The fox’s first few hours of sapience weren’t a great start, but I guess being knocked out cold tended to have that effect.

Hell, at this point it might have even counted as a break from just staring at the same four walls all day. I definitely needed a way to smooth this process out for the long run, either by making my mana a non-issue or finding a way to guarantee certain ascensions.

I actually was focused on that area of the dungeon when she finally began to stir, which meant that I actually got to witness her awakening along with the glint of emotion in her eyes as she realized that things were different now. A feeling that I had no direct analog to—maybe like waking up from a dream?

She hobbled up onto her paws and stretched with a yawn, before returning to her ‘hobby’ of pacing the perimeter of the cage, though I noticed she was moving at a far more methodical pace now.

So it was finally time for first contact.

I gave her a few minutes to wake up more and straighten out her thoughts while I had the manamites clean the night’s layer of snow off of the greenhouse, my first chore of the day. Once I had that settled, I had them haul a few pieces of fish and some of Ephilia’s foraged berries across the room to the fox, earning an interrogative squint towards this clearly unnatural happening. This wasn’t exactly the first time I’d brought food over while she was awake, but evidently she actually cared about it now.

She batted a paw down onto one of the manamites as it entered through the bars, the magical construct simply phasing right through her limb as if it wasn’t even there, smacking the food it was carrying down onto the floor.

“They’re just trying to help,” I snickered, finding it almost similar to a cat chasing a laser pointer, “Sorry to keep you waiting, can you understand me?”

What came after was almost a scene-for-scene repeat of when I’d finally gotten to talk to Ephi. The fox’s ears pivoted back and forth as she stood on alert, not quite understanding what this foreign sensation was. She slunk backwards, giving a nervous glance around the room, tail tucked down low to the floor. When no threat presented itself after a few anxious moments, she instead moved towards the bars, standing up on her hind legs and using her front paws to brace herself against the bars to get a better look around.

Not getting a response, I prodded her again. “Yep, hello! You haven’t lost your mind, I’m actually here. I’m the shiny thing in the middle of the room. If you want to respond, just try to focus and ‘push’ the thoughts out of your head. I’m friendly, I promise.”

It took a little bit of patience and encouragement, as well as several more attempts at guiding her towards how to use [Core Link] before I finally got my first garbled responses. There was a slight learning curve when it came to communicating over this telepathic link—it was incredibly easy to send too much information at once, which generally lead to it being incomprehensible.

The fact that our link was only rank one certainly didn’t help matters.

Flashes of places. The river, the burrow, glimpses of rusty red fur and the falling snow. Emotions, skittishness and concern and disorientation. Nothing immediately hostile though, which seemed like a good sign.

“I’m ‘Boss’. Yes, really. The mouse you’ve seen around here is Ephilia, though I usually just call her Ephi. This place you’re inside of is my dungeon. I’ve got something I want to run by you—an opportunity,” I started to explain, having not really rehearsed or planned my pitch, “I want to offer you a chance to work for me. If you accept, you’ll never go hungry or have to sleep out in the cold. I’ll give you a place safe from the predators and hunters of the forest. I’ll help you get stronger and see that you’re always taken care of—”

“Yes. Accept.”

Finally, a response. Her thoughts reached out over [Core Link] to me, being interpreted by my mind as the mental image of a fox nodding its head rapidly. She was sitting perfectly still in reality, though.

“…You’re going to want to let me finish. It’s a big choice to make and I expect you to carry your weight in return,” I explained, “Now, as I was saying. You’ll get a lot out of this, but you’re going to have to work too. We can work out what your work will actually be soon, but as of right now there’s really no shortage of tasks that need doing. You’ll probably be helping with scavenging for food, exploring the nearby area, and maybe helping with transporting some stuff around at first while we figure out a role to specialize you into.”

The fox’s head tilted to the side, looking up at my core. “A lot of work?”, she asked.

“A decent amount, yeah. You’ll still get to rest whenever you need to though, as well as take care of any other needs you have.”

