“The surface?” She asked, staring wide-eyed at the room around her. She shook her head. “I came from the Hallow.”

“What do you mean you’re not from the surface? Isn’t there a city above us?” Alverost asked.

“Whats it like in the Hallow?” Mark asked.

“Its— its a city. The Hallow contains the rot-city. It stretches nearly as far as you can see, though its practically split in five between the five clans. Each clan builds mostly in their own corner of the Hallow…” Valleria squeezed her eyes shut before looking down at her freshly made hand. It was a brighter color than the rest of her body, an almost cherry red.

Unstained.

“But this city— you cannot see the sky from it?” Alverost asked.

A pedestal of stone rose across the room, sliding upwards from the floor. At its top, it formed a pentagon. The mana roots guiding the creation of stone from the floor shimmered the emerald green of a forest.

Valleria shook her head no. “The Hallow is covered by a stone ceiling, pocketed with holes. There is water somewhere above us.”

“Water? We could be under a lake somewhere… a hidden entrance. How do you know there is water above?”

Pillars rose from the pedestal in the center of the room, stone emerging to support a basin which filled with water. A representation of their understanding of the next floor stood in the center of the room. Valleria stepped forward, stepping around it curiously.

“Once every few months, the Swell-Tide comes. A rush of water from above. It sweeps through the cities troughs, rolling along the walls and flooding into the city. At the center, it drains out of the Hallow, leaving behind various treasures. No one thought that there was anything below the Rot City… we called this area the Pit.” Valleria said, still pacing the pedestal.

“Then how did you end up down here?”

Valleria looked to the side.

“They cast me out. My little brother is still up there, somewhere. Hopefully alive.”

There was a marked pause.

“Why?” Alverost asked.

“I brought them a treasure. A purple gemstone. It shined with the same fierceness you do. A poisonous treasure, which I brought into our own hall. And— it ate—” Valleria choked up— “It ate our horde. Our treasures.” She fell in a sob. “All of our treasures.”

“Its okay. Material possessions are temporary.” Mark said. “As long as you have your… health.”

Valleria sniffed. “To Kobolds, our horde is everything. It represents our status. They cut away my tail. Its what marks members of my clan— Clan Longtail. Now I am clanless. I would be an enemy to my own clan and all others if I returned.” She sucked in a shuddering breath. “They cut off my hand, marking me thief, and knocked me unconscious. Clan Longtail disposes of much of their… waste… through the holes that lead to this level. No one has ever returned from a trip down here, so no one knew a place like this existed.”

“You say all of these Kobold clans have treasure. Does that include silver?” Alverost asked.

“Yes, several metals, gold, shining powders and stones, unstained wood, untattered cloth… each of the clans claim their hordes to be spectacular beyond belief…” Valleria nodded her head vigorously, looking between the floor and the dungeoncore.

“If we can’t find any on this floor, we could go there and negotiate for it…” Mark said.

“Or take it by force.” Alverost replied.

Valleria looked up at this.

“You would oppose the clans?”

“Is that a problem with you?” Alverost asked.

“No… just… I will lead the way and help you negotiate with clan Longtail.” She paused, weighing her words. “If you also help me recover my brother from them.”

“And I wonder just how much that would cost us.” Alverost replied. Valleria hung her head.

“We should help her, Alve. She can show us around the city. We will be on better ground to negotiate if we understand each of the clans wants.”

“She already owes us a debt for saving her.”

“I… I could be of more help to you. I will work for you. Please!” She knelt. “Just save my brother! He can’t feed himself. If you… if you heal him, I’d be indebted to you forever.”

“Perhaps.” Alverost replied, cool and succinct.

“Mark!” A voice shouted, outside of the range of Valleria’s hearing, but still audible to him. “Mark!” the voice replied again, now closer, spoken by a Kobold sprinting to the dungeon room. A Kobold burst into the core room, covered in spots of garish brown scales that contrasted with the rest of its gray tone.

