Cara

When Manning first brought the idea of farming the villagers for mana rather than killing them outright, Cara was less than impressed. Sure, she’d already noticed that she got a slight amount of energy just from them walking around inside of her, inside of her dungeon that is, but she wanted to consume their memories and skills along with the energy. When she realized her thought process, she quickly discounted it as dungeon instincts and decided they would give Manning’s idea a try.

His idea was twofold. He would convince the humans to tire themselves out with his trials above ground, and if they failed, he would dump them into a pit that led into Cara’s dungeon. All in all, the first test was a success as they both managed to gain record amounts of energy off the elf who was dropped into the safe room. Still, Cara felt like she had personally failed there.

She didn’t really have any intention of killing the elf with her floor boss, but she’d wanted him to do a lot better than he had. Were it not for the fact that Gladil was a long-range fighter, her troglodyte would have perished almost instantly. She only had herself to blame for that though.

She’d imparted the near-feral troglodyte with weapons knowledge she’d gained from the death of the humans who’d tried to steal her core so long ago. Well, not so long ago as it felt, but that wasn’t really the point. She armed the Trog with a spear because it was one of the better weapons she could make, but gave it knowledge of club and cudgel. What that created was an image of the trog flailing around with the spear like it was a club.

The fight was a lot closer than it should have been, but in the end the unnamed boar-troglodyte that was the newly appointed floor 1 boss had died. She’d respawned him and started the other warrior troglodytes on a training regimen. The respawning process was a little creepy, and it still bothered Cara to a certain extent.

When a bonded sapient dies, be it a slave or a regular bond like Brick, within a dungeon its soul is returned to the dungeon core. What soul consists of is still unknown to most sentient races, but for the dungeon it is really simple. The troglodyte died and an aggregation of all its memories and thought processes was yielded to Cara, sort of how she was able to claim a few skills from the dead humans, along with a signature of sorts that composed its natural energy. She had a feeling that a troglodyte empowered with magic and abilities might be harder to respawn than a simple troglodyte, but she’d cross that bridge when and if she ever got to it.

For now, respawning was pretty simple. All Cara had to do was located a boar that was pregnant, for lack of a better term, with a host of troglodyte embryo. She would impress upon an embryo the signature from the dead troglodyte boss and it would develop very similar to how the boss looked before death. Upon birth Cara would return all the memories while forcing its growth, minus the whole battle that led to its death, and it would return to guarding the boss room as if it had never died.

There were slight physical changes, of course, but Cara was able to respawn several of the troglodyte at a time, occasionally combining the memories of different versions of the same troglodyte if both had learned something valuable like a new weapons proficiency. This process hadn’t backfired, on her yet, apart from the small sliver of soul that the adventurers always absorbed when they killed him so that was how she kept it. There was no need to respawn the simple beasts, but the sapient troglodytes were far more loyal when they did not die permanently.

What a shame that she’d freed those children from her control and allowed them to die to the adventuring party that assessed her. Their souls were not returned to Cara, so they were gone forever, yet another reason she could never allow another troglodyte to have free will. She couldn’t protect them if she did.

The combat lessons for the currently lesson of Fobs was going on and that was what she distracted herself with currently. Fob is how she referred to the boar-mutant troglodytes that guarded the staircase down to level two. It stood for Floor One Boss, so it was a name and not a name at the same time. She used the term combat lesson very haphazardly, it was really just them sparring with each other or the occasional troglodyte citizen while trying to figure out how to use the spear correctly through brute force alone. Neither Cara nor the thugs who’d died in her dungeon had any actual training with the spear or soldiering.

If only Manning hadn’t spared the cowardly looking human, she wouldn’t be trying so hard and would at least have a basis to start from, probably. She couldn’t really be sure that she’d learn fighting styles from the sapients who died in the dungeon, but out of the two she’d killed, she’d gotten two different styles of clubbing.

Right now, a visitor was wiping the floor with the Fobs, figuratively and literally. She watched as the effeminate troglodyte swiped the shaft of her spear low after doing a leap backwards to avoid two attackers and knocked four Fobs down on their sides. He followed up with swift jabs with the butt of his spear to knock them unconscious and worked his way through the rest of the Fobs, putting them on the defensive for once.