What came through from her end of our link next wasn’t quite coherent enough to be translated directly. Simply put, it was a vision of her pacing along the walls of the vault, rather than just being confined to her cage.

“Yeah. You can come out, I’d want to give you a tour of the place first before pushing you to accept anything.”

I had the manamites eat through a section of the bars, the fox leaning in close to watch with rapt attention. She stood up when I thought I was at about the halfway point to opening a ‘door’, fidgeting around as she lined herself up, then hopped right through the gap, landing on the outside.

Forming a dotted line across the ground with my mites, I guided her out of the core room and down the hall. There wasn’t much really worth showing off yet, so I skipped the boring areas like the stockpile and the main aqueduct, instead leading her right toward the greenhouse. As the hall opened up into the tremendous underground clearing, I didn’t need [Core Link] to sense her surprise.

“We’re still underground right now,” I explained, “It’s a place for us to grow crops for food or other uses. It’ll be warm year-round so we don’t have to worry about the snow ruining any of it—and it makes it nice and comfortable to live here too. Not that I’d know—I’m a rock.”

“Amazing,” was about all I got in response as she galloped off into the center of the room, apparently deciding that a guided tour wasn’t quite fast enough for her liking as she crossed over the starfont’s cover, paying little heed to the stone paths as she crossed through unused dirt plots.

Well, at least she seemed enthusiastic, if a bit scatterbrained.

“It’s still a work in progress. Just about everything here is, though.”

By this point, Ephi had come to investigate what was going on in the greenhouse, eyeing the fox suspiciously as it looked up at the dome.

“You’re already letting her have free rein of the place?”, Ephi asked me, and it was then that I realized something that might be a problem.

They had no way of communicating between one another. I could talk with one or the other over our respective links, but as far as I could tell there was no way to use this directly between one another.

“I’m keeping an eye on her, don’t worry,” I explained, “She doesn’t seem like she’s going to try anything. Hell, she already tried to accept my offer but I wanted to make sure she knew what she was getting into first. And uh, for right now if there’s anything you want said to her, I’ll have to act as an intermediary. Actually, hang on.”

Giving the equivalent of a sharp whistle over the fox’s link, I grabbed both of their attention and began to explain something to each of them, having to repeat the message.

“This should be obvious but just for clarity’s sake, we’re all on a team here. No one is allowed to hurt another employee, period. In these walls, the natural order doesn’t apply. Understood?”

The fox looked down at Ephi, her tail swishing against the soil below as she seemed to formulate a response. “Yes. No hurting.”

I made Ephi promise the same for fairness’s sake.

“Great. Now, one last thing. You two are going to need a way to communicate between each other without my help. I’ve got a basic idea for it…”

We spent an hour or so developing a pidgin sign language that the two of them could use to convey simple concepts between one another. I didn’t worry about covering too much for now—anything that was too complicated, I could jump in to interpret.

Basic things that I’d taken for granted as a human, like nodding to mean ‘yes’ or shaking a head meaning ‘no’. We went over pointing at things to draw attention to them, something Ephi had a much easier time with while the fox seemed more unsteady, teetering around on three legs. We eventually came up with a system: ‘Help’ was two ear flicks in quick succession, ‘Follow’ was bouncing on their front paws twice, and a few other simple commands.

Despite their intelligence, they both lacked the vocal range to make much beyond simple noises and calls. Ephi could squeak and chatter, while the fox apparently had a surprising range of barks, chirps, and howls. Since there was little overlap in the sounds they could make, simply using body language would work better for now, and would remain useful even as we brought in more employees of varying species.

So far so good, even if I caught Ephi glaring at the fox a few times.

I continued the tour after this, guiding the fox to the bedroom I’d constructed and showing her inside. The interior of the room was fairly barren for now, consisting of little but a bed to rest on. She didn’t seem unhappy at least, leaping up onto the bed and testing it out by curling up tightly.

“So, thoughts?”, I asked, “That’s the gist of the tour, anyways. There’s a few other rooms around here, but they’re not quite as exciting or relevant as the ones you’ve seen so far.”

