I reached out, and pulled the dead into me. They unfurled in bright flames of incandescent Mana, the smokey residue of their lives drawn towards my core in a whirlwind that made the whole Dungeon shiver.

It was more than enough to produce a Mana Overflow. For once, I felt satisfied enough not to panic as my senses were cut off with the collapse of my Mana cloud into a single, condensed point. The world was replaced by a blazing white and I was calm.

The adventurers had shown me a flaw in my Dungeon. I lacked perceptive, clever watchdogs. Honestly, I had counted on my own senses being absolute, and now I realized how foolish that was. Of course adventurers would have ways to bypass a Dungeon’s sight; it was the first thing any competent crew would seek out.

Which meant I needed to design countermeasures. Traps that would find little vermin creeping into my domain without catching my own creatures.

It was tricky. Tricky tricky tricky.

You have created:

Crown of Inquiry - Once a week, the wearer may ask a single question and force a subject to answer to truthfully.

A clink of metal sounded as the crown materialized above me, dropping over the tiny gem that housed my consciousness. It was a circlet of braided silver with rising points of crystal. A beautiful, icy crown that gleamed in the dark of Argent’s lair.

It was a fantastic prize. For someone in a city of liars, being able to rely on even a single answer meant having a light in the darkness.

As my cloud of ethereal Mana flowed back into the Dungeon, expanding my senses once more, I took stock of the damage left in the incursion's wake. It was fairly light on the western boundary, only my spiders suffering any real losses. They would recover on their own.

Towards the east, my orchard had been hacked apart, the painstaking webs of the fisherman spiders ripped down and fires lit among the mangrove trees. Blood drifted through the water, and the survivors of the dead man’s rush sat on the shore, shivering, wet, afraid. A few of them had made it rich today. Golden fruit was clutched in their shaking hands. Most had come back with nothing more than their own lives, and new gratitude for that.

As they watched, the strange world where they had faced their death began to reform. The tears in the layer of floating lilies that covered the lake were stitched together as new flowers blossomed, growing at incredible speeds. A last flash of grey, slime-covered scales was visible as the hulking monstrosity of the abyssal shark was laid to rest under a blanket of flowers.

And I began my endless work.

I had long ago taken the Somnolent Blooms as one of my only three Schema. It was an impulsive decision, but since selecting a Schema reforged the inner pathways of the organism, it meant I could mutate the breed more freely than common Dungeon monsters. Now, I would build them into an alarm for my territory, developing a new crossbreed with traits from the carnivorous Nematocelia mushrooms.

The result were clusters of long, thin wisps that slowly stretched through the air like grasping tendrils, the color of pale undersea fish. They added something unearthly to the ravine, looking like they belonged on the bed of an ocean instead. Clustered on their waving arms were scatterings of small, sticky spores that created a uniquely fragrant perfume, a spicy earthen stuff that reminded me of woodsmoke. Anything that touched them would come away coated in the spore and the scent. That alone would make them obvious to the creatures of my Dungeon. To add a visual cue, I altered the tendrils to retract into the ground when something brushed against them.

[ Fainting Mycelium ]

Shy to a fault, this frail species serves as a useful method of detection for invaders, shrinking away at the slightest touch.

It cost me little to spread them, thanks to the Schema, and I quickly layered thick fields of the pale mushroom-tendrils throughout the ravine, and between the roots of the mangroves. I frowned, and began to alter them a little more, making the tops curl into fronds that glowed with a faint blue light. Now they looked properly beautiful, a sea of spiriforms full of pulsing bioluminescence.

It was a fine addition to my Dungeon.

The last bit of work to be done was tending to the reelfish. One of them had finally eaten its fill, reaching the point of evolution.

Your creation is undergoing Evolution

During this time, Mana you gift them will be more effective, and they will be easier to shape.

Choose a path-

Ink Eel (Common) - Infused with the magic of shadows, the ink eel exudes a cloud of darkness when threatened.

Placodermi (Common) - Born from an age long past, this armored beast can grow to behemoth sizes.

Heavenly Bride (Rare) - Attuned to the heavens, this peaceful creature accumulates fortune all its life, bestowing its good luck on he who devours it.