“You there, where did you learn that?” Cara called down to the unfamiliar troglodyte. Although every troglodyte in the warren was born shackled to the dungeon, Cara was far from knowing each and every one of them. Enslaved was a loose term when associated with her, considering the vast amount of freedom she gave her sapients to run themselves. The only one out of the thousands of troglodytes who wasn’t enslaved was Gil’thuk, who she’d released and allowed him to bind himself to the core. That was the reward for him capturing his small clan and assisting Cara in taking over.

“Training the children, Master. This humble slave introduces herself as Nala, in your service.” Cara was shocked when Nala replied at all, having long since stopped forcing the common language on them and leaving it to theirselves to teach the offspring. For its mastery to be so good was a shocker. On top of that, Nala referred to itself as a her.

Upon closer review, Cara noticed that the troglodyte did not have any genitals at all, just a smooth mound where the reproductive organs would be located. Had Cara not enslaved the entire clan and changed their ways, Nala would never have been allowed to exist. Not only were the troglodytes a parasitic existence, replenishing their numbers only by systematically forcing their seed into creatures that they’d conquered for reproduction, but they were wildly xenophobic as well.

If the offspring showed any sort of mutation, apart from a variance in the number of eyes it had, it would be killed as a child. It was ironic considering their disgusting existence could have only come into fruition through massive amounts of both crossbreeding and inbreeding. Then again, that could be the reason they stopped allowing mutations into their genepool. No, the creatures she’d found were not capable of that amount of higher thinking, it was just good old-fashioned racism.

This policy was also the reason the clan was so small. Most of every clutch of troglodytes born took after the ‘mother’, even when the ‘mother’ was a man and only produced two. By killing their mutated offspring, they limited their own growth substantially, effectively implementing population control which Cara had done away with.

Cara was getting distracted again.

“Nala, I do not believe we’ve spoken before,” the troglodyte, who was still bowing, nodded her head to acknowledge the dungeon’s words, “but you show great promise. If you self-taught yourself the spear to this extent, and I’m assuming my language as well, then you are far smarter than the average troglodyte. Tell me what it is that you want, and I will see if it is my power to help you, so long as you continue helping me. I want you to be my weapons master, but I will not force the job on you.” Or she might, but it was better the troglodyte choose to do it on its own. ” What do you say? Also, you can stop bowing now, please.”

Nala used her spear like a staff to stand up, but kept her eyes lowered to the ground as she spoke. “Master Dungeon, Nala accepts this position to strengthen her people. As for wants, Nala wants to be accepted by her people. Nala wants to challenge the Gil’thuk for leadership. Nala wants more knowledge, and Nala wants a woman’s body.”

“I can help with most of that. Your people will accept you if you force them to or earn it, becoming one of the strongest troglodytes will help with that. I will also grant you all the weapons related knowledge I gain, so long as you maintain the capacity for it. That means keeping your mind sharp and ready. I do not want you to fight Gil’thuk for his leadership, he has earned it. However, as the dungeon gets larger, there might come a time when another warren is created deeper and it will need a leader. Stay strong and contribute, and you may just stay in the running for that position,” Note to self, have Gil’thuk name his clan so that it’s easy to differentiate in the future, “and for as for the woman. What need do you have for a woman when you can do nothing with her?”

Did that troglodyte just blush? Please never again! Something about the slimy yellow-green skin taking a darker red undertone was disgusting to behold.”

“The Master misunderstood Nala. Nala wishes to be born again within a woman’s body, or have her own body made to be one of a woman. Nala is a female but trapped in a nobody’s body. This makes it difficult to be accepted.” With each word Nala’s voice lessened until it got to the point she was just whispering at her feet.

She was right, Cara had misunderstood her request by a large margin. Of course, being the all-intelligent god-like dungeon that she was, Cara had a response prepared for this scenario as she did with all scenarios. It doesn’t look good when you are caught off-guard, naturally.

“Oh.”