I missed music.

When I’d first gotten here, I’d spent a lot of time trying to keep my favorite songs in my head, back when I lacked the ability to act on the world. Nowadays, it was so rare for me to have idle time to allow my mind to wander. There was work that needed doing—tunnels to dig, walls to raise, and employees to manage.

Still, sometimes I couldn’t help but pull up my notes and look through the old lyrics I’d penned into them, even if I had a harder time remembering the fine points of the melodies sometimes.

It had only been a few months, but already so much of my past life had slipped to the wayside.

I tried explaining it to Ephi and Libra once, but neither one of them really seemed to understand what I was talking about. Frustratingly, I couldn’t even do so much as hum to provide an example—I put a token effort into whipping up an instrument that I could demonstrate with, eventually managing to make something resembling an ‘automatic xylophone’, temporarily using far too many of my mechanism slots on the gadget. It didn’t even prove to be worth it, as I just couldn’t quite muster anything more than poorly-tuned jingles from pistons clanking against metal bars.

Libra just sat there, tilting her head back and forth with each chime as she tried to make sense of it, while Ephi rambled on with her own attempt at rationalizing what I was talking about. Lacking the context for what music was, she had come to the conclusion that I was just explaining a “happiness from smashing things” in an overcomplicated way.

For all of the baseline knowledge that this world—or my own power, I wasn’t sure which—had granted my two employees, there were frustrating gaps that seemed to lack any logical reason for their absence.

At the very least, it probably would have helped with the occasional pangs of loneliness that gnawed at the corners of my mind. It wasn’t too intense, but I found it distracting all the same. Having two companions to talk to certainly did ease it a bit, but there was still something missing. Even though we shared so much, they lacked any knowledge of Earth and civilization as a whole—for as much as we talked, it still felt hard to connect to Libra and, to a lesser extent, Ephi.

Aside from Ephi’s occasional worries about mortality, the depth of our conversations rarely went beyond plans for the day and idle discussion about what we were working on in the moment. Sometimes I’d try to fill the air by telling the two of them about things I’d taken for granted on Earth, but that rarely managed to catch more than a few moments of their attention.

More often than not, it just turned into a spiral of “What’s that?”, “What’re those?”, and “Huh?”. I tried explaining what a library was to Libra earlier today and ended up having to detour to go over what books are, then what paper was, before finally describing the abstract concept of writing.

It's better than silence at least, which is what I end up stuck with come nightfall when my companions are fast asleep.

Those moments where I started to grow too conscious of my solitude were usually the times where I buckled down and worked the hardest to keep my head preoccupied with other things. Simply put, the dungeon’s most drastic changes and additions tend to occur at night.

Given that my two methods of interacting with the world could be boiled down to ‘creation’ and ‘destruction’, those concepts encompassed both work and leisure for me.

Work would be things like additions to the structure of the base.

The kitchen—or really, maybe calling it a brewery might have been a better choice—was my object of obsession this night. Picking out where to build it was the initial hurdle, as it needed to be somewhere close to the stockpile ideally to ease the burden of transporting supplies around. Things were already a bit cramped though; the storage room was attached to the hallway between the main vault and the greenhouse, but I would need far more room than was available without branching out further. While I would have liked for it to be connected to the hall itself, I eventually settled on adding the entrance to it along the back wall of the stockpile.

The room would need a fairly wide floorspace, as I was treating it more like a laboratory rather than a residential kitchen. There needed to be room for storage of bottles, both empty and filled, along with a hookup to the water supply. We’d need a container for boiling water, as well as a container for steeping the leaves or adding additional ingredients.

So, I began to channel the rectangular area out into the shape of the room, with smoothed stone counters running along the entire edge of the room along with an island in the center of it.

Most of the night went into building this new workspace, though it was still extremely crude in design and functionality so far as I needed some time to think about and plan out the layout, along with ways to run the production line within.

Not ideal by any means, but I was toying with the idea of moving the whole thing to a lower level at some point anyways.

My ‘hobbies’, on the other hand, tended to be more artistic or ‘pointless’ creations made in between bouts of more monotonous construction work. I used a small amount of my precious copper to make a wind chime, for example—though it’s entirely useless, as it simply hangs in the greenhouse below the aqueducts and there’s certainly not much of a breeze in there.