“I would like to think about it,” she responded, her meaning coming through far more completely now that she was starting to become accustomed to communicating.

“Sure, take all the time you need.”

Based on that, I’d expected her to need… well, at least a few hours, maybe a day or two. I’d barely diverted my attention elsewhere for fifteen minutes when she started nudging at me again.

“What about this ‘role’ you spoke of?”

“Well, the short way to explain it is that I can help you improve. That’s why you can even talk to me now. It’s not something I can do indefinitely though, so it makes sense to focus one a few things to get better at. Like, for you…”

CORE-TOUCHED FOX KIT LVL: 3 NAME: undefined

Traits:

[Forged Sapience]

[Mana Processing]

Skills:

[Core Link I]

[Core Bond I]

[Stealth I]

[Evasion I]

(2 unspent skill points)

HP: 9 / 9 CATEGORY: Employee? MP: 0 / 0 SPECIES: Fox SP: 5 / 5 SIZE: Small XP: 0% GENDER: ♀ STR VIT DEX INT WIS PER 3 3 4 5 4 7

A common red fox imbued with the auric touch of a dungeon core. A cunning and playful beast that's known for causing mischief. Force Level-Up Cost: 30 MP Criteria for Next Ascension Tier:

PRIMAL ASCENSION

Cost: 100 MP

I pulled up her tooltip, giving her a brief explanation of its contents.

“So, your stats have a pretty interesting spread. You’ve got great perception—think of that as your ability to see, hear, smell, and feel. It makes those senses stronger, more reliable, and more finely-tuned. You’ve also got a skill for stealth and for evasion, so you’d probably make a good scout I’d imagine… at least for travelling over land. But, your intellect is in good shape too—that’s your ability to learn and keep stuff in your head. Following me so far?”

She nodded slowly, her head cocked slightly sideways.

Yep. She didn’t understand.

I went over it another time, just to be sure.

“Now, you’ve got two ‘skill points’ available right now, I explained these just a few minutes ago. We could spend these on just about anything but I don’t think there’s any way to get them back once we do. As far as what we need around here, it’s hard to say. Any kind of magic or defensive ability would be great since it’s just the three of us so far, or maybe a craft of some kind. So, I think I’m willing to offer a few potential positions that you might be able to fill.”

Her ears perked up to a position of attention, her white-tipped tail curling around to her side. “These positions, what would they be?”

“So,” I started, trying to figure out how best to pitch what I had in mind, “The lines will be a bit blurry. We don’t really have the manpower—animalpower?—uh, staffing to only have one or two jobs each right now, so until we’re in better shape, we’re all covering a lot of bases. But, I think you’d be great for helping to ‘recruit’ new employees. You’re bigger than Ephi is and you can sneak pretty well, so you might be able to hunt down new employees and bring them back here. Small ones, anyways. But that’s not a full-time task—I think I’m going to want you helping out with things around here too.”

I took a while to explain my goals for our business, as well as the various challenges we had faced with getting established so far.

“So, I guess you can call it… ‘Research and Development’, with a side of ‘Corporate Recruiter’. Sound like something you’d be interested in?”

The fox gave me a nod. “Sure—and I can leave if I do not like it here?”

“Yeah, of course,” I replied, “No obligations, though if you do want to leave I’d prefer if you brought it up to me first so I can at least address what’s bothering you. Fair?”

Another nod.

Well, that was easier than I thought it would be.

What was less easy was keeping Ephilia in check now that we had a second employee. My assumption so far was that it was just instincts riling her up, but she generally tended to get on edge whenever the fox was near her. I wouldn’t call it outright hostility, but she tended to keep her distance and not engage any more than needed. While I didn’t have some grand personal stake in the two of them being friends, I had hoped they would at least get along.

Not wanting to intervene and try to force things, I chose to hope that they just needed some time to get used to one another for the time being. The fox was cordial enough at least, generally seeming to conduct herself cautiously but politely whenever Ephi was involved.

