Sela had, as Aby had hoped, settled into the now shared core room very well. The work she had done was truly stunning, and even the rather unrefined Aby felt geniuinely proud to have a room of such incredible detail. Sela had an eye for design, and she made very sure that it was well used. Even now, she continued to add smaller and more intricate changes, and Aby would often return its attention to the core room only to notice an entirely new aspect to the room that hadn't been there before. It wished to watch Sela work, in order to learn more about her own process, but hadn't been able to do so much lately.

Oddly, the past two days have seen a large number of sapient invasions into the dungeon. Groups of people were making their way into the halls every fifteen minutes, all with varying degrees of apparent experience. Some performed terribly, falling to the most simple of creatures within the first three floors, be they barracuda, sea-boars, rifle shrimp or even the seahorses. These people were few, though, and many were rather professional and well prepared for the creatures and creations within the dungeon.

The core realized they were getting continuously better within the halls, each group seemingly knew more about the interior than the last. Some still seemed content to remain on the first four floors, bubbling with excitement as they swam or sprinted around, admiring Aby’s interior. Others pushed deeper into the halls, and the deeper they went, the more Aby saw them fall. While the brittle star still gave trouble to intruders, it had been slowly losing the edge, with people working on methods to counter the creature. It was still dangerous, and had claimed the lives of more than a few who underestimated it, and even when outclassed it was far too slippery to catch within its own halls.

Those who made it past floor five were met with Carmine’s dwelling. The sapients seemed to be creating methods to protect themselves from her Song, but that led to them cutting off their sense of hearing entirely as a result. Those that did so could be caught off guard by the wandering fish and snakes much more easily, and those that didn’t were at risk of having their fragile psyches crumble should they listen too long.

Floor eight saw the most countermeasures being put into play, and some brave souls had apparently even started hunting the wyvern, according to the conversations Aby had overheard from some of these people. Once again, Aby wasn’t very pleased to hear that one of its favorite creatures was being treated as nothing more than prey, and sent Carmine to the fifth floor to help the brittle star teach these people the folly that is hubris.

Most often, though, people would try and either avoid or stall the wyvern to go by to the ninth floor, which worked some of the time. Those few that made it to the ninth seemed to use it to rest, rather than continue moving forward, and some even used strange items to directly leave when they had the time to activate them. Only seven groups in total had actually continued forwards, either into the tenth or thirteenth floor, and none returned.

It had to be said, the core was starting to get exasperated with the influx of people, both days they had invaded nonstop for hours on end, every fifteen minutes another group would dive, and this would continue for twelve hours. It was still able to work, but it was so much more time consuming to leverage the vast amounts of mana required for its projects when it did.

It was watching a group of strange looking sapients enter the dungeon when they suddenly spotted some of the tiny crystal seeds, and began frantically collecting as many as they could. Once again, Aby couldn’t begin to understand this behavior, why were they simply collecting the junk mana, and so eagerly?

They quickly departed, having picked clean the corals surrounding the entrance, and Aby laid down a new layer of seeds, frustrated at the duo on the second floor which was making it that much harder for the core to do so. Before the core deliberated on what to do in any real detail, however, it witnessed that one of the bloody seahorse had developed a… unique strategy, and was testing it for the first time. Using all the mana it could muster in its tiny body, it attempted to bewitch the two in front of it. After it attracted their attention, less so from successfully bewitching them and more that the older sapient of the group simply became fascinated by it, it slowly backed up into the coral lining the walls. The older one followed, happily observing the little critter, whilst his companion begrudgingly tailed him, muttering about lack of pay.

It just so happened that the little seahorse knew that this was the location to one of the rifle shrimp holes, disguised well enough that neither sapient even noticed it, not until the old biped was within half a meter of the wall, and the deafening crack resounded through the halls. The merman companion jumped, he’d been a meter behind the old man and was clearly feeling the effects of the percussive blast. The man, however, simply fell down, before dissolving into information.

As the merman reeled, Aby found itself assaulted by a torrent of information from the old man, the Scholar. All of it was clear, concise, and well organized, and much more intricate than what the core normally dealt with after the death of a sapient. Most importantly, it was understandable. The knowledge received was so much stronger than what the core had dealt with in the past, the simple passion in which he learned made the contents and concepts therein much more palatable than the core had thought possible.

The core had to snap itself out of its reverie before it started to reflect too deeply on its new information, instead turning its attention to a notification. Thinking that the shrimp had finally reached the threshold for evolution, the core found itself mistaken.

Congratulations! Your creature “Bloody Crystal Seahorse” has fulfilled a hidden condition(s), allowing it to undergo a special evolution!

Creator titles: Randomizer, Invasive, Adaptive, Ambitious, The Trench Dungeon

Successfully lure a sapient creature to their demise

Special Evolution Available:

Kelpie

An enigmatic creature found in and around waters of all types, the Kelpie resembles a horse in looks, and a monster in temperament. Scheming against the strong, bewitching the weak, and preying upon them all, a Kelpie happily lures its victims to their watery graves.

This was interesting to the core, and it decided to allow the creature to evolve, though the second floor was hardly the place for that with the dungeon under its constant siege. The core thus waited for the merman he now knew to be a bodyguard to work himself out of his stupor, something that apparently wasn’t easy.

The man straightened up, and with his head outside of the water the core could more easily make out the after-effects of the attack. Blood running down the sides of his head, streaming out from his ears showed the man was without doubt deaf, and the small trickle of blood leaking from his nose showed that he wasn’t doing so well inside his skull, either.

As an aquatic race, however, his sense of balance wasn’t solely reliant on his fluid filled eardrums, and he was able to swim forward in slightly sluggish, impaired movements. Unfortunately for him, he was moving in the wrong direction. However, this was still an opportunity for the soon-to-be-no-longer seahorse, and he darted across the hall as best he could to one of the smaller hidden tunnels, which led down to the eighth floor.