It's enriching work, at least. Perhaps more importantly, experimentation has already resulted in a noticeable increase in the quality of what I’ve been building. Not something I could measure with a skill or attribute increase—though I did get one of those too.

Experience Requirements Met.

FRAGMENT OF COALESCED WILL has increased to LVL 4.

FRAGMENT OF COALESCED WILL has gained 2 skill points.

INTELLECT has increased by 1.

WISDOM has increased by 1.

My mind wandered for a while as I stared transfixed at the prompt, idle thoughts distracting me from my work.

Right, skill points. What did I really need the most right now? I could spend it on trying to improve one of my current skills, like [Mechanical Engineering I] or [Textiles I] to increase the mileage I was getting from those, or perhaps try to branch into something new.

After all, I had been considering dabbling in alchemy, cooking, and even armorsmithing over the past few days. What did they call it back on Earth, again? Ah, right—‘diversifying my portfolio’.

I spent a while working out what I wanted to drop my points into, eventually settling on a bit of both worlds.

⬘ Mechanical Engineering II ⬘

Additional knowledge of physical and material sciences, matter and motion. Allows direct core control of up to fifty mechanisms. Mechanisms can apply additional force and have increased durability.

TYPE:

Passive

CATEGORY:

Proficiency

⬘ Eidetic Blueprinting ⬘

Allows conjuration of memorymites. A single memorymite can deconstruct an object and remember its configuration. Provided the core has all of the required materials in its virtual hoard, it can command the memorymite to reconstruct this object any number of times on its own. Materialization rate is reduced based on number of unique materials used. Incapable of copying magical effects.

TYPE:

Passive

CATEGORY:

Core

Additional slots for mechanisms would be a huge weight off of my shoulders and would actually allow me to really get creative with the utilities and defenses of my dungeon. [Eidetic Blueprinting] just seemed good for going into business. I’d be able to skip right to mass production without having to do something as radical as design an assembly line. If I could make even a single master copy of an item, I could print it out repeatedly without sweating the smaller details each time.

As long as I didn’t let any mistakes slip into the original ‘blueprint’, it seemed like I could squeeze a lot of mileage out of it.

My flighty attention span meant that the kitchen ended up being put on hold for the time being as I played with my new toys.

[Mechanical Engineering II] meant that I could afford a number of new devices in places where I had otherwise had to skimp on them, and it would also open the path up for me to create those vending machines I’d experimented with. If I combined it with [Eidetic Blueprinting], I wouldn’t have to worry about perfectly mirroring the design each time I built a new one, and the same went for the bottles.

I could afford to put more detail into the intricacies of the designs now too since I wouldn’t be increasing the workload of each subsequent one, which meant I could afford to make some nice-looking containers to help my product stand out.

There was no shame in what I did next: I had a field day with creating blueprints of a few things I felt might be a worthwhile investment. It was a bit like conjuring a manamite into existence, but mixed with deconstructing an original object at the same time. Blue light ate at the edge of the glass bottle I’d created, feasting until nothing but a sharp, angular prism of light remained in its shape remained.

Despite its abstract form, this floating framework followed orders just like any other manamite—floating around as commanded, only working when commanded to. A psionic nudge from me sent this light moving, coalescing the bottle right back into existence as if it had never left. It wasn’t a quick process, but a little bit of experimentation confirmed that it didn’t require my constant attention once the process was started, so I did the same to the vending machine along with one of my reinforced blast doors.

The sun rose a short while afterward and my employees began to stir, going about their morning routines. There was little left worth foraging for out in the stark winter landscape above us at this point, so Ephilia’s main reason for leaving the base was gone until the spring arrived. Still, she gave it an hour or two of effort, coming home with barely enough to even fill her paws. What the snow hadn’t smothered, the other scavenging beasts had already scrounged up.

Libra’s studies for that sunlight spell she had been working on came to an end this morning, as she finally managed to summon a sputtering, ephemeral fireball into existence for a few moments, much to our collective glee. Her next attempt was far smoother, lasting a few minutes, and from then on it only got better. With the basics down, I could take measure of what this miniature star could accomplish.

It seemed to radiate warmth from what the fox told me, though I couldn’t verify this myself. Its light was far easier to measure: I’d describe it similarly to the moonstone currently serving as the dungeon’s main light source, though warmer in hue. It didn’t seem to burn hot enough to ignite any fires or injure anyone, regardless of proximity.

