Trade relations between Orcs and Dwarves have been attempted on several occasions.

The Orcs need weapons being mostly unable to make them themselves. While there is little the dwarves really need, they don’t mind the unscrupulous nature of buying raided boozes and enjoy the Orcs choice of overpaying for items.

The problem of course is Humans. While Dwarves maintain friendly relations with both Orcs and Humans, the two mutual allies are on shaky acceptance of each other at best. Humans see Orcs as barbaric and Orcs see humans as unhonourable. Clashes happen when Orcs get cheated or attacked by individuals and then declare war against the nearest human settlement in retaliation.

One recorded case had a 12-year-old boy throw a rock at a group of orc hunters while calling them “big coward goblins”. His entire village was put to the torch and the resultant conflict between that tribe and the surrounding settlements lasted 5 years.

And thus, Humans make sure to disrupt any trade relation between Orcs and Dwarves to keep Orcs from gaining a larger military presence.

Excerpt obtained from “On the trade relations between various species”

Innearth: And he really said that?

Abe: Yeah lmao. Told him to throw an explosion at it. I’m not even joking explosions work for everything and can make anything better.

Abe: Bad day? Explosion. Want to redecorate? Explosion. Monster doesn’t do what you want? Explosion. Possibilities are limitless.

Innearth: You think explosions are able to defend against demons?

Abe: Undoubtedly my fine…good sir. Lol. of course Bruh. Explosions can damage anything. From what I heard at the end it was an explosion that killed the demon you faced off against :3

Innearth: Yes yes, I know you like explosions. Not sure if Explosion mana is as strong as the real thing, and I think the weird “super hot fire” did more to the demon than the initial explosion but I’ll keep it in mind.

Innearth: I was just mentioning because I think I’m going to explore above now, I’ll keep you in the loop this time. Check in every once in a while, you know? And I guess if I come across something that looks like it could use a good boom I’d buy an explosion or two off you.

Abe: “Buy” - Bro you know I’d just gift it why you gotta lie like that. I’ll pay more attention to the chat in case you call for me. Good luck with your exploration.

Innearth: Thanks!

Finally, Innearth was ready to explore. One last change to the spiders? No, if I do that I’ll continue to make changes indefinitely. I have to just go for it.

Checking everything once over, he inventoried his available monsters. Okay, I don’t want to leave my main dungeon undefended. So. 1 beholder to send off, 15 each of snakes spiders and flying crystals. 5 of a new breed of turtles and 5 “multi firing” turtles I’m renaming to “hedgehogs”. That should be enough.

Checking his status for the first time in a while he saw just how many gains he had gained over the past while of cripplingly focused defence effort.

Indecisive Earth Level 17 302/486 exp to next level. System Access Level 2 1/2 requirements met to advance. -1+ Unique Monster ✓ -Level 20+ Stats Mana Regeneration 11.3 unit/min Mana Storage 486.0/486.0 units Physical Storage 61% Percent Capacity Titles. Earth Mana Specialization, Crystal Mana Specialization

His level had climbed steadily, but more importantly, his mana regeneration had finally stabilized from the demon's release of all that it had pilfered.

Once I finish checking that it's safe, I should make sure to brag about my new level to Abe. I can nearly guarantee I’m still higher :3

Opening up a new path up from the farthest end of his dungeon before he could change his mind, Innearth felt like he was smashing through into the unknown…

The process took several minutes and was silent and slow as he dug through, but it was the thought and way he approached it that counted. His tense anticipation making the action feel much more significant than it actually was. DUN Dun DUN Dun Dungeonnn.

As the last of the wall melted away, Innearth sent a single stealth snake in as a reconnaissance unit. Followed by 3 spiders, one on each wall and one on the ceiling before bringing up the rear with the older beholder. GO, GO, GO.

As a path was opened up, the part of Innearth’s influence that had been blocked off was once again sharply in focus. Sending out more and more monsters to fill out the advance squad's ranks, they filed into the hallway as fast as they could, some seeming tense others excited.

Innearth gathered them all into two groups. One group was filled with magma spiders crawling along the walls or ceiling and backed by the flying crystals. The other group was comprised of crystal snakes backed by hedgehogs and turtles.

The split was based on two points.

#1 – keeping a mix of melee and ranged creations together and #2 – keeping the Fire and Water based creatures apart (so they didn’t fight).

The spiders and flying crystals were specifically designed to work together, so he sent them left (towards where Innearth had found the first demon).

The snakes and turtles upgraded into hedgehogs were both lone wolf-type monsters and didn’t mesh together perfectly…however they did fill in some of each other’s weaknesses, so they were grouped together and sent right. Cautiously starting to explore, Innearth left the beholder to guard his newly expanded entrance.

