her head at him. "Collect?" Oh. Right¡ªthe dungeon was looking to create a jungle of its own, which required plants. It had sent him for trees, but jungles weren''t just thickets of trunks and canopies overhead; they were tangled messes of everything green and growing. The fern didn''t look like much, because it wasn''t much, but it belonged in a jungle. If nothing else, it proved why he should keep bringing Chieftess along¡ªit was easy for his mind, if not used to than at least familiar with the jungle, to walk right by the lesser plants. But the dungeon didn''t have them yet. It would want them. "Yes," Nicau said, tapping one of his gourds. "Any plants you see, take them." Chieftess nodded, extending a claw; she cut the fern off at the base, spores fluttering loose, and shoved it into her gourd. A satisfied hum escaped her mouth as she stood, a new determination settling over her shoulders. Proving herself to the dungeon, and gaining her own knowledge as well. "Collect," she repeated, pointing to the other kobolds¡ªthey nodded as one and switched their gazes down, peering at the forest floor as they walked. Still traveling together, considering they were all rather small and rather fragile when it came to fighting an entire godsdamn jungle, but one of the kobold hunters stopped to pluck a flower, tugging out its stem as well, and shoved it into her series of pouches. Another unspooled a cluster of pale grass, clumps of roots and stems stored for later. They drifted apart as more species appeared in the peripheries, Nicau taking a moment to carefully dig out a strange tuber and Chieftess flicked her tongue at a mushroom, when¨C A squawk of surprise. Nicau spun. The kobold warrior, crouched over a flat stone he had been poking at the lichen on, sprung back with a warbling hiss. His eyes lit up, claws braced, kicking up his spear to jab downward¡ªa crunch of something violent. He danced backward, tail up, legs braced; yanked his spear out and stabbed again, thudding through the underbrush. "Safe," he barked, still glaring at the ground. "Am safe. Dead." Nicau exhaled, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. He couldn''t deny being happy that he had those actually combat-capable on the trip with him, but it did mean he had to be scared for everyone, not just himself. Which. Exhausting in its own right. The kobold warrior shook himself, scales rustling and horns catching the sun. He took a step back to rejoin the group, yanking his spear out of the ground¡ªand its new addition. A centipede. It was a macabre collection of limbs and claws with way too many of both, a burnished monstrosity with void-black eyes. The kobold had speared it through the side first, then straight through its¨C thorax? Whatever the word was, he''d killed it. And a good thing too, because in its full terrible length, it was maybe three, four feet long¡ªwhich was¡­ a little bigger than Nicau necessarily wanted to know was scuttling underfoot. "What happened?" He asked, leaning in; the thing was still twitching, clawed limbs curling in and out. The back of its carapace was an earthen brown, rain-soaked dirt, while its underside was bright gold like armour; the legs by its head were even longer and built for grasping, for holding its prey down as it bit. He didn''t want to imagine what kind of venom was stored in a beast like this. The warrior hissed. "Tried to bite. I killed." The eloquence of the kobold language was still a work in progress. Nicau nodded regardless. "We''ll collect it," he said, then frowned, patting his gourds. Four feet of pure nightmare wasn''t going to fit. "We don''t need all of it; a chunk will do." Chieftess tilted her head to the side. "Not all?" "Just¨C" Nicau considered it for a moment. "Different parts," he settled on, like he was an expert and not like the dungeon hadn''t beamed express disapproval about that one feather he''d collected from Calarata a lifetime ago. "Multiple pieces of a creature to learn it, but not all." The kobold warrior squinted at the thing, shaking his spear. Then he reached up, grabbed its head, and tore it right in half. Yeah, that''d work. Chieftess accepted the head, clutching it between her claws to examine it closer. It was most similar to the ants found in the Drowned Forest, or maybe the hard shell of the lichenridge turtles, but not near exact. A new species for her. Not something easy to expressively learn from, but knowledge¨C the reason she had come to the jungle. For his part, the kobold warrior pulled the rest of the centipede off his spear, poking curiously at its carapace. Pink-white flesh, from the multiple holes. His eyes gleamed. Nicau sighed. "Please don''t eat that. We don''t know if it''s poisonous." The kobold churred something moderately demeaning under his breath but released the other half, falling with a splat to the rock it had been sheltering under. Nicau needed a drink. He closed his eyes. "Thank you." Chieftess placed the centipede''s head in her gourd, taking some moss from the rock to pack it in tighter. "Good," she said, pride flickering through her mana. "We collect. More!" Hard to argue with that. Nicau shucked his straps higher on his shoulders and followed her back into the underbrush. The jungle was a choking thing, even barely poking their noses in as they were; a tangled destruction with no path but the one they carved through with claws and spears. Nicau was less than useful, admittedly, but he kept plucking more cuttings of plants and lesser creatures, anything that caught his eye¡ªor, more accurately, what Chieftess saw but was too busy cutting through to collect. She had an eye for anything new, which was everything to her. It was endearing, in its own way. Even walking around Calarata, where she had marveled at the cobbled streets or windows carved in walls; something to make him reconsider the little wonders of the world around him. After they''d finished dumping an unconscious priest in a back alley. Nicau moved to duck around a branch¡ªbut it wasn''t a branch. It was a root, extending overhead, fitting like a wall to the ground. He blinked. A tree, one dropped in the center of a clearing only formed by its enormous roots choking out all the competition, threaded through the ground until it was hardly dirt anymore, only more tree. It had odd, sinuous bark, twisting on itself like flesh instead of plant; a deep caramel-brown, underlights like amber, and the leaves scattered around its base were akin to needles, soft and feathered. Certainly one of the more unique ones he''d seen in the jungle thus far. Particularly alongside the fact it was fucking enormous. He couldn''t see the top, hells, even the start of its leaves; it shot right through the canopy like a sword, growing straight and powerful. Each of its above-ground roots were thicker than his torso, knotted around each other like a castle''s walls, and the trunk¨C the trunk! Gods, he could have walked through it, carved a den, lived entirely within its walls. Easily twelve, fifteen feet in diameter, if not more. A mountain of a tree. The dungeon had wanted a centerpiece; or something to make into the centerpiece, considering jungles were rarely one tree. And Nicau hadn''t really seen something quite as large as this before. "This one," Nicau decided, patting its trunk. Then stopped. Probably shouldn''t have done that, considering he lived in an atoll littered with thorned trees with a taste for blood, but. Well. Chieftess churred her approval, tail swishing by her legs. "Good size," she said, which, an understatement. "But nothing to take. No branches." Ah. A fair point¡ªit grew in a single line, spearing through the wilderness like a beacon, but for the kobolds, who needed branches and accessible wood for tools, that was less than helpful. Particularly if the dungeon wanted to add climbing creatures to the mix, or anyway for other species to make their way up. Chieftess stepped closer, eyes bright, and tore a section of the bark free. It wept sap over her claws, a strangely sweet smell that made her wrinkle her muzzle and pull back. Nicau helpfully offered a gourd and she dropped the bark inside, dragging her claws over the edges to clean off at least a little. Across the way, the kobold hunters collected some of its fallen leaves, one scraping a chunk off its exposed root. The warrior kept watch over them all, head on a swivel. She nodded, tongue flicking out as she looked up, scanning the canopy with keen eyes. "Hunt for tool-tree," she said, pointing to the surroundings. "Branches, roots. Things to take." The others nodded, a warbling agreement. Chieftess flashed her fangs and walked on. Nicau padded after her, coiling Otherworld mana in his throat just in case. They were stronger together, but also louder¡ªmoving through the jungle was always a terror, and at least he knew he could defend against scorch hounds, but that didn''t mean there weren''t larger threats within as well. Hells, what was he saying? Of course there were. Just his luck, one of the famed thunder-rhinos would pop up just to vivisect him. He missed the parrot, in a way. Someone who knew the jungle, guiding him out; gods he hoped Chieftess remembered the way back, because he certainly didn''t. Or the kobold hunters¡ªthat was what they had evolved for, a perfect power for exploration. For collecting. Chieftess stopped moving. Nicau ran directly into her. He yelped, jumping back¡ªher charcoal-black spines weren''t as sharp as her claws, but that didn''t mean they were pleasant; he winced, shaking his head. Chieftess glared at him over her shoulder. "Stop that," she said. Nicau rubbed his nose. "Sorry." She warbled some wordless amusement and turned back to the front, where her eyes were fixed on something spiraling up through the underbrush. Another tree, this one with flaking white-gold bark and wide leaves. It was some thirty feet tall, but twice that in width; a canopy like latticework, emerald green spiraling overhead. "This," Chieftess declared, padding forward to rip a branch off¡ªit groaned and bucked but she wasn''t a kobold chief for nothing; it splintered off in her grasp, bark cracking. A good heft, strong enough to support itself. This would be the tangled knot of branches the jungle needed, something to give its creatures actual places to be rather than single spikes growing from the forest floor. It wasn''t as tall as the other¡ªwhich was an impossible comparison, actually, considering how tall the thing was¡ªbut it was wider, spreading where it had room to fill the space. It even had flowers, pale pink, blooming over older growth; and fruits, dark and clustered. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. Nicau stepped around it, scanning the branches¡ªhe''d been burned by the webweavers one too many times to just go reach into the leaves, but it seemed a strong, stable tree, only excluding how it was growing up¡ªits roots weren''t limited to only earth, but instead twisting up and around, latching onto anything in its surroundings. Similar to the mangroves, though without water. Its peeling bark, spreading out, seeds pebbled around its base. The kobold warrior flicked his tongue at one of the fruits, eyes curious. It was long, about the length of his arm, and covered in a hard shell; he knocked on it, a faint hollow thud in return. Interesting. That went into a gourd for storage, alongside splinters of Chieftess'' branch and some peeled sections of bark. Plenty, hopefully, alongside the small menagerie of lesser plants they''d collected so far. The jungle would be a wild land of diversity. "This is good," Chieftess churred, eyes bright. "Gathering much. More." Nicau poked around his gourds; they had about three, four more empty, and then what they could carry on the way back. So long as both the warrior and Chieftess kept their arms free for defenses, he and the hunters could¨C In the distance, a lone, echoing howl. It was alien enough that Nicau froze, ears pricked. Something feral and guttural, booming like thunder over the trees; the death-call of a beast approaching. Of something. "Spears!" Chieftess barked, extending her claws like daggers; in perfect evidence of her training, the other three kobolds leapt to protocol, stances up and positioned like a bulwark. Nicau lurched to be in the middle, hackles up, eyes wide. Hells, was it the scorch hounds again? But no, that didn''t make sense¡ªthe scorch hound had snuck up on him, slipping through the wilderness as it chased down the smell of the mottled scorpion''s corpse. Even in a pack, it relied on stealth. Not this creature. It was a howl but not a canine one, throatier, fiercer; a warcry. Otherworld mana spooled up his channels, settling in his mouth, fire-bright. Ready for anything. Not ready enough to look up. Something fell from the trees onto a kobold hunter''s back. She shrieked, lashing out, but the thing clambered over her scales with inhuman agility¡ªit howled as she spun, beating it with her spear, unable to get proper aim. Chieftess roared and sprang forward, the kobold warrior lunging¨C It got its claws around her neck and slit her throat. Her scales were paper beneath it, scarlet-black blood bursting outward as she screamed, collapsing. Her weight carried them both to the ground even as the kobold warrior slammed his spear into the beast¡ªinto the savage, shrieking monster, trying to leap off its dying victim. Green fur, sickle-curved claws, and a disturbingly humanoid face¡ªmonkey. The kobold hunter gasped and croaked, trying to press her claws to her throat; the warrior wrenched back his spear and just tackled the damn thing outright, Chieftess'' warcry echoing through the clearing. The monkey howled anew, writhing underneath the warrior as it tore its claws on whatever it could reach¡ªbut the warrior had thicker scales than hunters, and he held, snarling back in its face. It snapped and snarled and called out¨C Nicau tensed. His mana surged. Something moved. "Stop!" He roared. Chieftess flinched¡ªthe beast on the ground twitched¡ªbut most damningly, in the tree overhead, four more monkeys froze. Pack hunters. They were spread over low-hanging branches, long limbs hooked around branches and vines; his command had caught them right before another was about to fall, prehensile tail unlooping from a trunk. Four to fight four, one with aerial advantage, one already proven to kill. His Otherworld mana pulsed fire-hot in his throat, the only way he had to defend himself, his Name. "Leave," he snapped, power scorching through the words. "Leave!" The smallest of the monkeys twitched, its black eyes glazed and clouded. In twitching, unsteady movements, it wrapped its hand around a branch and pulled itself up, going higher, turning opposite of Nicau. The others fought his command but they were pack animals; they wanted to stay together. Claws dug into bark instead of flesh and tails coiled over branches as they slowly, slowly, faded back into the canopy, only their echoes of their howls left behind. Distraction¡ªthe monkey still in the clearing tried to lash upright, tried to spring free; the kobold warrior slammed his spear directly through its chest, crimson smearing through its green fur. It croaked, a howl locked behind its fangs, limbs splaying; he stabbed it again, snarling furies. Nicau staggered back, Otherworld mana burning his tongue on its way out, a headache ratcheting to miserable life¡ªfour pushed him to his limits, particularly four hungry, violent beasts who did not want to leave. Very violent. His thoughts reconnected and he spun, turning back to the others, to the¨C The hunter was dead. Even the moments to chase away the other monkeys had been enough for her to bleed out, scarlet spilling over moss below¡ªher eyes, staring blankly overhead. Torn scales and gashed throat. Nicau thought her name had been¡­ Root, maybe. The kobolds gave themselves names infrequently and inconsistently, changing whenever they found a new favourite object, and it was hard to keep up when the dungeon kept sending him out on missions¡ªbut the last he remembered, she had called herself Root. Now she was dead. The kobold warrior clambered off the monkey''s corpse, leaving his spear stabbed through its chest; he shook blood off his claws and warbled, something soft and remorseful. He hadn''t been fast enough. Chieftess rumbled deep in her throat. Her crown of horns, gleaming with green dappled light, smeared with scarlet. She bowed her head, eyes closed, and then knelt; she took Root''s head carefully, almost gently, and ripped out one of her scales. Then Chieftess reached up to her own chest, claws digging in, and took out one of her own; she let that fall and instead set Root''s scale in its place, a little smaller, a duller red. Mana pulsed through her eyes, concentrating¡ªand the scale settled in place. Hers, now. Her chest was full of that; a patchwork collage of scales from the fallen, a memoriam to those that hadn''t survived. The kobolds had an interesting outlook on death, Nicau knew. Life in the dungeon was fast, frantic, and inevitably short; whether by invaders or the claws of another within, they tended to measure their lifespans in months rather than years. Kobolds were more resilient by way of being a tribe, but there were precious few that Nicau had seen stay alive the entire time, other than Chieftess. It was easier to die than to live. Chieftess lived. And she kept the scales of those who hadn''t. "Remember her," Chieftess said, standing back up. "Hold her here, with us." The kobolds kept their heads bowed, mana flickering around. A promise to keep her in the tribe still, past her death; her body, gone, but her name, remembered. Something more than a gravestone eroded by time or ashes never to be looked at. The other kobold hunter carefully undid the ropes over Root''s body, unstringing the gourds to put on his own shoulders, knocking against each other. Taking away her burden; what she had come to the jungle for. Her death for the corpse of a monkey. A trade, not one he wanted. "Let''s go back," Nicau said. "We have enough." Chieftess''s face twitched, the reptilian version of a frown. "We have more," she pointed out, gesturing to the empty gourds. "Can collect more." Right. He was dungeonborn¡ªat least, he wasn''t fully human. And dungeonborn creatures did not let death stop them. Root would lay here, quiet, and the jungle would take back her mana to give to Aiqith. A funeral in the way of the wilds. Nicau shook himself, like pushing out the anxiety, the nerves; just let his mind take over, the pulse of battle-ready mana. Just a few more schemas to gather, a few more encounters, and then back to the dungeon. Back to the world he understood. The warrior leaned over to rip out his spear, strands of green fur fluttering around. The hunter had the largest gourd and he was the one to stick the point of his spear into the monkey''s neck, puncturing through its spine as its tail lashed through the last of its life, and tore the whole head off to shove into his gourd. Gods, Nicau could have used this last time. His shitty palm-frond backpack was nothing in comparison. Chieftess arranged Root''s limbs, curled to press her throat to the ground, containing the flow of blood¡ªsomething to avoid predators. Ever the pragmatism, even with the new scale in her chest. Then she straightened, her horns held high. "Go," she said, looking overhead. "Not there. Away." Nicau could agree with heading in the opposite direction as the monkeys. He nodded, stepping back as the warrior cleaned off the point of his spear. "This way," he suggested, pointing to a thin game trail scoured between the cradled roots of another towering tree. Chieftess nodded, claws out, and began walking again, others settling in behind. Still collecting things as they went, from lesser plants to scuttling bugs, but more wary; proof that this jungle was dangerous, even if it wasn''t the dungeon. Things could still kill and be killed. Root survived the Drowned Forest and evolved down to the Hungering Reef, but she had still been killed. They all could be. But that was true everywhere, wasn''t it? In Calarata, he was only one too-drunk pirate away from spilling his interior over his exterior, or enough days without selling pigeons, or a nightmarketer forgetting to latch the cage of some beast. Everywhere, he could die. That was life. It was here that he could do something other than die. Nicau kept walking, coraling an orange-black frog into a gourd without touching it, shoving a handful of dried leaves to pin it in place. He''d learned enough about poison not to risk that. Chieftess kept clawing at every tree they crossed, testing its wood against her strength, though she hadn''t found one she wanted enough. The warrior kept his head high, searching. Nicau crouched, pushing aside the low sweep of a heavy branch¡ªand instead of more jungle, open air greeted him. He blinked. Ruins. Crouched in the thin space of a clearing, trees encroaching on all sides but staying oddly out of the center, a pocket of stone sat. Rough-hewn chunks, piled up on top of each other in a vague angular shape, not quite chest-height and uneven on all sides, moss flooding the cracks. Less than the size of the kobold''s old den, barely large enough to fit the four of them within, shoddily built and unfinished. A building, alone. Ruins. In the middle of the jungle. The hairs on the back of his neck rose, paranoia snaking through his bones¡ªNicau turned, looking around the clearing, hackles up. Nothing but trees creeping in and roots spreading, but¨C holding back. Allowing this empty space. Something about this was off. Nicau pushed through the jungle into the clearing, finally out of the nest of biting insects; there were still roots and branches littering the ground but flat otherwise, an empty expanse of land. The kobolds followed him, eyes narrowed, spears up. In the center, the stone chunks piled up on each other, a rectangle with a gap in one side for a door. A room of some creation, poorly made and broken further by time; the rocks were chiseled, clearly designed, but laid on each other without proper understanding of what was needed. Well made and badly placed. A room disconnected, just huddled in the center of this abandoned clearing, nothing else within. What looked like a shelter, almost. A shelter surrounded by an inhospitable jungle and the promise of death. Whatever this place was, it was wrong. The fumbling unease of a group that wasn''t used to building for themselves, young and unskilled, slaughtered by the jungle around but still with this bleached corpse left behind. But what collection of people would just¨C start in the middle of the jungle? Why not on the edges, or how had they even gotten here? Nicau frowned, raising a hand to scratch at his chin, and stopped. His fists were clenched. White-knuckled, veins straining under his skin, dull pain where his nails dug into his palms; coiled like he was ready to strike. Anger, crackling, growing brighter the more he became aware of it; a beast crying for action. These ruins made his Name lurch in his chest, defensive in a way old stone shouldn''t be causing. Nicau wasn''t particularly the posturing type, due to the unfortunate circumstance of being easy to kill, but he wanted to puff up his chest and punch something here. All of them did. Chieftess hissed. Her eyes were sparking flames, amber-gold, but even through it he could tell she was confused¡ªwhy was she so mad? What was causing this? "Hey," Nicau soothed, unease prickling down his spine. "It''s okay, Chieftess." "Wrong," she snarled, not at him but at her claws. "This is wrong¨C need to kill¨C" She did. And he did. But there was nothing to kill because it was just ruins in the middle of nowhere. Nicau shook his head, which didn''t help. It kept brimming up as he got closer to the room, to this quiet, less-than-nothing room time hadn''t yet managed to retake. Anger, frustration, this odd, impersonal rage¡ªsomething boiled in his gut, a fire stoked by itself. But there was nothing to cause it. There was nothing to fear, no creatures, not even plants; just old stone. Wait. There was something. Bones. Curiosity beat back the fury¡ªNicau padded forward, ears pricked and caution thundering, to peer at the remains. They were inside the stone walls, half buried in the dirt, interwoven with scraps of skin so old they were near mummified. Collapsed against the walls, curled in; three, maybe four, though their individuality had been eroded away by time. The bones were¨C worryingly humanoid. Shorter than him, but with the familiarity of shape and structure, even desiccated. Nicau leaned in, brushing one with his hand; just a bone, nothing more, but his mana lurched. Three corpses, hidden under ferns and moss and dirt¡ªthough it could have been how they died, he wondered if they were trying to hide, to shelter within their half-built structure. It seemed whatever had killed them had gotten to them before they finished. Chieftess glared through slitted eyes, claws tensed and still twitching with confusion. Nicau looked around the ruins again¡ªmore pieces of stone, carved from the ground, from their surroundings. Pieces that almost looked like sharpened spearheads, tools, undisturbed. Remnants of a civilization, its inhabitants destroyed. Outside the walls, the kobold warrior hissed, jabbing his spear at the ground¡ªhe pushed aside an enormous sun-warmed leaf, warbling. "More." Another corpse. This one didn''t match the others, being larger than him in almost every conceivable way; but still the same untouched state. What arms it had were thin and spidered, while long legs with three oddly-extended toes jabbed outwards. Its neck, curled in, ended in a beak nearly the width of his twin fists. It was coiled around itself, dying as it fell; a spearhead, the wood long-since rotted away, pierced its chest. The last stand of the other corpses. They had taken one of their killers down before they fell. He stared at it, at this canvas drawing of an event he was only seeing the aftermath of. Somehow, a collection of people had made it to the center of this primeval jungle and tried to make a life for themselves, working with stone instead of wood, and had been brutally dispatched by their neighbors. Only bones left behind. But bones untouched, bones undisturbed; and this was in the jungle, where scavengers lived lives of plenty. But they hadn''t taken these bones. Hadn''t overgrown these ruins. Hadn''t squashed out this fragile moment of time. Nicau licked his lips. "We''ll collect these," he said, and his Otherworld mana purred at the thought, a visceral approval past the anger still thrumming through his veins. "Then we''ll leave." Chieftess nodded. Her eyes still burned, even as she shoved bones in her gourds with brutal force. Too strong, too sharp; hard to control herself. Nicau was the same; even walking was difficult, this howling hunger trying to make him fight. Fight anything. He knelt before the three corpses, the humanoid ones, the ones who had tried to make the shelter and died before finishing; they were wrapped around each other, either trying to protect or a predator stacking their corpses. But what predator would leave them uneaten? What scavenger would leave these bones untouched? Why was this clearing so untouched? Nicau picked up a smaller bone, the width of his palm. Just cold marrow. But deep in his chest, his connection with the dungeon thrashed. Chapter 171 - Sea-Shaped Hardly a moment after I''d collected new schemas had my attention been pulled down, burrowing deep within my halls. A heartbeat of hesitation, making sure the merrow had left¡ªbut they had, and Abarossa had followed them, returning to Arroyo. What was left of it, anyway. Seros'' memories were of a false city, empty and broken, the rubble and ruin left after a devastation. The single pillar of bloodline kelp up the center, hiding the entrance to the rooms underneath. Hiding after they were destroyed. By what, I didn''t know, but Seros had seemed certain. A pitch-shark. I should have asked Abarossa about it, asked why it was so important for the merrow of Arroyo to hear her voice again instead of all her other followers in the wider world; but part of me wondered if she would even answer. I still remembered how it felt to take that schema, to feel the creeping, shuddering wrongness of the abyss carved into a shark''s shape¡ªand the power above, trying to keep it from me. The gods, squashing its mention. A pitch-shark had destroyed Arroyo, and it wasn''t recent. Old enough they should have recovered, but instead stayed hidden beneath the stone. I shook my mana, coiling back in over the pale glow of the Scorchplains. A fear that I could do nothing about for the moment, slotted back into my core for when I had time to hiss concerns to Seros. For now, my focus went else, far below the surface world¡ªwhere, n a land of smoke and soot, a new creature opened her eyes. All four of them. The orthrus. Her ears perked up, the leftmost head lifting off the ground with a rumbled whine. She''d grown to some five feet tall, burnt sienna fur spilling over her bulky shoulders and the muscle coiled tight as stone. Black streaked over her spine and face, surrounding ember-bright eyes, four of them; two heads, conjoined at neck, staring over her surroundings. What an odd creature. Powerful, yes, and already she''d thrown off the sluggish consciousness of evolution to start thinking in these brisk, pointed thoughts, but two heads was certainly not something I would have come up with myself. She could bite prey from multiple sides, at least. And she could do it all the better with the one awakening at her side, silver light drifting off his scales. The kobold tamer. He had the build of a kobold hunter, all long limbs and overlapping scales, but instead of their spiraling horns, he had an enormous curling set that wrapped around the back of his head and stuck forward, long enough to gore something. Dark red scales, like the embers after a fire, and a long tail curling around his legs; not too closely, with the blade-like spine on the tip, black like his claws. Grey eyes opened blearily, motes of light fading under his scales. At his side, the orthrus barked, her leftmost head pitched lower. The right head tried to look over at its twin, ears cocked, and she fumbled around for a few steps as the twist in balance threw her off¡ªand that was enough for the kobold tamer to lurch upright, arms spread, and look at her. She looked at him. Whatever truce they''d established before not so much reappeared as remade itself; almost immediately I could see them categorize each other as allies, locking in their understanding, choosing each other. He was a tamer, she was a beast; but both with minds well above their peers. A proper partnership. And all around, the rest of the pack awoke, peeling out of their evolution daze. Blazebane wolves, picking themselves up slowly¡ªtheir wake was littered with houndspores, so that would likely have to regrow, but they were all the stronger now. Four feet at the shoulder and powerful limbs corded through with muscle; their fur was this dusty orange, flickering to fire-yellow at the tips of their ears and tail. Their eyes, bright red, and their breath¡ªit smoked between their ivory fangs, crackling like embers. They stood up together, ears pricked, panting air already wavering with heat. Larger than before, enough the few unevolved scorch hounds in their midst immediately tucked their tails in submission, but it seemed the pack mentality held stronger than post-evolution aggression. They walked around each other, sniffing and butting noses against flanks, eyes bright. And over them was the kobold tamer and orthrus, taller by at least a foot. The leaders of the pack, maybe, but even if they went their own way I knew they wouldn''t attack each other. Canine loyalty. For her part, the orthrus barked, a dual-tone, rumbling sound¡ªthe wolves perked up and turned to her, ears swiveling up. She yipped a few things, paused, then switched heads to the one with a higher pitch to continue her spiel. At her side, the kobold tamer kept testing out the movement of his arm, flicking his tail; the blade on the tip scored against a basalt pillar, and his eyes lit up. Another weapon. Another animalistic weapon, to be specific. Chieftess'' kobolds tended to use spears, and Rihsu fought with claws, but the tamer looked to be fighting like the beasts he surrounded himself with. A lashing tail would work wonders. And he would need it, as their prey awoke. Farthest away, the bounding moose clambered to its hooves¡ªand then kept clambering, up and up. Maybe seven feet at the shoulder, with three more in the form of enormous, twisting antlers spread wide like wings. Shaggy brown fur, dull black eyes, and a bray that echoed off the stone like a warhorn; plenty and plenty of meat, but only for those brave enough to risk it. These would adapt themselves to the heat of the Scorchplains, but I could already see them fitting well in my eventual glacial floor; grow out their coats and plod through the ice on their face-sized hooves, carving prints for predators to track. And while they could live in the tundra, my next species couldn''t. The cinderhoof deer. I had evolved a dozen and a half of them alongside only eight moose, considering I imagined they would be more herd-focused¡ªand they seemed to be wonderfully excited to prove me right, as they shook off their evolution and immediately clustered together. They stayed around the same height, five feet at the shoulder, but their coats were now a bright auburn, trailing to white on the underside. Branching antlers, black like their eyes, and their hooves were overly thick, like stones attached to their limbs¡ªand sparking. Hard to miss the sparking. With every step they took, embers kicked up around their hooves like stars in the pressing dark of the Scorchplains¡ªsettling on their fur didn''t seem to bother them, surprisingly, though I imagined a fire resistant element would be critical for this evolution. They were skittish things, clumped tight in a herd with ears raised and tails flared; even the distant pop and hiss of magma pools or coal pits made them jump, hooves skittering over the surface. Well, if nothing else, they''d provide an exciting variety of prey for the blazebane wolves. The final evolution was tucked in the smaller corners of the Scorchplains, hidden around basalt pillars and any shelter that could be scrounged from the unforgiving landscape. Only four of them, enough to start a population¡ªthe seekspine lizards. The largest clambered her way out of the pit she''d chosen, hooded eyes searching blindly through the smoke. She was maybe four feet long, a brilliant grey-gold with these white spines, barbed like fishhooks, spreading over her back. She flicked out a forked blue tongue, head tilted curiously to the side. And a bounding deer darted across the Scorchplains, too distant to be visible, just the clatter of hooves on stone, and she launched one of her spines like a fucking arrow. It snapped off her back and disappeared, lost in the smoke, but I tracked it as it flew through the air and slammed into the haunch of the deer¡ªit bellowed, stumbling back, but the blow wasn''t enough to kill it; just a scare tactic. Her way of clearing out her territory. Hells, I wouldn''t mind more of these. As if hearing me, she scurried off her little pillar and out into the wider floor, head high and thoughts full of hunger; so long as she and the others survived well enough to reproduce, they didn''t have enough natural predators that I imagined there would be a thriving population before too long. Something to truly look forward to. Because now my Scorchplains were not only tested but improved; instead of quite literally a collection of unevolved creatures, now they were stronger, more aware, more alive. They knew both danger and themselves. Or, as a cinderhoof deer surprised itself with its own sparks and nearly fell over, they would soon figure themselves out. The orthrus seemed permanently confused on which head to use for basic activities. I left them for the moment, though I pushed a point or two of encouraging mana to sift through their minds, a few mild suggestions in place. The kobold tamer raised his head, nodding at what he thought was me in the air. Something about him was calmer than I expected, eyes bright and thoughts steady. He wanted to hunt. He was excited about it. Well, he had no lack of targets. I rather thought the bounding moose would have to establish themselves quickly or risk disappearing. And with my evolutions safely awake and aware but Nicau still not back, I had one more thing to do with my mana reserves before diving back to the eighth floor. Because Abarossa had just lovingly bestowed me with four schemas, and I wasn''t interested in letting them rot in my core. Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. I dove down to the Hungering Reefs, splashing about in the water like a hatchling, letting the white sand sift and move around by my mana. The first, the table-reefs, water circling through the bottleneck I''d carved between rooms. The lagoon in the second, the rest of the kobold tribe carving new tools and swimming out over the wider room to hunt prey. They were getting surprisingly bold with it, moving out of the safety of the atoll to test their spears on larger targets, and I knew they would only grow more fierce with Chieftess returned. Then, the third room, my land of predators; those where the others did fit. Or where my new arrivals landed. The armoured jawfish, with his symbiotic tidewalker sprite¡ªit was still a pulsing, thrashing collection of spines and fins but it pushed him up, a guided current kicked up under his enormous armour to sail smoothly around the Hungering Reefs. He''d fit his way through the few gaps I''d left in the atoll wall, narrow things that led past the lagoon and into the final room, with its tower-reefs and the shipwreck splintered over the bottom. The second he arrived, my sea serpent had peered out from a gap in the hull, his amber-gold eye narrowed. Puckered skin and scales where the other had been, a lasting blow to his fighting instinct; even now he spent most of his time coiled in the shipwreck, snapping at anything that got too close. He hadn''t fought, hadn''t trained with Seros, even after my mana had healed over his injuries. But now I watched his frills extend, sea-green luminescence in the murky depths. His thoughts, for seemingly the first time in as long as I could remember, pulled themselves out of the cold they had been hunkering under¡ªbecause he remembered the armoured jawfish. Back in the Underlake, a lifetime ago, when I''d had to deal with the territorial messes of Seros, the sarco crocodile, the sea serpent, and the armoured jawfish. It had been a hell amongst hells just to keep all four of them alive, and creating the Hungering Reef to move half of them down had done wonders for my sanity. And now, they were back together again. I considered them. My first instinct was to let them hash it out, train against each other like they had in the past, the reason for both of their exponential growths¡ªbut no. I had seen this fail before, when they were strong individually but not together. They needed to learn. They needed to be taught. Seros, I called through our connection, my Otherworld mana simmering like a volcanic vent. He raised his head, still swimming through the Underlake, snapping at leftover pieces of the crystalline starfish. Come down. He rumbled, low in his throat, and pushed off the sandy bottom; hydrokinesis swirled around his claws as he swam, tail flicking with a melodic lilt to his mana. The royal silvertooth pulled his school back, my chosen greater crab watching with wary eyes, but the predator in their midst just clambered out of the water and started padding down to the Hungering Reefs. Seros floated a question to me, a vague confusion without proper words. What did I need him for? My points of awareness drifted out, providing me a perfect picture of the sea serpent and armoured jawfish to send him. Seros missed a step. Apprehension flickered through our connection, mana brimming through his channels. He knew he could beat them in a fight separately, and a part of him was curious whether he could do it two versus one, but he knew enough of my strategies as a dungeon to know that wasn''t what I wanted. No, I agreed. I want you to train them. He missed another step. Pure confusion reflected over to me. I was¡­ a little bit setting him up for failure here. He had just learned the Song, the true call of the sea, but that was rather the first time I''d watched him open his mind to something larger than himself. Or me. Alliances wouldn''t come naturally to him, much less teaching. But he had to learn; he had to be the face of my Named and all their potential, because, well. Frankly, I was watching Chieftess, who didn''t have a Name, flawlessly lead her tribe into a well-honed army that controlled the lagoon and everything within it. And I was watching Veresai, who I''d given a Name, grind her horde into the dust and terrify all those into obeying or dying. Technically, both were doing exactly what I needed from them, which was controlling their territory to prevent invaders from making it further down, but Chieftess'' tribe was growing strong, adapting, learning, and Veresai''s horde was¨C surviving. Holding on. The last evolution she''d had was the spectral serpent from Sy?alia, and putting Kriya under a geas¡ªwhat else? The kobolds had learned to build storage vessels in the funnel gourds, had figured out how to swim, how to hunt in the lagoon, and doubtless Chieftess would bring back a wealth of new knowledge from the outside world. They were growing in more than just strength; they were learning. I still loved Veresai. How could I not? She was a tyrant strong enough to cower a gold-drake, and her psionic hold was likely the strongest thing in my entire dungeon. As soon as I finished the eighth floor, I would be moving her down for a new territory further away from the threats of invaders, but that would have to mark a new change for her. She needed to be better. Seros did, too. He had to learn how to be a leader, because even if he became a sea-drake, he would be a dungeon''s sea-drake, which could not afford to be the solitary destroyer we were prone to being. He''d be fine. Probably. As for me, I left half a dozen points of awareness to watch over his descent and flew off to the opposite end of the Hungering Reefs, to do what I had actually come here for. Likely best to start with the most expensive schemas, to give them a chance to establish; I flitted off to the first room, spreading intangible wings as if to catch the currents. My mana pooled up around me, not quite full but hopefully enough to start a school, and I began to weave together a pod of shrieking dolphins. They coalesced slowly, a long, sinuous body covered in pale grey like stone. A muzzle, some foot and a half long, teeth jutting out, eyes pure black. The first wriggled out of my mana and splashed into the water, its tail beating back and streamlined fins throwing it forward, ten feet of near pure muscle and raw potential. And then, right as it broke the surface for air and looked around the world, it opened its maw and screamed. Fucking hells was that going to get annoying. It was a sound like the banshees of stories, high and piercing, and being a dungeon core I could see the mana crackling alongside the call, fierce and jagged like blades. Not just a noise, but an attack; something to destroy the spirit and morale of their enemies. Four more sprung into existence, the stretched limits of my available mana, and started circling each other; every time they surfaced for air they screamed, seeming testing their abilities, until the eldest by about four seconds tried it underwater. A little less grating on the metaphorical ears, but traveling faster and further; there would be nowhere for the invaders to hide from that. And already they were swimming around their new home, cresting the surface every other moment as they scouted out a home. Abarossa''s boon and their own innate abilities meant they didn''t need a den and already I could see them as an ever-roving band of destruction, their jagged fangs ready to take out any in the path. I felt a little bad for the prismatic dartfish that had no idea what their life was about to become. But for now I watched them swim, darting around each other. It was curious to have a creature that stuck so close to the top of the water; they needed it to breathe, obviously, but most of my other creatures were more adept at diving. Even the roughwater sharks traveled wherever there was prey, but not the shrieking dolphins; I wondered how they would affect their hunting habits. To make it a little easier, I would give them more prey. I wove together a whiplash squid. It came quickly, being only three feet long and not particularly complex¡ªbut where I had previously demeaned the deflated mounds of pink-white flesh, now it was an actual creature, spinning away from my mana with a flash of its tentacles. Its mantle was a dusky red, streaks lining the fins, its slit pupils almost a blue beneath a milky surface. It drifted away for a second, its mind catching up with the new fact of being alive, and then its arms contracted and blew it backwards, swimming down into the floor; its arrow-shaped body did not so much dispel the water as become one with it, moving with a near casual ease. Its two arms, larger than the others and lined with barbed hooks, floated out as it stared at its¡ªher¡ªsurroundings. I hadn''t given squids much thought as a sea-drake, but she seemed intent on proving me wrong. There was a startling awareness to her; not quite intelligence, considering she didn''t have a brain much larger than a burrowing rat, but within those simple thoughts was a dream much larger than her. It seemed innate, more than one chosen, but it was achingly strong; she knew she needed to eat, to hunt, to consume, in order to grow bigger. And oh, did she want to grow bigger. Her dreams were amorphous, not quite her own, but the end result was clear. Very interesting. I''d be curious how she''d end up. Not much mana left, but enough for the last. I dipped out of the first room and into the second, swarming with the life of a dense coral reef, and let the sparks coalesce into two razortooth barracudas. I''d already seen their corpse and they looked much the same, seven feet long but narrow, small silver scales covering their bodies. Hooked fangs, built for holding and tearing, and these black, hungry eyes¡ªI only had enough for a breeding pair and they immediately swam off together, fast as all hells; in a world, similar to my silvertooths, but actually made for saltwater and infinitely more in control. These would actually choose their battles rather than rushing blindly into whatever spilled blood. One splayed its fins, lashed its tail, and sunk its fangs into a lone prismatic dartfish; the rest of the school scattered, panicked, and its pair went rushing in to pick off other scraps. Another lovely mid-level predator for the kobolds to both hunt and defend themselves from. Which was rather what I was hoping for. The last creature wasn''t much, and while I knew I had to gather mana to create a second whiplash squid, I felt fine only creating one crystalline starfish. It came together slowly, tucked under the outcropping of a wall of reef, ghostly silver-blue flesh and those odd, angular growths. If I had been impressed with the squid''s mind, there was, quite literally, nothing to be impressed with here, because there wasn''t anything. Just a body, moving on through stimuli than thought. Well. Maybe it would¡­ manage to stab an invader and evolve a brain. I could hope. It laid under the coral bed, its seven arms twitching; slowly, it ratcheted up one and started sliding over the limestone, its mouth on the underside gnawing blindly for anything within reach. I had a steady supply of Underranked clams, mollusks, and other meaningless things that were no closer to gaining my attention than they were evolving, so it would have no lack of things to feed on, and all it needed was one bite from a predator to split apart and start filling my reef. I would just. Leave it here, I supposed. Until it did something. Anything. I let the current carry me away from that, drifting up past the shipwreck and then down into the Scorchplains, where the orthrus was leading a pack on unsteady feet as they returned to their den to figure out their new positionings. Then lower, over my core at the very back, its marbled red-black surface gleaming with golden light. My heart. My soul, really. All that I was. And soon, I would be moving. All my activities were critical, insofar as I couldn''t just let my creatures wait in the light-soaked oblivion of evolution while I toddled around doing other things, but still my core prickled with nervous energy. Shoth had shown me my weakness, and for all I was making strides in bolstering my defenses and teaching cooperativeness to my creatures, I wanted more room between me and the invaders. Nicau was fast, and with Chieftess at his side, I had little doubt they''d come tromping into my halls before long¡ªand I wanted the eighth floor carved out by then. I gathered my mana around me, a pulsating mass of teeth and claws. It was time to dig. Chapter 172 - Guided Focus "I have been waiting much time for this meeting," the Marquesa de Wolf said, smiling like her namesake. "It is an honour, Scholar." Ealdhere, feeling about as much out of his depth as when he was dragged out of the dungeon with his party dead around him, shook her offered hand. "The honour is all mine." Her palm was heavily calloused, written over and over in the scars of battles past. She looked like an adventurer, certainly; a type he''d grown more than used to. Her dark skin was lit from underneath with a mana-warm glow, golden eyes flashing, an untreated wood staff resting at her side. Her accent wasn''t native Calaratan, coloured by a harmonic lilt, matched by the melody in her words. Ealdhere could feel how practiced they were, how organized; whatever she was here for, it was something she had prepared for a long time. He just wished he didn''t have to be a part of it. The Marquesa de Wolf released him, still smiling, and walked to her side of the table; a long one, spread out in the central welcoming hall of the Adventuring Guild, timber magicked from the surrounding jungle and quartz-lights glowing overhead. Four chairs, two on each side, the rest stored for later. On one side, the Guild. The other, the petitioners. Ealdhere sat, prim and controlled, and did not look at the man sitting next to him. Lluc. He looked lazy, or at least relaxed, resting his elbows on the table and letting mana spark over his nail beds in a variety of colours, but Ealdhere had spent an unfortunate amount of time around the man and knew otherwise. His eyes were sharp; cold iron, hidden blades. He did not like what was happening. And it was more concerning, honestly, that he was here¡ªEaldhere had lived a remarkably peaceful life the last few weeks, only seeing Lluc in the quiet hours of the morning to welcome in the newest adventuring party. The Guildmaster he was, and every group had to obtain his approval before being brought in¡ªalongside an over-healthy dose of threats to make sure they stayed the line¡ªbut past that, he was gone. He disappeared directly after, and only next morning did he collect information and pilfered parts from Ealdhere. But now it was nearing evening, the sun dissolving down to light the cove up in crimson-gold, and yet Lluc was here, looking across the table like a man over the lands he owned. "Quite the trouble you''ve gone through," Lluc said, half a drawl, half apathetic disinterest¡ªboth were lies. "It''s rare someone takes a bite out of the Silent Market just for a meeting." Because beside the Marquesa de Wolf, stoic and straight-backed, was Gon?al. Ealdhere''d had a devil of a time not meeting his eyes, particularly with the vantage of the last time they''d spoken being the scaled man was going to enter the dungeon and attempt to broker an alliance with the sapience within, and he hadn''t returned to tell Ealdhere of his progress¡ªexcept now he was here, stone-faced, sitting beside a woman who prickled every nerve Ealdhere still had to call his own. Concerning, impossibly so; he wanted answers, and reasonings, and he''d gotten neither. He lived a life not much worth living in a gilded cage, ensnared like an exotic bird for the singing; a single pittance of a message he''d snuck to the Silent Market to barter for Gon?al''s assistance, little more than a plea deal, and now the man was just¡­ ignoring him. It was the right choice, unfortunately, considering Lluc was not the type to take partnerships from his pet Scholar well, but it was remarkably irritating. The Marquesa de Wolf kept smiling. "He is my friend," she said. Gon?al kept staring placidly forward. "It was only after I learned of his coalition with your Guild; and why, there is no finer place to go than here, if I wish to learn more of the dungeon. And, well; time is of the essence, particularly with the deaths," she said, rather politely. "The deaths." Lluc''s gaze was flinty, cold. "The Dead Man''s Raid did Calarata no favours." "Not those deaths," she corrected, though all with this perfectly subservient, warm-hearted tone. Like she was doing this from her own polished morality and kindness. "Those of the streets; fourteen, throats slit, no suspects. I am familiar with dungeons, and I know that to be a harbinger of a maverick." There was something about her eyes; something about those golden depths that rose his hackles. Ealdhere was a man that scared often and endlessly, considering he was Unranked and held prisoner by a Gold, but this fear felt different; felt like thorns, burrowing into dead soil. Her eyes flashed. "Of course, that''s nothing but rumours. I apologize for taking up your valuable time with mere gossip." "Yet you continue," Lluc snapped, drumming his nails over the table harsh enough they dug divots into the wood. "Are you going to blather on still?" Something in her face flashed. "I only mean to inform you," she said, quiet, but mildly indignant. Likely not intended, but peeking through. A return to her softer nature in an attempt to appease, which wouldn''t work, because Lluc took offense at anything and everything and she didn''t have a chance for a proper conversation. Lluc and the Marquesa were going to keep verbally sparring until it switched to actual sparring and then he died in the unfortunate crossfire. Ealdhere had played parliament through enough of the Darlington family councils to know what was needed to cut through the verbage¡ªhe shifted, settling forward, smiling with vapid stupidity. "I apologize, Marquesa de Wolf, but did you mention a maverick?" "Ah." She crossed her arms, robe rippling¡ªsomething in the dark pocket over her breast shifted, moving more than cloth, a faint rasp underneath. "Of course, good Scholar. I came here because I wish to warn you, and offer my services against them." Maverick. The word was vaguely familiar, insofar as it meant something, but not in the way she was using it; a general noun, rather than something specific. Ealdhere tilted his head to the side. "What are they?" Her eyes gleamed. "They are dissenters," she said, and more of this pre-planned speech came tumbling loose, each word carefully chosen. "Those who stand against Guilds and all their meanings, who wish to see dungeons as free territory to fight in without the command of Guildmasters. It is a position fed and built by greed, a want not to pay the taxes of a Guild." Ah. Something that Calarata in particular would marinate in, even with the Dread Pirate overhead. The Marquesa de Wolf smiled, a plume of pride settling over her face. "I am from Le¨®ro," she said, and ah, there was her accent; the lilt of a more civilized country, though without any of the corded strength of Viejabran. "And from there, I stopped a maverick from nearly killing High Lord Thiago. Now I come to Calarata, and I see you about to suffer the same problem. I am willing to dedicate myself to your Guild to stop all attempts to dethrone you." A smile, dagger-sharp. "I assure you, my fees are quite reasonable." Ealdhere winced. Maybe she thought that was a fair bargaining tactic, a way to sell herself; if she did, then she didn''t understand who she was dealing with. Next to her, Gon?al carefully averted his eyes. Lluc stood. His chair screeched back over the wood, the whine of something disintegrating, and then he towered over the rest. Mana, bleeding through his eyes. The First Mate of Calarata. The Guildmaster, earned in blood and death. "Mavericks are ghost stories," Lluc said. He was cold. He was iron. There was nothing benevolent in the gaze he fixed her with. "A fright thought up by lesser men to believe themselves superior. They are not here, and if they are, they do not threaten me." Lluc hummed; something soft and mana-tinged floated around his mouth, trickling through his teeth. "I have no need of your services," he said, sharp. "And I will sooner slit your throat than allow you to enter my Guild and speak as if you know more than me, as if you are important. Do I know you, Marquesa de Wolf?" She blinked. A raw kind of affront flashed over her face, though she smothered it a second later. "No, Guildmaster." "True." He tilted his head to the side. "And I don''t plan to. If I see you here again, either as a panhandler or a delver, I will make your death slow." The Marquesa de Wolf sat there, frozen. Eyes wide. "Not just slow," he corrected, head tilting further. "I will break you. I will shatter you to the spines and the seventeen seas there. I will destroy your name so thoroughly your precious Thiago will rue the day he knew you existed. Do you understand me, wolf?" The air lingered, heavy as chains. The Marquesa de Wolf shot from her seat and left¡ªnot-quite ran, not-quite stumbled out of the door, leaving it clattering in her wake, the Guild echoing. Whatever persona she''d inflated thoroughly popped. Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. Ealdhere inhaled for the first time in minutes. Lluc growled something under his breath, digging a hand through his hair, adjusting the seat of his wolf-brim hat. Fire, still burning over his mana, lashing out at the air like it wanted something to attack. Unfortunately, it had another target. "And you," Lluc snarled, glaring down Gon?al. "Bring me another miserable fucking wretch and I will make the Silent Market wish they had strung you up as another prize for the selling, do you understand?" "Yes," Gon?al murmured, head bowing down. A prickle of fear over his face, not hidden by his trader''s apathy. His bronze scales went dim and flat as his mana tucked itself back in his chest. Lluc hissed, and¨C something shot out of his mouth, bright and boiling¡ªit carved a line over Gon?al''s cheek, peeled through flesh and skin and crimson blood flooding through the gap. A cut as wide as a hand, stark. Gon?al didn''t react beyond a flinch. Used to receiving pain. Something lurched in Ealdhere''s gut. Lluc stalked out of the room. The sound of his boots faded away, leaving the building trembling¡ªthe crack and rumble of mana, a Gold, a god amongst mortal men; the threat Ealdhere had been caged by. The threat that had just attacked his own ally, the one who served him through the Silent Market. Gon?al, bleeding, sitting still. Eyes fixed on the table. "Are you okay?" Ealdhere asked, hesitant. Gon?al didn''t respond, lifting a careful hand to press to the wound. It came away scarlet, trickling down the stubble of his beard and threatening to seep under his armour. He made no effort to block it, to heal himself. Just observed the blood. Then he looked up, met Ealdhere''s eyes, and stared at him. Really stared, in a way that made him shift and prickle heat under his collar; a look from his past, when he was near royalty; not for now, when he was Unranked and a cage bird for viewing. "Does our alliance stand?" Gon?al said, slowly. Ealdhere blinked. "Why, of course," he started, a frown building. "The dungeon is still far too important to destroy, not with its potential." Gon?al kept looking at him. His trader''s apathy was a solid, constructed thing, carved over his face like a promise rather than a persona. The bland, passive face to make any seller squeal. But now it wasn''t there, dissolving away as his eyes sparked with mana. His injury kept weeping. "Your goal is to ally with the dungeon," he said. There was a manner in which he said it; a strange emphasis on dungeon, above the others. "Alongside you," Ealdhere hastened to correct. Gon?al didn''t react. "You are trying to ally with the dungeon," he repeated. "Are you keeping its secrets?" Its¡­ secrets? Ealdhere knew precious few, caged as he was. The sapling in his room, growing larger than its ceramic pot by the day as he cut his own arm to feed it; the crocodile taken by Ghasavalk and his black eyes and empty smile; the inner works of the first floors; those were not secrets but facts, knowledge he gave freely to Lluc and to adventurers who bought the privilege. He knew more, with his hunch the dungeon was born from the corpse of a dragon and was sapient, but that was it. He wanted to know more. He wanted to know it, whatever the it was; to find something new about Aiqith no others had yet devoured for petty power. "Yes," Ealdhere said, and felt the resonance of the statement. A promise to protect a murderous, hungering dungeon above his fellow man. "Yes, I will." "I am not friends with the Marquesa de Wolf," Gon?al said. He picked his words carefully. "She contacted me because of my connection to the Adventuring Guild through the Silent Market, though there is no world in which she should have known that. She gave me knowledge of another nightmarket in order to secure me accompanying an adventurer into its halls, a boy named Romei." Ealdhere frowned, thinking back. "The Unranked?" Gon?al''s lips tightened. "So he seemed. But when we traveled inside, he led me below with a familiarity and stopped before the third floor, asking if I would cooperate so he didn''t have to kill me." Ealdhere swallowed. His memories of Romei had been of a young boy dressed to appear old, half-drowning in a blue leather coat and exhaustion that hung gallows below his eyes. More nervous than an adventurer ought to be talking to lluc, but then the revelation of his mana¡ªand his apathy about his apparent lack of strength. Enough that even Lluc had assumed he was hiding his power; a miracle in Calarata, where appearing weak often led to a shiv in the kidneys or some other regrettable manner of death. "Kill you," he said, hesitant. "It was not in jest?" Because, well. For all the boy had been hiding his strength, Ealdhere would still believe Gon?al to win the fight. "Not him," Gon?al said, grim. "The dungeon. He was its voice." What. Ealdhere, for a brief moment, imagined he was floating out of the Guild. Ghasavalk had mentioned sensing a human presence within the dungeon, and Ealdhere had dared to hope it was sapient enough to study humans, perhaps attempt to learn their language, not¨C not partnering with one! Not perfectly obtaining an ally capable of both infiltrating Calarata and serving as its voice! Was Romei its only one? Was there an entire cabal of dungeon-sworn adventurers out in Calarata, waiting for their mission to set? How powerful was its mind, to create things not supposed to be created? An explanation for Romei''s Unranked status; he was powered by a dungeon''s mana, not his own. Similar to priests, in a way; his body was Unranked, but the mana he wielded came from a stronger power. The stronger the dungeon got, the more he was; and if he felt comfortable enough leading Gon?al into the dungeon, it was likely he was quite strong. And the dungeon as well; to give him power, to instruct him, to speak through him. To exist. To think. "Gods," he breathed, impossible to wrangle back his excitement. "Gon?al, I¨C hells, it''s true! It''s possible! This is a fully sapient, fully understanding, dungeon¡ªwhat did it want? What did it say to you?" "It wanted to kill me," Gon?al said, a little tightly in face of Ealdhere''s exuberance. "It was only through my offering of¡­ gifts that it allowed me to leave." He wasn''t wearing his necklace; the thin crystal held by bronze links. It was gone, and his palm sat over his throat like he regretted its absence. Ah. Interesting. Susceptible to praise, then, or at least material goods; that implied a more¡­ worldly consciousness in a way, rather than one fed by mere cause-and-effect. Another point for a dragon-born dungeon. Ealdhere nodded. "What did it say?" "It said I would be allowed to speak of an alliance, and bring more gifts." An alliance. An alliance! The dungeon was open to the idea, to the suggestion; a proper gathering of minds, one entirely alien, the rest human. "Oh, you must have said yes," Ealdhere said, half a plea. "Have you gathered any gifts? Have you made plans to delve again?" "I already did." Ealdhere froze. There were no words to describe his mind, what thundered through like a herd of horses; the dreams, the possibilities. "No," he breathed, pure awe. "Did it accept?" Gon?al nodded. He wanted to laugh and he did so, bright and burning. "This is¨C this is more than I could have hoped for, Gon?al; gods if I don''t wish I could march back to its halls myself. To speak to a dungeon! To