The longest ones she conjured seemed to last for two or three hours, but the range varied all the way down to under an hour at their weakest.

“I believe that will do it,” she chimed over our link, a slight sense of pride clearly evident from how she was puffing her chest out, “Satisfactory?”

“Yeah, definitely!”, I shot back, transfixed on the flickering ball of ephemeral fire about the size of a softball suspended in the middle of the greenhouse, “You knocked that our pretty fast too. Nice work—though for any practical use we’ll need a longer duration, if possible. I don’t know if we can make them stay indefinitely, but that would be phenomenal.”

She bobbed her head up and down, just as enraptured by this mystical star as I was.

“It was an interesting challenge. I had no idea I was capable of such things as this even just a few weeks ago.”

“That’s a pretty common sentiment around here, honestly. You get used to it. Give it another month and you’ll be looking back impressed by how much further you’ve gotten. Hell, I used to just be one room,” I explained, “Things change quick around here.”

Libra’s curiosity seemed to shift a bit as she looked away from the flickering star. “I will hope these changes will be for the better,” she remarked over our link, “What will you have me do now?”

“Well, for as much progress as you’ve made, we still can’t rely entirely on Sunlight Orb to take care of this place full time just yet without constant maintenance,” I admitted, considering our options, “But it sounds like you’re itching to move on to something new, am I right?”

“It is… interesting work, but it leaves me tired. Not of the body, but I struggle to focus after long. It is difficult to explain,” she admitted.

Ah, I knew the feeling.

“No, I totally understand,” I replied, “Brain-heavy work can be just as draining as physical work in its own way. We’ll just have to find some other tasks to break the monotony of it, and—actually, we can cheat a little bit.”

My mana reservoir wasn’t in a bad state at the moment after all. I could afford to splurge a little bit towards giving Libra a break.

Focusing on her, I brought up her tooltip and then her available spells.

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 1 2% Create a stationary false sun that will radiate sunlight to illuminate an area. Area and duration scales based on rank. 25 MP Flash 0 0% Conjure a blinding flash of light to temporarily daze creatures nearby that have sight. 15 MP

The transaction was simple and over in an instant, much like forcing a level up—Libra’s Sunlight Orb spell ranked up to the next level, although there wasn’t quite as much fanfare I would have expected. The number ticked up and that was that.

At the very least, Libra seemed to have felt the change somehow, shooting a confused glance down as her body, her tail jolting straight and rigid in alert. “What was that?”, she asked over our link, “It felt almost like being doused in water for an instant.”

“I cheated a little bit. Mind trying your spell again one last time? We’ll leave it up and see how long it lasts for, so try and make this a good one.”

It was clear that she didn’t fully grasp what I’d done, but she was receptive to giving it one last shot at least. Sitting down on the path heading through the center of the greenhouse, her eyes drifted shut as she gave a curt, “Very well.”

The spell seemed to take far less effort to weave this time—gone was the minute or two she needed to mentally prepare, as a flickering spark began to form mere seconds after the fox put her mind to the task. Flickering gold embers phased into being at uneven distances around this core of light, rushing in as if reeled in by some unseen force as the star grew in size and intensity until it was well over a foot in diameter, floating over the area and rotating slowly.

Puzzled, Libra shot a sidelong glance towards one of my walls—at this point, I figured she was starting to grow accustomed to addressing the nearest inanimate object as if it were me—and spoke. “The process feels simpler now, at least… and the star itself feels stronger. Is this satisfactory?”

“Yeah,” I affirmed, entranced by the steady, thrumming light, “Nice work. Hopefully it’ll last long enough to actually be of use. Anyways, why don’t you grab some lunch for yourself? We won’t know if this will work well enough for me to permanently enclose the greenhouse until later today, and that’ll give me some time to think on what we’ll have you doing next.”

She gave what I can only describe as a fox’s equivalent of a bow, stooping her front half lower to the ground before trotting off towards the stockpile. “Of course, take your time,” she rang back.

I was, unfortunately, at a bit of a loss.

Libra’s sun was still functioning perfectly well after four hours, but I was still no closer to having anything immediately productive for her to do. At this point, the cold outside made me hesitant to send either of my companions out for anything beyond short stints and there was only so much for the two of them to do. Winter’s biting cold had removed my quick and easy assignment of “go scavenge for stuff” from my arsenal, and when it came to housework…

Well, there was only so much someone could do without thumbs.