The ones heading right quickly came across a fork in the hallway.

Ish. I sent them in opposite directions because I didn't want to get ambushed from behind… but I also don't want to continue to split them up at every fork...

Leaving most of his monsters behind, Innearth started expanding with a single snake following along for each of the two forks. He was now split and focusing on 3 separate expansions at once. He didn't actually know if anything could hurt his influence or his core from here – all the information he had read on the subject said no – but the last demon had looked “right at him”.

And it’s not like the market has all the information in the world…guides are written by the survivors after all. Maybe Cores have died this way and haven’t gotten the chance to warn the rest of us.

The snakes knew to inform him of anything, in case they sensed something before he expanded into an area. They were acting as his eyes because he couldn’t really see past his influence well. Thus, when one of them started wiggling back and forth, he knew it was trying to indicate something was ahead. Okay I’m paying attention. Do you think its dangerous?

I don’t have a bad feeling about this…lets see what it is.

Cautiously expanding into a room Innearth found a cavern filled with floating balls of magma. Each ball would stretch out and break into smaller blobs before combining with another after colliding. They functioned and looked kind of like the oil in a lava lamp.

They combined and split happily in the center of the room but seemed repelled by the walls floor and ceiling, every time the got close squishing down slightly in the air and then reversing direction.

Innearth watched anxiously before telling the snake to try attacking one.

A small crystal shard slowly formed in the air and then shot off. The magic of the snakes was less effective than calling one of the turtles here but it would have taken too long.

The snakes shot hit one of the magma balls, causing it to split into 3 bubbles that each shot off and re-combined with the others.

Nothing happened.

After confirming the magma balls weren't sentient, Innearth relaxed and started to observe the rest of the room.

Cracks in the wall shone a brilliant red and faint streaks of magma bubbled away beneath the surface. The floor was made of black matte stone bricks, with a faintly glowing material connecting them together.

The light from the ground would grow brighter and then dull in a rhythmic slow beat as if the ground itself was alive. An incredibly slow heartbeat of light.

Staring deeper he saw they were all deeply deeply combined with Magma mana. The floating balls were a twisted mess of affinities and Innearth was nearly positive they were a unique material.

As he expanded into the walls the secrets of this room were laid bare. The channels of pulsing grout passed through the sides of the walls and attached to slowly turning turbines of magma…which Innearth could see in his influence but which kind of killed the heartbeat illusion when he saw them. They didn’t seem to have much of a purpose other than to add to the aesthetic of the room, but they were nearly made all the same.

The effect was made with a smooth tube filled with a threaded X shaped cross of two plates filling the entire length. On opposite sides, they were partly filled with a bright “non cooling” magma and separated by two empty pockets. As the magma part touched a strip of the grout on one side, the material would suck in light and mana and brighten before rapidly losing it when contact was lost once again. There was also a rubbery kinetic flavored seal preventing the magma from passing through the pockets… somehow.

Is this the sort of thing Bose was talking about? It seems like so much effort just for some lights. They aren’t even that noticeable. I wonder if this was a boss room? Again… seems like too much effort.

The other snake came to a similarly shaped room – this one dripping bits of magma from the ceiling that fell into cracks in the bricks. It all looked very “natural” and appropriately “dangerous” to have molten hot liquid dripping from the ceiling, but this room too had more to it than it was first apparent.

Under the whole room was a giant drip tray of sorts. A funnel made with Fire mana that attempted to keep the magma material hot and fluid. Why didn’t they just use the non cooling version of magma they had in the other room? Is that more expensive? Did they make this before they found the other material? Huh.

The center sloped down into a funnel and then several corkscrew tunnels pumped the magma to the side and around to the ceiling. A spinning propeller flung the magma somewhat evenly over the room's ceiling where it dripped down once more.

I’d say the core was overengineering a decoration…but I think this room can actually count as a trap so I’m suitably impressed.

It was a strange sort of dichotomy, the contrast between the natural looking drips of magma and the ugly synthetic backend inside the walls.

I like this aesthetic to be honest. Not going to use a lot of magma obviously, but the hidden internals is kind of neat.

Expanding to fill the rest of the room he found 2 entranceways. One headed directly for the tunnel with the other snake and the other headed onwards some more so Innearth felt like he could bump his main army up.

The snakes rapidly funnelled through the two previous tunnels and met up with their two advanced compatriots. One sent from each side to try and meet in the middle.

The two turtle variations took much longer to arrive despite Innearth’s upgrades.

