The badgers were ruining everything.

I had been working at digging my tunnel along the stone wall, searching for a break where I could start forming my new entrance, when Mama Badger returned from her outing. I had greeted her cheerfully, not that she could even hear me, and had been prepared to simply ignore her while I continued my work.

With the new door in place I had nothing to really worry about. She couldn’t interfere and anything she did in her little badger tunnel wouldn’t have any real effect on what I was doing.

I didn’t really know much about badgers yet but I could only assume that she had been out eating or something and was coming back to rest. When I was full it made me want to work even more, the feeling of too much mana built up inside causing me to feel restless and desperate to start moving, but I had the strangest sensation that organic creatures got sleepy when they were full. I didn’t know where that impression came from, only that I had it, and that I was sure it was true.

So, imagine my surprise when it seemed as if Mama Badger was full of far more energy than ever. As I slowly [Tunneled] along the stone wall she paced about her room, stomping her paws against the hard packed earth and huffing and puffing at the rounded walls as if they had personally insulted her.

She was acting strangely enough that I split my attention so I could dig, watch her more closely, and vaguely monitor the dungeon all at the same time. I couldn’t help but be curious about what it was she was up to, acting as if the very walls of my dungeon personally offended her. I didn’t have to wait too long to find out the answer, however.

Mama Badger began to dig as well, clawing at the side of her room, digging downward at an angle and away.

Something like alarm shot through my core, causing it to flash brighter, prompting Cobble to look up from their sketching on the floor to frown about the room they were in. I hardly noticed them asking if everything was alright, all of my attention turned to Mama Badger and what she was doing as I stopped my own expansion.

Surely it wasn’t what I thought, right? She was just making her room bigger, right? Maybe making an alcove to put her bedding into where it would be more comfortable? That’s what I had done with my core and I could feel the difference already. I felt much more comfortable where I was now rather than jammed into roots or laying around on the floor where anyone could just crush me by mistake.

It didn’t take long to confirm my fears: Mama Badger was definitely digging another tunnel.

Dammit! I could only build five rooms total on this first layer of my dungeon! I didn’t even have a proper entrance, either, so it wasn’t as if I could just start digging down and start building a whole new floor yet. I wouldn’t have the mana flow or materials to really do anything I wanted if I tried that.

And besides, even if I wanted to go ahead and dig another floor…

Dungeon Core must reach level two before being able to create a second floor.

Just thinking about starting a second floor caused Inner Voice to pipe up, repeating the same awful phrase over and over without offering any other help or advice on how to handle the situation. I wish the me that was me knew more about being a proper dungeon, then I wouldn’t need to rely on the unreliable me for help.

Ugh. I had told myself that I’d stop having these kinds of thoughts. Yet here I went, confusing myself…

I could always try to separate out what was her rooms from what was my own, but then I wouldn’t be able to see what was going on in them, and worse than that I wouldn’t be able to feed off of her mana if I let her get outside of my walls. Having part of the dungeon cut off from myself just felt wrong, and it was just so natural for me to expand into what she was digging that I had to physically hold myself back to see what would happen.

The feeling of her digging away from me while I just watched, being able to see her but not feel her as she exited what was my body and moved into what was just empty soil? Absolutely awful. It was something I didn’t want to experience again, and so I quickly moved to expand into the tunnel she was making and to eat the loose dirt she was throwing back.

Now what was I supposed to do? Who knew how many rooms she was going to dig? I already had two now thanks to her, her first room and the first room I had made, but that only left me with three more I could make. Or it had been three… If she went and dug out more rooms then I would be left with less and less…

Inner Voice had mentioned special rooms before, but I wasn’t sure what that even meant, how to make them, or how to figure out what they were. Inner Voice was silent about the matter, which meant of course that I was entirely on my own with the situation.

I would just have to try to expand faster than she could expand. It was the only way I could see it working out. If I dig out my three rooms before she could add another one to my layout then Inner Voice would have to be forced to accept the situation. Surely I could just take over the rooms that Mama Badger built later, right?

“I have to move faster with my plans, Cobble. I hope you know what you’re doing, because I’m probably going to pass out again in a moment if things go wrong.”

I ignored Cobble’s squeaks of surprise and words of protest, instead throwing myself into expanding my tunnel. The tendrils of my body rushed through the soil, tracing the outlines of the stone wall as I slid against it. Dirt funneled into my core, drawn by the invisible bits of me that made up the walls and ceiling. I ate the dirt almost faster than I could dig it out, scooping it into myself along with any bugs and grubs that hid inside.

There was no time to monitor my mana with [Appraisal], I was literally racing against time in the form of a badger, and I needed to get everything done faster than Mama Badger and her cute little gray fuzzy rump could. I could only hope the bugs I was turning into mana would be enough to do what had to be done. I knew they wouldn’t fill me back up, of course, but hopefully they could keep me from running out so I could keep [Tunnelling] and find a break in the wall.

Why couldn’t I get lucky and find one of those incredibly tasty rocks that were full of delicious mana? That would be a miracle right about now.

I was vaguely aware of Cobble running along the tunnel to watch my expansion, so focused on what I was doing that all of their squeaking didn’t even make sense to me. I had no idea what they were trying to say, all of my attention focused only on getting the entrance made as fast as I could. I knew they were there, I knew they were trying to tell me something, but it was all background noise against the all consuming need to find a way out so I could move onto phase two of my plans.

