Aby was delighted when it realized it was finally able to pull its consciousness back together, no longer feeling obligated to monitor every crevice of its halls in excruciating detail. And so it did, taking a moment to simply bask in the feeling of having its mind be back in one piece once more, or at least the feeling of not having its consciousness spread so thin.

Unfortunately, it was not to last, one of the few creatures it deemed important enough to actively monitor was doing something worth monitoring.

“Sela? Sela, are you there?” Carmine had suddenly started calling for its partner. At first, it thought little of this behavior, and simply let her do as she pleased. However, upon watching her descend a floor deeper and feeling her discomfort at witnessing Sela’s empty home, it needed to ask the subject of her search.

“Sela, Carmine calling?” It spoke, watching as its small partner jolted awake at the sudden conversation. She shook off her grogginess as she processed the core’s statement, seeming to shoot out of her bed when the words clicked.

“Tell her I’ll be right there, please!” She stated, shooting out of the room with an urgency the core was confused to witness. She didn’t get all that far, however, before thinking of something important and turning back. “Aby, what floor is she on? Wait, can you just show me the quickest way there?”

Aby did as she’d just asked, tugging her in the right direction while making good on her first request. It reached out to Carmine, sending a message to her in much the same way as it does Sela, albeit with a bit more effort to start that bond.

“Wait, coming.” The message itself wasn’t all that complex, but Carmine seemed confused for some reason, before asking a rather off topic question.

“You can talk?”

“Yes” Came Aby’s swift response, answering what it felt was a rather obvious question, and then getting another.

“Why haven’t you before, then?”

“No.” Aby felt no real need to do so, and still felt it unnecessary, so it decided to let her know that.

Thankfully, she seemed to not have any further questions for the core, so it felt fine loosening the link some. Other than that, it watched Sela carefully as she ascended one of the hidden tunnels, yet again having a rifle shrimp follow her out as she entered into the eighth floor.

Aby was caught off guard, and subsequently a little perturbed, when the first thing Carmine did upon seeing its partner was rush forwards and pull her into a tight embrace. It was only after feeling Sela’s happiness rather than fear or even confusion did it stop considering outright sending Carmine away, and once she released Sela it found itself relaxing.

It still made sure to watch the two for a while longer, but when it found that the two were getting on without any difficulties, its attention shifted to something different. Earlier that day it had received quite a bit of knowledge on how elemental crystals could be used, and it realized that exactly none of what it had gained was in any way related to what it had done with the drake.

Some of the information was useful to it still, and it learned an interesting way it could enhance the potency of some of its more magical creatures, but there was nothing in the scholar’s memories about physically enhancing someone or something with these gems. She’d barely any information about what breaking a gem does, even, only that the only times she had ever done so was with a pitifully small and already depleted example, and that was to grind it up for some other use.

And so it was left unsatisfied in its pursuit for understanding, unable to figure out why the drake had gotten so much stronger, why the crystals embedded into it had begun growing ever so slightly whenever it fought something, or why it seemed to be getting more and more interested in gathering a pile of crystals into the area where it had begun sleeping. It held out hope that it would figure it out sooner than later, but until then it was simply another mystery to it, right along why the Undines on the same floor had continued to gather in large numbers, raising the water level to nearly twice what it had been before a party of invaders had made it to the twelfth floor and things changed drastically.

For whatever reason, their presence seemed to startle the spirits, and they all immediately dispersed, along with whatever it was that kept the waters as high as they were. Almost instantly the water level plummeted, and the party of bipeds was very quickly swept off their feet, allowing the drake to capitalize on this even if he too was a bit confused and wobbly in these raging waters. Despite his initial clumsiness, he made short work of the invaders and was left with a floor full of very confused inhabitants and one equally surprised Aby.

That was earlier on in the day, and by the time it had checked back in on the floor after Sela and Carmine’s meeting there had been a few Undines which had actually returned to their ritual, but not nearly enough to get anywhere near the level of influence they’d had previously.

Aby didn’t spend too long checking on that floor, simply leaving the drake to focus on messing around with one of the faster growing shards of crystal as it watched the few returning spirits. Instead, it moved to the floor above, interested in checking the progress of the now expanded kobold tribe, as well as the progress of their remaining clutch of eggs.

The first thing it noticed upon centering its attention on that small gathering of buildings was the noise. It seemed that the hatchlings, particularly the coastal variants, hadn’t given up their tendencies to make noise whenever they wanted the attention of whoever they considered their caretakers at that moment.