With the flying crystals (or crystal bats) Innearth was trying to make his ranged monsters untouchable and mobile. They would ideally be flying above adventures and actually dangerous enemies reach – thus most of his focus was on making them shoot fly and dodge better. They landed quite a few hits on the demon when it attacked but didn't do much damage at the end, so he was also working on increasing their damage.

In comparison the turtles were designed to be a ranged tank. They weren't designed to attack in a team and thus had to take a few hits with all the focus on them.

The original turtles were simply a grounded version of the flying crystals, but now they had vastly diverged. He had tried adding the vibration material to give them skates and try and deflect shots – but that had messed up their aim, so he had scrapped it.

Instead, each had several long rolling pins of wheels attached to the bottom of it. A kinetic plate on top pushed the whole thing downwards while several retractable mini wheels that were endlessly spinning with kinetic mana could be pushed down into the ground to propel them.

He had come across the concept of wheels in the market and loved them.

So much easier than legs. So much more efficient too! You don’t have to deal with balance or joints just plop em' on and let them go! Why don’t more monsters use them? Why don’t the sapient creatures up there use them? Its very very clearly a better body part.

It was at the point that he no longer needed the main flesh of the body to be liquid crystal however he had kept the center the same. Taking a cue from the snake’s flesh Innearth had compartmentalized the whole inside with small square pockets of liquid. It was stronger than just making the whole thing solid crystal because the liquid couldn’t really shatter.

All the monsters were upgraded with mana circuits which were some of the largest power boosters of “using the market and prior ingenuity of Dungeon Cores” Innearth had found. Veins of super-high concentration liquid crystal wrapped in tubes and pumped throughout the body.

While both the turtles and the hedgehogs had similar bodies, this is the point where they diverged. The hedgehog had roughly 40 living crystal cannons spreading over its entire surface and could attack in any direction by shooting off these “quills”. The center core had to sadly be switched to a pure core to allow the wheels to function with Kinetic mana and was upgraded to a Tier 2 core. However, in exchange, Innearth placed several small cores throughout the body – an even split of kinetic and crystal cores, their quantity depending completely on the monster size.

Currently, the hedgehog was around the size of a natural hedgehog and took 8 mini cores. Each “mini core” was much smaller than system-regulated cores – instead being made at the minimum size Innearth could make them before feeling like they were a “core”.

Each core was connected to the mana circuit as it surrounded them, and the circuit ran up to each spike cannon as well as each other and the central pure core.

One or two didn’t change much but somehow by connecting them the whole system grew more and more specialized. They were initially designed to help stabilize and shoot out the spikes but at this point the hedgehog could control the shot quills in set patterns after they had been shot out. Curving them in the air or accelerating them even more as they were released.

There was actually a difference in how the creature functioned based on where he placed the cores and the way they connected. Nothing in the market really helped and he didn’t understand what changes made what…so he wasn’t currently able to intelligently make use of the fact. Instead it was closer to trial and error – if a monster didn’t seem to be able to use mana to make effects in ways he wanted, he’d swap some cores or shift them around until they did.

This whole node network was what had clued Innearth into how strange cores actually were.

A monster without a core had the spark dissipate into its whole body which then was controlled as a bundle of instincts. Adding a core of more concentrated material pulled the spark into the more concentrated material or “core” and upgraded its consciousness level. The rest of the body could still be controlled, but the amount of “control” actually lowered by adding a core. He could continue to scale up his sand boss monster almost indefinitely because it didn’t have a core.

However, as soon as one was added, the amount of body mass that the core could control was somewhat limited. He would need to use larger and larger cores just to have them function at the same rough level of usefulness as not having one.

By making a mana circuit of highly concentrated material in thin wires and connecting it to a core, the spark was still drawn to the core, but the core was then able to run its…consciousness? Soul? The core was able to run its “control” through the veins in a heightened way. Spreading back out through the body instead of being kept trapped in the central core.

If he wanted the monster to be more efficient at using mana outside of its body he had to run the mana circuit right up next to the outside of its skin – it would slowly leak mana out of the body and then the monster could shape that mana instead of having to push it from inside its body out.

On that note an entire monster could theoretically be made out of a higher concentration material – their whole body functioning closer to the non core'd version but with a stronger soul. The problem of course was that they constantly released mana unless kept in an area with much much higher environmental mana than most of Innearth’s dungeon.

It was also impractical when comparing to having veins and cores spread throughout the monster's body.

The monster still died if the largest – or multiple at the same size – core containing its soul was shattered, but its control over its body was greatly improved by giving it pathways with which to run through. Additionally, by connecting cores in a network, they no longer needed several separate sparks to give life to them.

Innearth had tested this fact out by making two independent mana circuits in the body of a snake and connecting two identical cores to the independent circuits. 2 sparks were needed to give the isolated systems life. However a second monster with the circuits connected even if the cores were physically far away only required 1 spark.

