Aby continued to work mechanically through the early portion off the night, moving its attention from one task to the next far quicker than any observer would be able to keep up. It wasn’t anything unusual for the aquamarine gemstone, anyone familiar with a dungeon core would agree that it’d be more concerning to find Aby not in such a state. To Sela, however, it was still a distinctly unusual feeling. It had been months since she had bound herself to Aby and she still found all the various states of mind the core shared with her a little alien, though not nearly as surprising as the first time she’d felt a part of her own mind become something else.

She smiled a bit at the memory in spite of that, though, looking up at the core which had grown markedly larger since then. She too, had grown; by now she was nearly fifty centimeters from head to tail, even larger than her mother when she had left home. She thought about just how absurdly quick she was growing as she played with one of her spirits, Whitey. The little one was shivering in joy as she twirled it in her hands or let it dance around her arms.

After a few minutes of idle play, she sat up in the nest of unnaturally white seaweed she rested on and stretched mightily. A few satisfying pops echoed out within the core room, startling the two other spirits which lay on the bed with her, Brighty and Regalt, who took but a moment to join Whitey in their soundless reverie. After a moment of contemplation on how she would spend her night, she decided to review her own information, first.

Name Sela, of the Abyssal Reef Race Prime Dungeon Nereid Maturity 2 Years Old

48 Centimeters Long Status Bound Feats Progenitor

Primogenitor

One of a Kind

Named

Name Giver Partner The Abyssal Reef Dungeon

Unsurprisingly, there was nothing new. Any other Nereid would already be shocked to find out just how quickly she had been maturing, and having five titles was nothing short of astonishing to her, even if she felt she hadn’t earned any of them. She still made it a habit to check whenever she woke up, though, growing a centimeter a week for the past few months had conditioned her to expect something every time she checked her status.

After she brought herself upright she set about tidying up some, primarily just fixing the bed she managed to so thoroughly tangle and knot, as well as fixing some of the corals which made up one of the walls of her room. She helped one of the elkhorn corals grow a bit straighter and stand a bit taller, before turning around and coming face to face with an excitable bundle of icy blue light.

“Brighty, what are you doing?” She squeaked, as the spirit in question tangled itself into her hair, it’s mostly incorporeal nature only served to tangle and knot her own hair more severely and by the time she could coax it out, her hair was a mess. She was fixing to scold the icy spirit, but simply couldn’t bring herself to do so when she saw how happily the little creature swam around her.

Instead, she merely gave it an affectionate ruffle before placing it on the bed with the other two.

“Stay here, you three. I’ll be back.” The trio gave a disappointed shine, but listened nonetheless. She turned her head upwards next, addressing the core directly despite knowing she needed little more than a thought.

“Aby, is there anything invading right now?” The link between the two shuddered, and she could feel it change some before the core focused on her directly a moment later.

“No, clear.” Came the gemstone’s succinct reply. She thought a moment, deciding to visit some of the upper floors tonight and see what had changed. Perhaps she could even find something along the way to bring back.

She gave a short nod to herself before setting off, waving goodbye to her companions and giving Aby a brief thanks. She could still feel the core keeping a fair bit of attention on her, and it made her feel a bit warm at how protective it seemed to be at times. She took a path into the sixteenth floor, opting to avoid the seventeenth and its squid. She knew they would do her no harm, but she had decided, after watching them go into a feeding frenzy for the first time, it wasn’t worth the risk. There was also the fact that she felt decidedly uncomfortable watching these creatures act so brutal.

She was given a wide berth by many of the less intelligent creatures, with fish swimming out of her way and crabs making to hide, but those with a bit more developed mental faculties were more curious or respectful than fearful. She was given a start when she swam past a large coral, only for it to unfurl itself and raise a pair of sucker-laden tentacles in a very flexible amalgamation of a wave. After taking a few seconds to calm herself, she gave a tentative wave back at the octopus, then swim off towards the fifteenth floor. She didn’t exactly like the sweltering heat, but there was one creature she knew lived there which she hadn’t seen in some time.