speak to a being formed of pure mana, an immortal in a mortal world; what it would think! What it would say!" Gon?al''s lips twitched. Amused, a touch peeved. "It spoke mostly of wishing to kill me." Ealdhere flapped a hand. "It was our first attempt," he said, bullrushing on. "Our second, we will supply it with great treasures, the most I can gather; offer it a contract open and entirely affixed to it, merely in return for information. For knowledge! To speak to this¨C this being, learn of its mind, of its thoughts!" Gon?al raised an eyebrow. "And how will you¡ªthe Scholar of an Adventuring Guild whose mission is to claim the dungeon''s core¡ªencourage it to speak to you of its secrets?" Ah. Ealdhere rocked back, frowning. "I will come to it as Ealdhere instead," he said, though without the confidence he wanted. "Anything it tells me will be kept to myself, never to be shared with the delvers. And, well." He brushed a hand through his hair. "If it can offer me¨C even a chance of a way out of this Guild, to escape Lluc, then I will be able to offer complete secrecy. Its secrets will be forever locked within me, not for anyone to take or to try and claim it." Gon?al looked away. Something oddly¡­ hesitant about him, even with the injury bubbling scarlet over his face. The way he''d looked at Lluc¡ªthe way he''d looked away from the Marquesa, the myriad ways he had done his best not to exist in that room despite being the reason she had an audience at all. Ealdhere sobered, looking at him. "What is it, my friend?" Gon?al inhaled. Steadied himself. "Were you listening to the Marquesa?" What kind of question was that? Ealdhere had been there, eyes fixed, hungry for any scrap of information that made it past the fours walls of his existence. "Entirely so." Gon?al looked at his hand, at the dagger-point claws and bronze scales scattered over the back of his knuckles. A feverish kind of destruction in his eyes, more than words. "She did not mention the dungeon once," he said. Ealdhere blinked. "She did," he pointed out. "She talked of it rather a considerable amount." "She did not mention the dungeon as a target," Gon?al stressed. "She talked of mavericks and their potential, and how they seek to destroy Guilds; but not the dungeon. She tried to draw Lluc''s attention to the Guild and its weaknesses." He clenched his fist, stared at it like a world''s mystery. "She wants to guide his focus." Oh. His mind ratcheted back; played over the conversation, one-sided though it had seemed, all the words she''d brought up with that careful, laced certainty of having practiced them before. Hells, she''d brought up fourteen deaths and bodies thrown to back alleys, of mavericks that threatened her in Le¨®ro, all things a fresh-faced Adventuring Guild with rather a lack of charitable communications with other countries wouldn''t know about. And of course Lluc would remember this, even if he didn''t trust her; a man commanded by Varc¨ªs Bilaro was one who needed to perform his task, and all threats to it were threats to him. She had only mentioned the Guild. "I see," Ealdhere said, faintly. "Yes, I can see that now. Why?" "Lluc insulted her," Gon?al said. "And she took offense; or looked like she did. But it was poised. It was what she wanted. She wanted to seem like she was squirreling for a position in the Guild, a defense against mavericks; and when Lluc rejected her, as he always would, she retreated like a cur with her tail between her legs. But now Lluc is thinking of mavericks, of threats to the Guild, and that pulls his attention from the dungeon." Gon?al looked at him. His slitted pupils were blown wide. "What reason would she want Lluc to look away from the dungeon?" Precious few. And none of them good. Chapter 173 - Eight Legs Slowly, slowly, it awoke. This was rather concerning to me, considering I was far beneath it tunneling merrily into my planned heart tree, eating away limestone and basalt until dry air heaved at my touch. It was a plummeting kind of space, where beings without wings would feel a lurch in their gut as they stared over the endless drop; even if they were starting on the ground as my tunnel led to, I doubted they would be able to resist the temptation to look down as they climbed, to see the travesty waiting with hungry maws for their fall. Half a missed step, the slip of a hand; gone. A fatal kind of promise. Oh, I loved this floor, its potential; as soon as Nicau returned with enough plants to fill in the gaps and stuff it full of the danger I needed, it would flourish, blooming much like its namesake into a tangled web of teeth and threats. But I had been focusing on that, right until a goddess awoke in the forefront of my awareness. I coiled back, mana smothering my core in protective chains¡ªbut the star-burn flitting about my thoughts wasn''t attacking, nor particularly aggressive. Just the cold iron that Nenaigch''s presence always brought, the thundering slowness of moving tunnels. And within those tunnels, pulling itself upright, too many limbs by far and eyes black as death, was the arachne. It¡ªhe? they? I had no idea what it would choose¡ªwas tall, worryingly so, its back stooped against the cramped corridors of the Jungle Labyrinth. Pale skin, the bristled points of its spine jutting through the canvas, only to disappear beneath a chitinous armour, shadow-black and crawling up its sides. Hair so white it seemed the colour had been stolen from it, hanging ragged over its back and spilling before its face; its face, with eight black eyes arranged like a crown, two largest in the front. A mouth full of mandibles, a collection of fangs already pooling with venom. And the legs. Hard to miss the legs. There were eight of them, four on each side, looking all the world like a spider if it wasn''t filling the entire godsdamn ten foot width of the tunnels and still needing more room. The same black chitin, armoured over the joints and down to enormous claws on the tips, large and strong enough to puncture through a man''s chest. I floated overhead, mana pulled in and deeply, deeply curious. It was moving slowly, ungracefully, hands clawing at the thornwhip algae as it tried to figure out its balance. Its legs kept lifting and setting down, the ones in the center trying to function like a human''s pair but entirely unable. Its thoughts were still sluggish, drifting off evolution, but almost immediately I ran directly into a divided front; the human brain of Gnat melding with the worship of the webweaver. This could be interesting. And potentially disastrous. I flitted a few points of awareness off to Seros just in case I needed him to rocket up and solve what had the chance to become quite the problem. But the arachne just stayed there, fumbling about moving as it stared through the surrounding darkness with wide, unblinking eyes. Its thoughts cluttered and clustered up, thrumming with a hungry kind of confusion, wanting to devour but not knowing what to devour. It looked down at itself and rejoiced; it looked down at itself and recoiled. It couldn''t pick whether it wanted to be a man or a spider. That sounded, frankly, exhausting. I hucked a few extra points of mana into its mind if that would help. But there was another seeking to guide it; Nenaigch floated down, her presence filling the Jungle Labyrinth like a plume of cloud. The arachne stiffened, legs twitching like it wanted to bow but knew that would make it fall over; it stared up as she descended upon it, allowing it fully within its mind. Unease prickled as she spoke to him directly, a way I couldn''t overhead. Something coiled through with iron, the waiting teeth of her mana; but nothing rebounded into my halls, no words, no ideas. Just Nenaigch and the arachne. I might not as well have been there. But I was, and I wasn''t hearing what was happening, and I did not enjoy that. Finally, Nenaigch pulled back, unsinking her teeth from its head. It sagged back, human torso bending oddly, its clawed hands splaying before its chest in a kind of gesture; the slender points of its claws brought up in a mimicry of her godly symbol. A worshiper. He will serve, Nenaigch murmured, a rare delight spiraling through her presence. He is mine. Alright. He it was. A little concerning that there might be more Gnat than webweaver, but I supposed if Nenaigch thought him acceptable there was less a chance of him destroying me. Or trying, at least. Because I would not allow it. My first instinct was to call him Gnat, use the insult as what it was¡ªbut I still remembered roaring myself intangibly hoarse at Rhoborh for daring to use his part of our deal. While I knew I had more freedom in interacting with the gods than I had been before, able to move and adjust their halls so long as I explained my reasoning and didn''t remove their teeth, I wasn''t comfortable with insulting them directly. I was growing in strength, growing in power, but I was still nothing beneath a god. And, well. It was nothing but a temporary pleasure. The memory of being a sea-drake, of being indomitable, but that time was passed and my world no longer worked that way. I had to be¡­ more. So instead I flicked a point of awareness up to Nenaigch, mana flickering around in passive inquiry. What shall he be called? Not a Name, though. I wasn''t that willing to give up my ideals. Nenaigch hummed, the rumble of the nameless world where all deities resided. Not the Otherworld, nor the world beyond worlds; something high and floating above the rest. Even now, when she was directly interacting with me, it felt like I was looking through a storm; what I saw from her were the flashes of lightning, the gaps in the grey, but the true body of her power hidden. A presence rather than definitive. I rather preferred it this way, I thought. Better to have that instead of the constant, unending knowledge I was weaker. Her star-burn wrapped around me, the iron spools of teeth. Gnat is acceptable, she said.Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions. Fair enough. There was no accounting for taste, I supposed. Gnat, I murmured, settling in his mind. Two twists¡ªthe lurch to obey the Great Voice, the commands from on high, and the desire to shudder and hide from awareness, to curl up beneath Calaratan alleys and wait for danger to pass. The consequence of combining two things that should not have been combined. But it had been, and now I had a priest. ¡­what to do with said priest. The Haven was where I had thought to place him, being that I already had the beginnings of a temple and the assertion he would be safe, but looking at him, I was seeing that as less of a problem than it had initially been. Ungainly now, yes, as his two brains fought to establish into one without losing themselves, but his claws weren''t just for show. Each of his legs could skewer any lesser prey, and for all he had a half-pathetic human torso, the vast majority of foes would be dealing with his arachnid side. And the venom in his mouth hissed with a fervour. Threats would be acceptable to handle. Not in the Jungle Labyrinth, where he could barely fit in the tunnels as was; and the Skylands would grant him no favours in places to hide nor spin his webs. The Scorchplains, perhaps, with the drowning dark and no longer of towers to build off; or the eventual heart tree, with its myriad avenues and danger ever-present¨C Something drifted back over my core, Nenaigch''s ever-watching eyes. A guard, she murmured. For the escape. Through our limited connection, she showed me the tunnel snaking off of the Jungle Labyrinth, tangling through the Al¨®mbra Mountains until it stuck out of the Overlook above Calarata. My secret fourth entrance, the one I was going to maintain if it killed me; if anyone discovered it, I was bringing the fucking mountain down. It was also a thin, inaccessible tunnel where no invaders went nor caused problems. Hells, I shuttered it up every time Nicau returned, though my mana-barrier meant I could never close it entirely or risk losing the tunnel. Not exactly a prime spot of location, and I, ah. Wouldn''t mind him beating the shit out of invaders, actually. Was she sure? Her star-burn strengthened, coiling like silk. He is not to be risked, she said, and yeah, that was unfortunately a risk whenever a dungeon came to call. He shall serve me and guard your escape. That word again¡ªescape. Why escape? I had designed it as rather the opposite, actually; a way from Nicau to return without risk his head, to bring schemas in by the armful. And dungeon cores were, rather by nature, sedentary; we liked moving almost as much as we liked being enslaved. But she called it escape. Either way, I guessed that was the solution to my problem¡ªtaking a beautiful bastard of a monster and shoving him into a side corridor. At least I could rightly terrify Nicau when he returned. But it wasn''t worth arguing with a god, not when Gnat had been near entirely her creation; in the future I would wheedle a deal to bring him into my halls proper, but I was content to allow it past for now. Not happy, to be very clear, but content. I had other things to worry about than the man of a man and a spider warring for dominance scuttling through my halls. I did waver my mana in idle curiosity. Why there? In the halls of me, Nenaigch said. Farther from Her. Excuse me? Nenaigch''s presence shifted, a kind of wary anticipation. The mind is not one willing, she settled on. He came to you from a goal apart from thievery. I will keep him within my mana and I am the only one he thinks of. So Gnat had invaded my dungeon looking for something else, and even newly evolved and remade and blended with a webweaver, there was a chance he wasn''t exactly mine, still clawing after the shadowy cabal that taught him cannibalism and apathetic betrayal. Right. Cool. I loved that, really. I was also moderately more okay with keeping him far from my core. Nenaigch pulled back, drifting back to the nameless world; and left me as the one to guide him. Gnat. It was truly a terrible name for an arachne. Gods if I didn''t regret things. But I sunk my mana into his mind, peeling through the cluttered thoughts and desire to attack both others and himself; he twitched, clawed hands pressing to the sides of his head, rimming beneath his crown of eyes. He looked up, head tilted; a garbled attempt at a word fled his throat, something deep and rasping. I nudged a map within his mind. He worshiped Nenaigch, but the webweaver of him still knew my voice¡ªhe immediately clambered off in that direction, fumbling over thornwhip algae and the many-jointed length of his legs. His head cracked against the ceiling and his claws scored deep holes in the limestone, but he was bloody fast when he was driven to be so¡ªI hadn''t even needed to keep the other denizens of the Jungle Labyrinth away before hed found his way into the outer passage, clawing further within. I watched him, taking some points of mana to carve the tunnel wider around his legs so he could walk freely. It was, objectively, a horrible place for him to live; even if he could move he was just a walking wall in the tunnel, nothing to shelter or hide behind. If an invader entered¡ªwhich they wouldn''t¡ªhe would have little option but to face them head on. Hopefully Nenaigch would see that. And if she didn''t, well. I wasn''t going to challenge the goddess, not when she had given me this tunnel and the Haven. But I was entirely fine with proving their incompetence to their faces and then showing them a better path. - They were moving. Things were moving. The jeweled jumper sprang, quick as light, and climbed over the shallow hunch of a stalagmite; the grey-green-beasts were clustered and shaking, a bug in the web, pulling back and forth as they attached things to their backs that seemed their attempt at a carapace. The stone they broke, the dens they carved; all things within were pulled out and prepared, wrapped around themselves. Strange. He watched from the shadows, ducking beneath stone whenever they got too close. A break in the killings, enough his venom built behind his fangs and hissed displeasure, but he was oddly curious in the activity. Still the strange beasts, still the new threats, but now the grey-green-beasts were done preparing and were leaving. Leaving. Going elsewhere. He killed them in the shadows and they went to hunt something else. This was not a home; it had been nothing more than a field for him to do battle upon. And he had done battle, again and again, never losing despite how they tried to stop him; just him, just victory. But now they left. He was already following them, this he knew. A chance to see what the greater threat was, the challenge, and then kill it before them. To show them who the actual one to fear was. And they seemed very full of fear. The Growth, they said, over and over again. Useless think-words but there was something about this one that made him notice its repetitions; how they clung to its sounds like importance. Even now, as they began to walk out of the cavern in long, thundering lines of beasts and creatures and monsters, they said it again. They kept saying it. They feared it. The jeweled jumper looked around the halls, the corner of rocks he had chosen to lay in wait for his next chance to strike. A perfect gathering for his fangs, his venom. But it was just stone. It was just the field; he would leave and find another. And with that, he crept up the walls, claws flashing, and disappeared after the horde. Chapter 174 - Internal Threat I was midway through throwing the last of my points of mana at carving an elaborate archway in the eighth floor when my points of awareness spiked¡ªor, more accurately, my alarm system for my newest walking monstrosity lurched to follow Gnat. It had been perhaps a day since his evolution and his grace had¡­ moderately improved, insofar as he was capable of walking without stretching out his arms for balance or constantly stumbling over his own claws, but not much else. His mind was still a maelstrom of divided thoughts and interaction, unable to wrangle an identity out of the mix of two slammed together; though Gnat was supposed to have died and the webweaver survived their fight, the human had not wanted to go gentle into that world beyond worlds, and he clung with a fervour to his body. Which made things difficult. It would be much better if it was only the webweaver''s mind. But it wasn''t. And thus I was temporarily okay with Nenaigch shoving him into the side tunnel instead of directly next to my core. And it wasn''t like he wouldn''t see action here, as he was already making himself a nuisance as Nicau came back. He was bloodied, dusted, and looking otherwise very tired¡ªChieftess was still a brimming pool of energy in the way she''d always been, both of them slung over with gourd-pots stuffed with plants. One of the kobold hunters was missing, a new crimson scale on Chieftess'' chest, but the other and the warrior both marched behind to take up the rear. It seemed the jungle had not bested them. But they probably hadn''t been expecting this newest roadblock. My arachne¡ªGnat, gods, could I please change his name¡ªreared up, a hissing, spitting chitter snaking through the air. Nicau froze dead, mana sparking to his tongue¡ªChieftess raised her claws¡ªthe kobolds readied their spears¨C And I slammed in overtop of everyone. Stop. Gnat halted, because the webweaver part of his mind still knew to obey the Great Voice, and he skittered back, enormous legs flashing in the dark. His mandibles clicked before his mouth, all eyes fixed and glossy; considering the only light was the single quartz Nicau had clutched in his palm, it certainly seemed like a nightmare. "Give-self?" Gnat said¡ªwith said being far too generous. It was a monstrous, garbled mess of a sound, like old scales dragged over stone, rasping and hissing and choking over his own fangs. "Here-give-self?" Gods, I couldn''t wait until his brain sorted itself out and he could have even an ounce of intelligence. Nicau, for his part, seemed to have looped around from startled into bewildered acceptance. It wasn''t the strangest thing he''d seen from my dungeon, though it was the first with as strong a human influence as this one. "Okay," he said, careful. "I am one of the dungeon''s Named. This is Chieftess, of the kobold tribe, and two of its members. We are returning to its halls." Gnat tilted his head to the side¡ªwhich off-balanced him nearly into falling over, this idiot¡ªbut I was hovering in his mind, plucking the threads of agreement and necessity. I was his Great Voice, and he knew I was right. "Self-to¨C" he paused, eyes sharpening. "You are here. For Great Voice." Still stuck between human and arachnid talk, but closer. I''d take it. Nicau licked his lips. "That''s right." Chieftess warbled something distrustingly. Gnat, on account of being fucking enormous, filled the entire tunnel¡ªso his apparent solution was to rise to the very tips of his claws, legs splayed to press against the stone; he pressed his exposed back to the ceiling, bulbous spider thorax shifting and rising, until there was just enough space to walk underneath. Nicau stared at that. He stared for a moment too long. Then he sighed, hoisted his gourds higher on his shoulders and slipped under, nearly stumbling in his effort to move as fast as possible. Chieftess followed right on his heels, her claws fully extended, and the kobold warrior had a scuffle trying to get his spear through without stabbing Gnat before they were all on the other side and, appropriately, booking it into the shadows, far from the arachne. Gnat turned to watch them go, head cocked. Thoughts moving. I dumped a few more points of awareness over him and followed Nicau. He kept moving quickly, whatever exhaustion he''d brought from the jungle thoroughly wiped clean in face of that new welcome. He paused as he felt my attention sweep over, wincing just a touch, though he smoothed his face over before looking up. "Is he¡­ always going to be in the tunnel?" A guard, I said, slightly miffed. Protection. "Right." He rubbed at the brim of his nose. "Thank you, o'' dungeon." Was that sarcasm? That felt like sarcasm. My awareness of the tunnel was frightfully small, lest I wanted too much of my ambient mana to spill off unused in the canals of the Al¨®mbra Mountains, and it was only some ten minutes between Nicau entering my awareness before he emerged into the Jungle Labyrinth proper. He yawned, setting his quartz-light down; I fed it with my own mana and let it spill warm yellow over their surroundings, soothing the thornwhip algae down to keep it from attacking them. One kobold down, but entire gourds full of new creatures. What did you find? Chieftess warbled something. Her mind thrummed with excitement. "As much as we could bring back," Nicau said, diplomatically. He gestured to the kobold hunter, who nodded, started to pull apart the numerous gourds over his body. "The jungle was very full. And¨C" Then he paused. Emotions, one too fast to parse apart, flitted through his channels. "We found something," Nicau said, hesitant. "Ruins¡ªjust a half-built structure, in an abandoned clearing. Some bones, which we gathered. But." Chieftess warbled, tail lashing the ground. The other kobolds shifted. "I, ah." He paused, pursing his lips. "Got angry?" What? Nicau''s connection to my soul fluttered as he attempted to shove his memories through it, vague recollections of shoddily-stacked stone in the center of a clearing. It was strangely empty, even the roots hungering on the edges instead of encroaching within, just the desolation of some small-scale loss and the bones left there. I felt nothing looking at it, because unfortunately they were just memories, but I did feel the reflection of his anger. This fierce territorialism, the pain of nails digging into his palms, the shaking, shuddering rage that came from nothing but old stone¡ªand the visceral relief he''d felt leaving the site, abandoning it back to its eerie solitude. Nicau shrugged, a little helplessly. "I don''t know what it was. I''ve never felt anything like it. I wanted to¨C punch something, anything. Chieftess too." She nodded when he gestured to her, hissing something through her fangs. Right. I''d been around Nicau enough to know that while he liked power and he liked prestige, he was not necessarily the type to obtain it by bloodying his fists against the faces of those below. There was a reason his grand scheme had been feeding people to me rather than killing them himself. And the rage I felt through his memories was entirely antithetical to what I knew of him. Curious. The bones, I said, clustering points of mana forward. Perhaps they will reveal. He warbled something and the kobold warrior stepped up, pawing open the gourd slung over his back. From within, he tugged out a bone, split in half to fit. It was yellowed with age but surprisingly pristine; no bite marks, no cracks. Like time had forgotten it. Just the bone wouldn''t have sufficed, but I was the Resurrector, and by the gods, I would bring this thing back. ¡­which was also wonderful that resurrecting something gave me the schema, rather than actually bringing the creature back, considering it would probably be a bad time for all involved if I dropped a hyper-capable predator right in the midst of this group. Ah well. I poured over it, dissolving the outer edge piece by piece, ivory-white flaking off into mana as I dug into the marrow of what had been a living creature, and what would become a living creature once I gnawed into the depths of what it was¨C Crack.
Terrorbird (Rare) A beast only found in the deep forests, it stalks through the underbrush with enormous talons and jagged beak. Their flocks control sprawling territories, fearing nothing and crushing all those in its path.
Oh. Oh! I remembered this one! Hells, what was a supposedly rare Otherworld schema doing in the middle of this jungle off in one lonesome corner of Aiqith? I rather thought they were supposed to be these impossible creatures I could never make for myself. Well, that sounded like complaining, which I certainly did not want to do when such a wonderful schema had come to me. If nothing else, it spoke marvelously of building a jungle floor when you directly bordered a jungle to take schemas from. Particularly ones as dangerous as this. Certainly something capable of killing those smaller, though. Particularly in packs, roving through the undergrowth¡ªthough it was curious these had entered the clearing to kill the others, when the rest of the jungle had stayed back. I leaned over, letting the schema flit back to my core. The other. This one came out of Chieftess'' gourds, two thin bones that looked eerily humanoid, down to the twist and length. I paused as she set it down, examining it closer; familiar, in a way. I took my time breaking it down, feasting upon all within. ¡­hm. Knowledge flowed through me, critical information that I¨C already knew. Depictions of stone-carve dens, of mushroom-based diets, of reproduction and fighting habits and intelligence. For highland goblins. But as I devoured the bone, let it trickle away to motes of light as I ate my fill, no schema came to me. Nothing more than the understanding of goblins I''d already gotten when the first of the Magelords had died in my halls; and much like I hadn''t gotten the schema then, I didn''t get it now. A sapient race, one the gods themselves prevented me from just making as I wished. The reason that it was so critical to have gotten the kobold schema from my evolution, because I couldn''t have gotten it any other way. Goblin, I said. Nicau blinked. He looked at the ground where the bone had been, like a fully-formed goblin would spring through the cracks. "What?" Again with this. I''d already said what it was. Goblin. Perhaps expected, though. Bylk had mentioned a third tribe of goblins, the miners, who had disappeared far below; it couldn''t be that much of a stretch that some had tried their luck in the outer world. But that didn''t explain the rage¡ªthe fury my normally quiet Named had felt. Nor why it was so untouched. Well. There was damningly little I could do about some ruins in a distant jungle, not when I had bigger problems to claw towards. I dismissed the knowledge, alighting back in this room with my full awareness. The other schemas, I reminded him. Nicau sifted through the gourds braced on his hips, head tilted. "Creatures or plants first?" Well, this would be a jungle, but I had always been a being of teeth. Creatures. "Only three," he said, apologetically. Then paused. "Four. With the bones." Already almost at his previous record. This was quite the improvement. The kobold warrior nudged open his gourd and dumped a whole head on the ground, still leaking blood and pus; it was oddly humanoid between green fur and wide fangs, black eyes frozen open in death. A monkey, I thought, though I''d never encountered one before. A climber? Well, no point in speculating when I could just figure out the truth. I gnawed on the mammal''s head.
Verdant Howler (Rare) Land and air combined, they are beyond agile as they leap and fling themselves through the canopies of jungles, traveling in roaming packs. With their camouflaged green fur and wicked claws, they are a nightmare for those who don''t see them¡ªbut their echoing cries are always heard.
If my terrorbirds would control the ground, then these would control the skies. Already I was stitching together the schema and Nicau''s memory of the event, their booming howls stalking the underbrush as they fell from on high¡ªnone could resist them, even if they knew they were coming, because I would place my plants so strategically to never have them be seen until they wanted to. The next was rather easy to parse apart¡ªan insect, large and sprawling, though split down the half to reveal pink-white flesh under its burnished gold carapace. I picked my way through.
Acidic Centipede (Uncommon) A motley collection of limbs and claws, it waits beneath stone and brush for any to cross its path, digging dens with spat venom. Rarely is it ever threatened twice.
Fascinating; similar to my crowned cobra it seemed, ranged venom attacks when bites weren''t enough. I''d be curious how it dealt with my more populated floors. The last was near impossible to see, just a tiny thing, but Nicau took the most care with it. He carefully overturned his gourd, letting it fall splat without touching it¡ªand considering the bright orange stripes over its back, it was rather the correct choice.
Sunset Dart Frog (Uncommon) It lives an unharried and unworried life, content in the fact its bright colouration will dissuade predators. If it doesn''t, they will both only have a very short amount of time to regret it.
Oho. I was damn near giddy, feeling all this information flood through my core like the finest of meals¡ªand I wasn''t even done. The frog was a lesser prize, admittedly, relying on natural instinct to keep from being attacked and only able to enact revenge instead of protect itself, but it would fill another necessary gap in my ecosystems. Much the same as the next section; I slipped my mana back into Nicau''s head. Plants. A hint of a grin flashed over his face¡ªhe was anticipating something, interesting¡ªand he warbled to Chieftess, who churred back and to the others. And then they started to pull out plants. And kept going. More and more and more¡ªI didn''t even bother to sift through all, to admire the intricacies; just devoured them one after the other and let the knowledge flood me like a hurricane.
Towering Cypress (Uncommon) In a land of competition, it grows to beat the rest. Only once it breaches the canopy will it begin extending branches, glutting itself on sunlight until it grows faster than all its surroundings.
Cobweb Banyan (Rare) A collection of interwoven branches without a central trunk, it spreads to take up as much room as possible, building off of other trees to cement itself within the jungle.
Painted Fern (Common) So named for the way they absorb colours from their surroundings, it adapts to whatever hue is most likely to survive with.
Maraca Moss (Uncommon) Its large, heavy seedpods move at the slightest touch, clattering against each other like the ringing of bells; creatures are frightened away, leaving it uneaten.
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Laddercap (Common) It grows in extremely dense protrusions off of trunks, stable enough to be used as supports for climbing¡ªwhich it uses to attach its spores to the bottom of traveler''s feet.
Clovertail (Common) A large, sprawling bush, it covers itself in white flowers to attract pollinators and ensure its seeds are spread.
Crane-Bloom (Common) Its flowers are extremely long, fencing off the base with wide leaves and vibrantly-coloured petals. Its nectar is all the sweetest for those who can reach it.