Crossing across the newly empty room and mockingly nodding to the wyvern, only to be ignored, he was instructed to take yet another tunnel to the twelfth floor. After all, it wouldn’t do to be caught off guard, and that group on the sixth and seventh floors was still holding out against Carmine’s Song.

And so, in one of the deeper pools on the floor, Aby began the evolution, already instructing the others to refrain from killing him. The glow once more started, highlighting the outline of the sixteen centimeter tall seahorse before the changes started. And change it did, as it very quickly reached a height of two hundred ten centimeters, and that was the least noteworthy change. Swiftly, his body elongated to two hundred eighty centimeters, then thickened, then, in much the same way the wyvern had, grew limbs, only instead of two wings, there were four rapidly growing legs, each long and thin with misshapen looking feet.

His transluscent skin once more became opaque, a pale white coloration covering the entirety of the as yet amorphous creature. Following the color change, the texture became smoother, though damp and amphibious, and fur started growing. It was a sleek and oily black that started in clumps on its head, neck, and tail, then swiftly covered his entire body. A mane of fur was present on his neck, the darkness seeming to flow off of his skin like tar. His head was reworked entirely, changing so largely and so swiftly Aby couldn’t keep up with it, and as the evolution started to draw to a close, the core realized that this was swiftly looking more and more like an equine horse that one of the surface races remembered riding.

There were differences, if the almost liquid texture of the horse didn’t clue one in, the backwards facing hooves likely would. His teeth were sharp, dangerous caricatures of what a horse should normally have; and his fiery red eyes were intelligent, cunning, and mocking. The slick, oily mane truly was awful; the pores on his neck oozed a thick and adhesive oil that flowed out like molasses, and would easily result in the careless being stuck, and the weak, at his mercy.

At a distance, he was truly a champion of the equine species. From up close, he was a cruel nightmare to behold. As he shook himself out of the daze of evolution, it took him multiple attempts to even stand. He may have the instincts and abilities of his race from the moment he awoke, but adapting to a completely, entirely new skeletal structure, and the musculature that entailed, would take a short time.

Aby too had to do a double-take. This was the most unusual change the core had ever seen, by far, and even though it knew about the race from the moment the evolution began, knowing what the outcome was proved to be not even a fraction as impactful as watching that. The slight feeling of revulsion it felt was swiftly replaced by curiosity, however. Not even the smart old man knew anything about these creatures, and yet the core already knew that this beast would be considered rank B, and could grow more powerful in the future. It was truly impressive for a creature only barely considered to be rank C- due to its near invisibility and mana-parasitism to be part of such a strange and esoteric lineage.

As the kelpie stood up he shook his mane, sloshing off the viscous substance oozing from his neck. Most of it splattered onto the floor and ceiling, or plopped into the water, but a few innocent bystanders were in the splash zone, and were struck by it. It quickly hardened on contact with the shells, scales, and skin of these various creatures, and refused to come off. Some tried wiping it off, only to stick their various appendages to themselves, and others attempted to smear it off, getting stuck to the scenery instead.

The horse happilly brayed, and with an expression that didn’t belong on a horse, or any creature, sneered at the creatures that found themselves in such a helpless situation. He turned around to walk off towards the entrance, only to find himself looking up into the angry gaze of a true monster, one whose face and chest was caked with the black gunk he’d shaken loose. The unnatural sneer was very swiftly erased, and panic began to register in his eyes.

Aby too could feel the murderous rage the short-tempered drake was feeling, and had to inform it, in no uncertain terms, not to kill the creature. The drake acknowledged, easily prying open his jaws despite the tar that stuck them shut. It gave the kelpie a predatory grin as it circled around the sticky stallion, debating where best to lunge from. The kelpie, however, was having none of that, and kicked out backwards with its hind legs as the drake was behind it, and as it felt the kick connect to the creature’s skull and leave it momentarily dazed, the kelpie leapt forwards.

His hindquarters seemed to melt and stretch out, trailing behind him as the area reshaped into a long, eel-like tail that extended for two and a half meters. The kelpie adapted to its new body structure once more, much more urgently this time, and darted to the exit upwards to the eleventh floor, followed closely behind by a truly incensed drake. Slithering through the waters, and dashing over the lands, the kelpie left a disgustingly black trail behind him wherever he passed, yet nary a grain of sand stuck to his mane, nor a drop of water to his coat. It was truly interesting to behold, and the chase swiftly drew to a close.

The kelpie had successfully dove into the eleventh floor exit, sporting a gash on his hip that dug to the bone, when he adapted for land and had hips. Yet Aby never even needed to heal it, the wound itself swiftly knit itself shut, the fetid green flesh weaving back together the muscles as the pasty skin covered the wound. Not even a scar could be seen through the greasy fur. It was honestly quite impressive, nothing else in the halls was even remotely as capable as that at regeneration.

The only two contenders were the brittle star, who could naturally regrow entire limbs given time; and, oddly, the Frozen Waters Dragonkin. The few times he had been wounded fighting invaders, his injuries swiftly froze, before the ice would slowly melt away during the fight, whilst new tissue grew in. It wasn’t nearly as effective as the star, but this meant that he didn’t bleed, and was incredibly helpful a trait to have.

Snapping back to the kelpie, it had finished swimming upwards, and then stepped out onto the eleventh floor, pulling that eel-like tail out of the water where it slowly molded itself back into the shape of a horses’. Once more the mop of black stuff hung down in place of its tail, and it began to trot off into the eleventh floor, when Aby thought of something, and sent it towards the direction of the kobold tribe.