The version with two sparks was slightly bipolar and less reactive as the two minds fought over control. Innearth had put a core in the tail and a core in the head and the separate mana circuits let both body parts move independently.

Interesting... but useless for a snake and without coordinating body parts the snake was quickly killed by a spider that sensed its weakness. In comparison however, the "connected" version was still alive and doing well...somewhere.

I think several sub cores with a single larger control core is better. I can connect multiple cores and keep em sane by making them part of the same network…but they don’t seem to have the same split focus despite having multiple cores.

There was a caveat to this point which was that it only really worked with tier 1 cores. To connect two tier 2 cores he needed a “Tier 2 Circuit” connecting them – which meant a much thicker wire or tube, surrounding an even denser concentration path for the soul to travel. Doable, but more annoying to set up. It didn't work with liquids and was thus a stiff path that was only really useful for connecting close cores in a matrix, like the beholder…which wasn’t using them so who knows if it had a purpose.

Finally, a monster could be made without any real “Core” and still have a mana circuit. However, it was the worst of both worlds – the spark was sucked into the circuit instead of the flesh of the body, but the circuit itself wasn’t strong enough to support as strong a soul as having a dedicated spot for it.

Either way that was the design of the hedgehogs that were barreling down the two hallways towards the connected rooms. Innearth had also iterated the original turtle design to contain a large sack of liquid connected to the main cannon.

Death mana was nearly impossible to use in a (normal life attuned) monster without killing it, however, the unusable mana could be combined with Water to make a Poison mana that only slightly harmed its host. He wanted to add a Life mana healing material as well that would help regenerate it, but was absolutely terrified of accidentally making a demon – even if the Death mana was technically no longer there after being converted to Poison mana. It's just not worth the risk right now.

He had decided instead it was safer to deal with the slower poison regeneration that happened with the crystal trees healing the spent poison, than it was to make rapid refilling poison stores.

He wanted to eventually make a bunch of sacks with various “effects” or attributes to apply to the cannon but was currently limited by the physical materials and mana types he knew.

Innearth considered the problem while watching the monsters regroup and start travelling in two separate groups.

I should see if Abe wants to help me make that explosion goo of his. I might be able to stick that to the side of shots! I’d have to make it a different version that doesn’t have Poison mana just in case… I’d need some sort of healing material for that to work after all and I just decided not to risk it. Also might want to keep it away from the Water mana in the middle? I could save it for the bats – they don’t have any water in them and it would make them match the spiders slightly?

Innearth: hey bro how hard is that explosion goo you make? And how much healing has to happen to keep it from exploding?

Abe: Hey! Well…that’s the thing. It requires constant healing and you have to make sure it's balanced for that. If it's damaged too much and healing magic is split to other parts of the monsters body it might break its equilibrium.

Abe: You also have to keep it from exploding while you design the monster because the healing only really kicks in once its been seeded. It's kind of easy for me to do? But I don’t think you could do it reliably without an explosion affinity. Even if I could transport the material to you without it blowing up in your control idk if you would get it.

Innearth: Ah that’s fine. Just a thought I had. Actually, now that I think about it, I read the tier 3 primer. The system has some controls that might help with that so all we have to do is level up to level 20 and we should be good to collaborate on stuff. I’m nearly level 18 so should be soon enough.

Abe: Yeah I’ve sped up my levelling speed loads recently…but I’m still level 15. Based on my current speed I might be level 20 in just under 2 months? It's hard to judge because I’ve been getting better at this dungeoning thing but you have to give me quite a bit of time lol.

Abe: I thought you stopped cheating? How are you still a higher level than me bro? It's not even funny anymore.

Innearth: I think it might have something to do with iterating several monsters at once? I upgraded 4 main templates at once several times while I was busy making defences. Also made a bunch of traps at the same time. I don’t know if there's a penalty for using information from the market…I guess not really considering how much experience I’ve gotten…Honestly I'm not that far ahead. You can still catch up!

Abe: I guess. I’ll try and diversify a bit and see if that helps me catch up.

Innearth: I wonder what level Amy is at? Have I surpassed her yet?

Abe: Oh lol, I’d love to see her reaction if you have.

Innearth: I’ll see about asking her in a bit. I’m actually splitting my attention 4 ways right now 3 are on separate groups of exploring monsters. 1s on you.

Abe: I’m touched. 25% of your attention lol. So much. Tell me if you find anything exciting.

Innearth: Will do!

Both groups of snakes had come and gone through smaller rooms and were continuing to head sideways and upwards now. It was time to see what the group sent in the opposite direction was up to.