Gods, there were so many of them. The two trees, indomitable and towering; the ferns snaking through the underbrush; the moss filling in the gaps between roots; the mushroom to help my creatures up; the flowers as sparks of brilliant colour through the green¨C Already my mind spun like a thousand currents of what I could use these for, to create such a masterpiece of a jungle within my halls that it would be unlike anything seen before. And not even on the eighth floor, but elsewhere too, filling in the gaps of my other lands who needed the variance. The vast majority of these I already knew would not be the evolving type, the kind I hoped would reach the fabled fifth evolution¡ªbut that was, perhaps, the point. Not everything in a dungeon could be the apex predator; some were needed to fill in the bottom ranks. And plants were rather perfect for that. Nicau had done well¡ªand the kobolds as well. I pushed my last remaining points of mana into them, a soothing, encouraging touch brimming with pride¡ªa half-surprised smile flashed over Nicau, brightening his whole face. Thank you, I murmured. He exhaled, rubbing the back of his neck. "I''m happy you like it." Oh, I very much did. Obtaining plants as a mountain-bound dungeon was a dream I hadn''t known enough to dream of until he had supplied it. And now he could rest well in the Hungering Reefs, helping show the kobolds what they''d learned of the outside world, while I shaped my eighth floor and puzzled over whatever that odd ruin was. Hm. Actually, I could nip another issue in the nest here. Before I polished up more of my floors, I wouldn''t mind an adventurer''s opinion, and of all my creatures, Nicau was doubtless the best to convince Kriya for assistance. And I did want to see his reaction to another human in the dungeon. I want you to meet someone, I said, flicking a vague collection of a map into his mind. Kriya. Nicau perked up, head tilting to the side. "Kriya," he repeated, like testing the word. "Are they another Named?" No. And likely not ever, considering I needed more trust than I could get from humans to Name them¡ªbut, with my new title of Welcomer, I hoped I could make her dungeonborn if she agreed to join me. No, I said. She is a human. He blinked. "What?" What was confusing about that? I thought I''d explained it rather succinctly. This way, I said instead, pushing the map more firmly in his mind. Nicau glanced back to Chieftess, whose golden eyes were thrumming with excitement, like her little jaunt in the jungle hadn''t been enough adventure for the day. I could respect that kind of deliverance. She warble-hissed a question to him¡ªand I could actually hear that it was a question, though the precision of the words was lost to me. Their language was very, very close to be decipherable, which was lovely, considering it was a pain to dip into their thoughts every time I wanted to know what the kobolds were gossiping about. Nicau shrugged, churred something back, and began making his way towards the Stone Jungle. I darted ahead, all the better to clear the path of any adventitious critters hungry for a bite; the bladesong mantises were already beginning to spread through the outer tunnels, in territories unmaintained by Veresai, although I was already running into a problem of supplying them enough prey. It was a problem throughout my halls, actually; as my creatures evolved, they tended to become predators, chipping away more and more at my ecosystems. The Scorchplains in particular, even with the bounding deer and moose; the blazebane wolves would need more sustenance. And the seekspine lizards. And the kobold tamer. Hells, there was a lot I had to do. But for right now, I dipped through the tunnels until I emerged in the open chamber of the Stone Jungle, my mana pooling out to alert all of my presence. Far in her dorm, Veresai lifted her horned head, four eyes gleaming with power; she hissed some vague greeting, idle curiosity sifting through our connection. What was I doing here? Kriya, I murmured. Here to see her. Pride thrummed through Veresai''s mind¡ªI, the mighty dungeon, here to look at her thrall¡ªand she hissed a command, mana flickering through the air. From further back, a shallow outcropping that led to a moss-filled room, Kriya walked out, head bowed. I paused. Kriya was standing there, dappled red-gold scales flickering with quartz-light, slitted pupils blown and hood pressed to her neck. Healing mana hazed around the tips of her fingers, ready for another half-dead serpent to be set before her, blood smeared up pale skin; and she looked drained. Tired. As exhausted as she''d been before, if not more. But I''d given her a gift. Restorative aloe, all the better to heal Veresai''s horde without emptying her own stores. My points of awareness fluttered; I''d left some here originally to see her reaction when she woke up with the aloe in her room, but the distraction of everything had led to me neglecting it. I threw another off to her room, peering at the spot where I''d planted it, but there was¨C Nothing. The plant had been carefully removed, a healer''s precision, and then used. Raw frustration crackled through me. Kriya was a healer, one who knew damn well how powerful that plant was; and it looked like that, considering how carefully she''d removed it, roots and all, to make sure not a piece of it went to waste. But then why would she just¨C use it all? Why not take a cutting, bleed some sap, and let the plant regrow so as to maximize it? Unless it had been another''s command to do what she did. But before I could follow that damning realization down the line, Nicau was already entering the Stone Jungle, peering around curiously at the land he''d only seen once or twice before. The forestfall ratkin, leading her cluster of mage ratkin around for more harvesting of jadestones, webweavers filling more fake trees with ghostly webs, serpents with flickering blue eyes traveling about¨C And the den at the far back, the way down, writhing with bodies. Veresai''s oracular blessing had already told her of the intrusion and she slithered out, crown held high and eyes burning. Nicau, for his part, winced. It seemed he did remember when I had originally spoken to him through her psionic abilities. I nudged him closer, at least enough he wasn''t squinting across the enormous room, and he hesitantly walked over the rolling hills of billowing moss, kobolds right on his heels. Chieftess had her head constantly moving, keeping everyone in her line of sight, claws bristling. Understandable, really; being Veresai''s territory had imbued the air with malice, making for a thoroughly uncomfortable experience. Little wonder why her horde kept bloodying themselves endlessly for a chance at survival. Veresai watched him approach, coiling up. He paused some sixty feet away from her, plenty to talk without the excessive threat of death, though from his thoughts he really wished he was anywhere else. For her part, Veresai just seemed confused, though she was too prim a leader to show it. I dipped back into our connection. Also here to see Kriya. More pride¡ªanother to admire her geas¡ªand Veresai hissed again, shifting to the side so as to frame the entrance to her den. Nicau frowned, not moving, glancing back at Chieftess. Then Kriya walked out. She kept her arms tight to her sides, hood pressed in, none of a serpent''s threatening actions. Her naga ancestry gleamed in the light, dappled scales, quartz-light bouncing off her fangs. Eyes averted from Veresai, she padded out into the clearing proper, stopping before she strayed too far from the den. Nicau stared at her. I stared at her, at this automaton that I could have sworn had been a person not two weeks ago. "Hello?" Nicau tried, thoughts prickling with unease. Even Chieftess was stiff, watching the interaction with a lash of her barbed tail. "Are you here to be healed?" Kriya asked, in a garbled throat rasping from unuse. She looked back, not making eye contact, but shifting so her head pointed to Veresai. "Am I to heal him?" Veresai just hissed, more mana flickering around her eyes. Nicau took a step forward, almost unconsciously. Something was brimming through his mind, taut and uncertain. "Are you a¡­ healer? For Veresai?" "I serve the Empress," Kriya said, head tilted. "Who do you serve?" Nicau licked his lips. Every nerve he had was tense. "The dungeon." There¨C A flash of attention. Of interest, something more than bland apathy. And then it faded away, disappearing back beneath the winternight pool of obedience filling her eyes. For the strangest reason, I felt a prickle of¨C discomfort. Guilt, almost. In the beginning, Kriya had seemed¡­ alive. Serving Veresai, yes, healing what should be her sworn enemies, but still functional. Still thinking. I had taken some joy in turning another human to my side. But it seemed as Veresai drained her, kept overusing her mana, her spirit had dipped and died under the geas. Until only the thrall was left. She was a human. She was a human who had invaded my halls with the express purpose of enslaving my core, binding me to her service, and I had tried to kill her for the slight. I had killed her party, quite successfully. I had rejoiced in that. But I hadn''t wanted this. Nicau''s soul lurched in his chest, pain echoing through our connection as he dug his nails into his palms. Worry, confusion, and¨C revulsion. At this. At me, for allowing it. "Are you okay?" He asked, cautious. Kriya just stared at him, like she didn''t understand the question. She likely didn''t, if Veresai had remade her mind; she only distinguished between alive and not. Like she had been rewritten. But the question did not go unnoticed. Veresai hissed, coiling up; her serpentine horde boiled in, called by her summons, the atmosphere simmering to a dagger''s point. Mana surged to Nicau''s tongue as he tensed, battle-ready; behind him, Chieftess curled her claws and the kobolds hefted their spears, bristling. Power hummed in the air like a warcry. Stop it, I snarled. Do not fight! Veresai hissed again. Her eyes burned; she didn''t like Nicau''s question. She didn''t like that he dared to institute her thrall was¡­ malfunctioning in any way. Not for Kriya''s sake, but for that of her psionic mana. If he asked it again, she was going to punish the disrespect, my commands be damned. My first instinct, worryingly, was to separate them; pull them apart so I wouldn''t lose either of my Named nor special creatures. My mana was already reaching out to do it, to tug Nicau and Chieftess back, guide them to the Hungering Reefs and leave Veresai to calm down¡ªbut. But that was what she wanted, wasn''t it? Get rid of the interlopers, since she knew I wouldn''t let her kill them. Back to her unchallenged territory, particularly with the boundless jaguar already moving down and the mage ratkin being annoyances at best. She would once more have free reign of her floor, since she knew she was powerful enough to threaten anything that entered, and it wasn''t like it was difficult to sense my affection for her bloodthirsty ways. She knew she was admired. She knew she was necessary. I stared at her. There had always been the budding nervousness in my core about her; I hadn''t called her a gold-drake as a compliment. They were oft the most powerful of the dragons to the terrestrial races, which they would brutalize to build their horde; tyrants to all those in their surroundings. But they were known tyrants, and more often than not, they were killed for it. One could only be a monster for so long before others decided it wasn''t worth it, and they pushed too fast too hard before they''d built up the strength to be unchallengeable. But Veresai had been unchallengeable, because I''d made her so. No creatures in my dungeon were allowed to kill the Named, every spar with me watching overhead, because I would never allow them to die preventable deaths. Which meant that she held a perfect confidence in her actions and no understanding that she was not the higher power. I stared at her, sharper now. My mana prickled overhead. It had been a little too long since anyone had pushed back. Nicau, I murmured, pointed enough to echo out for other minds to hear. Take Kriya with you. Perhaps most worrying of all, Nicau didn''t balk at the new command. Just nodded. He thought it was more necessary than his own preference to stay out of the action. Gods. How bad had this gotten? My empress serpent, my Named, my tyrant. She slithered closer to Kriya, rearing overhead. Her thoughts thrummed with a bitter refusal. All around, my mana grew teeth. Nicau will take her, I said, pointed. It is my choice. Veresai hissed, butting up against my iron will with her own fanged approach¡ªshe switched tracks already immediately, four eyes flashing. Her next thoughts were of her horde, the endless serpents flooding the Jungle Labyrinth; if they were to grow stronger, they needed a healer. How else could they fight for mana if they were scared of death? How else could they learn their limits in anticipation of invaders? I bared unfortunately intangible teeth. I gave you a healer. Alongside my words, I sent an image of the restorative aloe thundering over, what should have been the solution to her problem. Veresai paused. Her forked tongue flicked, a peal of light drifting through her crown of horns. She remembered what I was talking about, and her memories lit up with telling Kriya to heal her serpents above all else. There was a damning certainty when she thought of how I could simply make her more of them. Absolutely fuck that. It had been twenty points for a near-seedling, which was enough mana to revolutionize my halls with the new schemas Nicau had just brought. If I had spent that on the kobolds, they''d have dedicated one of the shamans to learning only healing mana, providing an endless bount of healing for themselves. Hells, even my creatures without sapience would know to only drink the sap instead of ripping the whole godsdamn thing out. Veresai had Kriya, a healer from the start, and still wasted her talents. It hadn''t been more than a moment, less than an hour, since I had come down here. Since I had seen what she had done with what should have been the greatest boon for a dungeon horde; since I had seen what I allowed her to become. It required a response. I should have thought about it, should have weighed the cost and rewards, but fury simmered under my surface in a way I hadn''t felt since I had destroyed half the Drowned Forest in an endless rage against the inevitable. My mana settled around Veresai, looming overhead like her creator, which I was; and she would do well to remember that. Break the geas. The echoes of the command flowed through my halls. It was a terrible choice. I would be dropping a Silver right into my sixth floor, ripe for the taking, but¨C but I would also be putting her on my most populated floor, filled with monsters, and leaving her uncoordinated and confused after a geas. If nothing else, I trusted Nicau to be able to command her, and my various creatures to slit her throat should the need arise. It was a terrible choice. But it was also the only way I could show Veresai that for all she had made an empire, she did not own the land. Veresai hissed, blue crawling down her horns until they were entirely lit up with iridescent rage; her thoughts thundered over our connection. Refusal, fury, the constant repetition that Kriya was hers. Maybe she was. But Veresai was mine, and I would be damned if I would let her continue on her current path to threaten my dungeon and all the creatures therewithin if she kept up with this fucking power trip. Oh? I taunted. Are you so weak you need her? I''d called her a gold-drake; I knew how to hit where it hurt. Veresai reared up, fangs flashing. The rest of her horde slithered away as her wrath bled into the surrounding air, a psionic raid-frenzy of her own making. The exact thing I knew I needed to avoid; creatures fighting mindlessly for a war larger than them. Not using their minds, their intelligence; just the raw force of their bodies. Her horde did that. I remembered her rejecting the spined lizards simply for not being serpents. Her constant refusal to parlay with the mage ratkin, even if their nimble fingers would allow her jeweltone serpents to properly obtain a coat of magical gems to utilize their mana on. Her war to keep all outers out of the Jungle Labyrinth. How long had it been since she''d fought? And I didn''t mean her horde, her army, the blue light flaring behind her traveling serpent scouts; I meant her. When had she last bloodied her fangs on a threat her serpents hadn''t brought back to her as food? When had she last used her psionic abilities on anything but commanding her underlings? Chieftess ruled her tribe. And yet it was her that went out into the Myvnu Jungle with Nicau, who swam in the lagoon to hunt food for all, who investigated the world to learn new things. The kobolds were growing. I had given Veresai a Name before of her strength. I was going to give Chieftess a Name because of the strength she gave to others. Veresai fought like a dragon. But I wasn''t a dragon anymore. All around, my mana picked up, swirling in these biting ripples as the air stirred. Everyone felt it, shifting, the anger I exuded like a lifeforce; so close had Shoth come to destroying me. I would not allow those I had created¡ªthose I had Named¡ªto do the same. Break the geas, I said, cold. No point in taunting, trying to cajole her into obeying. It was either she did or she didn''t, and I would react accordingly. I will not tell you again. Maybe she knew she''d pushed too far. Maybe she could hear what lay underneath my words, the promise there. Maybe she understood what this meant, maybe she didn''t. Veresai''s eyes burned. Mana scorched the air, fire-bright, and¨C Kriya collapsed. Nicau yelped, bouncing back; the kobolds clustered up, gazes spiraling as if they anticipated another attack descending from on high, but it was just Kriya, sprawled in the moss, eyes closed and the remnants of the geas floating away from her head. Her scales, dappled like light through leaves; the hood fluttering loose around her neck; herself, unbound. An adventurer, free in my halls. No longer under Veresai''s command. Oh, it was a battle, but it wasn''t the war. Veresai was still glutted on Otherworld mana, filling her horde with terror and commanding too strong of a presence in my halls to ever be ignored; taking away Kriya, even temporarily, wouldn''t stop her. All I''d done was bruise her ego. It was a test for us both. My way of seeing how she reacted; if she used this as a lesson to grow, to be more than the tyrant I''d allowed her to become, or if she would double down now that I saw the full display of her violence. And it was a test for me, if I would be willing to cull her if needed. I didn''t want to. Gods, but I still remembered her back before, when she had been a mere luminous constrictor falling from the ceiling to stop a juvenile lunar cave bear, when she had been a horned serpent slithering through the thorned roots of vampiric mangroves to entice invaders into her waiting fangs, when she had first taken claim of the Jungle Labyrinth and shown my halls what she was truly capable of. I remembered her before I''d given her a Name. She had been¡­ more, then. An odd thing to think about a creature that had evolved so far past her fragile start but she had been more alive in the beginning, when she had fought, when she had wanted to grow. Veresai of today just wanted passive domination. To control the center of a land and let others brutalize those that dared threaten her. A monster, yes. But not the monster I needed. Help her, I murmured, softer, to Nicau. He nodded, hesitant; though he didn''t know the full story, it was rather hard to miss that something had happened. And still, that quiet disgust at what had happened; at what I had allowed to happen. A month ago, I would have killed him for daring to think of me like that. But now I just looked away. I didn''t particularly care about Kriya, not with who or what she was. She was an adventurer, a human, who stalked my halls looking to enslave me. Killing her was what I did, and I would feel no shame from it, whether it happened then or now. But I would not take her mind. I would not become what I feared would happen to me. Slowly, Chieftess padded forward, golden eyes fixed on Veresai. She crouched, tail extending for balance, and got her arms around Kriya; hoisted her up like she weighed nothing, slumping over in Chieftess'' arms. She kept her gaze locked on every threat as she walked backwards, the other two kobolds keeping their spears up and teeth bared. Mana still waited in Nicau''s mouth. To the Hungering Reef, I murmured. It will take away her exhaustion. He nodded, warbling something to Chieftess as I pushed a new map into his mind. The journey would take some time now I didn''t have the auxiliary tunnels, but I hoped it would be soon enough; I needed to talk to Kriya, to learn what had happened and why she had seemingly disappeared beneath her thrall. Why Veresai had been draining her healing mana dry, even if she hadn''t engaged in any fighters with invaders. I split my consciousness, sending half with Nicau as that group carefully walked out of the Stone Jungle, wary as all hells. I dumped another chunk over Veresai, to actually watch her, to not let this corner of my halls go unchecked. Then I drifted away for other things. I let my new schemas flit through my core, already imagining where they would go in the heart tree once I regained enough mana to make them; the verdant howlers, filling the air, the boundless jaguar clambering up my extended branches, the cacophony of green and green and green. A perfect hellscape. What I had hoped would be Veresai''s new home. She had grown too large for my dungeon. I still hoped I could cut her down, show her the error of her ways, but for too long had I been content to let her corrupt herself because it meant she was more powerful. And it didn''t escape my unfortunate attention that it was only now, watching her destroy a priceless resource of a healer, that I was stepping in; not before, when I''d watched her slaughter her serpentine horde wholesale if they dared not to bring her food or attempt anything past her commands. Only once she''d threatened to kill one of the greatest boons possible, if I could convince Kriya onto my side. Maybe Veresai would be given a place in my heart tree. Maybe she wouldn''t. But I would no longer allow her to think of herself as a dungeon instead of a dungeonborn. Chapter 175 - Green Hell I watched Nicau descend. Chieftess was carrying Kriya, the anaga-human weighing nothing in her arms, the darkness before meaning little to her golden eyes. Nicau kept Otherworld mana in his throat, tense and coiling for any threats, but I smoothed the way before them as they traveled to the Hungering Reef. Kriya was still unconscious, listing from the breaking of her geas, of her enslavement. I turned away. I would confront that when she was talking. But for now, I gathered my wits about me, letting my new schemas flutter through my awareness; not enough mana to fully sculpt the eighth floor, considering how large it was, but enough to begin. I dove down through the limestone and basalt, through the empty mountain that protected my floors from the other, and arrived at the future home of my heart tree. It was a wonderful hell of a place, exactly as I wanted. In comparison to my other floors, it wasn''t as large; perhaps some three thousand feet in diameter, vaguely circular, the walls irregular and peppered with dens. And then the ceiling, a lovely three thousand feet off the ground. I had rather wanted to make it more, to tunnel down until it was leagues upon leagues that invaders had to climb up, but my dungeon instincts had lurched unpleasantly at the thought. There was a reason dungeons had floors, rather than amorphous spaces; digging too deep meant breaking the orderly composure of our halls. If I dug too far, I would limit the amount of total floors I could build. And already I could sense the faintest strain in my awareness, the knowledge that I was approaching the end of what I could maintain. Even as I allowed more deities to claim my upper floors, to hold them stable with their mana, I was only one core, and I could not control an empire fit to consume the world. There would be a maximum to my number of floors, and one day, I would reach it. But not yet. I still had time. So I spread myself over the floor, mana coiled and ready. My dreams were already honed and prepared, waiting at the tip of my core, and all I had to do was breathe them into life. First, the trees. I had four at my disposal¡ªvampiric mangrove, cloudsire palm, towering cypress, and cobweb banyan. But for the first time, I wanted to limit the mangroves; though they had dominated my floors above, by the time invaders made it to the eighth floor, they would be well-familiar with their tricks. And, well. I didn''t want to be predictable. I''d carved a small pond to one side of the floor, a repository for aquatic beings and a water source for others. I''d even magicked up a small waterfall down one basalt wall, looping an auxiliary tunnel to my higher floors to feed it, though too small for anything but baitfish to slither through. I unstoppered it with a sliver of mana and let the water rush down, the pool blossoming in pale blue¡ªalready mist trickled out into the air, humidity raising. Mangroves around the pond, their thorned roots tangled in the shore, and only there. The rest would be for other trees. And chief among them was the towering cypress. Oh, Nicau couldn''t have chosen a better schema if it had been him designing the floor; it was tall and enormous and powerful. Not in terms of mana, being rather a passive species, but in terms of presence; there was little that could see the bulwark shape I envisioned and not feel humbled by their own pitiful size. The cloudsire palms would fit in the corners, helping to bring even more mist and humidity to the jungle space; the cobweb banyans would weave together this land until it was an interconnected mess of a paradise, drowning in branches and pathways for brave creatures. And above all, the strength of the place. I wanted a heart tree¡ªthe heart of a primeval forest, grown so old its mana had no choice but to coalesce into one tree to serve as the beating heart of its depths. Could I make one as they existed? No. I didn''t have a thousand years to wait patiently for a tree to decide it wanted to be more, nor did I necessarily have the room for one befitting its station. But I could cheat. And I did love cheating. So I gathered my mana, bright and sparking with potential, and began to weave. First around the edges; I laid the seeds of cypresses, pumping points into their shells until they cracked free and shot up. Their deep, caramel-amber bark, sinuous like muscle and flesh, erupting through the earth; I guided them up and up and up, as tall as their schema would allow. Their roots, rising up like buttresses, lancing through the soil until they formed a maze at their underside. But even at their tallest, they stretched only perhaps seven hundred feet up, feathery leaves spread to catch the quartz-lights I had filled the walls with. Tall, yes, but not enough. My solution was simple. I went into the walls, digging out pockets wide as my schema directed, and there I planted more towering cypresses. Then up they grew, seemingly continuing from the trunk beneath them, up at least their caps brushed the stalactites far above. Was it perfect? Admittedly not. It was rather hard to hide that the trees did end when you got close to them, when you saw new shoots coming from the walls directly. But when you were a hapless invader fleeing for your life through the tangled labyrinth of my jungle hell, all you would see was the canopy of trees, so far ahead. Actually¨C I dug more niches into the walls and laid down cobweb banyans, their white-gold bark unfurling as its branches knit around each other. I didn''t want just one canopy, three thousand feet over invaders'' heads. I wanted multiple, many; each layer they climbed being more inhospitable than the last, bound and wired in like a hell of their own passing. Every five hundred feet up, I laid down a new layer of cobweb banyans, letting them thread together a perfect net. To fill in the center, I even planted them directly onto towering cypresses, letting their roots wrap around the giant''s bark. It would take some fine-tuning as time went on, I knew, to give the cypress enough nutrients to support both it and its parasites, but already the dream was coming together. A layered jungle, half a dozen canopies all coming together into a green paradise. But that wasn''t enough. It was a jungle in name only, merely a collection of trees. It needed more. I had plants aplenty, thanks to Nicau. Most were those generously given, and others still were Underranked plants that had been tucked in the back of his gourds, caught on his boots; little things, grasses and sedges and other meaningless species. And then those he had gathered specifically, those I had obtained from my higher floors¡ªdozens of species, all waiting. I gathered every single point of mana I had, consequences be damned, and threw them all into the floor. First was the canopies; here I wove creeping vines, tangled like a fishnet, over every available surface. They could root into soil or bark equally, and I used that, forcefeeding the parasites until they were content and settled onto the trees of my choosing. I hung them heavy overtop so they would dangle down, snaking through the air until they spanned the entire length of the air. Then between the canopies, filling in with more cobweb banyans until there was hardly a free section of air to breathe in, more vines knotting around each other. I strung funnel gourds around as well, their fat fruits dangling in temptation as serrated leaves wove through the branch cover. In each divot and pocket I dumped soil, deep brown and vitamin-rich, and there I grew the green of my green hell. The painted ferns, already soaking in the colours of their surroundings, adopting the deep browns of barks or the muted grey of basalt, or even the white sparks of mica from deep within. Their crown-like fronds shivered wide, spores already beading under the surface. Then clovertails, who grew in enormous bushy clumps of emerald leaves, pale flowers the size of a human''s face blooming at even a single fraction of gathered mana. Those filled in the majority and from there I laid down crane-blooms. They were smaller, with long leaves bursting from the dirt to spear at their surroundings¡ªand their flowers! They were long-necked and wide, and with each plant I grew I saw new colours; reds, purples, yellows, blues, pinks. More and more points of mana I dumped into them, letting another invading trio of adventurers not worth the dirt they walked on as my kobold tribe killed them just to use their mana right away for more flowers. The only contrast from the ever-present green. Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. Every colour and shade of moss I threw around like I was bringing it back from extinction. Billowing moss, with its waving fronds akin to a prairie''s grass, I layered over every available surface until it seemed as though there was no ground anymore, just the pale green. Jadestone moss clung to overturned roots and dangling branches, mana already coalescing into heavy jewels at its center. The maraca moss I set up on the creeping vines, a blue-green collection with these large black seedpods that rung hollowly whenever the creeping vine twitched. A funeral toll, echoing through the halls. Even my first schema, the basic green algae, I wove over my quartz-lights so the entire floor was lit up in a dappled green hue, like we were truly out in the jungle. Then the mushrooms. Already the light was dim enough that they could grow mostly everywhere, and everywhere I put them. Whitecaps and lacecaps filled each shadow cast by the towering cypresses'' mighty roots, these layered kingdoms of fungal rebirth, interspaced with razorleaf lichen for any with curious hands. Then, up the cypresses'' trunks, I laid laddercaps¡ªthey were broad, pale orange things, circular in their extensions off the bark. Already spores clustered heavily over their flat tops, waiting for hapless to carry them to their next growth. Perfect for my creatures to use, and any invaders who thought themselves brave enough. Something I would quickly relieve them of. Then I settled back. Already, the entire floor hummed and buzzed and existed, heavy in the air even past the humidity. Even my Jungle Labyrinth was just thornwhip algae filling the tunnels, dark and pressing; but here the greenery was impossible to ignore. Everywhere I turned I saw a new species, a new colour of crane-bloom, a new tapestry of woven cobweb banyan and creeping vine. Already bugs were finding their way within, those Underranked I didn''t bother to pay attention to, only half a point needed to spawn an empire''s worth of numbers. They flitted from leaf to leaf, filling the air with the cacophony of a million wings, ants plodding underfoot and beetles sheltering beneath strewn rocks and roots. A few of my greater species¡ªhunting mantises, platemail bugs, swarming wasps, eyeblight butterflies, cave spiders¡ªthough I only created as few as necessary to create a population without wasting. Bugs would evolve as they did; I didn''t need to guide the process too much. I had drained myself past empty of mana in the making, but the wonderful thing about being an artist was that it took time to lay everything in place. And with the trio of invaders I''d merrily killed, I had enough to start creating some creatures. Not all¡ªunfortunately it did take time for me to regenerate mana, considering my Otherworld supply was near useless with how little I got and I instead had to rely on the fighting of my creatures against each other and any invaders foolish enough to stumble within¡ªbut enough to begin the ecosystem. Which meant starting from the bottom. Which meant prey. That was a problem I was becoming unfortunately worried about¡ªtoo many of my creatures evolved into predators, precious few taking another turn around to become food. I prodded through my schemas; for this floor, I had, hm, bounding deer, burrowing rats, stone-backed toads, and a collection of other half-predator half-prey that could be hunted if need be. Which¡­ wasn''t enough. Not nearly so. Fuck. I didn''t particularly want to send Nicau back into the world, considering I needed him for Kriya and I was rather expecting that whole debacle to take some time, but I didn''t see any other route for handling that. So far I had been increasing the ambient mana on floors to provide other kinds of sustenance, but that wasn''t a forever solution; it was hardly enough a temporary one. I needed more prey. Perhaps by putting so many burrowing rats and other similar species on the lower floors would help trigger an evolution, where I would then pick only the most defenseless and largest option. It had worked before. Okay. I''d try it. I gathered my mana, what scraps of it remained, and woven hundreds of burrowing rats into existence; they fled from my presence, disappearing under the gentle fronds of painted ferns or scurrying up laddercaps to reach safer dens. Next was stone-backed toads, which croaked as they appeared alongside each other and hopped off in search of accessible bugs. Bounding deer stumbled over their own hooves as they shot off into the surroundings, silverheads splashing around in the waterfall-fed pool, luminous constrictors slithering up to the canopy overhead. Just enough to hopefully trigger some new prey, if not fill in the ranks themselves. It hurt me¡ªdeeply¡ªbut I would hold off on predators for now. I would wait until I had a strong enough base to support them, so I wasn''t wasting mana constantly replenishing prey that served as little more than a mouthful to my creatures; if I wanted to begin my ninth floor, and quickly, I couldn''t be spending my limited mana like that. I had to be more clever, and that meant waiting. Well. I would hold off on most of them. But a few couldn''t hurt. Particularly those I wasn''t wasting any mana in creating. I awoke several points of awareness in the Skylands, drifting through the lightning-stained mana. Several creatures would function well in the heart tree, particularly the Magelords, but I would allow them longer in this space before making the move down. No, I had my eyes set on another. Curled within a den, feathered tail resting over her nose, the boundless jaguar pricked her ears as I settled overhead. Come, I murmured, quiet and polite. A land for you. And in her mind, I showed her just what I meant; the tangle of trees and thickets, the perfect perches for her to watch all those beneath her, the bountiful prey I promised just as soon as I finished. A land for the taking. Her thoughts hungered. She wasn''t Old, not in the way her evolution said she should have been, but she was a creation of hunger still. She rose to her paws, feathered tail swishing over the stone; for too long had she been confined to the Jungle Labyrinth, only able to hunt that which was not under Veresai''s command. I would give her a territory for herself, now. She could test what I had created, to show me where I needed to form bridges or thicken up the canopy; the eyes of a hunter to see what my omnipresent dungeon-self didn''t notice. She churred something in her throat and stretched, six limbs digging claws into the stone. Then she padded off to Akkyst, either a goodbye or just informing him of where she hunted, considering very little could keep her from traveling my different floors if she wanted, and from there I knew she would follow the map I set in her mind. Soon, I would fill in the rest of the floor. Already my mind spun with it; verdant howlers, terrorbirds, mottled scorpions, cavern-mouths. A land akin to my others, but altogether separate. Travel up instead of through. The promise, not threat, of a fall. As soon as Nicau made it to the Hungering Reefs¡ªhe was already partially through the Skylands, moving at a starfish''s pace past the Magelord''s territory¡ªI would let Kriya decide to either help me or die, then I would Name Chieftess, and then I would figure out what the fuck else I had to do. But as I looked over my green hell, my paradise in waiting, I couldn''t help but feel content. - The jeweled jumper followed the masses into the midst. They moved slow, limited by their lack of limbs, the grey-green-beasts and their mindless walk. All the creatures at their sides, the monsters he took such delight in killing when he could, but on they marched and on they moved, and only now were they stopping. The halls were unremarkable; grey stone and shadows, much the same as before, but the grey-green-beasts treated it like new territory. They clustered, tucking in, not one separating from the others. Difficult to kill. Difficult to be unkillable. But the jeweled jumper didn''t try, not now. He was curious; an odd thing to be, but he was. Whatever scared them more than him was here. The think-word echoed like a prayer. Growth, Growth, Growth. To the stone they turned, a flat section of grey the same as all the others. But this they faced like a threat, and this the largest grey-green-beast stepped forward. Not the one the jeweled jumper had killed, but just as unthreatening. The only difference was a staff it carried in its odd-flat-claws, tipped in bone. It slammed the base against the rock. The bones clattered, echoing louder than they should have. Deep within the mountain, something rumbled in answer. A monster. The jeweled jumper shivered¡ªhis carapace felt suddenly hot, bursting at the cracks. His mind, so large, so clever, hungered for that rumble¡ªwanted to know what it was. The grey-green-beasts all huddled and clutched at each other after the noise, and again the leader slammed its staff against the rock. The rumble snarled through the depths again. And the wall shook. The wall trembled. The jeweled jumper readied himself, venom hissing over his fangs. The grey-green-beasts picked up their spears and prepared for battle; he did the same. They had arrived. It was time to fight. Chapter 176 - Collapsing Barriers I watched my eighth floor begin to spread its leaves. No predators, not yet, but the buzzing understory already spread to its own fruition. My numerous bugs only grew by the minute as I provided them with such a plant and mana-rich environment, scuttling through painted ferns and laddercaps, encroaching endlessly as they picked their way upright. The cobweb banyans in particular were a miracle of exploration, providing all the vascular veins stretching to the horizon. My tiered canopies, woven through the towering cypresses, creeping vines throughout, funnel gourds hanging like second suns in the emerald green. The boundless jaguar hadn''t yet made her way down, but I was already brimming with excitement for when she did¡ªwould she find the canopies too smothering, too dense? Would there be enough pathways for her up, or would I have to construct more available paths so that it was not a land where all of my creatures lived only on the floor and the top was abandoned? Would she make a home for herself here, in the way she hadn''t with the Jungle Labyrinth? Would she show me this design was correct? So many things to ask. And still Nicau had only just entered the Hungering Reef, making his way over to the lagoon with Chieftess holding Kriya. If I could get her on my side sooner rather than later, hopefully I could gather all the mana necessary to bring this floor into fruition into a proper heart tree. A heartwood, the center of a forest. Hm. Heartwood. I didn''t dislike that. But for now, I flew, touching up waving branches or smoothing down wayward growths. Peeling through Nicau''s memories let me grab more accurate pictures of how the jungle had looked, how a proper land untouched by cultivation and precision formed; while I didn''t necessarily want mine that messy, I did want it wild, untamed. A proper building of things that were not humans and would never belong to them. My land, my only. My eighth floor and all the death that entailed. Something trembled through the mountain. A hit, like a skipped stone over water. I was a paranoid beast, that I could admit¡ªno shame in acknowledging what had led to my survival. So it was me that immediately dropped the mana I had been planning on using to bring about more prey into my burgeoning eighth floor and instead flew to find it, points of awareness spiraling through my halls. A hunt like a predator, too many memories of the Priestess of Abarossa filling me. Foolishly, foolishly, I looked up. To my Fungal Gardens, to my split entrances, to where I wanted invaders to enter. But when had invaders ever done what I wanted? Because the stone wasn''t breaking there¡ªmy Fungal Gardens were a paradise enclosed and encircled by my mana and nothing else. And the Drowned Forest sat quietly within its boundaries, water lapping at the edges of its canals, and the Underlake hummed with reverie and hunger as it always did, and my upper floors stayed content and contained and altogether unharmed. Because the stone was breaking in my Skylands. My Skylands. Five fucking floors down, all of my defenses stripped away, all of my careful planning ruined, because the stone was breaking in my Skylands. I roared. My mana thrashed. In damning similarity to the Underlake of months past, I watched a spider web of cracks cross over the limestone, the rupturing of long-held stone crumbling in on itself. Splinter one, two¡ªlike some mighty giant had rested its weight on the other side, pressing in like anvils to break. From the depths, the Al¨®mbra Mountains¡ªnot humans. Not Calarata, my known enemies, who wouldn''t tunnel this deep to reach me. Would they? I couldn''t discount that. I couldn''t discount anything, because they had surpassed my first four floors and were coming to my Skylands unhindered. Terror rose through me, and I swallowed it, ground it, gnawed it down to the marrow¡ªbecause with terror came the raid-frenzy, the mindless fury that filled all my creatures until they could no longer react with thinking or intelligence in the way I needed, in the way I had to have to survive. Already my mana was sharpening, every creature in the Skylands raising their heads with eyes flashing, but I needed them alive¡ªneeded them functioning. Needed them conscious. To my creatures I flew, controlling myself, biting down the fear until focus shone through the gaps. Up, up, up, I pushed, simmering on the broadside of Akkyst''s mind. The starwrought bear raised his head, runes flickering off his mangled ear. Before I could impart the situation in full I flew off, brushing against each Magelord¡ªup, up, up! The Skylands woke, humming at the edges as disorienting fear pooled in the crevices of their awareness. A threat, approaching¡ªI barely had enough time to wake up the goblins, let alone the others, before the stone cracked again. Back to the wall I darted, intangible wings spreading and claws hooking on the air. My core, brimming with prickled fear. Not the rad-frenzy. Focused. Scared, but focused. I could do that. I had to do that. The wall trembled. Another blow, another ramshackle power billowing through the darkness. Khasvar''s mana crackled in the distance with the rumble of thunder, the storm distilling overhead. I prepared myself as best I could. The stone shook. Then broke. Dust exploded outward, choking the air¡ªmy points of awareness scoured through the grey to the darkness at the center, to the movement, to the action. Because not a second after the rock crumbled did there come things, creatures, beasts clawing through the gap and howling fury¨C Goblins. Goblins? Diminutive, hunchback, yammering; they piled over each other as they flooded in, uncaring of the way ahead so long as it had a path for them to run upon. Waving spears, claws, fangs. A monstrous race for their ilk. This was the War Horde. I could tell the difference¡ªinstead of the blue-grey skin marbled with black stripes of my Magelords, they were a pale green, their eyes bulbous and their claws sharp. Stronger, with arms for tearing and ripping rather than casting, teeth bared and hackles drawn. But, strangely enough, it wasn''t the only difference. My core lurked with another collection; one of deep grey skin, with clever fingers and all-black eyes. But I hadn''t seen them before, I knew that. Still the knowledge held within me. The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. Later. Time to focus on the godsdamn threat first. Which, damningly, wasn''t only the goblins. It was the opening they''d popped right through the fucking wall of my dungeon. I remembered this, at least¡ªthe immediate whirlpool of my mana, tugging away from my command as a hole punctured through my fragile control; but I remembered what this had felt like, and I remembered what it did. Long ago, in the Underlake, allowing the tunnel''s construction and all that entailed¡ªnot this time. Not this fucking time. They wanted another entrance? They wouldn''t be getting one. I threw every point of mana I had at the problem; the Otherworld roared as I wove it together, as I slammed it down and told it that this was stone, this was rock, it was insurmountable and not an opening and not a break¨C My mana shivered, trembling. It didn''t want this¡ªit was like water, more than my sea-drake origins. It wanted to flow, to fill each space I gave it, to pool in my deeper floors and hang heavy in the air. It wanted to escape. I would not allow it. That gap was not a gap¡ªit was stone. It was as much as a wall as the areas around it, as the perfectly-carved halls of my making; it was stone and it was stone and it was stone¨C My mana held. The hole disappeared from my awareness; what trickles of mana I''d lost to the mountainside were gone but no further left to join, staying within my boundaries. To my awareness, it was like nothing had happened, no further could I see past my halls than ever before. There. Fucking there. The break was still there, still allowing these wretched bastardly monsters into my halls, but it wasn''t another entrance, and as soon as I murdered them, I could close it, and it would hold. Okay. Okay. Okay. One problem solved. A hell''s load left to work through. My points of awareness spiraled, what few left I had after shoving all my mana into holding the barrier¡ªthey looked at the War Horde, the braying mass streaming through the gap in my walls. Goblins¡ªnot evolved, still baseline highland goblins, that at least I could take comfort in¡ªall hooting and hollering, brandishing raised spears affixed with bone tips. Their pale green skin, their hooked claws; a warmongering race, yes. Not particularly strong by themselves. Their companions, more so. Streaming through the gap was a hulking monstrosity, insectoid in build but utterly reprehensible; enormous mandibles reached down to its thorax, amber-gold chitinous carapace embracing stocky limbs, eyes like the pale width of the moon. It chittered and snarled, rushing mindlessly forward, goblins slamming the butts of their spears into its flanks to push it on. A trio of beasts that moved on four limbs, heavy and low to the ground¡ªand crystalline. They seemed like quartz, like mica; their armour was angular and reflective, working like an outcropping of ore, no living pieces visible underneath the geological glow; but with my spiraling points of awareness I caught a glimpse of jagged claws and a wide, yawning mouth, insatiable, though I couldn''t tell for what they ate. And the third; a gelatinous, shuddering mass of pale grey-blue. It dragged itself forward, no eyes or limbs or anything functional beyond its body, sliding and moving as needed. A slime of some variety. Hells above hells, that was an entourage. And between them all, howling madness, were the goblins; armed to the teeth and furious. And talking. "Growth!" They roared, again and again, as they poured into my halls and screamed vengeance. "Growth, Growth, Growth!" What in the hells was that? Was that me? No time for that. No time for anything. Go! I roared, but separate, keeping my mana from entering anyone''s mind¡ªinstead I just called for action, for action of their understanding, and my creatures moved. The Magelords coalesced, whipping together as a collection of their newly-evolved forms. Their tails, grey-tipped and corded, lashed the ground as their hands lit up with mana, bright and sparking. Bylk stalked to the front, weighed down by age but not yet weary, eyes sharper than I had seen from him before. His evolution had served him well. "Goblins," he said, brows furrowed. From his perspective, they couldn''t see much but the tips of spears through the mist, but it seemed he recognized their calls¡ªall the Magelords glanced at each other, confusion, unease. Then Bylk''s gaze hardened to steel. "War Horde." As one, the Magelords awoke. Mana crashed over their hands, spiraling up their fingers¡ªfire-heat and electricity, the crash and brilliance of light in all powers. They remembered these foes; they remembered what they had lost to them before. They remembered losing. They would not lose again. My voice still simmering through our connection, Akkyst roared, rearing to his hind legs. He towered over all the rest, the mist swirling around his flanks as his power hissed through the Skylands. The War Horde he had been captured by before, that I knew from his memories; but no longer. He was no longer the same bear he had been, weakened and pained and terrified of the wider world. Now he was strong, even more than his evolution. I froze. His evolution. Akkyst had left my halls, disappeared to the wider mountains, and he had come back evolved. He had faced the War Horde, stood strong before their indomitable force, and emerged victorious against¨C Against the stone-wurm. The War Horde didn''t fear the Magelords, not after nearly crushing them thrice before, from what history I had gleaned from Bylk''s mind. But they had still brought a stone-wurm, a tyrannical beast of the deep mountains to crush them and their home. For a known threat, they had brought a monster. The insectoid creature, the crystalline constructions¡ªthey were powerful, yes, but not monsters. And I was entirely an unknown, the Growth, as they insisted on calling me¡ªbut that was all they brought. This couldn''t be it. There was something to being a dungeon core. Aiqith functioned oddly around me; I was a omnipresent being within the constraints of my halls, able to see all my mana touched, able to commune with gods in the nameless world that held them, to wield Otherworld mana that had never before touched Aiqith. In particular, time was an ally more than an enemy. With my consciousness spread so far, split between points of awareness and my eight building floors, I could coalesce just enough to make time slow to a crawl as I thought. Every sliver of my consciousness came together and time inched along as it did so, as I focused on not what was happening but what would. This couldn''t be it. The goblins, entering my halls, interwoven with beasts I had never heard of nor seen before in the Al¨®mbra Mountains. They shouted about the Growth and seemed feverishly determined; but not to the point of suicide. One death meant little to them, that I knew, because they were goblins; it was how they worked. Even the Magelords, who kept to a smaller population to aid in their casting, worried little over singular deaths. But this strategy didn''t make sense. They wouldn''t throw all their lives into the unknown and trust it to be enough, not if they were even remotely familiar with dungeons. Which they seemed to be, though their word was wrong. My awareness quivered. This was wrong. Akkyst bellowed, rearing up¡ªrunes flew off his fur in a silver explosion, inscribing facts of Aiqith upon the world around him. My storm-eel snaked through the air, my stormcaller sprite calling down a thunderwave to broil between her fangs. The Magelords gathered in a final stand, the preparation for a champion''s fight now that they had a home that would defend them back rather than leaving them out to die as it had before¨C Another boom. Every meager point of mana I had to my name went very still. The goblins halted in their entourage¡ªAkkyst''s roar froze in his maw¡ªlightning arched ice-slow over the sky. Time crawled alongside me as my attention traveled down. I had panicked over the Skylands, over invaders entering five floors below where I wanted. But now the Al¨®mbra Mountains trembled from an unseen death, a promise I couldn''t parse¡ªand the walls were shaking, and I did not have time to react. Another attack. Another break. Far below, in the entrance of my Hungering Reefs, the wall exploded, and a monster entered my halls. Chapter 177 - Ice-Fire The Hungering Reefs shattered. Its wall fell apart, limestone thundering in pieces of the quartz-white sand; I howled anew as another entrance punched into my dungeon, mana flooding out in the break. As something slithered through the gap, crowned in dust and a ringing horror. It was a monster. As a dungeon core, I didn''t use that term lightly, but there was nothing else to describe it as. A nightmare''s cross between a wurm and a centipede, twisting and coiling in on itself, carried by hundreds of insectoid legs¡ªit surged forward with hooked claws and orange-red protrusions over its back, unnatural grace. A frill extended from its head, wide and taut between bristling spines, scraping at the ceiling so high overhead. Mandibles clustered over its gaping maw. Ice-blue armour, offset with the ruby-red of its fiery spines, a volcano''s warmth wavering around. Its eyes¡ªpure white, nothing behind them. Bulbous and arachnid, all hunger. Fucking hells, what was this? It hissed and spat, a chittering nightmare of multi-jointed limbs and crackling flames. It had broken past the wall with its innumerous claws and the dust over them immediately caught fire, smoking away in acrid smoke; it coiled on the beach, over quartz-white sand and the lap of waves beneath. It wasn''t from the mountains. It couldn''t be. But then from where? How had the War Horde gotten their claws on a beast like this? The opening. I had precious little mana left after closing the Skylands, but I didn''t have a choice; I gathered all I had and threw it at the wall, at the entrance, at the gap in the stone. My mana bucked, trembling¡ªit knew that was an entry, considering the monster was still slithering its centipede''s length through the gap, but no. It was stone. It was stone, and nothing more, and my mana would stop escaping me and this was my¨C Not as smoothly as before, a shuddering kind of resignation, but my awareness snapped shut. No longer could I see outside in the mountain; it was just stone. Not another entrance. But the beast continued to emerge. Longer and longer, filling the beach with chitinous armour and the hiss of smoke against air; fifty feet emerged from the opening, concluding in a seething array of spikes, all the same fire-bright material. Larger than anything I''d fought before. Larger than anything in my dungeon. And it wasn''t the only threat. In the Skylands, the War Horde raged¡ªand rejoiced. My halls echoed as they howled, a rippling cry of victory spreading through their ranks; they knew their pet monster had arrived, and they counted the battle won. Where had they gotten it? Where in Al¨®mbra had this been hiding? My points of awareness flickered and shook, torn between centering and dissolving; all my mana had gone into shutting the entrances, holding my dungeon steady, and now the scraps remaining struggled to exist. Two floors to watch was too many. I only had the mana to focus on one. I had to choose. Time slowed in the manner of a dungeon core¡ªmy consciousness coalesced into one, sharpening to teeth and wings and terror. I flew up, burrowing past stone into the lightning-tainted halls of the Skylands, Magelords and War Horde alike. A final stand, but not, but broken. Something more. I had to defeat the beast below. So others had to defeat the threat here. My awareness dove, hunting through the frenzied minds for the one who I knew I could communicate with in my mana-starved state. For Akkyst, standing tall at the forefront of the burgeoning army, my Named, my strongest of the floor. His thoughts burned for his enemies, these curs with their vicious batterings against reality; but he paused as I spoke. Hold, please, I begged, humming on the edge of Akkyst''s mind. His singular ear flicked back, awareness trickling over our connection. My eloquence disintegrated in face of terror. Kill, defend, alone, can''t help, below, fight, go! His memories echoed over to me; thoughts of the stone-wurm, of digging his claws blindly into its punctured neck for a chance at victory. He didn''t know the creature below, but he understood the threat. Resolution thrummed through his mind. He would handle the Skylands. He would protect the Magelords once more¡ªI would go lower. I poured pride into his mind and gathered each point of awareness, abandoning all higher floors so as to flee below. My last glimpse of the Skylands was Akkyst rearing onto his hind legs, claws extended and fangs bared, bellowing. And then I was gone. The Hungering Reefs awoke as I resurfaced, my eyes hampered and shuttered like a storm over the coastline; even as I ducked and wove throughout, a shuddering emptiness lurked in me, my gaze locked to only one floor. This was not how I should exist, but I had no other option. The beast coiled in the first room, bulbous eyes of pure white scanning its surroundings. In memories stolen from Akkyst I recalled the stone-wurm being on a rampage, a furious deconstruction of hunger¡ªthis monster seemed more sentient, investigatory. Smarter. It raised the upper half of its body, frills extending to triple its width, stretched like ice between spines. Heat crackled over its back, amber-orange horns like teeth over its armour. An amalgamation of nightmares. Smoke, trickling to the air above. Fire something. I had no idea what powered those spines, what kept the heat crackling between its armour, but it burned with an internal fire¡ªthe Scorchplains would not stop it. It needed to die here. My remaining scraps of mana thrummed. Its frill extended like wings, mandibles clicking against each other. The beach wasn''t large, just enough to give invaders enough room to take in the majesty of my reefs, to understand the threat they had befallen them. It filled the entirety of the sand, so much larger than anything I knew; and still it was far from size alone. Each of its many claws pinched and snapped at the air, a coalescion of hunter and predator. Not something for the mountains. Not something for the sea. But its eyes, pale, looked to the far wall, as though it could see the next room. The prey it hunted through a drive I didn''t know. And it slipped into the water. Steam erupted like a geyser, choking out the air; whatever its spikes were made from made the water froth, boiling, but still they didn''t lose their glow. It burned hotter than this. And now it was in the water, now it was in the territory that was mine. The first room of the Hungering Reefs. I didn''t have enough mana to roar a battle-frenzy, nothing to warn my creatures; but Abarrosa''s boon carried the threat forward. Five dolphins, pod still so young and undeveloped; their sinuous bodies leapt and darted through the waves, fanged muzzles shrieking. It flinched back, the frill around its head snapping closed; the whites of its eyes burned. It couldn''t swim, not in the manner of swimming¡ªbut it could move. Its hundred legs undulated and clattered against each other, kicking up hazy clouds of sand and grit. What lurching movement it had was slow and condemnable, obscured by a billowing cloud of boiling water; but on still it forced itself. Why was it doing this? What hold did the War Horde have over such a powerful monster that it would throw itself into its opposite just to swim on? There weren''t any goblins here, none beating it forward or howling commands; it moved from its own volition. The dolphins swarmed around it, a cyclone of muscular bodies faster than it could hope to be, but they were barely a fifth of its length with fangs built for soft flesh, not chitinous armour. All they could do was circle and scream, but with its frills pressed flat to its sides, it hardly seemed to hear them. Not a creature that hunted via ears. Its mandibles caught one of the shrieking dolphins; it took only a shake of its enormous head to snap her spine, black eyes dulling to glassy depths. Scarlet bloomed through the water. It hunted like a centipede, all extended jaws and coiling length; even in the water as it fumbled, all I could see were its eyes, pale in the blue. It clawed itself forward over the sand like a corpse, floundering through water but still moving. The first room wasn''t built to kill, not yet. The dolphins were so young, so untested, only schools of prismatic dartfish to fill in the gaps¡ªthe monster slithered forward unhindered, dragged to the ground for insectoid claws to sink into sand. Through the first room, water boiling and capturing coral bleaching white in its presence, until it squeezed its hulking mass into the second room of my Hungering Reefs. The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. My mana roared. This was the largest, my most adept, but not for this. Nicau and Chieftess weren''t here yet; the kobold tribe, leaderless. Svythe was a whirlwind of fangs and claws but only a fraction of the beast''s size. My newly-evolved sharks were hardly the length of one half its body, their fangs like twigs against its spines. Even the venom of my silver kraits wouldn''t bring this monster down. My third room was made for those of its bulk; as unaquatic as it was, it would swim through the tower-reefs and find its way to the exit. The sea serpent in his shipwreck was still scared, still cautious from Shoth''s attack; I didn''t think he would win. I needed to end it here. And there were a few here with the size to match. Seros answered the call before it had time to ring through my Otherworld mana¡ªhe uncoiled from a tower-reef and sprung forward, hydrokinesis like a sea-drake''s wings. In the third room, my armoured jawfish narrowed his scarlet eyes. The dolphin''s blood diffused through my halls, staining the water, and he smelled it; prey, more than the normal. I didn''t have enough mana to speak to him properly, no connection binding our souls together, but he was a hunter reborn, and Abarossa''s boon had only accentuated his drive. He snapped at the water, a summoning cry. His tidewalker sprite, the watery collection of frills and fangs and fury, sprang underneath his fins and drove him forward, powering through the current like a loosed arrow. He slipped out of the room, mind thrumming with the hunt. The monster emerged into the second room like a harbinger. Still it scuttled over the ground, an insectoid shadow so much larger than anything I''d known¡ªand still it snapped and spit and hissed at my dungeon. Driven by something. The centipede raised its foul head, mandibles flashing. Its eyes landed on the expanse of limestone in front of it, the base of an island. It moved, this horrible, clattering approach to swimming that wriggled it through the madness like a swarm of locusts; prismatic dartfish died in heaps as the boiling water around its bulk seared them black and carried their corpses down. Greater crabs steamed in their armour and roughwater sharks flinched back from the heat, its journey unhindered until it clambered out of the water and onto the first of the shallow isles surrounding the lagoon, the atoll I''d made as protection. It hauled its bulk onto the white sands, dozens of legs clawing for a grip to hold its weight. Mist writhed off its horns, choking out the air. My points of awareness howled. Out of the water, it looked so much more the beast; fifty feet of coiling centipede, wrought in ice-blue and fire-red. Its frill expanded, filling in the length of its body like malformed wings, steam curling off like jagged fangs. It stared over the room, the stretch of water between each island it would have to cross. Within the lagoon, my kobold tribe gathered to the ready; no Chieftess to lead but they were far from helpless, preparing spears and coral-tipped staffs for the shamans. But they were so small before the beast, little more than a morsel. What could they do? What others could. Because Seros swept forward, tail lashing at the surf¡ªand at his side swam Rihsu, plucked from her hunting to join her lord''s side. She had grown since I had last watched her, larger than any kobold warrior and still with those deep indigo scales to prove her transition from fire-drake origins; not yet of the sea, but closer. Her webbed talons clawed at the water as she swam, an eel''s grace through the currents Seros provided. They moved together, faster and faster, encircling the hall; my bare scraps of presence guided Seros'' mind up, to the island where the beast sheltered. They would have to bring their fight beyond. And they did. Rihsu surged through the water, finned tail lashing; Seros sang a snippet of the Song and a current pushed beneath her webbed talons and launched her up, flying through the air. Something they''d practiced. She dove like a bird of prey and slammed into its side. It shrieked, lurching away¡ªshe was a fraction of its size but thrown as she was she punched right through its balance. Quartz-sand kicked up like a dust storm as it thrashed, biting at nothing. But Rihsu screeched herself, falling back with a crash to the beach. Her indigo scales scorched white where she had touched its spines, where the demonstrable heat burning inside it had seized her. It hissed like a dirge, coiling in the sand; more steam erupted to fill the skies, drowning out the cloudsire palms and vampiric mangroves. Pure white eyes roved for what had hurt it. Rihsu, ungainly on land with all her training with Seros, burned from muzzle to tail, struggling to her feet, trying to get back to the water. It saw her. My points of awareness spiraled, calling for Seros, for the armoured jawfish, for Svythe, for Nicau, for anyone. But the monster reared, frill snapping out with a raw burst of heat; it lunged like the arachnid it was, all teeth, all fury, mandibles extending and many-jointed legs clustered up like a clenched fist as it dove for her fumbling form in the sand¨C And it swallowed her. It swallowed her. Seros and I screamed in unison. Rihsu disappeared before she had a moment to attack. Its throat bulged as it devoured her, more steam erupting from its touch¡ªbut the core side of my mind saw that its mouth moved oddly, mandibles retracted. Not teeth. It was swallowing her but not chewing; a beast that ate its meals whole. Something to consume. There was a chance. But a chance that didn''t fucking matter as Rihsu disappeared into its maw and lost us a fighter. Seros launched himself forward, blind fury; the waters howled at his call, kicking into a whirlpool to rival Mayalle''s as the walls trembled. Even the armoured jawfish was blustered back in his rage. Seros ripped out the waves and slammed into the beast''s side, heedless of injuries; his own iridescent scales scorched and his ivory claws turned black as he hammered against its bulk, ravaging anything he could reach¨C beyond the island, the armoured jawfish snapped his fangs and circled¨C And in my third room, something moved. - The sea serpent raised his head. Within the shipwreck, he coiled around the rotted wood and sagging fastenings of a gifted home. Below, he knew, there was an entrance further down, the tunnel between floors, but all he was here for was to guard the wreckage and stop others. To hunt as others came to him, serving as protector. A life of surety. A life where he would not lose another eye to a human who had nearly ruined him. When all he remembered was the waves moving and the water rushing and the blackness where there had once been sight; when the world dimmed and the pain erupted. When he had failed. But now, simmering through the mana that kept him awake and alive and aware, he smelled blood. Rich blood, sea-tainted and worn. That of his brethren. That of the dragon-born. It wasn''t the hunger he remembered, the blind rage that filled him until all things foreign were threats, but something urged him to move; so he uncoiled from the wooden halls and slithered upright, frills tensed tightly to his side and fangs bared. Nothing in the water above, just murky darkness and distant tower-reefs. Slowly, he swam outward until he was entirely free of the shipwreck, darting from shadow to shadow. Still the blood in the water, but