Bertrand is furious. After all that had happened, he cannot hold back his outrage and is grumbling on his own.

He may not be a slave anymore, but that doesn’t change the fact that he is still trapped. Trapped inside this dungeon, with heretics no less. As everyone should know, dungeons are the work of Gods, and that would be acceptable if they were not usually made by Dark Gods. And this particular dungeon is clearly the work of an evil God. It is tempting people with false promises about power, safety, and wealth, while it clearly covets their souls, just like a demon. A sapient dungeon? As if! Just an elaborate trap created by a demon.

Bertrand knows that there are all kinds of faiths across the world and that some people don’t worship the almighty Jezabel, Goddess of Light, or one of the Gods on her side, but that can still be forgiven, as long as they are at least not worshiping an evil deity. Unfortunately, it seems like most of the people in this Jezabel forsaken place seem to be too weak-minded to resist the evil dungeon’s temptations and promises.

The worst of them is that Dwarf. Bertrand has a lot of respect for Dwarves, they are strong-willed and full of honor, as well as masterful craftsmen. And, even if they are not following Jezabel’s words, they are always on the side of the Light when war strikes. But this Dwarf, she has thrown away her honor and sold her soul to a Dark God, merely for the ability to jump higher and to heal faster, or for the leisure of taking a hot bath. She’s despicable. She could have gotten most of those things by becoming a Second, no need to sell her soul for that, especially if she was as close to it as she pretended to be.

Becoming a ‘citizen’ of this dungeon is treason to all that is sacred. And it is the sacred duty for any of Jezabel’s legitimate followers to right this kind of wrong.

-

I’m happy with the early results of Franziska addressing the people living in my small city. From listening to a lot of the following conversations, I can see that some people are still wary of becoming Citizens, but more and more of them are seriously considering it. I already have two men and one pregnant woman trying to follow the instructions in the meditation room of the gymnasium.

The main concern people have is the point that the blond man brought forward. The part about selling their soul to me. I honestly don’t know if this is what they are doing when becoming Citizens. Do I steal the souls of the creatures I claim? That’s a heavy philosophical question for later.

Right now I’m focusing on that blond man’s activities - Bertrand if I recall correctly from his earlier conversations with the others. He is rambling in his house, something about how I’m evil and how Franziska is a traitor to all the creatures of the ‘Light’. If I recall correctly from those few bits of memory I regained, the ‘Light’ with capital L, is a term used to refer to a part of the principal pantheon of Gods worshiped on Aropia and Jarnio, the two main continents of the known world. From the tiny of knowledge I obtained by killing the pirates, I also know they are mainly following Dark or neutral Gods.

This pantheon is believed to be primarily a gathering of two groups of Gods, the Gods on the Light side are gathered behind Jezabel, Goddess of Light and those on the Dark side are following Gronal, God of Darkness. I found this pantheon quite unoriginal, with its Manichean view of the world. I know I have seen more religions with different pantheons, some really more complicated, but I cannot recall the specifics, and there is the one I am creating for the Marms, too. At least there are some ‘neutral’ Gods that are supposed to refuse to completely align themselves with one side or another, like Morhick, the God of War. I remember primarily worshiping Morhick in my previous life, as well as a few Gods from the Light side. I also remember that I cast away all of my respect for them when I was enacting my revenge on Maria’s murderers, during this time I was closer to the followers of Gronal than those of Jezabel.

But, from the moment I awoke as a Dungeon, I have lost absolutely all faith in every kind of deity. I do not know if the Gods are real or not and if one or several of them are responsible for my state. In my previous life, I was like most other people, believing in Gods and following the rites, but not really caring much about them. In my actual life as a Dungeon, I’m more of an agnostic, I don’t know if they are real or not and for the moment the answer to that question is of no relevance to me. And even if I find the answer to that question one day, I will never worship a God again, not anymore. But that does not matter now.

What matters now is that the blond man is plotting something. I am almost certain he is going to attempt something against Franziska. Well, maybe not against her, if he is at least a bit smart, he can see that she would beat him easily, but maybe against one of my other future Citizens, like the ones currently meditating in the gymnasium.

While I’m watching Bertrand, I notice something happening elsewhere in my Domain. I focus my attention on what is happening over there and look at the pregnant rats from my experiments, they are about to enter labor. They emit a short, high cry, to which all the other rats around them start to move frantically. Some of them rush out to fetch food - small pieces of meat and juicy berries - or pieces of clothing they managed to steal from the people in the Dungeon village, some of these rags are wet, while others are as dry as possible. I didn’t tell them to do that, they acted by themselves and it is quite surprising to see them acting with so much intelligence.