Angler of Styx (Rare) - Born from the waters of the underworld, this lurking predator rips the souls from its victims to absorb their Mana.

Many-Eyed Carp (Mutant) - Absorbs traits from the last foe defeated. Gains multiple eyes and enhanced cognition.

The choice was fairly easy for me. My abyssal shark already took the role of apex predator, and I saw no need for another species of predatory, violent aquatic carnivore.

No, the Heavenly Bride intrigued me. It possessed a form of magic tied to Fortune, which was higher in the divine ladder I had glimpsed than shadows. Higher, likely, than whatever Attunement the Angler of Styx was aligned with, although the ability to absorb Mana directly did seem powerful.

Making my selection, I watched as the amber chrysalis hatched to unleash a beautiful, elegant creature, with a slender form that trailed diaphanous tails of long, billowing membranes in translucent silver. Its scales were the rich orange of the midday sun dotted with white, as if it was passing through the clouds, with a metallic red tinge that flashed under the waters.

I set about making a new environment for them, hollowing out a wide pond in the Garden of Glass Bells, separate to the muddy tunnels where the reelfish lurked. I layered the bottom with pale, even-sized stones, all of a light blue color, giving the sun-patterned fish a blue sky above which to swim. A few lilies would lure down insects and frogs to feed on.

But there was something missing. I felt a certain artistic intuition, a need for a finishing touch.

I raised a pillar of stone from the pool’s center, and began to sculpt.

“These five…” Eyfrae declared, lifting her voice above the clamour of the masses. They were near rioting, a furious cloud of anger storming down upon her in the yells, the pelting of bits of garbage that were hurled at the stage.

She had cut off access to the Tower.

After another two days, eleven of the available twenty positions were on the third floor, waiting. Four were on the second, leaving only three doors open at the Tower’s base. As the crowd fought to be the next to enter, Eyfrae had gathered troops from Governer Kedlin’s guard and her own loyal contingent from the Adventurer’s Guild. They had crashed into the fray like a brick through a window, an organized formation versus a mob. Truncheons and whips beat back the disorganized challengers.

And just like that, Eyfrae had control over the city’s great fortune.

Even now her guards were dispersing the miniature village of sprawling tents and merchant pavillions that had sprung up around the Tower, laying waste to the complex industries that had surrounded the challengers, from supplying them with the necessities of food and sleep to trading for the trinkets they brought back from their triumphs.

Tomorrow, a new order would begin. Only her adventurers would qualify to enter the Tower. Only Eyfrae would hold the keys to prosperity.

Today, she would have to endure the crowd’s anger, but tomorrow they would be lining up outside the Guild.

“These five.” She reiterated. “Were among the first to reach the third floor. In honor of their bravery and strength, I award them each a gift.”

Malvet walked alongside her, bearing a silk-lined coffer containing a dozen tiny bottles. Each one sparkled like it was full of starlight, a faint blue elixir sloshing in the teardrop-shaped vials, the stoppers in the shape of the Institute’s seal.

“A gift to help them conquer the Dungeon, where true riches await.”

She had to refocus this fiasco. Take the energy of the crowd, the furor the city was in, and redirect it towards the threat lurking under their feet. A threat to her more than anyone else. Suffi hadn’t even tried to stop Eyfrae and Kedlin from taking control of the Tower, although that old crone Cathara was watching from the stands all the while.

No, everyone of real importance knew the Dungeon was what mattered. She simply needed to wake the common people up to that. To direct them, poor lost sheep that they were.

And if they resented her for it, well, being the adult in the room had always been a thankless task.

She presented the vial to the first in line, the golem-armed man named Nim. She smiled as she pressed the fatal poison into his palm.

One by one, she handed out deadly gifts. To the twin mages, to her own loyal steadfast Jakon, to the dwarf with the seven-stone cudgel.

As she reached the end of the line, a messenger was waiting for her, thrusting up a letter sealed with the Halfhand crest from off the edge of the stage. She bent down to take it, melting away the wax with a wisp of flame.

Eyfrae's face soured immediately as she read the contents. Her smile flickered for a moment.

And she looked up to the tower, where flames burned in the eyes of two statues on the fourth floor. Just two. Nobody else had made it past the bottleneck on the third layer.

She could only hope they were capable of another miracle.