not from here. He moved until he could see into the other cove. Scarlet-white waters, filled with grit and gore. The jaw-beast, circling an island, hunger palpable; the wavering note of terror from the Gifter. Something overhead. Up he swam, until his head lifted above the waves to see the island''s top. Where the dragon-born thrashed against a monster of fire and ice. It looked, almost, like him. Too many claws, too many limbs, armour instead of scales; but it was long and it was fanged and it was dangerous. Others were scared of it. And then he was struck by the thought. How slowly had he moved out of his shipwreck? How slowly had he let the world pass him by with nothing more than hunting those that came to him? He had taken this mighty form by killing the greatest of the tooth-sharks that filled his previous home; and now he hid like a whelp in the dark. This beast was not in the water, in his territory. But he could not limit himself to only that he knew he would win; he could not strike himself into the belly of a den as protection and never snap at the wider world. He could not be a champion if he was scared. Before, he had waited for the human to see what it was capable of. That had failed him. So instead he launched himself from the water before he could think. Infinitely larger than his previous form, but it worked the same way¡ªhis finned tail lashed and thrust him above the water, above the safety; he barely cleared the waves but his head crashed into the sand, gills gasping and air choking his eyes. Movement, in the blurry world before¡ªhe snapped his fangs into three twisting, crackling things and fell. There was a scream, a chittering hiss like breaking stone. One of the things he was biting snapped off, torn beneath, but the others held and continued to hold as he plunged back into the waters. And a weight followed. The monster crashed into the surf, bubbles exploding around them. Blood like fire filled his mouth, scorching, and he flinched back from the pain, released its limbs, curling in¡ªand fought it. Fought the urge. Turned back to the fight. It plummeted through the water, no fins to support itself, but here he could see how much larger it was than he''d thought¡ªso much more than a human, than something small and darting away from his fangs. He should have feared it; but something felt better with it being enormous. He knew it couldn''t surprise him, not when he could see it. When he could face it outright. He wasn''t alone¡ªthe jaw-beast snapped and the dragon-born hissed¡ªbut he was the only one large enough. So he sprang, boiling water catching at his scales and frills but he was large and it was large and this was a fight without the terror of the unknown. Serpent against monster; he coiled and it thrashed, claws ripping into his sides, fire burning through the waves. Wounds, destruction¡ªbut he had already been hurt. He already hunted through one clouded eye. He had tasted agony and found it did not kill him. He was a sea serpent¡ªbut he remembered his roots. Before he fought with venom, he had fought with his size. Pain became inconsequential. He coiled, wrapping around himself against and against, heedless of scales popping and boiling water lapping at his bared skin; he crushed the monster until its armour cracked and its spines punctured his flesh. It could not fight; it could injure him but it couldn''t fight and he needed that. He wasn''t alone. It was his to stop, to be more than, his fight to take to the end. He held and he held and he held and he burned and he held and¨C And from above, the dragon-born dove from behind and slammed his fangs into the back of the monster''s head. It thrashed, clawing at the water, but he pinned it so that it could not escape. The dragon-born gnashed his jaws into its armour and pulled, digging claws in for grip, ignoring his own pain as the water redoubled in heat and scoured at their scales. As they worked together. He tightened his grip¡ªhe coiled¡ªand the dragon-born ripped the beast''s head off. It died. And he lived. Chapter 178 - Reverie The last time Akkyst had faced the War Horde, he had won, and he had been broken for it. The stone-wurm had taken his eye, his ear, and the Magelords'' home¡ªit had been a victory, but not one he thought fondly of. It had brought him his evolution, and had tried to kill him in the process. It would not be so this time. The dungeon had already gone below, their connection lingering with thoughts of another enormous beast drawn to move at the War Horde''s command; so this was up to him. Akkyst bellowed¡ªthrough the storms and the surge, the sound echoed like a warcry. Every Magelord answered, hands held aloft with mana sparking like lightning overtop; their grey-tipped tails lashed, whipping the stone. Their last home had been lost to them in fire and destruction; this one would stay theirs, no matter the army before them. It wasn''t only goblins. They poured through the entrance, hollering and brandishing spears, but those several heads taller marched alongside them. Still pale green but with cords of grey hair and angular faces, claws akin to daggers, clutching spears and clubs and weapons unfamiliar. Larger, more powerful¡ªan evolution. And others; filling in the ranks were beasts, slow and lumbering with crystalline growths over their backs and filling in the gaps between limbs. Not taller than him but close enough it was worrying, particularly with a weight that shook the stone as their feet plodded into the ground. And in the far back, slower than all the rest, a twisting, reeking mass of translucent blue-grey, hissing like acid. Stronger than any beast he''d seen in the War Horde''s collection. But they would all fall. Akkyst pushed off and ran¡ªthe entrance was not above on any of the islands, starting right in the underground where the Magelords lived, and he had to hardly move for three heartbeats before the first goblin reached him. One of the evolved variety, up to his shoulder instead of his chest, roaring with black eyes wide. He ducked under the swing of its club, runes flickering in the corners of his eye, and sprang for it. Its blow glanced off his back as he rammed his bulk into its chest, something cracking under his strength, blood splattered his fur. It reeled back, croaking, and he sank his fangs into the marrow of its neck; heard its spine crunch until its eyes faded. Harder to kill. But still not hard for one of his size. Akkyst raced on, thundering over the stone; the War Horde flooded into the land. The Magelords barked their own warcry, lightning sparking to their fingers¡ªit roared through the approaching ranks, leaping from head to head as Bylk guided the destruction to its peak. They had grown since their last fight, and this time, they were not alone. The bladehawk, screeching, rust-red feathers knifing through the clouds; mist-foxes bleeding in and out of sight; the stormcaller sprite summoning winds to whip like gnashed teeth; the storm eel snaking down with fangs bared. A home in harmony together. The War Horde didn''t care. They poured inside, jabbing spears into the flanks of their commanded beasts to incite them into a fury of fighting, unbothered by the corpses beginning to stack over the stone. Akkyst became a whirlwind around the base of the broken island, forcing all to fight him instead of advancing up to the next floor, uploading the dungeon''s safety. Though they were outnumbered, they would not lose. And then the War Horde stopped coming through. Akkyst paused for a second, flicking half a goblin''s ribcage off his paw as he angled his half-cut gaze to the hole. It yawned into the surrounding mountains, dark as a gullet, but the streaming wave of bodies ceased. No more. Still the ravaging horde present, but no more. This¨C wasn''t enough. It also wasn''t the time to think, as another squalling goblin came hurtling through the mist for him. He spun, letting the spearhead wedge itself into his fur¡ªrunes by the dozen floated off, telling him the type of wood and stone and bone and twine used to hold it all together¡ªand the goblin fell back, her wide ears flaring. He cleaved her in half with a single swipe of his claws. She toppled to the ground in a splatter of crimson. But then he looked again to the entrance, where no more goblins emerged. Nearly a hundred boiled through the dungeon, screeching and hollering and waving their spears, and the beast alongside them¡ªbut that wasn''t enough. It wasn''t the numbers he remembered from his time under them; even if every goblin that had attacked the Magelords had died, that still wasn''t enough to decimate their ranks to this number. Where were the rest of them? Distraction would be the death of him. So fixated was he on the empty hollow of an entrance that he missed the stone quaking beneath his paws until it erupted. Something burst from the rock, rubble scattered to the far reaches¡ªAkkyst bellowed as jagged claws dug into his underbelly, thrown back, weight thundering to the ground. He scrambled back, shaking free the dust. The beast before him was akin to nothing, taller with enormous forelimbs and a twisted insectoid build. It chittered and hissed at him, a coalescion of spines and claws and chitinous armour of a sandy amber-gold. Its eyes, bulbous and oddly hollow, set overtop a grasping pair of mandibles. Every rune floating off his fur was unfamiliar, an entirely new opponent to face¡ªbut he was familiar enough with fighting to know what to do. Its attack had been intended to destabilize him¡ªbut he was rather too large and the creature seemed startled by that, hesitating to press what it had thought would be its advantage. Akkyst moved instead. The stone trembled with the echo of footsteps as he raced, weaving around scattered spells from the Magelords and dust raining from overhead. It reared as he approached, bulbous eyes glinting, claws braced. Akkyst ducked under its swipe, fur cleaving with rippling runes. He ignored that to snap at its leg, at the spindly connection between armour and joint; it howled with this buzzing, arcing sound like struck metal as he tore its back leg clean off, greenish blood oozing through his teeth. It tasted foul. He spat it out. The beast wailed, skittering back with its myriad limbs and listing head. Its mandibles cracked on empty air, spines rustling as if in wind. Not a thing used to being hurt. But Akkyst had made a legend for himself for hurting the unhurtable. He lunged for it, pressing the advantage¡ªrunes for pain and fear floated around him, though the creature''s hollow eyes stayed unreadable. It clashed its claws together, ducking and bobbing as its weight no longer spread evenly. He slammed into its front, shoving past the bracing of its claws. It howled, swiping at his face¡ªit kept staring in his eye like it wanted something to happen, like he should be weakening, but he pushed on unhindered, and it didn''t seem to know what to do with that. If unleashed, it would cleave through the Magelords in a massacre. So he wouldn''t allow that to happen. Akkyst crashed his bulk into its side with the leg, buckling under the weight; it collapsed, thrashing, and he carved his claws into the joint of its other leg. The limb bent and twisted, not severed but crippled, and it spasmed on the ground, still wailing with its chittering voice. Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. He bent and crushed its head between his teeth. Mana flooded through him like a tidal wave. But there was no rest for those in battle, not when the Magelords were the ones at risk¡ªAkkyst straightened, shaking out lingering pains until he could ignore them. In the absence, another goblin sprang at him, howling frustration; he slammed it to the ground in an explosion of viscera, head twisting under his claws. The war thrummed through him, every thought focused on the next body ahead, on the next fight brewing in the wake. He was one of thinking but this was where his body was meant for, for protection, for defense¨C "Akkyst!" Bylk, his hands raised imperiously over a cluster of the crystalline beasts¡ªbut one knobbly finger jabbed towards a figure in the back, with a staff raised above his head. No different than the others, beyond a collection of stone armour bolted over shoulders, but the staff was out of place, tall and jagged. Familiar. The staff of the leader. Akkyst ran. He thundered over the stone, islands high overhead shaking as he neared their bases. The mist clung to his fur, spinning off in silver runes and intricacies, but he only had eyes for the target; for the one commanding the others. It wasn''t an evolved goblin, merely one of the ones that barely came up to his chest, the ones he had been so scared of long ago. The goblin''s black eyes widened as he approached, swinging the staff in his direction. But Akkyst ducked under the weak swing and slammed his face into the goblin''s chest. He flew backwards like hit by an avalanche, sprawling over the ground in a tangle of limbs. Akkyst thundered forward and reared back, planting one paw over the goblin''s torso, bones creaking beneath. He thrashed, scrabbling at his thick fur, and¨C And talked. "This ain''t all," he snarled, clawing heedlessly. "Don''t matter¡ªthere''s more¡ªyou''re gonna die¨C" Akkyst paused. He decreased the pressure, feeling the goblin''s rib shake and flex under his weight. "What?" Confusion flashed through his black eyes at hearing his own tongue, but the leader ignored it in favour of hissing. "There''s more. You think¨C" he coughed, phlegm stained black through yellowed teeth "¨Cthis''s all we got? It ain''t. We got more. We''re jus'' waitin''." Victory, gleaming through his gaze. "We''re already below." A moment of confusion¡ªAkkyst stared at him, runes swirling in his periphery. The goblin ratcheted back as if to claw at his remaining eye. Akkyst ripped his head off. It was disgusting. He spat it out. He clambered off the corpse, shaking blood from his fur¡ªthe War Horde hardly seemed to notice their lack of leader, still pressing onward, but their numbers were a fraction of what had been. Everywhere he looked, Magelords were tearing through their ranks, lightning called like air in this mana-rich land. The crystalline beasts quailed underneath it, impervious to physical attacks but not to mana, shredding through their earthen armour until it splintered like shards of glass around their feet, baring pale flesh and blank eyes. Even the viscous creature in the far back shook and shuddered under their attacks, piercing its insubstantial flesh like the bladehawk''s feathers. Akkyst left those to the Magelords and continued carving through the goblins, evolved and not, unstoppable as an avalanche. Cuts scored themselves over his flanks and back but it meant nothing, not when all he needed was one attack to end their lives; to glut his fill on their mana and continue marching. He was not the beast that they had taken; he was not weak anymore. A lifetime ago, he had killed a stone-wurm; these goblins were not a threat. The din of battle started to quiet; still warcries and bellows, but less, silence stretching through the mist. Akkyst gnawed another evolved goblin''s head off, crunching its spine between his fangs, and spun¡ªand saw one more goblin, small and diminutive, a spear aimed to his chest with trembling claws. Her face, pale. Eyes wide. Memories. Runes flooded off his fur, quicksilver understanding; they rippled off the water like quartz-lights. He remembered her. She had been one of his keepers, back in the War Horde, when his existence had shrunk to a single cage filled with dozens of other creatures all crammed together in a space too small for them and starving. She had battered at the bars, laughing, dragging them out when they were needed for patrols and uncaring whether she brought them back. He remembered her. Akkyst pulled back his claws and crashed his paw into the side of her head. Gently, almost. She still crumpled, spear flying from her grasp with a croak of dismay. She crashed to the ground in a tangle of limbs, gibbering, clawed hands pressing over her face and ears flattening to her skull. Far from the nightmare she had been. It wasn''t pity, because Akkyst remembered her spear through his flanks, the way he was kicked to the front lines to die as needed so the War Horde could expand their ever-growing territory, he could remember the terror he felt as his fellow beasts were made into corpses for a war none of them wanted¡ªbut looking at her now, he could not feel that same rage. That same all-consuming mindlessness that had pushed him to his hind legs and bared his fangs. It wasn''t pity. But it was, perhaps, understanding. He had been small and she had been terrifying¡ªnow he was large and she was terrified. A reversal of what had been. The runes, floating off his fur to drift over her huddled form. The constellation of answers he didn''t yet know how to read. Then, as Akkyst pulled himself out of reverie and stared at his home, he found the battle concluded. Goblin corpses stacked to brush at the clouds overhead, blood spilling like river deltas over the stone. The crystalline shards from the beasts'' armour scattered underfoot, the liquid from the sluggish beast hissing as it corroded through the ground. Already the Magelords began to pull their fallen brethren out of the piles for mourning rituals, but their number was significantly unreduced, while none of the War Horde were left standing. It had been a fight, yes, but to call it comparable to the previous battle was a lie. They had grown much; they were not so easily defeated. Akkyst shifted his gaze down until he looked at the goblin between his braced paws. She stayed curled up, unmoving, but he could hear her breathing in sharp pants through her teeth. He remembered, vaguely, her calling him a coward. Footsteps¡ªhe lifted his head to see Bylk walking over, eyes half-lidded and arms swaying. Then he caught sight of the last survivor, and he sneered. His tail, grey-tipped, lashed at the ground; though his limp was pronounced and all the myriad jewels strung through his ears were dull, there was an anger in his expression that exhaustion couldn''t quench. There was no love in him for the War Horde, not after what they had done. "Last straggler, eh?" He said, a remaining spark of mana crawling up his hands. "You want the honours?" Akkyst shifted, cuts stretching over his legs as he adjusted their position. "Not yet." Bylk''s sneer deepened. "They ain''t the type for mercy," he said grimly. "You can offer it to ''em all you want, but they''ll never give it back. No reason to spare one." Akkyst shook his head, ruined ear twitching. She still curled beneath his weight, all limbs tucked in; no tail, no magic. Pale green skin instead of black striped blue. "Not mercy," he said. "Questions." Bylk tilted his head to the side, eyes sharpening. "What kinda questions?" Akkyst splayed his feet, centering his mass so that she had more room to breathe; she twitched, one long, shuddering movement over her curled limbs, but didn''t attempt to stand. Not the most intelligent, he knew, at least after his alliance, but she had come running into a dungeon shouting about Growth, the same name as the Magelords. A monster on their side, one smaller than the stone-wurm but no less destructive, an army the same size as before; he didn''t understand why. This ain''t all, the War Horde''s leader had snarled. There''s more. We''re already below. "This wasn''t their full attack," Akkyst said, voice gravelly. Bylk blinked. He glanced back at the dungeon, at the myriad stacks of corpses and all the gore left after the battle. But the number there was similar to what they brought against the Magelords back when it was a massacre waiting to happen. Not when they were threatening an unknown disaster and calling it the Growth. "Ah, hells, you''re right, ain''tcha?" He finally said, weary. "Rock and rubble, I wanted it to be. Wanted to know we were finally stronger than those bastards. But this ain''t their proper strength." "No," Akkyst agreed, gaze drifting back to the goblin. He wished it had been the leader kept alive, one more likely to know, but he would take what he could. "And I''m going to figure out what happened." Chapter 179 - Half Full My sea serpent, lovely, wonderful, untamed, unstoppable, held the beast in place as Seros ripped its head off. Blood choked out the water as it thrashed once, twice¡ªthen went still, caged in a drowning grasp. Its many spines flicked and twisted, pure white eyes going hollow. Dead. Panic shot through me, roared through my first Otherworld connection. I slammed all my awareness into the sea serpent''s mind. Squeeze, I pleaded, shoving thoughts of gullets and stomachs and burning through to him. Squeeze, compress, force, break, push¨C He hissed, bubbles snaking through his fangs, but rewrapped himself around the beast''s corpse¡ªstill it smoked and burned, but Seros sprang in with hydrokinesis spiraling, carrying away the boiling water as fast as he could. My sea serpent coiled, chitin cracking and snapping like underwater volcano, its headless neck flopping¨C And something purple-white, through the flesh. Seros lunged, wrapping his fangs so gently around the exposed limb. Currents looped around like cradling wings as he pulled a limp body from the ragged hole where a head had been, Rihsu. She was a twisting, macabre mess of scales bleached white with heat and trembling muscles. Her heart still beat, mana sluggishly trickling through her channels¡ªalive, but barely. Seros shifted his grip to wrap his claws around her torso, barely putting pressure on patches of pale skin where the scales had melted away. Her eyes stayed shut, no movement. Unconscious. A lifetime ago, she had thrown herself forward at the merrow Priestess for little more than the desire to fight by Seros'' side¡ªand it had worked, against one at that strength. But her targets were no longer surmountable. She cracked one plate of its armour before it had swallowed her, and she had barely survived. She might still die. I had no mana. All had been spent patching the two holes slammed into my dungeon, keeping my influence from spilling out in the mountains to wisp and diffuse away; I barely had enough to maintain my current points of awareness. I needed to consume corpses before I could heal her. Keep her stable, I murmured to Seros, pushing images of warm water and keeping her away from sand. He didn''t waste time nodding and just swam up, wrapping his tail around a reef outcropping to support a hovering depth midway through the water. The burn from his golden eyes scared away all those who thought to chase the scarlet bloom of blood through the water. My sea serpent sagged back, uncoiling from the corpse¡ªthey both fell, drifting to the sandy floor beneath. The beast''s spines had punctured through his scales, scorched them white with raw flesh underneath, but he was more stable than Rihsu. Strong enough to survive. Still missing an eye, still injured, but strong. He''d pinned it for long enough for Seros to apply the finishing blow. He needed healing, too. Which meant I needed mana. I gathered my few points of awareness, reshaped them into teeth, and dug into the corpse. Motes of mana poured through me as I devoured chitinous armour and fish-pale flesh underneath, the fiery spines cracking like ivory as I gnawed into its core. The water heaved around its colossal size, splitting and boiling and thrashing, its faux wings snapping as their spines disintegrated. I was filled with images of tundras awash with sleet and hail, dunes of snow piling up to swallow horizons, the flicker of orange-red as the only difference for leagues upon leagues¨C
Remorhaz (Exotic) A monster from distant lands. It devours all those it can fit within its mouth whole, using their mana to power magma-hot spines over its back to protect from the cold. It is fast enough with its many limbs to evade all those who wish to harm it, even if they even see it at all.
My first thought¡ªelation. My ninth floor needed a beast, needed a monster akin to the ice-drakes of polar worlds, and this would live in my dungeon and be a lethal promise to all who entered. My second thought¡ªwhy was this in the Al¨®mbra Mountains? Not now. I had more important things. I gathered the mana from its corpse and flew back to Seros, wrapped around the reef. He perked up as my presence approached, suspending Rihsu in a curl of controlled currents. I poured mana into her. She flinched, still unconscious, as healing swept through like a flood. Bleached scales popped off, snapping and cracking, as maroon-indigo scales grew to replace. Her tail flicked, the fins over the side rebuilding out in sluggish unity, her bone-white claws lengthening back to where they had been melted off. And then, right as I was about to test all of her muscles, my mana stopped working and started getting taken. I pulled back, bristling in an intangible grimace. I couldn''t heal her completely. Much like I couldn''t give Svythe her arm back nor regrow Akkyst''s eye and ear, my healing abilities were limited by how much mana I could push into my creatures until they started absorbing it instead of being changed. And while Rihsu wasn''t down any limbs, she was just so dreadfully injured, to have been swallowed by a fire-beast and nearly consumed by it; the journey to health would be long and perilous. I had done all I could. Seros shifted, pulling currents up so that Rihsu floated over him; he rose carefully, arranging her on his back so that she was nestled between his spines, as stable as he could manage. She listed back, eyes still closed. Gone to the world, even as her dragon-lord nosed his muzzle on her limp tail, careful as she was a hatchling. Then Seros crooned, a soft, thankful sound, to the sea serpent. For saving Rihsu. It had been teamwork, mostly. Rather more the sea serpent doing something and Seros frantically moving to assist, but still something. The first since he had lost an eye and scared himself past the point of action. I had assigned Seros to teach him, but it had been the sea serpent who had made the plunge to work together. It seemed he had more to learn himself. The sea serpent hissed, haggard. I pushed my remaining mana into him, filling in the punctures by the remorhaz''s spines; deep blue scales regrew where they had been missing, restitching a tattered frill by his face, soothing an ancient injury. He warbled something appreciative, thoughts deep and brooding. I had hoped this would be enough for him to evolve, but there wasn''t the light overtaking him¡ªnor Rihsu or Seros, actually, though all of them should have been close enough to it. What kept them from that new peak? Little matter. I couldn''t afford to wait down here and lavish apologies for what had happened¡ªthe remorhaz, devastating as it was, wasn''t the only threat. Hold, hold, hold, I said to them both, quiet, pushing praise as best I could¡ªthen I gathered all my points of awareness, what scant remained, and flew up. I burrowed through limestone, through the edges of my control, until I burst into a storm-wrought floor. The Skylands, where the War Horde had burst through, where the goblins had threatened me and the Growth they shouted for. All the myriad threats and deaths and creatures they''d brought to bare against me¨C Which were. Hm. Gone. I was quite positive there had been a fighting force akin to an army here. But what was left were corpses, stacked high and smoldering. Through the choking mist, dozens and dozens of goblins laid strewn about the ground, lightning lingering over pale green flesh or riddled with the bites of mist-foxes and my storm eel. Magelords as well, their grey-tufted tails limp and eyes glassy, but inconsequential in number compared to the War Horde. Their bulkier evolutions as well, and the crystalline beasts and insectoid hulks and popped slime. I had, ah. Thought they would be more of a problem? This didn''t feel right. My cloud of awareness floated down, drifting over the shattered remains of the broken island from Alda and the cluster of dens carved into the basestone. Blood spilled scarlet over the cragged rock, slicking up the grey until even Khasvar''s energy couldn''t chase away the smell, iron and rich through the air. Already Magelords began the tireless process of unearthing their dead and dying, either to bandage or burn. Akkyst, at the very front of the room, stood on all fours with Bylk at his side. Cuts carved through his fur, scarlet sluicing over silver, but his eye was bright and focused. He rumbled quietly to the leader of the Magelords, gaze drifting between the hole punched in my far wall and something between his paws. I flew it, glancing. If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it. At the fucking goblin there. Still alive, a miserable wretch curled up with long ears folded in and all limbs retracted. Breathing, living, hardly a bruise over its pale skin. Not attacking, to be clear, but that likely had something to do with the enormous bear crouched over it, and something else to do with why said bear wasn''t killing it. All my points of awareness swarmed overhead, girdling the room as if any other threats were going to emerge. I dissolved a War Horde goblin or two, just enough to replenish my fill, and pressed mana into him; stitched his skin back together, rethreaded his fur. He rumbled, lifting his head to stare at my amorphous presence. Thank you for protecting me, I said, and did not hold back on rippling feelings of gratitude. And bewilderment. Why do you have a goblin. "Questioning," Akkyst said, in his deepest timbre as if to scare the goblin. In my fine opinion, she seemed plenty terrified, but I respected the effort. What questions? I asked. They followed you. War Horde attacked Magelords¡ªMagelords escaped¡ªWar Horde found them again. It all seemed to line up to me, beyond the marvelous fucking infuriation that they''d apparently found my lower floors instead of my actual entrance. Pricks. Akkyst shook his massive head, stone trembling under his bulk. "This was not a full attack," he rumbled, singular eye narrowed. Runes flickered off his fur like a spiraling of thoughts. I stared at him. What? "Not enough," Akkyst repeated. He pawed once at the ground, rivuts bored into rock. "Not their full strength." Bylk sighed, snaggleteeth revealed in a grimace. "They''re stronger than this," he said grimly. "Don''t want ''em to be, but they are. This ain''t the army ya bring against the Growth." There was that word again, spoken with a strange formality to it. I peered closer at Bylk, like any War Horde sympathies would come flickering up¡ªbut no, he''d called me that originally, hadn''t he? Back when I''d first welcomed them to my dungeon after Akkyst guided them here, when they''d come for sanctuary; they''d come because they knew I was the Growth. Or a Growth, perhaps. With a little less finesse than I wanted, I pushed into his mind, humming on the edges so he could hear me. Why called Growth? Bylk frowned. The jewels in his ears swung as he tilted his head to the side, a curious confusion spreading over his face. Beside him, runes drifted off Akkyst''s fur, dim in the mist-choked air. "Dunno," he said, stilted. "Always has been. Can''t remember why." Well, that was a good sign. I switched back to Akkyst''s mind, where at least I was properly eloquent. What kind of questions? I repeated. "Where the rest went," he said. "Their leader said they were below." Like fucking hells were they below¡ªif they were already popping into my fifth and sixth floor, what did they count as below? Was I going to feel a tunneling sensation and mere seconds before one of them emerged into my core room and enslaved me before I''d had a moment to react? Question her now, I demanded, then pulled back. It was his idea, his insight that had led to her capture at all¡ªI should be thanking him instead. Because at least for Akkyst, I trusted him to do better with a prisoner than Veresai. Kriya still hadn''t woken up yet. After recovery, I corrected myself. Akkyst nodded, stepping back; though Bylk was no doubt low on mana, he summoned enough to raise sections of stone in a makeshift cage around the goblin, though she made no effort to move even with her captor out of the way. A perfect little coward. He''d chosen well for his target. Then he padded off to the rest of the Magelords, helping pull their dead out of the piles and gathering supplies from the corpses¡ªI''d leave them to take their finest pickings before dissolving the rest for mana. Well. With a few exceptions. Because stacked around were new creatures, and those I would be taking first. Out of more interest, I found one of the evolved goblins and devoured it. From its corpse came the impression of strength and vigour, powerful arms and an unwillingness to back down, the name hobgoblin¡ªbut no schema. It seemed the evolved form of sapient creatures were still sapient. Not that I particularly wanted those brutes when I had mage goblins instead. But the other three, oh those were beasts. The first was the slime in the far back, seemingly popped by a bolt of lightning; that didn''t bode well for its tenacity, but given the myriad bones dissolving away in viscous blue-grey, it was still dangerous. I nibbled around its outer edges, teething through a form of flesh so alien it was acidic, eating back at whatever passed through the thick membrane that bound it together. Fascinating.
Stone-Slime (Uncommon) Moving through underground tunnels, it welcomes all within its core, where they are quickly made a part of it. Though it is not fast, it never tires.
Well, that was certainly something. I had absolutely no idea where to put it, nor what it was particularly supposed to do. At least the Otherworld slime schema from what felt like centuries ago had disguised itself as a water pool¡ªthis just¡­ slithered around my floor until something walked into it? Was that it? I''d find a use for it. The next one, at least, was more intriguing; the crystalline beasts, quadrupedal and hunkered beneath the weight of their own armour. There were perhaps four scattered throughout the Skylands, clustered in one group of three and a loner in the back. I ate that one, gnawing through the pale eyes and geological carapace.
Bullwark (Rare) Often used as war-beasts, this creature lumbers onto the battlefield with an armour ni-impenetrable by physical weapons. It eats minerals and stones to grow its ever-protecting back, both for itself and for those it shields behind.
Considering how much that had felt like a war, these would see their use. It seemed the War Horde hadn''t properly prepared for them, urging them forward with spears to flanks instead of hunkering behind; but I could see how my sapient creatures could use them as proper defenses or raising them as tamed prey, perhaps. Something to propagate. Or armour. Could their crystalline growths be used by my kobolds for armour? Something to harvest and repurpose? An interesting thought. I''d suggest it to Nicau later. And there was one more creature, one crippled by Akkyst''s mighty paws; a towering beast of amber-gold chitin, insectoid in build and with claws that extended nearly the length of its massive arms. It was missing a leg, snapped off at a more fragile joint, but the power extruded from its corpse even now. I ate it gleefully.
Stagclaw Brute (Rare) A rampaging savage, it burrows through stone to tear at its prey with vicious claws. Striking from beneath, it either cuts them to pieces or opens a sinkhole; either way, none escape.