Ephi spent most of the rest of the day scavenging, while I began to go over skill choices with the fox. Magic was an option, but I’d need to give her [Self-Catalyzation] for her to actually use it, which would mean both of her skill points would have to go towards it. On one hand, getting her access to magic early would allow her to start training immediately towards it. On the other, she wouldn’t gain any other skills that might prove useful.

We didn’t even have [Core Link II] which felt strange to me—I couldn’t look out of her eyes or anything, though I wasn’t even sure I’d need that with her.

Thankfully her leveling costs weren’t high enough to price me out, but thirty mana was still more than an entire day’s worth.

We’d just have to focus on other skills later. For now, I could get her started on learning magic during our downtime and potentially get her to the point that she could start providing utility to our dungeon.

[Self-Catalyzation] would be necessary again, to allow her any access to magic at all. Next, it would just be a matter of which school to choose from. [Life Magic I] made little sense, given that overlapped on what Ephi had access to.

That eliminated one choice, but there was a staggering number of others that remained. [Fire Magic I] and [Ice Magic I] along with matching ones for many of the other classical elements. I’d seen some of what could be done with [Spatial Magic] and [Illusion Magic] thanks to Cheshire, though I had no idea if the spells he’d used were from higher ranks or not. There was [Light Magic], [Dark Magic], and several others.

It was [Light Magic] that caught my eye the most, though. Many of these schools of magic had useful spells in them, some that I could easily see utility in getting in the near future. [Water Magic] could apparently create water from nothing, [Fire Magic] could… well, be used to have easy access to one of mankind’s oldest and most reliable tools, but [Light Magic] seemed to have something I could use today.

⬘ Light Magic I ⬘

The wielder of this skill possesses a basic intuition of light magic, akin to a student's level. Slightly improves the holder's ability to see in darkness, and provides a small boost to perception growth. Grants the ability to use tier one light magic, such as Sunlight Orb, Hardlight Barrier, and Flash.

Skill point cost increases by 1 for each magic proficiency held.

TYPE:

Passive

CATEGORY:

Proficiency

We just might be able to actually hide the dome if that 'Sunlight Orb' spell did what it sounded like it did.

I made a case to the fox as to what I was thinking for her, and she seemed pleased by the choice… or at the very least, didn’t voice any objections to it.

Spell Name: RANK: XP: DESCRIPTION: Force Rank Up: Hardlight Barrier 0 0% Summon an impassable plane of light between any two points. MP use scales based on surface area. Can be broken via damage. 15 MP Astral Binding 0 0% Create a single chain of hardened light connecting two objects together. Will break if placed under heavy stress. 15 MP Prismatic Flare 0 0% Throw a bolt of shimmering light at a single target, dealing magic damage. 15 MP Reflect 0 0% Reflects the next magical effect targeted against the caster. Can only reflect spells of tier 2 or lower. 15 MP Sunlight Orb 0 0% Create a stationary false sun that will radiate sunlight to illuminate an area. Area and duration scales based on rank. 15 MP Flash 0 0% Conjure a blinding flash of light to temporarily daze creatures nearby that have sight. 15 MP

For now, I made going for that spell the fox’s number one priority and had Ephi come back home briefly to give her some tips on how to study her magic, though I imagined that it wouldn’t be exactly the same given that it was a different school entirely.

For now, I left her to it. Her bedroom would make a decent study area at least, one comfortable and free from distractions.

Over the next several hours, we all worked on our tasks. Ephi went out foraging by the river, digging through the snow in search of whatever berries we still could salvage from the surrounding area. I worked on adding a new set of exits for the dungeon: they were larger in size, though still in a similar tube shape to the mouseholes that Ephi used and fewer in number. The fox studied.

We’d really need to come up with a name for her at some point as well, if she was really going to be part of the team. I just dreaded being the one to try and come up with it—the best I’d likely come up with would be something low effort like ‘Vixen’ or something and that wasn’t really fair. At the same time, I didn’t want to just give her a ‘human’ name from Earth, as I doubted I’d be able to take a magical fox named something like ‘Sarah’ or something similar seriously.