Ephi’s front paws were at least able to do some basic manipulation even if she was hilariously clumsy with them sometimes. Libra, on the other hand—pardon, paw—lacked even that. Her jaws were her best bet for interacting with the world, and I couldn’t exactly teach her to do any kind of serious craftsmanship using just her mouth.

Still, I owed it to her to at least try to find something to keep her occupied.

Ephi could always busy herself with tending to the crops when she found herself getting restless, and she actually seemed to be developing an eye for what needed doing without having to rely on me passing on information supplied by [Horticulture I]. Still, there was precious little work that really needed doing each day, certainly not enough to keep the two of them both occupied.

So I ended up bringing Libra on as my sous chef for now.

While I had a few reservations about fur potentially ending up in the product, I didn’t really see any other solution for the moment. While I continued to build, she watched and listened to my explanations of what this room would be for—after a brief rundown on what a kitchen even was, of course.

Given that my assistant would be a four-legged animal, some concessions had to be made with the kitchen’s design and I couldn’t simply copy ideas that had worked back on Earth. While I could handle the repetitive mechanical aspects of the kitchen such as stirring, Libra could be the dexterous ‘hand’ performing any fine work that needed doing.

The process itself wasn’t going to be quite as involved as it might have been to create the mass-produced teas I’d known back at home, but I could take some solace in the fact that it seemed to be an untapped market anyways. As long as I could make something of an acceptable quality, it wasn’t as if it would be competing against anyone else—and given that I had effectively no running costs, any amount I could make would be pure profit.

The set-up was simple enough: a valve could reroute some of the heated water from the boiler room into a copper bucket, where Libra could portion out the leaves as needed and toss them in. From there, we’d allow the tea to steep; once it was done, Libra could position a bottle below its spout and I could manually dispense enough to fill it. The majority of the solids from the tea leaves remained inside our makeshift kettle thanks to a mesh filter I’d made, though I was certain some small particles would make it through nonetheless.

Once a bottle was full, all that remained was to cap it, which I could do easily enough with my mites, at which point Libra would be able to cart it off and add it to our storage racks.

That was the theory behind how I’d constructed it, anyways. In practice, I was certain things wouldn’t go quite as smoothly.

“Ready for our first test run?”, I checked, having assembled most of our ingredients we’d be using for today’s attempt. A small pile of dried tea leaves, along with some of the Ellomerian mint I’d been cultivating. Some kind of sweetener would have been ideal, but without sugar or honey I didn’t have much to work with. It was basic, but perhaps that was a blessing for us given our target demographic of medieval travelers.

Familiar was good. Familiar would sell.

“Ready, I believe,” Libra nodded, giving a strange look around the partially-complete brewery, “Though I would appreciate if you go over the plan as we go. This is all unfamiliar to me still.”

“It’s easier than it looks, I promise,” I encouraged, backtracking slightly a moment after, “Though I’ve never made tea in a batch quite this large before, or without hands. We’ll figure it out. Worst case, we waste a bit of product and that’s not the end of the world.”

“I would hope,” she affirmed.

“It’ll be fine. Now, go ahead and add the mix.”

In order to maintain at least some small measure of food safety and not get fox slobber in the drink, I had constructed a scoop for Libra to use: the manamites would fill it, and all she had to do was carry it up onto the counter and dump it in. She did so without issue, placing the scoop back down and awaiting my next move.

Cautiously, I opened the valve enough to allow a trickle of the scalding-hot water to pour forth and into the vessel we had prepared. Steam rushed upwards like the eruption of a volcano from the neck of the pot, billowing upwards in a great cloud as I filled the vessel partially.

“What do we do next?”, my red-furred assistant asked eagerly, eyeing the pillar of fog rising up through the brisk air.

“We wait. This part’s very easy, but we can use this time to prepare. I’ve got a dozen bottles on standby, so why don’t you grab one and position it beneath the faucet?”

Hopping to action, she grabbed one of the bottles by the neck, jagged teeth clicking against the crystalline vial as she dutifully carried it over and tilted her head to the side to gently place it back down. She gave it a few nudges with her nose to make sure it was lined up properly before chiming up to me, “Ready.”