Hells did I want this one. Already I could taste the potential; perhaps in the Scorchplains, where its size would be invisible and claws unstoppable. There was something about how deadly I knew it could be when it wasn''t forced into a frontal charge; it was taller than Akkyst, though weighing less, and its schema spoke of vicious nature but with a mind capable of more than merely brute force, despite the name. The mana it would win me would far outweigh the cost. And then I paused, looking back at my core. I poked through the new creatures I''d gotten, down to the first¡ªthe remorhaz, all the glacial fury it wrought and promised. At the size. At the density. That¡­ could be a problem. I poked around the schema, coalescing in motes of silver-blue light. There was no true concept of space in my core, not in marbled red-black stone and rings of golden runes, but either way, the remorhaz''s schema felt¡­ large. It sprawled through my awareness, insectoid limbs and caged heart-fire. I could prod around and discover more about it, that it preferred deep tundras where its spines kept it warm, where it hunted through raging blizzards as an opportunist hunter, or burrowed through stone and snow alike to burst from below. A nightmare it was, perfect for my ninth floor. My nervousness flickered. Though I was nearly empty and this was a horrible place to try it, I gathered what mana I had and started to create one, to weave it together just to test how much it would take¡ªand flinched. Every single drop of mana I had flew out of my core and barely shaped the rough outline of the remorhaz''s bottom half, tingling away in the air with nothing to show for it. I pulled back my mana, dissolving the shape and stuffing it back into my core. Fucking hells, my stores could hold seventy-five points at full capacity, but I had a terrible suspicion the remorhaz was more than that. Which meant. Which meant I had a perfectly good, perfectly useful, schema in my core, and I didn''t know if I could even make the damn thing. I''d thought I should only ever choose regeneration when I evolved, so as to make more Named, but this was a very critical reminder that that was not all. Fuck. With an intangible sigh, I let my mana diffuse throughout my floor again, healing latent injuries in Magelords or sending more points to the sea serpent below. A victory won, and a lesson learned¡ªon more than just mana. To see the sea serpent rise above his fear, only to not evolve; for the Magelords to crush a threat I thought was above them; to gather new creatures to use in the coming floors. But still something felt off. I''d survived the attack, yes, and I rejoiced at that¡ªbut watching the goblin in the stone cage, or remembering Akkyst''s quiet certainty that this wasn''t all¡­ something lurched in my core at the thought. This wasn''t over. Chapter 180 - Golden Eyes I pondered Akkyst''s words as I moved. The new schemas burned in my core, enormous as they were. I was still far too empty of mana to try and create them, but a wriggling little thought in my mind told me I couldn''t afford to make the remorhaz. It was just too large, too complex, too evolved¡ªmy maximum pool of mana wasn''t enough to make it. And that wasn''t all I needed mana for, damningly. I swept through the Skylands, eating at the corpses remaining as soon as the Magelords finished gathering supplies and armour. Hopefully they would take those to better improve themselves, but I needed the mana, and I needed it now¡ªmy temporary fix wouldn''t last forever. A final hobgoblin corpse and then I flew to the back, intangible wings spreading wide; and I slammed ten points of mana directly into the hole. Limestone bloomed like an avalanche, woven through with granite and iron veins for stability. I couldn''t build it all the way back into the mountain, considering that was far beyond my control, but I could close the opening. Enough to at least stop those unknowing from walking right into my fucking floors again. I ate through more of the scattered corpses, gnawing at their bones until they splintered apart into motes of silver light. I burrowed through my various floors until I emerged back into the desolation of the Hungering Reefs, the other entrance that had been blasted into what had previously been security, and wove another stopper there. The stone creaked and moaned as it forced itself into existence. Then I settled back, a mere two points of mana left after all that destruction. It had been a success, but it didn''t feel like that. I was not a fan of Akkyst telling me this wasn''t the full force of the War Horde. It made damning sense, considering Akkyst had been able to defeat their original stone-wurm when he was still an unevolved lunar cave bear, but the remorhaz seemed so much more powerful, the horde filled with ranks of those stronger. It should have been all. But it wasn''t. And I hated that. The singular good thing was that the raid had been long enough that Nicau and his posse had finally made it down to the Hungering Reefs. Gods, had that whole debacle with Veresai truly been less than a day ago? It felt like years, after the attack. Time was moving the same way, but there was so much more happening in it than it seemed to crawl on. I couldn''t believe my start, where I had peacefully waited for my Otherworld mana to refill before creating a single mushroom. There were pros and cons to my new strength. I guided them a little faster through the tunnels, mana slithering alongside. Too many things had happened for them to dawdle. Emerging into the first room, Nicau blinked. His mouth fell open as he beheld the Hungering Reefs. I had already dissolved the remorhaz''s corpse, but its destruction was plain to see. The lagoon was lopsided where its enormous bulk had dug into the surf, sand bandied about from thrashing claws. The waters bloomed scarlet where its blood diffused through the currents, swept wide by the armoured jawfish''s lashing tail or the sea serpent''s return to his shipwreck. Seros was still here, moving slowly so as to not disturb Rihsu on his back. He was traveling to my core, the densest area of mana in my entire dungeon¡ªthere she had the best chance of healing. He was frightfully scared even now, anxiety thrumming through our shared connection. He truly cared about her. She would survive. I refused to believe otherwise. Nicau padded cautiously out of the tunnel, fists half-clenched like they would do anything. Chieftess moved alongside him, tail flicking and head tilted. Kriya bobbed in her arms. She was still unconscious, the strain of Veresai breaking her geas rippling over his fragile mind. I hoped she would wake soon, so Nicau could talk to her, and either convince her to my side or put her out of her misery. Neither were particularly wonderful options, but I would prefer the first over the second. A healer would never go amiss in my dungeon. Judging by how Nicau had reacted when he saw her, she would be treated much kinder in the kobold''s den than Veresai''s tyranny. I still bared intangible teeth when I thought of how bad that had gotten¡ªslavery was the one evil I would not allow, not when it was all I fought against. And, well. Perhaps, if Kriya was amenable to joining me, she could help heal my creatures. Bring Rihsu back from the brink, regrow the sea serpent''s eye. Do the things I couldn''t when they absorbed my mana instead of healing from it. Later. I needed to finish my preparations first. Go, I soothed, tugging on my Otherworld connection with Nicau. It is safe. Return to the den. He nodded, adjusting the cut of his coat with a warble to the kobolds. Chieftess widened her stance and slipped into the water, trusting the twin circling kobolds to beat away interlopers, and started to swim out to their home. Nicau morosely joined her, clothes hanging waterlogged off his body. He had no chance of ever getting close to a sea-drake, even if he had all the requisite scales. That was something he really needed to work on. The armoured jawfish snapped at them once, his tidewalker sprite swirling beneath his fins, but he knew well enough that Nicau was not on the menu. He swam deeper into the second room, moray sharks skulking out of his path and a prismatic dartfish shoal billowing away in a rippling wave of green-yellow. Pissed he hadn''t gotten to participate in the battle, though with how even the sea serpent hadn''t evolved, I doubted he would. That was odd, worryingly so. I didn''t like not knowing why things didn''t happen. But I couldn''t do anything about it now. Nicau dragged himself out of the waves, spitting a mouthful of water over the sand as he shook out his arms. Chieftess emerged flawlessly, as per normal, never once having even allowed Kriya''s head to dip below the surface. She wasn''t as attuned to the water as Rihsu, but she was a damn powerful swimmer, all her training in the lagoon paying off. The other kobolds swarmed, chittering and warbling happily. They hadn''t gotten involved in the fight, being mostly morsel-sized against the remorhaz, but they''d all felt the ripples. A battle of that scale echoed through my halls. Or a battle of that supposed scale, since it was apparently not that strong. I hated goblins. Chieftess hissed something brightly, shifting Kriya''s position in her arms. She padded into the den, Nicau following at her tail. I drifted back into his mind, plucking through his memories of the Myvnu Jungle. He had been more confident this time, both with others at his side and a greater grasp on his blessing, but the real interest was how Chieftess had reacted. She had devoured the world outside, all its myriad differences and manners of living. Though I didn''t have a connection to her mind yet, I could see how much seeing the city of Calarata had changed her. Already she was looking around their den with sharp golden eyes, noting primitive methods and lesser avenues. She was going to change this place into something worthy of the crown of kobolds. Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators! But not quite yet. I had something to offer her first. Take Kriya, I murmured to Nicau, guiding him around. Settle her. Then prepare Chieftess. He blinked. A strange excitement thrummed through him as he sensed my intention, eyes widening. "Really? You''re going to?" I am, I said. She deserves it. She really did. One of my earliest creatures, back when I had shouted and raged against the unfairness of my death, when I wondered if kobolds would ever worship me as a sea-drake¡ªbut that wasn''t my life anymore, and instead I had her. And she had led her tribe to heights, and then to heights beyond. She would do wonders with a Name. Nicau carefully took Kriya from Chieftess¡ªnearly buckling under the weight, I thought he was supposed to be getting stronger¡ªand headed to the back of the den, to a carved-out room they had been using for kobolds to sleep in before Abarossa''s boon took away that need. He set her down and she twitched once, her hood unfurling from around her neck, but didn''t wake¡ªa healing sleep, rather than a restful one. She still needed to recover. Which was good, because I imagined Nicau would have other things on his mind that alliances for a moment. My mana snaked through the den, tugging at the crimson scales of their leader. Chieftess raised her head, a curious warble in the back of her throat. She knew something was happening, but not what. Hello, I whispered to her, flexing the gap between us that would soon be closed. Would you accept a Name? Chieftess went very still. Her eyes, bright like golden flames, lit up as she tilted her head back, staring at the ceiling like she would find my core there. A raw want burned through her thoughts, the idea of rising above to heights she had only ever seen in Nicau. A promise to be more. To be Chieftess. ¡­this was the second Name I wasn''t choosing for myself. Nicau I could understand, and he was just a baseline human that I hadn''t had much hopes for when I''d chosen him, but Chieftess was made of my mana and my creation. She deserved a powerful name. But I supposed Chieftess would do. Actually, I hadn''t named Akkyst or Rihsu, either. How many of my creatures were meandering around to find their own names? Terribly rude. Focus on the present. She glanced back at Nicau, emerging from the side room. He was smiling, a facial expression the kobolds had only picked up on recently, his thoughts full of brimming enthusiasm for her. The right choice. Chieftess turned to the ceiling, which wasn''t where I was but the thought was appreciated. She hissed a ringing agreement. My sixth Named. My chosen. I poured into her mind, wrapping my soul around hers until the differences blurred away. I felt stone under my claws, flecks of blood caught in jagged teeth, the heat of a latent fire in my chest and the warmth of quartz-light on my scales¡ªshe felt the press of limestone walls and the hunger of thousands of creatures, the golden runes of my existence, the untapped potential of gods so high above our mortal world¨C Chieftess.
Kobold Chief Chieftess A group of scavengers no longer¡ªa leader rises to claim dominion over its brethren, leading them to greater peaks than ever before. With a vastly improved intelligence and sense of self, this chief commands its fellow kobolds to rise above.
Blessing of the Creator: all things witnessed are made manifest.
Chieftess exploded in light, tinged fire-red and gold; every other kobold barked and jolted and sprang back, but Nicau just watched her, grinning ear to ear. He understood what that meant. We both did. And gods, her blessing¡ªit fit with who she was. My beast-tamer kobold had used other creatures, Rihsu had used her claws, but it was Chieftess who had developed tools, traps, dens. And it was her that had gone to Calarata and devoured all knowledge there, filling herself with dreams and ideals for her tribe. It was her that would create. I couldn''t wait to see what her Name did. Just as soon as she woke up. I still wasn''t entirely clear on how the Naming process worked; it seemed like a proto-evolution, considering they slept it off for a few days and came back changed. Akkyst had grown, Seros had become more aquatic, Nicau¡ªwell, nothing happened for him, really¡ªand Veresai had brimmed with new psionic potential. Even Svythe, whom I thought would have taken to her new hunger with the ferocity she always did, took a length of time before awakening. Even now, she prowled over her main island, having not gotten close enough to the remorhaz to act. Actually. She was moving quite a lot. I swept a few points of awareness towards her. Svythe was perched beneath her Ancestral Tree, bristling. After her Name, she was taller but more hunched, a jagged collection of bark and limbs and claws. Even less like a humanoid dryad, and more like a beast, her legs protruding backwards and the beginnings of a tail lashing behind her. Her crown of thorns lifted high above the sand, pure white eyes gleaming. Fully Named, fully connected. Otherworld mana pulsed in her channels. Her blessing of the hunter¡ªall gateways are opened. She tilted her head to the side, baring thorned fangs. The hunger I knew her for surged within, a thrashing pit of void that could never be filled, even with the blood dripping over her muzzle. And a new thought, one I hadn''t encountered before and neither had she. Something curious. Svythe pressed her clawed hand to the base of her Ancestral Tree. And it opened. The bark shifted like a living thing, unpeeling in crimson strips and bared softwood as mana pulsed from it like a heart. Svythe''s feline ears perked, crown of thorns shifting; she stepped forward, claws sinking into the sand, and pushed. The vampiric mangrove seemed to absorb her, tugging at her remaining arm until she was in up to the shoulder. Then her torso, her legs, her head; within a moment, Svythe was gone, disappeared from my halls. Eaten by her own protector. I could still feel her though, lingering within the tree. Healing, maybe? I hoped it would give her back her arm, perhaps, if she could remake herself as necessary within the bark. But oh, was that an interesting form of her ability. Perhaps she could plant others of her Ancestral Tree, grow a forest she could disappear into at will. A way to protect her form while wrecking devastation on all those who challenged. Fascinating. I turned back to the kobolds, who were all chittering over Chieftess'' glowing forms and mostly making fools of themselves, warbling dreams of that happening to them. They had a long way to go to prove themselves before it did. I pushed into Nicau''s mind, murmuring reassurances. Keep watch over her and Kriya, I instructed. Guard them. He nodded, though his thoughts said he was already planning on doing so. He had come truly so far from the whining brat that had begged for his life. Before I could get too sentimental, I shoved a brief flicker of pride into his mind and then fled out of the kobold''s den before he could respond. The goblin''s attack had weakened me, but not to the point of devastation. Just enough to remind me there were more threats than Calarata, and that I needed to be more prepared. Akkyst had said they were below, whatever that meant. And I didn''t want them getting anywhere before I did. So for now, I gathered what bare scraps of mana I had¡ªnothing, genuinely nothing¡ªand darted down to the core. I would leave points of awareness throughout my floors, watching over should anything rear its miserable head, keeping my halls safe. I was waiting for Akkyst to interrogate that blasted miserable goblin he''d captured, for Chieftess to awaken, for the next batch of adventurers. But I had new schemas for my Heartwood, and a brimming unease that drove me to think of the next, though I only had a handful of creatures to fill it. Something told me I needed to be faster. Something told me I needed to start my ninth floor. Chapter 181 - Threats of the End Ealdhere was starting to become uncomfortably used to threats. Abhal¨®n was more feathered about it, disguised beneath kinder words and layered entendre, where one would come to their own conclusions about the befoulments they would soon be drowning in. More entertaining, almost, as he got to piece together what exactly would be done to his reputation or what trade deal would fall through. The Darlingtons were no strangers to threats, against their house or its members, and Ealdhere had grown familiar with the doublespeak there. Not in Calarata. Here, Lluc promised to rip out his entrails through a rat-hole in his stomach, and Ealdhere just had to listen to that. If he wasn''t terrified, he''d bemoan the lack of creativity. "Silvers only," Lluc repeated, as though he hadn''t just beamed that damnable fact into Ealdhere''s skull for the past twenty minutes. "If you allow a single Gold into my dungeon, you will wish you had died there." Ealdhere nodded again. Sometimes he already did. "I will only be gone for a week." Lluc adjusted his wolf-brim hat, the sweep of his elegant robes¡ªmore polished than his preferred appearance, though worried and wearied with grime from general existence. "Take more corpses than normal. Give out nothing. Obey the Dread Crew." The Guild had been open for long enough to cement itself into Calarata like a parasite, and Lluc had been there every day since its inception. But it didn''t sound like an excursion, not with how Lluc''s face was split in a snarl, tension ground between his brows. It sounded like a mission, almost. Something to pull him away for a week that he would rather wish he didn''t have to do. But what would summon the Guildmaster away from his position? "I don''t like it," Lluc muttered, as though Ealdhere was a particularly uninteresting wall he didn''t care about hearing his secrets. "Varc¨ªs out, the Silent Market struggling¡ªthere''s too much happening." Ealdhere, very deliberately, showed no reaction. He could pretend to be a plant so Lluc didn''t follow through on his threat of evisceration. It was curious, though. Varc¨ªs Bilaro, the famed Dread Pirate, ever a shadowy figure that had been only a rumour before he came to Calarata and then was the ground upon which the city was built. But as much as he was entwined with Calarata, he was rarely seen, even at his Adventuring Guild. And for Lluc Cardena Ferr¨¦, his First Mate, to say he was out¡ªwell. There was something to be noted about that information, if Ealdhere wasn''t anything other than someone trapped in a Guild with no promise of escape. No promise of freedom, despite what had led him here. Now he was just an exotic face in this land, drawing sketches and analyzing corpses at the behest of those that held his chains. Once upon a time, he lived in a palace with servants at his beck and call. He wasn''t the first heir¡ªnor even the top three¡ªto the Darlington Family, that he knew. Ealdhere had always taken some solipsistic pride in that, in how he wasn''t as vain as his older cousins; it was him that adventured across Abhal¨®n, delving into the tamed dungeons and eventually spreading his wings to the wider world. He had enjoyed that freedom. How long had he been in Calarata? The first few moon cycles were understandable. His dalliances had lasted months before, including a memorable stint in distant Nesre?a in the wake of their calamitous eruption, but never this long. He was fastidious about sending letters to his family, if only to regale them with stories of his exploits. But no one had come for him. He was a noble missing from an esteemed family of a powerful land, and his absence had elected nothing. Ealdhere decided not to think about that. There were no happy thoughts he could summon from that. So instead he stared placidly at the world around and gave Lluc nothing to suspect about him. Without a target to bury his metaphorical hatchet in, Lluc just snarled and swept out of the Guild without so much as a glance back, door slamming against the frame. Off to¨C whatever it was. He wasn''t the type to actually tell Ealdhere what was going on. The Guild echoed hollowly in his wake. Ealdhere exhaled, brushing hands over his Scholar''s robes. There was a charcoal stick behind his ear, mussing up his scarlet hair, and stains over his fingers¡ªhe had been halfway through a new drawing of the crocodile after a new juvenile had been spotted on the third floor, trying to find an easier way to manage it than the bulk of its armour, when Lluc had swept into the Guild and dropped that explosion in his lap. A week free¡ªthough he wasn''t foolish enough to deceive himself into thinking it was actual freedom, instead of merely a week without Lluc hovering overhead. The Dread Crew would still keep tabs on him, and he couldn''t leave. He knew that. He shook out his hands, flexing his fingers, and headed back to his room. Even the false comfort of another door to shut was appreciated, though shadows stretched long through the windows and the faint blood of corpses in the below-ground storerooms. His drawings littered the walls here, pinned up and scribbled over as new information filtered down to him. There was a vague recollection of other Scholars in distant Adventuring Guilds being adventurers themselves, delving within to chase their own queries, but Ealdhere had the arguable position of being Unranked. He had no chance of surviving such a mission. So instead he withered in his prison and made a collage of what scraps survivors could tell him. He set his charcoal stick on his desk, neatly tilted so it didn''t spread soot over the wood. Perhaps he could take the evening to himself instead, without someone glaring over for progress he couldn''t give. "We have a week alone," Ealdhere said conversationally to the sapling. It had grown recently, the tallest of its pale leaves brushing at the ceiling. Since his discovery of its¡­ diet, he had moved it away from the window to replace with other trimmings, giving it a place of honour on the ground so that it had the most room to grow. It was taller than him now, its caliper widening and extending thorns. Perhaps the only upside of his captivity was that he was fed enough to supply blood to two creatures, though he had been feeling faint as of late. But pricked fingers meant little against discovery. And he had so much discovery left to make, if he wanted an alliance for his freedom. Ealdhere was halfway through the outline of the ridged scales along the crocodile''s snout when something moved in the room beyond. He paused, lifting his head. It was night now, only darkness outside, but there was the unmistakable sound of the door opening, despite the runic wards he knew were littered in the stones around. Ealdhere set down his charcoal, heading to the entrance hall, and came face to face with an intruder. He froze. "Hello, Scholar," said the Marquesa de Wolf. She was closing the door behind her, nudging the butt of her quarterstaff against the base. It had grown more moss since he''d seen it last, creeping up the edges of her robes as well. The green rippled against her dark skin. In another world, she could perhaps have been a comfort. Her Le¨®ran accent, lilting on the edges and softer than the bite of Calaratan words, another foreigner in this unforgiving land. She had a cadence that spoke to practiced eloquence, a deliberation to her words that only the learn¨¨d could muster. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. But he remembered her talk of a maverick, of fourteen throats slit out in Calarata with nothing to serve as reason, of the glint in her eyes. Of Gon?al, asking why she would want to draw Lluc''s attention. Ealdhere did not particularly trust her. "I''m terribly sorry," he said, lacing his hands together. "But you''ll have to wait until morning¡ªthe Guild only entertains visitors before the daily delve." She smiled, a warm, bright thing that reflected in her face like honey. The petals of a valencan-flower, entrapping wandering flies within its grasp. "I''m not here to ask about delving," she said. "Instead, some questions about the dungeon prior. I am allowed¡ªdid Lluc not tell you?" That was a lie; Ealdhere didn''t need his two functional eyes to see that. But everyone in Calarata lied, and he couldn''t quite figure out whether it was a notable lie. The kind people told from an allergic reaction to the truth, or the kind people said when they wanted something else. "The Guildmaster did not," Ealdhere said, sharper than he necessarily wanted. "You will have to wait for him." She did not look like she intended to wait. The air was wrong, though he knew he was much too weak to believe it to be anything like a Gold-sense. Perhaps it was just his latent aristocratic instincts, though quashed by his current conditions. But this felt different. The last time the Marquesa de Wolf had arrived at the Adventuring Guild, she had come with Gon?al. But she was alone, now. He was Unranked. For some strange reason, he was very aware of that fact now. "Lluc isn''t here, is he?" The Marquesa said, instead of asked. It was too confident. Ealdhere licked his lips. "He will be, " he said. "Tomorrow." She cocked her head to the side. There was something bird-like in the motion, in the glint of her amber eyes. "He will not." A confirmation. Then she stepped forward, tapping her staff along the ground. Mana sparked under her dark skin, reflecting gold, as she scanned the hall. What false subservience she''d shown in front of Lluc burned away for something altogether harsher, teething into her face like power. Ealdhere took a step back. "Your notes on the dungeon," she said. "How many floors, what creatures, what defenses it has mustered. Have you managed any alchemic refinements yet?" Ice crackled down his spine. "Excuse me?" The Marquesa glanced at him, brows raised. "Your notes on the dungeon," she repeated, with deliberate slowness, as though he simply hadn''t heard her. "Give them to me. Or do I have to take them?" She couldn''t. That was everything he knew about the dungeon¡ªits potential sapience, the creatures, the depths, everything he had gathered. His plans. His alliance. Gon?al''s words echoed back to him. "What do you want?" The Marquesa stared at him. "Let me put it a different way," she hummed. It was the sound of branches shifting in the deep jungle, moved by a predator''s claws. "You are the Scholar, no?" Ealdhere didn''t know what answer she wanted. He nodded. "Perfect," Marquesa said. "And you are going to do your job like a good little Scholar, or else I am going to bury you in this Guild for the rats to consume." It wasn''t a question. But it was a threat. Ealdhere was too familiar with these. They were never comforting. Something within the Marquesa''s robes moved, the clack and clitter of claws moving through a copse of trees. Moss crept down her staff like rain from a storm. She never dropped her smile; it stayed and it burnt, sharper than a smile should be. "Now, Scholar," she said. Part of him noticed that she never used his name, only his title. A separation. "Give me your notes, and then turn around, so you have a chance to mock them up again before your master cuts your throat. That''s it." She paused, a little smile creasing the corners of her face. "Actually. Stay." Her palm glowed gold as she raised it to face him, mana simmering under the surface. It wasn''t a spell¡ªit was hardly anything. But Ealdhere froze all the same. The Marquesa de Wolf disappeared into his room. A clattering din of noise and chaos bubbled under the gap, but he didn''t move; even the memory of his power, of the threats he had grown to cower under keeping him still. It was just paper. Just information. He could remake it easily, with the iron trap of a mind he''d developed. But she was getting precious secrets he''d sworn to protect. The Marquesa left his room, arms piled high with papers, with parchments, with all the past months of work. Victory gleamed through her eyes, though she barely looked at him¡ªmuch as with Lluc, he was nothing more than an obstacle to break past. Without power, he wasn''t someone she cared about. He had been a noble, once. Ealdhere watched as the Marquesa shuffled the papers together so they more easily fit in her grasp, a stack some several hands-width thick. She pressed a finger to her lips, a mocking call for silence, and disappeared through the front door. As like before, the wards didn''t so much as react. Then she was gone, and Ealdhere was alone. He stumbled back to his room in a daze, every muscle clenching and mind trembling. Strangely forest-scented air surrounded him, the vampiric mangrove shifting its branches, though untouched. The room was not so lucky. It was ransacked, papers ripped from the walls so harshly the corners were still pinned by nails. There was nothing left. She had taken it all. Why hadn''t he tried to stop her? Had it been a spell that kept him pinned? Or had it just been his own cowardice? The Marquesa de Wolf had all the information on the core, all the scraps he''d gathered and collected and built together in an effort to understand the first sentient dungeon he''d ever heard of. Born from a dragon''s corpse, assembling into a living, breathing ecosystem with creatures he''d never encountered before. A marvel, as much as it was a monster. The dungeon had tried to kill him. Had very nearly succeeded, if only he hadn''t recognized the creeping vines covering the entrance. He had only known tamed dungeons before this¡ªhe should want this one to have its core claimed, to remove the fangs so handily carving through the throats of all the adventurers who entered it. It had kidnapped a human, one they still hadn''t rescued. And instead of hate, that made Ealdhere want to protect it. To ally with it, should Gon?al successfully convince it of his earnestness. Ealdhere couldn''t entirely parse apart his feelings on the matter. He didn''t know what was right or wrong, not anymore, not after Neus'' scarlet-splattered head and the darkness of Alami choking on ink had filled his vision every time he closed his eyes, or the darkness in Lluc''s face. But he knew he didn''t want the Marquesa having the core. Ealdhere collapsed in his chair, wood creaking under his weight. His palms scoured into the sockets of his eyes. He didn''t want her taking the core¡ªand there was nothing he could do about it. Even with Lluc gone for a week, he was still bound to the Guild, still caged here, and he couldn''t tell anyone to stop her when she was doing whatever everyone wanted. He couldn''t do anything. Gods, he hadn''t prayed with understanding since Abhal¨®n, since all deities had ignored his pleas for mercy from Lluc''s shackles, and certainly not to any gods that lived in this land of murderers, but some strange instinct pulled his hands to press into his shoulders as he bowed his head. He couldn''t do anything. All he could do was voice his desperation. "Don''t let her take the core," Ealdhere murmured, eyes closing. "She will destroy it. She will ruin what makes it unique. It doesn''t deserve that. Help it, please." He waited, for a moment. Only silence. Then sound. Something low and crackling, the pulse and flex of bark breaking along seams. Ealdhere flinched, imagination filling with whatever druidic beast the Marquesa kept in her service, spinning in his chair¨C But it wasn''t the door opening. It was the sapling. Perhaps he shouldn''t call it a sapling, being taller than him, and certainly not now as its trunk split, crimson bark splintering as a cavernous void opened underneath instead of the heartwood he knew should be there. It was black, then deeper red, then moving, then growing. And then something emerged through the gap. It was a monster. Every part of it twisted and rebounded, many-jointed and towering overhead. Skin of crimson bark, thorned jutting through the gaps, twisted around on itself like armour. Though it had an upright build, one of its arms was missing, a snarled mass of bark and thorns filling the gap. Its legs bent backwards, claws digging into the soft wood of the floor, a short tail thrashing. It clicked its claws together, hissing a low rasp like punctured flesh. It had pale white eyes, a muzzle split through with a fanged maw. There was nothing human in its eyes. And yet it was achingly familiar. Ealdhere stared at it. He hardly dared to breathe. It tilted its head to the side. It could kill him instantly, he knew, and it didn''t. It watched him instead. This wasn''t of the gods. But he knew what it was. He stood, slowly. It tracked him with its white eyes. Its remaining arm clenched its claws. "The dungeon is in danger," Ealdhere said. "Can you tell it the Marquesa de Wolf is coming?" The¨C the non-dryad, the beast, the spirit, the manifested mangrove kept watching him. And then it nodded. Its muzzle split into a fanged grin. Chapter 182 - Ravenous Nicau had only just gotten Chieftess settled¡ªChieftess! A Name! Otherworld mana, a soul-woven connection, ascension!