“Splotch.” Alverost replied before Mark could. Alverost had taken to naming Kobolds, especially ones he didn’t like.

“Theres been an emergency! The eggs have hatched, and, and… come quick!”

“You go deal with your creations.” Alverost said. “In the meantime, I will use Valleria’s knowledge to create a more detailed layout of this… Hallow Rot City.” Valleria looked up at this, a gleam of hope in her eye.

Mark shifted his perspective— it was easy, and the world spun at a thought. He was now looking into the room where the centipede eggs had been tended to. It was dark. Not the normal amount of dark typical to the dungeon system lit by luminescent mushrooms— no, it was darker.

Also, a Kobold was screaming. Not constantly, It was more of an intermittent thing. A bug biting Mala, Mala crying in pain, trying to pry off the dozen baby centipedes trying to eat him. Mark could feel his connection with them— even though their minds were less than the Kobolds, he could still feel his telepathic link to them in his dungeon domain.

Roach, a nickname Alverost had given to the larger but still juvenile centipede, was attempting to pull the bugs off of Mala.

“No! Bad bugs!”

At once, all of the centipede trying to eat Mala fell to the ground, crawling away. Mark could feel their basic desires through his connection to them, an endless hunger. Not only had the insects eaten the mushrooms Mark had left in this room to prepare for their hatching, they had also eaten the mushroom that provided light to the room. They even ate their egg shells. When they ran out of that food, they went for the first lizard they saw.

“Mala, how long ago did they hatch?”

Mala shrugged, slowly picking the centipedes off of himself and putting them back on the ground. “Already Hatched when checked them.”

Mark could feel their need for more food, and there was a rising tension among them in the room. He noticed that they all were facing off against each other, sitting still. Vicious bugs. As if his thought broke the stalemate, one of them leaped at another, attempting to wrap itself around another bug.

“No! You can’t eat each other either!”

Mark felt disappointment from his connection with the centipedes. And hunger. He sighed internally.

“There is plenty of food in the courtyard. Eat the mushrooms there, but don’t leave the area. And none of the luminescent mushrooms!” He hoped they were intelligent enough to understand his command.

With a mental pivot, Mark changed his perspective to outside the courtyard.

Centipedes crawled all throughout the mushrooms in the courtyard, twisting around their sides and goring chunks out of them. Mark hoped the mushrooms in the courtyard would last— he would have to expand his plans for a farm. Now was as good a time as any.

While they could produce water easily, it took some time to build the infrastructure for food to support so many Kobolds. By now they had absorbed nearly every Kobold in the level of the dungeon they occupied, each one lured so quickly by the hundreds of mushrooms.

Surrounding an entire farm with stone wasn’t feasible— it would be a huge expenditure of mana, maybe taking days. Instead, Mark erected fungiwood fence posts which rose to surround the field. It was his best idea so far, a dense, dry material made of the same as the fungus. They were dense and stable, rising several heads higher than a Kobold, and the tops ended in wicked, curved spikes… to keep out anything that might climb them.

Mark looked at his work in satisfaction. Each day, the amount they could build and expand grew along with their domain. He would still need Kobolds to come through and harvest the field, though Mark had no doubt the mushrooms would grow anywhere they could find purchase.

There was something bugging him. He paused to survey the dungeon’s domain. It was constantly expanding, stretching outward, mushrooms extending as far as he could see. Something was missing.

If the floor above them flooded with water, and drained downwards, it meant that this area should be, at some point, filled with water. But Mark observed no trough in the ground carved from repeated water, nor algae or residue left behind from water. The fact there was no water here could only mean one thing: there were other chambers this deep.

Something to explore later.

“Need somewhere to store all the food…” Mark said to himself aloud. Then he wondered if he could make ice. He could already produce water, or maybe he was pulling it out of the air, but he hadn’t seen ice, or tried creating things at different temperatures.