It was around dusk when Ephilia called for my attention for something, sitting at the edge of the riverbank.

“Boss, dead guy.”

Ah. Of course. Just a normal day around here.

I pulled my attention over towards Ephi to investigate, quickly taking in the area around her to try and spot whatever—whoever—she’d found.

Bobbing down the river face-down, there was a single goblin with its limbs spread wide, and very clearly dead. Its hide armor was drenched, shreds of leather and fur clinging to its skin as it drifted along.

“Oh, huh. I’ll fish him out to take a look. Must be a guest from my ‘sibling’.”

CURRENT PROGRESS:

BOSS

FRAGMENT OF COALESCED WILL LVL: 3 NAME: "Boss"

Traits:

Skills:

[Horticulture I]

[Biology I]

[Creator's Insight]

[Mech. Engineering I]

[Textiles I]

[Transmutation I]

[Mining I]

[Core Metalworking]

Features:

[Manamite Creation]

[Self-Synthesis]

[Manamite Specialization I]

[Material Infusion]

HP: 18 / 18 CATEGORY: Elemental MP: 19 / 100 SPECIES: Dungeon Core MP Rate: +22 daily SIZE: Tiny WEALTH: 5 XP: 41% STR VIT DEX INT WIS PER 0 6 0 9 8 8

Nascent heart of a world-born entity, crystallized from soul energy. Exerts control over a localized area.

Manamite Horde (140 / 180):

139 Manamites

1 Managermites (-3 MP/d)

Boiler Squad (5 / 20):

5 Manamites

Criteria for Next Ascension Tier:

Level: 5

Wealth: 25

Employees: 3

Cost: 100 MP

Facility: Prison Virtual Hoard:

[COMMON MATERIALS]

➤500.8 Raw Stone

➤418.0 Loose Soil

➤0.1 Biological Material

➤326.1 Raw Lumber

➤28.3 Plant Fiber

➤0.2 Raw Crystal

➤12.4 Iron Ore

➤35.9 Copper Ore

[RARE MATERIALS]

➤6.1 Moonstone

➤0.5 Shimmerwood

EPHILIA

CORE-TOUCHED DIRE MOUSE (RUNT) LVL: 4 NAME: "Ephilia"

Traits:

[Forged Sapience]

[Gigantism]

Skills:

[Scavenge]

[Festering Bite]

[Core Link II]

[Core Bond I]

[Enhanced Vitality I]

[Enhanced Strength I]

[Athletics I]

[Self-Catalyzation]

[Life Magic I]

Spells:

[Rapid Bloom I]

HP: 12 / 12 CATEGORY: Employee MP: 0 / 0 SPECIES: Field Mouse SP: 5 / 5 SIZE: Small XP: 63% GENDER: ♀ STR VIT DEX INT WIS PER 5 6 5 5 3 7

A field rodent of unusual size under the auric influence of a dungeon core. Possesses enhanced mental acuity and judgement. Force Level-Up Cost: 30 MP Criteria for Next Ascension Tier:

PRIMAL ASCENSION

Cost: 100 MP

'FOX'

CORE-TOUCHED FOX KIT LVL: 3 NAME: undefined

Traits:

[Forged Sapience]

[Mana Processing]

Skills:

[Core Link I]

[Core Bond I]

[Stealth I]

[Evasion I]

[Self-Catalyzation]

[Light Magic I]

HP: 9 / 9 CATEGORY: Employee MP: 0 / 0 SPECIES: Fox SP: 5 / 5 SIZE: Small XP: 0% GENDER: ♀ STR VIT DEX INT WIS PER 3 3 5 6 4 7

A common red fox imbued with the auric touch of a dungeon core. A cunning and playful beast that's known for causing mischief. Force Level-Up Cost: 30 MP Criteria for Next Ascension Tier:

PRIMAL ASCENSION

Cost: 100 MP