¡ªwhen something stirred in the back of the kobold''s den. Someone. The human rescued from the empress serpent two floors above. The slave, almost. Veresai was¡­ powerful. Nicau knew this, because his first introduction to her had been when the psionic serpent beamed the dungeon directly into his skull to swear him into its service, but he hadn''t really interacted with her sense¡ªwhich he was more than fine with, to be very clear. She had been powerful then and for all Nicau was strengthened by his Name, he wasn''t up to fighting her ilk yet. But now, seeing what she had done, he wondered¡ªfor a very brief, escapable moment¡ªif perhaps he should have. If he could have known there was another human in the dungeon, and saved her before whatever had happened to her mind. Nicau pondered that thought. Because it was a distinctly hero-esque thought, neither that of a pigeoncatcher nor particularly of the persona he''d been building scampering around the underside of Calarata and pretending to be more Romei and the Pirate Lord and a few new names he was thinking over, considering how dangerous it would be to actually go by the Pirate Lord in a city owned by the Dread Pirate. He truly could have been so much more creative. He was never going to forgive himself. And still there was a part of him that wishes he had saved her from Veresai before it had gotten to this. At least she was here now, safe in the back of the kobold''s den, and the boon from Abarossa was already waking her with mana that just devoured exhaustion. Nicau took one last moment to make sure Chieftess was fully secured, moss piled up under her head and sides, before padding to the back room he had once slept in. It was used for storage now, but it hadn''t been much work to clear his old moss bed for her. For the human. She was a few inches taller than him, aided by the scarlet-gold scaled hood that took the palace of her hair and waterfall down her back, even scattered over her cheekbones and down the lengths of her arms. Deep brown skin where it wasn''t scaled, and her eyes fluttered open to reveal pale gold with slitted pupils. Kriya, the dungeon had said. A healer. Nicau was a little worried that he was finding scales more normal than human flesh. Kriya''s naga ancestry was actively the familiar sight instead of anything else. Kriya shifted, a clawed hand pressing against the stone as she lifted her head. Her pupils bobbed and weaved, widening and thinning as her eyes struggled to catch up with her surroundings, head lilting. Nicau sprang forward and got a hand around her shoulder, scales smooth and cool. A brief moment to wonder whether she was warm or cold-blooded, how strong her ancestry was, and then he was helping her to sit up, moving steadily as her eyes fought to see in this new world. Slowly, she focused on him, pupils mirroring each other and eyes wide. She opened her mouth, fangs glinting around scaled lips, before coughing¡ªit rasped up a hoarse throat to echo in the cramped stone. "Er," Nicau said, eloquently. Kriya coughed again. Nicau¡ªpolitely¡ªpushed her back so she was resting on the stone wall, then disappeared out of the room¡ªsome of the younger hatchlings were on fire-duty, keeping a steady burn near the entrance to make sure there were always gourds filled with freshwater, and he plucked up off its vine-woven cord and padded back into the room. Kriya hadn''t moved, head ducking and shifting, her hood fluttering around her neck. "Here," he said, offering the gourd¡ªshe narrowed in on it, lifting a shaky hand with claws out. He waited until she had both up and then gave it over, helping her hold it steady as her body tried to recover from whatever Veresai had done. She drank greedily, parched and desiccated. What had Veresai even fed her? Had she been able to cook anything, or just been forced to eat raw meat? Eventually she slowed, taking deep, gulping breaths between before pulling back. Her eyes sharpened, landing squarely on him. "I''m Nicau," he said. She stared at him, forked tongue flicking through her teeth. "Kr¨C" she coughed again, hood trembling. "Kriya," she rasped, draining the rest of the water. But already Abarossa''s boon was doing its work, brightening her gaze and making her sit more upright. She looked around, hood shifting¡ªit was like a sign of nervousness, almost, more expressive than he would have thought. "Where am I?" Ah. Nicau thought about that for a moment. The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation. It was¡­ probably for the best not to take her out of the den quite yet, considering the lagoon was still half-crushed from where an enormous corpse had hit it and the waters were still billowing crimson with the blood. And also that it was full of monsters when she''d just gotten out of being possessed. Nicau thought it best to ease her into her situation instead. "You''re in the dungeon," he said. Kriya''s pupils slitted, the tips of her fangs poking through her lips. Nicau winced. Appropriate reaction, unfortunately. He''d had plenty of time to adjust to the batshittery that was his life¡ªmany others had not. "I know," he said, because gods, he really did. "And¨C well, I''ll be honest, I''m not sure if you can leave." She tensed, fists curling and hood coiling. He was really fucking this up. "But I do know you won''t be going back to Veresai," Nicau said, and this he knew. "The dungeon wanted to apologize for what happened. It never wanted you to lose your mind." Well, the dungeon hadn''t said it in exactly those terms, but Nicau had become rather attuned to its mind. It was a thinking creature, clever and quick; it just thought with a brain that wasn''t a human''s. There was something interesting about that, bringing up questions he never would have thought of as a pigeoncatcher. The difference of intelligence from, say, him to the dungeon to Chieftess to an unevolved kobold. All beings, all living, but intelligence in different ways. And the dungeon, for all it had let this happen, had regretted it. Nicau had felt that, deep and rich through their soul-woven connection, the echoes of guilt shared. The dungeon had no qualms about killing her¡ªand likely would, if Kriya ever so much as glanced at going deeper or trying to leave without swearing to silence¡ªbut it didn''t want slavery. Nicau knew he wasn''t a hero, not anymore. He''d known that ever since he''d started shoving drunkards at the docks to the budding dungeon in hopes he could utilize their death for his gain. But he did appreciate this line in the sand. He didn''t want to take anyone''s mind. She paused at that, head tilting to the side. "No?" She rasped. "No," Nicau agreed. "You won''t. No more¨C" what had the dungeon called it? "No more geas." Kriya sagged, a kind of miserable relief thundering over her face. Even with Abarossa''s boon she was woozy and uncoordinated, but it would be impossible not to see how deeply the news impacted her. Gods, how bad had it been under Veresai? How much had she done? Nicau hesitated. The dungeon had vaguely pressed upon him what it wanted him to do, which mainly revolved around convincing Kriya to join willingly and be a healer. But looking at her now, the kicked-dog wariness and the way she still stumbled over her words like her mind wasn''t used to leading them, well. He was going to give it a couple days, he thought. "I¨C" Nicau glanced out of the room, where a gentle golden glow spilled over the stone with Chieftess'' Name. She would wake soon, hopefully, and together they could help introduce Kriya to the wider tribe, get her situated in a more comfortable setting. But until then, it would just be him and her, talking. "I''ll grab you some food," he said, taking the empty gourd from her, "and more water. Then we''ll talk, okay? Anything you want to know, I''ll answer." Within reason. The dungeon likely wouldn''t be fond of him spilling all its secrets. But Kriya just looked at him, and for a moment, she seemed more ancient and young. Veresai was a serpent first¡ªshe wouldn''t have explained anything. Kriya would have just woken up in her grasp for however long she had been there, confused and fumbling and without anything to tell her what was going on. Nicau would do better. He would help her. "Okay," Kriya rasped, and the faintest glimmer of hope shone in her eyes. - It spread. Deeper and deeper it rooted into the stone beneath, its malodorous aura little more than a whisper on the back of the tongue. Tongue, teeth¡ªconcepts it knew as all things know, brought about as they were ere the Breaking. They had existed before, but they were new, now. A different form. Made for the eating of lesser beings. There were many new things. No longer was it just the beast-of-depths-and-presence, the thing-of-tongue-and-talking, the mind-of-study-and-wisdom, the queen-of-strength-and-silver¡ªnow there was also the claw-of-hunger-and-hunter and the leader-of-stone-and-scale. More, more, more. More to learn, more to see, more to eat. Always to eat. It hungered. Ravenous was this world supposed to be, but it was not. It was the pale grey instead of the darkness between stars, between worlds, between eyes. This world was lesser. The Breaking had ruined it, made it worse than it had been. Where were the fangs, the devourers, the terrors of God and Guard? Where were the umbral teeth and the festering darkness? Where were the beasts that had scared all worlds, had forced the Breaking through their strength? They were gone. But things like that, deep and powerful and Old, never die, truly. They''re too much to die, at least not dying in this new form of dying, where only one piece dies and the other runs free to another world. It knew of days when death had been permanent, instead of this false mockery of it. Where death had been final, a promise instead of a threat. It grew in the shadow of that great time. Where its growth was not caged by stone walls and rules and prisons, deep below the mortals who knew not was lay beneath their feet. They were not Old. They were not from before. And it wasn''t, either. It had been born here, it knew, when it had picked up but a spark of the Old, that had spread through its roots and its thorns and its leaves like in the Old days but lesser. Still, it knew of the Breaking and what had come before. It knew of what had birthed it into this fragile realm. It knew for what it hungered. In another world, there would have been fire, and a red moon rising. Here, there was only darkness. Soon. Soon. Chapter 183 - Harbinger I was listening to Nicau''s conversation with Kriya, the healer still bleary but starting to sharpen her awareness as this new page of her story turned over, when something else dragged my attention away. Something rather important. Because in the center of the Hungering Reefs, the Ancestral Tree was shuddering. I had been focusing, but I would say this took precedence. My points of awareness spiraled, circling over the island in the middle of the lagoon¡ªthe vampiric mangrove''s branches shook, thorns rooting in and out as it reacted to something, stirring like a predator in search of prey. Was it sick? Was something wrong? Then the bark at its core split, crimson red and weeping sap, a presence building and doubling and snarling at the bit¨C And Svythe stepped out. She shook out her head, crown of thorns rustling as though in the wind. Her pure white eyes were eerily sharp, focused¡ªshe clenched the claws on her remaining arm, armour bristling. Wariness. Readiness. Her voice was a garbled mess, unadapted to her throat, but it came regardless. "Threat. Danger," Svythe said, growling over the words. She tilted her head to the side, testing an unfamiliar phrase. "Marquesa de Wolf." What. What? Where had she learned that? Svythe''s mana fluctuated, biting as she felt my confusion. Her memory poured over our connection, Otherworld mana simmering beneath the surface. She had felt her tree call to her, a humming melody that sung of old wood and blood-covered thorns, of a piece apart. I had watched this, actually¡ªhad seen her press her clawed hand to the bark and her Ancestral Tree open to accept it, allowing her within. The blessing of the hunter. Then I''d¨C gotten distracted. Yes. In my defense, many things were distracting in my dungeon, and that had been shortly before Kriya woke up. So maybe I hadn''t noticed when Svythe not only entered her tree, but also left my dungeon. There was a trimming, somewhere in Calarata. She had known about it, had felt it like a limb apart¡ªnot painful, but aware. And as soon as she had been Named, she had followed it, searching for that last piece of her Ancestral Tree. Her memories from before her evolution were hazy, but she knew what had happened. Someone had taken it. Had clipped a branch and removed it; and she had found them, had found the thief, and hadn''t killed him. His face in her thoughts was indistinst¡ªshe wasn''t one to focus on human features other than them being human, but she had noted his red hair, which I had only seen on one human in this area, that of the Scholar. Nicau knew him too, the previous invader who had then been put into service by the Adventuring Guild. Nicau thought he wasn''t there willingly, which I had found a strange enjoyment but hadn''t thought much of, until now. Because now he was reaching back to me. Communicating in the only way he had access to. I didn''t know why. It had¨C he had been in partnership with Gon?al, no? Something about the alliance reaching between us, the schemas simmering in my core. Was he trying to reach out to me? The Scholar¡ªEaldhere¡ªhad only said one thing to Svythe, eyes wide with fear and voice shaking. The dungeon is in danger. Can you tell it the Marquesa de Wolf is coming? Nicau hadn''t trusted her, which meant I certainly didn''t. And now she was coming, and coming in a way that the Scholar of the Adventuring Guild thought to warn me, despite what should be loyalty to other humans. Fuck. Svythe made a clicking, rasping sound in the back of her throat, like branches dragged over stone. She could sense my paranoia, even if she didn''t fully understand it. Her Name had boosted her intelligence to a level even I was proud of, though her perspective stayed alien. She knew this was a threat. And gods, was it a threat. Seven floors to my name, and I knew I was strong, but the War Horde had shaken that confidence. It didn''t matter how powerful I was if they could just skip past all my danger. Did I think the Marquesa¡ªwhoever she was¡ªcould be tunneling down now to my core? I didn''t know. That was the scary part of being a dungeon, I was finding; the world was impossibly large but I was remarkably stationary, locked within my halls without a chance to look elsewhere. If I hadn''t Named Svythe and she had somehow followed her missing sapling to hear this from Ealdhere, would I have ever known a threat was coming my way? I wouldn''t. Thank you, I murmured to her mind. She hissed, tail swishing, before slipping into the water to hunt¡ªeither the teleportation exhausted her, or she wanted to reward her Ancestral Tree with blood. Both were options. But I had to focus. There was a threat coming, one I had to counter, and the War Horde had already shown the weakness of my floors by punching through. I needed more. My upper floors were strong, and any effort I put into improving them would only be destabilizing the balance I''d built. Instead, I had to focus down. I flicked a point of awareness back to my core¡ªthe golden runes inscribed over the surface were starling-bright, burning with an anticipation I couldn''t name, and all the schemas that slumbered under the surface. Not quite full, but close enough. The War Horde''s attack, partial though it might have been, had filled me. Enough mana to work with. If the Marquesa de Wolf was coming for my core, then I would be moving it further down. Originally, the plan had been to completely fill my Heartwood before starting on the ninth floor, but plans were decidedly less important when faced with the possibility of my own extinction. I would be adding creatures to the Heartwood, though. I was well beyond leery of leaving it entirely empty, even with the trick of its exit being above instead of below¡ªI wanted something to serve as defense, no matter how much I was able to build below. The bugs and scuttling prey I''d added were not enough. My boundless jaguar was already here and laying claim to her territory. She seemed brighter than before, her fur more vibrant, the feathered tip of her tail a near iridescent blue. The Jungle Labyrinth had been her kingdom before, tunnels prime for her speed and athleticism, but here was simply more. The cobweb banyans spread like veins through an arterial heart, interweaving and threading from stone to stone, and she relished in them¡ªher six limbs carried her up and up and up, towering amongst the cypresses and cloudsire palms, ignoring the laddercaps to leap up with a grace few could compare. She''d already hauled a bounding deer''s corpse all the way to the canopy a thousand feet up, eating it at her leisure, channels flooded full of mana. Even if I wanted to spend the majority of my mana on my ninth floor, she would serve as a handy deterrent. But not all. I couldn''t rely on only her. Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. I''d dug a small pond in the side, pressed against the back wall with a freshwater stream feeding a waterfall to trickle down. A lovely little paradise. The intention had been to simply provide a place for my mangroves to grow, for all I''d wanted to keep their number minimal in order to keep myself from growing predictable, but now I thought of a new use. A very rude one. Behind the pond, I grabbed several points of mana and began to dig, tunneling into the stone. I ducked and wove it around like some of my previous tunnels, just high enough the water lapped at the edge instead of filling it¡ªany invaders who had come the past seven levels would see this and think they knew what was ahead of them. Yet another tunnel to walk through and continue on towards my core. Unfortunately for them, I had obtained a schema some weeks back that would be perfect for this. My shadowthief rat would earn her keep with this. I plucked at the schema, unspooling it from my core with gentle care. Peering at its intricacies, I made sure that this tunnel would function as its home, and then I began to weave. Nearly twenty points of mana, enough I almost wanted to weep from the loss, and a cavern-mouth coalesced within my halls. It was easily fifteen feet tall, some twenty-five long, and nearly all of that was its maw¡ªan enormous, gaping thing that hollowed out its body, which wasn''t much of note elsewhere. Four stubby legs, little more than the idea of moving, and pale, vacant eyes¡ªall of its sensory organs were within its maw. And what a maw it was. Jagged, irregular teeth, lumped and formed like stalagmites, all as grey as the rocks around it. Its tongue mimicked a boulder, flat and pockmarked, but even I could sense the strength within it; used to tug things further into its gullet. Even its gums were a mottled grey-black, the better to disguise and hide away. No light, nothing to showcase the more living elements of its mouth. Invaders would simply think they were walking into a tunnel. I peered at its¡ªhis¡ªmind. Not a terribly clever creature, which did make sense; he was a slow and ponderous thing, mostly concerned with the exposure of his back and flanks. He plodded deeper into the tunnel I''d dug for him, wedging his maw in until he was entirely hidden, just a cave snaking deeper into the mountains. Then he did something with his jaws, locking the bones in an open position, and¨C Sat. And waited. His thoughts were content with waiting for however long it took before someone would enter his mouth. Well, I supposed not all of my creatures could be ambitious hunters with aspirations towards evolution. I needed a few traps as well. I also just needed more. What else did I want to add? The boundless jaguar would serve as a singular threat, punishing any who strayed from the group, and the cavern-mouth would be a one-time stopping force¡ªbut I needed something on a larger scale. A group of something, capable of dismantling full parties should they make it this low. Two options¡ªeither verdant howlers or terrorbirds. Both collected from the Myvnu Jungle, perfect for this environment, and hopefully with prey populations established enough to support them. I stared over my green hell, considering. The boundless jaguar wasn''t limited to the ground, able to climb all over the canopies, and would be perfect to knock away those who were trying to ascend¡ªso did I want another species capable of that, or someone to fight them on the ground? From what I had surmised from their schema, the terrorbirds weren''t those that flew, despite their species; while they could climb with their powerful legs and beaks, they much preferred running. But they were also much stronger than the verdant howlers, who were light enough for clambering through vines. Hm. A tricky question. I spread out my points of awareness, listening to the clicking and chattering insects that filled the level and all the myriad disasters they were. I had prey populations beginning to form, stabilizing out until I no longer had to feed them with my mana, but they weren''t particularly strong other than being annoyances. I wanted something stronger. Well. Actually, I did have an idea to power up this floor, and it wouldn''t cost me any mana. I dispatched a part of my consciousness up, flitting through the floors until I arrived at the Jungle Labyrinth. Mantises scuttled through the darkness, blades held high and multi-faceted eyes gleaming, corpses in their wake. Serpents slithered around with pale blue eyes, Veresai''s presence diffusing through the tunnels. I didn''t look at them. I still didn''t know what to think about her and her geas, her obstinance building until it threatened her creator. Until this threat was dealt with, I would be ignoring it, though. I had other things to focus on. I slipped into the Stone Jungle, still purposely keeping my gaze away from the den at the back. Let Veresai seethe from my lack of attention. Maybe she could take that time to think instead. The actual creature I was here to see raised her head, jade-green eyes glimmering. The forestfall ratkin. Gather your followers, I murmured, pressing into her mind and filling it with all the sheer greenery of the Heartwood, all the plants she could utilize and master with her mana. A miracle of potential. Her head tilted to the side, sniffing at the air, whiskers twitching. She settled on her back paws, a thrum of power in her chest where she had swallowed the jadestone¡ªall around, the mage ratkin she was training squeaked curiously at their leader, wondering what she was thinking. She churred something to me, a question. Room to grow, I soothed, more of a promise than convincing. Here in the Jungle Labyrinth, all my ratkin were caged by Veresai, unable to evolve when her serpents claimed all the prey and invaders. It had only been Sy?alia''s death that had evolved the forestfall ratkin, and she hadn''t earned that easily. There are more here, but not territory. Free to improve. She let mana spark over her fingers, drifting over her earthen fur. Moss crawled down her back. Considering. Then she nodded. Perfect. I shoveled appreciation in her mind, letting it spill over to the others, then I flew back to the Heartwood, carving a few larger dens for the ratkin to inhabit once they made it down here. They would find this a better home than the Jungle Labyrinth, both from lack of Veresai and the increased presence of plants. She wasn''t called the forestfall ratkin for nothing¡ªI had wonderful dreams of her wielding entire cobweb banyans, thundering all invaders with branches like blades¡ªand I was very curious how this would develop her. So. The boundless jaguar, the cavern-mouth, and now the ratkin¡ªI still had some mana I was willing to spend here before moving onto my ninth floor, and this had changed my decision somewhat. The ratkin would fill in the ground, thrashing all those who moved on foot, growing in their own power. And then it came down to prey, unfortunately. The terrorbirds were large and powerful and dangerous and hungry¡ªthey would require large beasts to hunt, and I didn''t know if I had enough to feed them. But verdant howlers could eat plants, fulfilling at least half their diet. Simply the safer play. But the second I had the mana, I was making an entire flock of terrorbirds to rampage over my floor. Since I''d seen the skull Nicau had pulled from his bag, I had never wanted anything more. Something with talons large enough to crush a human''s skull and the bitter aggression that claimed their territory with more than presence¡ªthat was perfect for my dungeon. Just not yet. I could wait. The threat came first. So I grabbed fifteen points of mana, enough to leave me with plenty to begin carving out my ninth floor, and wove together a troop of verdant howlers. Not nearly as mana-intensive as the cavern-mouth, but I only managed to make four before my allotted points dried up. But already they started to spread over the Heartwood, black eyes curious and prehensile tails curling. They were around three feet tall, covered in mottled green fur, armed with sickle-like claws and a jagged bite¡ªmore built for harassing than lethal blows, but Nicau''s memories carried the death of the kobold at their claw. They hooted and shrieked at each other, dividing up the hierarchy¡ªone of the females bullied her way into de facto leadership, beating her tail against the ground, punching the air. Her eyes gleamed with fervour, fangs bared. The others squawked their agreement and took to the vines with her, clambering up into the canopy¡ªfrom across the wall, the boundless jaguar raised her head, tail twitching. I hurriedly pushed a little suggestion to not kill them until there were enough to maintain their own population. Please. She huffed and settled back on her perch. But now the Heartwood was, if not strong, at least something¡ªthe majority of the challenge still came from attempting the climb up to the exit, but now invaders would be harassed on their way down, liable to fall to their untimely demise if they ever faced one of my creatures in battle. I watched the verdant howlers make it up to the first layer of canopy, five hundred feet up, and begin exploring for somewhere to roost. The cavern-mouth shifted in his tunnel, jagged teeth braced, the boundless jaguar resting after her kill. Okay. Well. Nicau hadn''t seen the Marquesa fight, and Ealdhere had only told Svythe that she was coming, not how strong she was. But I hoped this would be enough, if for some fucking reason my previous seven floors weren''t. Or if she would also find a way to punch a hole through my lower floors, since that was something invaders just did. But I wasn''t done yet. Gon?al had granted me three arctic schemas, and I had others that would fit the place, and I wouldn''t be letting invaders just waltz to my core. My ninth floor would stop them. Chapter 184 - Ocean Wanted If my Heartwood was halfway completed, then my ninth floor would be even less so¡ªbut I just wanted my core to be lower. Something to put more space between me and invaders; and if the worst truly came to it, I would just call Seros and my other Named down to defend me, trying to cut out what scraps made it past the previous eight. I was going to survive this threat no matter what happened, this I knew. And thus my ninth floor had to come together. In a reverse of what normally happened, I was building this floor off of my creatures, rather than trying to gather them to fit an idea I already had. Gon?al had given me three schemas that didn''t fit anywhere else in my dungeon, and I wanted to use them here¡ªeven if a part of me hissed at using it. He would know exactly what species they were, perhaps even their weaknesses or how to defeat them. But I just had to hope it was only him and not the entirety of Calarata. I couldn''t afford to just let the schemas waste away in my core, scared of the potential of someone knowing them over the potential of their strength. And they would be very strong. The frozen world was not one of kindness, unforgiving in all the most dangerous of ways, and that was what I wanted to take. Invaders had faced fire and forest, and now I wanted them to freeze. In terms of the floor''s structure, I had a rough idea of what I wanted, mostly born of creating a different challenge than those above. The Heartwood was a cramped land, webbed in by trees and canopies, and the Scorchplains were massive and empty. I knew the cold would be different enough, but I wanted more, wanted an element to pin people as they struggled forward. No one could be allowed to make it. As a sea-drake, I had not been a creature of the cold. When I ventured into the deep oceans, I had touched it, letting it wash over my scales, but not settled my hoard there. I preferred the warmer waters that carried more prey. But I was very aware of the dangers of it. And those were what I wanted to harness, because there was little that guaranteed death but a glacier. In many ways, they were the threat of the high seas, not creatures or wandering heroes. They were enormous, unstoppable, and moved faster than expected when pushed by dancing currents; I had seen corpses crushed between two opposing glaciers, entire islands battered beneath their bulk, frozen schools of baitfish dead before they could swim away. And now they would be mine. Already I could envision it¡ªan endless expanse of pure white, ice cracking underfoot with every step, fire or heat magic a promise of plummeting below. To create a plain of ice, some parts frozen over frigid waters and others rising in icy pillars, creating an unstable surface similar to the Scorchplains, just reversed. I wanted to see people fall through the ice into water, drowning against the frozen surface¡ªor creating a coastline of fractured glaciers, constantly moving and shifting until no step was safe. I wanted a lot of things. I had approximately forty points of mana to make it happen. There would be a few corners cut for the current plan. If nothing else, making eight previous floors had made me quite the master of burrowing into the mountain for the least amount of mana possible. I knew how to consume the stone I was destroying instead of merely erasing it, granting me fractions back, not enough to equal but enough to soften the blow. So I gathered my mana and began to dig. I shredded and reworked in equal measure, using scant percentages of a point to carve out yawning caverns. My plan was to make it as large as I could right now, putting all the more space between my core and invaders, and considering my Heartwood was only three thousand feet in diameter, I wanted to double the length for this one. Glaciers were tall, yes, but I wanted the danger to be from falling into the water, not necessarily climbing. So it would be around three hundred feet in height, with around a hundred of that taken up by water. A much changed environment as to the floor above. There was so much I wanted to do. But for now, all I could try was to build up enough of a hazard so as to survive the upcoming threats, and then improve it later. The ninth floor slowly started to come together with a yawning vastness. My prediction had been accurate¡ªsome six thousand feet long, roughly oblong with cragged corners and irregular widths. I had put in work to make sure the roof sloped and curved, not with stalactites but just tossing edges like storm clouds overhead. I didn''t want anything too sharp to block the glaciers. The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. As for the ground, it was a mix of nothing and pillars, reaching up to one hundred feet where the tunnel entrance was. While I was planning to flood the entire place and then freeze the top layer to provide a surface to walk on, I wanted my creatures to actually have a place to den down and rest without fear of falling through, so I raised some two dozen pillars throughout the floor to build a proper basis on. I had made that mistake before with the Scorchplains, where even the blazebane wolves needed to retreat all the way to the walls to reach their den. I wanted the creatures here better spread out and ready to react to any invaders, not spending their time tramping from side to side. Particularly if there would be enormous glaciers trudging around and making it take even longer. The Jungle Labyrinth was a nightmare before, and now it was moreso due to Nenaigch''s boon to make the tunnels move. I could make a mimicry of that with glaciers, by setting all of their bases in the water and kicking up currents to push them. It would take some work, but I could picture it now, all the madness of icy walls thundering by with no way through. All I had to do was make it. And for that, I needed an ocean to build them off. I reached downward, digging into the stone beneath the exit to carve out a pocket. There, I gathered over twenty points of mana¡ªalmost all of what I had remaining, which hurt¡ªand dumped it into a colossal gem of murky blue-white. The jewel hummed with power, filled near to the bursting mere moments after its creation¡ªthe excess mana shivered within, nowhere to go but needing to move, attuning to the gem that held it. And then, slowly, water began to trickle out. I was very thankful I''d discovered this little trick a while back, after the debacle with the saltwater poisoning my mangroves. If I had to rely on the cove and the mountain river for all my water, I''d be stuck with deserts for floors, much less the aquatic paradises I wanted. Particularly for something as large as this, stretching to the far reaches and with a dream of reaching over a hundred feet of water. And ice. It would take time for this to work, needing to fill in the floor, but I had deliberately created the gem to be impure¡ªboth water and ice attuned, taken from someone during the last big invasion. So the water that was being created was frigid, pulsating on the edge of frozen, just enough to keep flowing without even providing a break. And once it was high enough, I would stop feeding the gem mana, and create a new one of pure ice, which would freeze the upper crust of the semi-ocean. Probably. I was experimenting here, just a little bit. Given I was in a tropical cove that had a jungle less than a hatchling''s swim away from my first entrance, I hadn''t exactly done much with ice since becoming a dungeon, but I was relatively confident that this would work. By actively powering the gems, the mana that left them would be attuned to whatever they were, which should create water and then ice. And then perfection. An enormous tundra, crowned with glaciers that went from surface to ceiling with no way to avoid, waters rushing underneath and ready to carry away any invaders. Perhaps I could even obtain schemas of creatures that lived under ice, slamming into it from underneath to trick invaders into their mouth. All while muskox herds headed over the planes and snowscape beavers built icy dens. Piercing lynxes would stalk from the blustering snow, bounding moose lumbering through, lunar cave bears hunkering within glacial homes. The basis of this ecosystem would have to be fish, considering I wasn''t providing anywhere for plants to grow¡ªbut I trusted in my ambient mana to forcibly evolve baitfish that filled this sea until they survived. Once I moved my core down here, there would be so much mana that I knew ice-attuned evolutions would pour forth, providing food for all those I wanted to add. Even if I couldn''t do anything now. As much as I wanted slowly-moving glaciers, grinding away over the stone with the rumble of ancient tectonics, it had taken all of my mana just to shape the floor itself. I would have to wait. My points of awareness came back together, time beginning to move more normally as I watched water spill into the opening I''d carved for it, lapping at the base of the pillars. How long would it take for it to fill completely? How long until I could add fish, add plants, add greater creatures to the ice above? I looked over the floor, vestigial as it was. Unease flickered through my core. ¡­should I start on my tenth floor? Should I try to go even deeper, just to put more room between my entrance and my core? It was a hazard as it was, and would only grow moreso as the water filled, but I didn''t trust this to stop invaders, not if they made it down as far as they would have. I glanced at my scant few points of mana. The Heartwood had only a few species to its name, this floor was empty, yet an instinct deeper than my comprehension called me further down. It said to keep digging. It said to burrow. The Marquesa de Wolf. Was she enough of a threat to actually warrant this response? Why was I reacting like this? Svythe''s memory was altered by her own hunger of the world she saw, viewing it as little more than prey and not-prey; I couldn''t be certain of how serious Ealdhere was when he warned her. But it took a certain kind of fear for a human entirely unprepared for combat to stare at my vampiric dryad and speak to her instead of losing their mind. He felt serious, or at least scared. There was no sound but the slow trickle of water, building up as my ambient mana fed into it. And still I felt scared.