A few minutes later the pregnant rats start to push and baby rats come to the world. As for usual rats’ birth, I don’t have to claim them, they are already mine, but this time I can see that there are some differences from the habitual process. The ‘servant’ rats grab the youngs and start to rub them with the wet clothes, then with the dry ones, while others proceed in the same manner with the mothers before placing them near their mothers’ mammaries. The youngs immediately start to suckle milk. I must admit that I’m amazed by the behavior of the rats, I know that rats are quite smart rodents and are able to take care of each other, but to do it to that extent? To wash the newborns and the mothers? I wouldn’t have bet on this ever happening without me telling them to do it, unfortunately, that doesn’t spare me the need to heal some of the mothers with my mana.

I take a more attentive look at their offspring and that as expected, some of the mothers gave birth to more numerous litters than usual. While a normal rat’s litter is composed of around seven babies, for my rats a normal litter is closer to ten rats, but these special litters are composed of fifteen to twenty youngs. The first part of my experiments is a success, allowing me to force my creatures to give birth to more children, therefore repopulating my Domain more quickly.

But that is not all. There are two kinds of litters in this rat nest. The first is the numerous one, the other is the big one. Amongst the young actually suckling on their mother there are some that are much bigger, they are thrice as large as the other infants, unfortunately, not all the mothers of those big younglings survived the birth of their progeny and the litters only contain three or four individuals each. This marks the success for the second part of my experiments, the first step in creating real monsters. I know now that I am able to successfully modify mammals in the belly of their mother. I already knew I could do so with the crabs, but being able to do it with mammals is a first, I need to be able to freely manipulate all kinds of living beings - fish, mammals, reptiles, birds, bugs, crustaceans and whatever else may exist - to fulfill my plans for the future.

Speaking of which, the batches of eggs I infused with mana in order to speed up their growth are growing just fine. Most of the bugs have already hatched and the larvae are already bigger than the normals ones. Well, larger than even the passively mana infused ones, which are already bigger than the natural ones. The other kinds of eggs still need a bit of time to hatch.

On the other side of the monster experimentations, the squirrel I impregnated with a bat is not ready to give birth yet. But the hybrid in it seems to be developing quite fine, for the moment. I hope it will keep growing like that.

Looking at all those little creatures made me realize that a whole bunch of them were ready to have a small evolution. It has been a long time since I did that, distracted by the pirates and the village as I was, but I should do it now. I focus on those creatures who can evolve and infuse them with mana to make them grow. For almost all of them, it is a simple matter of becoming a bit bigger and stronger, but some are manifesting some interesting abilities. Mostly the bugs, of whom plenty are developing a kind of resistance to acid, I think it is a natural evolution to resist the growing number of the acid spitting beetles that are preying on them.

Actually, one of those beetles is now already big enough to hunt small lizards, even if it can’t beat rodents yet, but if it keeps on going like that, it may be able to do so after its next spurt of growth, or at least to strengthen its bloodline. In truth, it would be hunting them if it could aim its acid directly at their eyes, but it can’t aim that well.

There also are some crabs that I take special care of. I miss my old dancing crabs, so I made some new ones. Well, it is still a work in progress, but I now have crabs of all the rainbow’s colors. The next step is for me to manage to make them glow.

Doing some of my old activities made me realize I have not done any of them for quite some time. Some of them could be really useful for fighting the pirates or other invading forces in the future.

That lead me to start claiming the bottom of the sea around my island. The plan is to go as far as I can before the mana needed to claim any more land starts to grow faster and faster. Then I will raise some reefs around my Domain and claim all the water between the new reef and the old one, claiming all the creatures living inside in the process. I also plan to raise some rocks and install some bird nests on the border of my Domain to serve as watchtowers and warn me as soon as possible when a boat is coming. That will allow me to raise the alarm and move my creatures and Citizens in place to defend my core before any invasion into my territory starts. Of course, I could completely block the access to my island by raising the reef enough to block any ship, but that would be useless against any enemy worth their salt. I think claiming all that area will take me two or three days, maybe more, but that is fine. I have enough time to do it peacefully. Furthermore, I also plan on claiming as much territory underground as possible, so I can expand the maze, ideally with several hundreds of kilometers of tunnels, but that’s for a far-off future.

Right now I’m increasing the amount of mana infused eggs of all kinds in my Domain, as well as infusing mana in the pregnant mammals. I am reproducing the rat experiment with different kinds of rodents and other mammals. In a few weeks, I should have a much higher amount of creatures living on the island. I make sure to not do so to all the individuals of the same species, I want to keep some ‘normal’ specimens partially for diversity’s sake and to allow them to develop ‘naturally’, but mainly to keep a basis for future experiments.

During all this time, I kept a bit of attention on Bertrand. I am not completely taking my attention off of him, not until he decides to act on his ramblings. I am certain that he will attempt something stupid. After that, I’ll have a new subject for my experiments. I had to postpone some experiments, after I released the pirates I held in captivity, after all. Experiments that would add more grist to Bertrand’s mill and anger a lot of the other followers of the Light.