Thankfully for the members of that tribe, they were growing shockingly fast, and had begun to realize that those caretakers were their parents, but their curiosity and tendency to start a fuss at the slightest provocation had made them quite a hassle regardless of who their fits were aimed at.

The next detail which stood out to the core was of course their growth. In just about a day after hatching, they’d already grown in size by nearly a quarter, and they showed no signs of slowing down. Each of them had also taken next to no time to acquaint themselves with their bodies, too, and so they were all surprisingly adept at moving around. The only member of the group of hatchlings not sprinting around, leaping about, and even fighting with the rest was the aquatic kobold, and Aby had the sneaking suspicion that even she was simply not doing so, rather than being unable to.

That said, she wasn’t particularly interested in being around her peers to begin with. Unsurprisingly, she hadn’t outgrown trying to escape the landlocked tribe, and her efforts were still being thwarted by her father. At least for her sake he had realized that she wouldn’t stop trying to leave, and after digging out a pool of water for her he’d found that it drastically lowered the amount she tried to get away. He still needed to keep an eye on her at all times, but at least he could tend to the rest of his brood more easily.

The mother was also quite busy, though for entirely different reasons. Rather than trying to prevent an infant escape or corralling over half a dozen hatchlings into one space, she had to deal with three surprisingly intelligent children, and answer a seemingly endless amount of questions. The core watched as a seemingly harmless question about one of the nearby coconut crabs and their claws had spiraled into the harvesting of nearly a dozen of them along with four broken fingers needing to be mended.

It was also a bit surprised at how quickly they were growing in terms of combat, too. They were each already able to wield a weapon with some level of proficiency, despite being not even half their parent’s size, and some of the coastal hatchlings had begun sparring with one another or even the adults. It was clumsy and unpracticed, but already far beyond what one would come to expect of a creature so young. It was definitely a promising sign in Aby’s view, it meant that before long it could have a much more effective force patrolling its many floors, especially since it had begun working on getting more kelpies. While there hadn’t been another success yet, almost all of the seahorses had taken up the practice of luring invaders to rifle shrimp openings, to varying degrees of success.

It would continue trying tomorrow, but until then it decided to check up on the nine growing eggs, and seeing how they were doing. The fact that it still hadn’t received the templates for the developing drake-kin left it both surprised and excited. The differences in species had finally become apparent, though, and it could feel the faintest links forming with the kobolds, while the drake-kins had none.

Of the nine, five were kobolds, all five coastal, and it was good to learn that they were no different from the rest in species, if a little confusing based on their incubation times. Even more confusing, after a closer inspection Aby found that the little ones were developing differently than the other coastal kobolds, they were bulkier, had more feathers growing, and had already started growing out some rather menacing teeth. On top of that, their jaws were structured more similarly to a drake-kin’s.

They still appeared more feral in appearance than the drake kin did, but they were definitely different than the rest of their kind. It was a helpful thing, too, the core didn’t often deal with situations like this, and so learning a bit more about the limits of what can be considered one creature rather than another was interesting, to say the least.

Aby wanted to learn more about this, but it felt a slight pull on its mind in the upper portion of its dungeon that it decided to investigate. It wasn’t disappointed, either, when it realized that it was because one of the creatures which it was paying extra attention to had finished a natural evolution, and the bond it had with the core had changed ever so slightly too, a product of an increased intelligence, if Aby was guessing correctly.

The subject of its focus was currently in the hive of rifle shrimp sitting around the first three floors, unsurprising given that it was born and ‘raised’ there. The former rifle shrimp had grown to be much less ridiculous in appearance, looking less like its ridiculous kin and more like a very large pistol shrimp, one with a much more gaudy appearance.

It took but a moment to come to learn that this newest addition was called a Royal Rifle Shrimp, though for the moment nothing other than its appearance suggested that it was royalty of any sort. The platinum carapace shown in the dim light of the tunnels, and its metallic gold claw glittered far too brightly for it to be caused by simple ambient light. On top of its head, where there were once antennae, now three golden spikes jutted out, giving it the appearance of a crowned creature. It had yet to test out its capabilities, but if Aby’s assumption about its claw was on point, that was definitely a good thing, considering the small and densely populated space which it currently resided in.

The core watched as it continued crawling towards the highest point in the hive, taking it without any form of conflict from a shrimp far larger than it, and realized that it was in fact doing something, but what exactly that might be was a mystery. It hoped there would be time to figure it out, though, and it made a note to pay more attention to the critter come morning, hoping to witness how it acts against some of its invaders, before turning to yet another task.