The stone that made up the wall was becoming more and more uneven, broken in places, gaps appearing where previously each stone had slotted neatly against the next one in line. None of them were big enough for what I needed, but it was giving me hope that I would find a good place soon enough.

Soon enough came sooner than I expected.

Just as I felt myself starting to get tired there was a break in the stone wall that seemed to continue onward. My [Tunneling] slowed as I scraped along the wall I was forming, my tendrils tense and the air in the dungeon going still as I hoped that the break would be large enough for a proper entrance. Even Cobble stopped their squeaking to watch, pupils eating up space in their yellow eyes as they stared.

Slowly the gap expanded, first being as large as a badger, and then Cobble, and then two Cobble’s before I hit more stone. In my inner chamber my core lit up a bright red as I cheered, my good mood palpable enough that my kobold let out a loud noise and threw one little fist into the air, bouncing in place.

“Kor has done the thing! Kor has found a place for entrance!” They squeaked out, their words making sense again now that I wasn’t focused only on digging. I didn’t put words to it, but I thought very hard about making a noise that would convey my agreement and appreciation of that statement, and a soft grunting sort of sound briefly filled the dungeon. It sounded a lot like the noises Mama Badger made to herself.

If I wasn’t currently so mad at the adorable strippy asshole I would probably be more satisfied at managing to make a grunting noise that could be heard by my kobold. As it was I found myself huffing from imitating her so much.

I turned my attention to the gap between stone blocks, pausing to gather myself and steel my resolve. Once I dug out an entrance then I would be exposing myself to potential danger, and at the moment I only had a single kobold to defend me. No traps, no elaborate layout. It was just my exposed core and Cobble against the whole world.

Then there were the worries that I would just be digging into a dead end, that it would be more stone and no way out, and that in a few short moments I would find out I had wasted both my time and mana digging to nowhere. I couldn’t afford a setback like that, not when it looked like Mama Badger was really throwing herself into the whole digging thing. She was slower than I was, but I didn’t know what her plans were. Any minute now she could start digging out the room.

If I could have shaken myself the way I had seen Cobble shake themself, then I would have. Instead I simply started to [Tunnel] again, boring into dirt that was far rockier than I really liked.

There were chunks of stone that went down fairly rough, almost choking me, but I persevered against the sharp edges and cutting sensation as I sought out the open air. This time I wasn’t in any danger of exposing my core to sunlight, both because I could see it was night time by peeking out of the former entrance the badger family had taken over and also because my core was tucked away this time around.

The only danger I was in was letting something in that I wasn’t prepared to fight off. Actually, come to think of it, that was scarier than the pain of sunlight. Clearly I wasn’t good at cheering myself up.

Soil and rock fell away into open air, and I felt a rush of cold that traveled along my tendrils straight back to my core. If I could have shivered then I would have, but as it stood I just found myself looking out of the new entrance and into what little of the world I could see outside my walls.

There was more stone and darkness, and even though it looked almost like it was underground I found I couldn’t bring myself to stretch out into the new walls. I could take the stone wall against me as my own wall, but I couldn’t venture out into the new room. It seemed to be due to a hole in the ceiling, which appeared to be the floor to a level above it.

On the other side of the room across from me I found a set of stairs stretching up into a greater unknown, and roots from trees stretched through the stone and into the room. The thickness of the roots seemed to be what had broken up the wall, allowing me entry into the room, but at the same time the vines and roots seemed to be the only things holding the whole room together.

The air tasted old and musty, yet somehow strangely familiar. Was it because it was similar to my own dungeon air? Or was there another reason behind it? Whatever it was I could figure it out later. I had more pressing matters to figure out.

“Cobble, go gather supplies for your traps, okay? And while you’re out see if you can collect anything for me to eat. I’m trying to make another kobold that I can name, and I need all the help I can get.”

As I spoke to them I watched my kobold’s face shift from determination to outright joy, and stomping their little clawed feet Cobble spun in place twice before nodding firmly. “Absolutely, Kor! You can do the counting on me! I will not let you the down, yes!” They chirped, voice almost too squeaky to really make out. If it weren’t for our connection I was sure I would have had difficulty understanding.

Cobble left the dungeon and into the lower floor of whatever ruin I had broken into. I watched as they sniffed at the air and poked around the room, looking behind every vine and under every broken rock before they began to venture up the stairs and into the room above. I would have told them to hurry up and get to work if I could have, but it seemed as if leaving the dungeon cut out our connection entirely. I was basically screaming into the silence, unheard and ignored.

I was alone again, it seemed, just me and Mama Badger and the insatiable urge to expand and dig that we both seemed to share.

There was an idea in my head of what I wanted my first floor to look like, and with nothing better to do while I waited for Cobble to bring me things ,which would hopefully help me build up points, it seemed as if expanding was all I could do.

I needed to get another room built before Mama Badger could make her own. I doubted I could get all three new rooms built before she could dig out a new one, but I either sat and did nothing or I tried. Sure she might take one more room from me and leave me with only two more I could build, but that was better than nothing. I had ideas, after all.

Turning away from my new entrance I began to dig away at an angle, back towards myself but deeper still into the dirt where I was. Two more rooms was really all I needed for what I wanted to do. I could only hope that Cobble would hurry back quickly so I could make my second kobold. With two monsters able to leave the dungeon I might be able to make some real progress.

I could almost hear the ticking of the clock that I was racing against, counting down to some unknown event.