“Well, we’ve still got a while before the tea’s done, so feel free to sit back and relax while I stir. Won’t be too long, I promise.”

Within the vessel itself, I kicked on the simple agitator I’d rooted on the bottom, stirring the mixture at a slow pace as the liquid took on a golden color, soaking leaves drifting about in the currents.

Bottling it turned out to be the most challenging part of the process, as we ended up splashing quite a bit onto the floor as it rushed out from the faucet, but overall our trial run went surprisingly smoothly. We filled up the twelve bottles I’d pre-constructed and still had about a quarter of the vessel remaining full of the stuff.

Libra seemed to be just as satisfied with our work as I was, proudly gawking at the condensation-covered bottles as she circled around them, staring through the rich-colored tea within. “Hey, as a treat for a job well done, do you want to try some for yourself?”, I asked, her ears flicking up almost instantly at the question.

“Perhaps. What is it like? It smells very nice, at least.”

“It’s… oh man, how do I even describe it?”, I sputtered, trying and failing to come up with something that fit, “You’ve pretty much only ever had water to drink so it’s hard to really compare it to something you’d know. It’s got a nice, satisfying taste though and it always used to help me feel relaxed. Just try it.”

I had the manamites construct a bowl beneath the faucet and filled it up, to which she curiously approached it and leaned down to lap some up. She gave it a few cursory sniffs as she slank forward before her tongue darted out, and almost instantly she recoiled from the bowl.

“Too hot?!”, I questioned in worry, “Sorry, I thought it had cooled enough by now—”

“No,” she sputtered over our link even as she actually lurched and let out a choking hack, “Bitter.”

“Oh. I guess unsweetened can be an acquired taste, yeah. Actually, maybe we can… crush up some mogo berries and add them to the next try. Hopefully we can salvage this batch.”

CURRENT PROGRESS:

BOSS

FRAGMENT OF COALESCED WILL LVL: 4 NAME: "Boss"

Traits:

Skills:

[Horticulture I]

[Biology I]

[Creator's Insight]

[Mech. Engineering II]

[Textiles I]

[Transmutation I]

[Mining I]

[Core Metalworking]

[Eidetic Blueprinting]

Features:

[Manamite Creation]

[Self-Synthesis]

[Manamite Specialization I]

[Material Infusion]

HP: 18 / 18 CATEGORY: Elemental MP: 26 / 100 SPECIES: Dungeon Core MP Rate: +27 daily SIZE: Tiny WEALTH: 6 XP: 11% STR VIT DEX INT WIS PER 0 6 0 10 9 8

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

Manamite Horde (149 / 177):

139 Manamites

1 Managermites (-3 MP/d)

Boiler Squad (5 / 20):

5 Manamites

Memorymites (3)

Criteria for Next Ascension Tier:

Level: 5

Wealth: 25

Employees: 3

Cost: 100 MP

Facility: Prison Virtual Hoard:

[COMMON MATERIALS]

➤680.4 Raw Stone

➤418.0 Loose Soil

➤65.1 Biological Material

➤312.1 Raw Lumber

➤24.3 Plant Fiber

➤0.0 Raw Crystal

➤12.4 Iron Ore

➤30.9 Copper Ore

[RARE MATERIALS]

➤6.1 Moonstone

➤0.5 Shimmerwood

➤4 Stellarite

➤2.2 Orichalcum

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]

Equipped:

🞚 Moonlit Mouseknight Barding

HP: 12 / 12 CATEGORY: Employee MP: 0 / 0 SPECIES: Field Mouse SP: 5 / 5 SIZE: Small XP: 98% GENDER: ♀ STR VIT DEX INT WIS PER 5 (+1) 6 (+1) 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

LIBRA

CORE-TOUCHED FOX KIT LVL: 3 NAME: "Libra"

Traits:

[Forged Sapience]

[Mana Processing]

Skills:

[Core Link I]

[Core Bond I]

[Stealth I]

[Evasion I]

[Self-Catalyzation]

[Light Magic I]

Spells:

[Sunlight Orb II]

Equipped:

🞚 Moonlit Silver Opal Ring-Amulet

HP: 9 / 9 CATEGORY: Employee MP: 2 / 2 SPECIES: Fox SP: 5 / 5 SIZE: Small XP: 33% GENDER: ♀ STR VIT DEX INT WIS PER 3 3 5 6 (+1) 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