She had just barely peaked her head out of the shaft at the far entrance when she saw him, curled in the center of the room around a coral which left her dazzled. The thing was unlike any coral she had ever even thought possible, giving off so much mana that even from hundreds of meters away she could feel it. She almost couldn’t help herself from swimming towards it in her daze, when a wall of blue descended in front of her. She snapped out of it, looking up at the unusual critter.

Colored a brilliant blue and shaped rather unusually, she knew this to be something evolved from the man-o-war, she was just unsure as to what it was. One of its myriad blue tentacles seemed to flutter in the water, reaching towards her, and she was backing up to avoid the obviously stinging attachment, but it only hastened its pursuit. She wasn’t entirely sure what to do, but before she felt too uncomfortable the offending arm simply stopped. It then lazily drifted downwards, dissolving into light as it touched the floor.

She looked past the blue stingers, all of which had suffered the same fate, and turned her attention to the now much closer wyvern. He had just finished giving the strange man-o-war a glare before turning to her with a much warmer expression, and she returned the same. She spent a fair amount of time simply petting the eager creature; despite having grown up he was still plenty happy to see Sela. He frolicked around her eagerly for a while, before giving a brief wave and returning to his apparent home; and Sela was once more lost in the majesty of it. She made a mental note to ask Aby if it would be able to make a frozen variety of one of those in the future.

The blue creature had retreated once the wyvern had reared his head, and even after the two split up it seemed reluctant to approach Sela. Thanks to this, she was able to proceed forward to the fourteenth floor relatively unaccosted, and could see the sights and splendor of the frozen reef on a much grander scale than back in the core room. She simply marveled for a bit, getting lost in the delicate beauty of it all before she remembered what she had left this evening to accomplish. Even though she would have much rather gotten lost in this floor, or even better, the tenth, she steeled her resolve to head upwards. She hadn’t been any higher than the fourth in quite a long time, mostly due to her own fear and anxiety at having a portion of her tail removed by the only invading creature she had ever encountered.

Deciding to take a more direct route so as to not get sidetracked again, she leaned up against a frigid staghorn coral, then spoke aloud.

“Aby, do you have any tunnels from here to any of the first three floors?” It took but a moment to receive a response, this time the core didn’t even try to use words, simply giving a mental tug in the direction of a wall nearby. Sure enough, she found what she was looking for without issue, a hole roughly three quarters of a meter wide which she had no trouble swimming through.

Along the way upwards, she passed by an enormous amount of rifle shrimp, they were lining the walls with next to no space between them. It seemed that Aby, too, had some reservations about her being entirely alone. When she arrived at the exit which deposited her squarely in the first floor, a rifle shrimp broke ranks to follow behind her, albeit rather clumsily and slowly. Since she was in no hurry, and also quite happy to have something akin to a guard to begin with, she slowed her pace. She swam leisurely beside the moderately large shrimp, a bit amused by just how clumsy it was with that huge claw.

They went side-by-side through the winding corridor, a change Sela was definitely unfamiliar with, until they rounded another corner and spotted the entrance to the dungeon, a massive opening which very swiftly tapered into the three meter around hallway of the floor. It had been altered immensely from the days where she could see from one end of the floor to the other, now it was a truly impressive labyrinth, one lined with corals and gems, glittering and fluttering brilliantly.

Her moment of contemplation was swiftly cut short, however, when Aby sent a very urgent message to her.

“Sela, Leave.”

Despite being no less monotonous or emotionless than any other worded message the core has sent, there was a sense of importance she didn’t often feel. Much like earlier, she was guided to a hole in the wall nearby, unsure of where exactly it led to but not bothering to question at the moment. In the background, she could hear the bone-rattling boom of the shrimp firing at something, but whatever it was either made no sound, or was drowned out by the next shot and the ringing in her ears. As she descended, entering what was apparently the hive of these shrimp if the number of shrimp currently swarming out past her was any indication, she took a moment to simply think to herself now that she was safe. Most of her thoughts were in the same vein, all revolving around her swearing off coming to the first floor ever again. A moment later, she found a hole leading straight downwards and took it without hesitation.