Amy had spent too much mana in her instinct-mad rush to expand her dungeon. She needed more, and she happened to know about an especially delicious source of mana scarcely a hundred feet away. For her plan to work, she needed to construct a few things. She had barely enough mana for the first part of the plan.

After a bit of minor construction, she sent the avatar rabbit outside. She ran gleefully over to Ephraim’s camp.

He was enjoying a breakfast of simple rations and water as he sat by a tree. He perked up as she appeared.

“Good morning, Miss Dungeon,” he said, his eyes bright with curiosity. “Coming over to say hi?”

She nodded and then gestured to him to follow her. She turned around, darted off two feet, and then looked back. Lucky really wanted to chase her, but apparently, he’d been trained not to do that.

“Something to show me?” he asked, getting up and dusting off his pants.

She nodded again and bounded off. He and Lucky followed, after he grabbed his bow and a short sword.

He followed her into the entrance area and smiled at the improvements. Most were just small quality of life improvements, like adding rabbit fur pillows to the seats, expanding the water basin, adding glasses for easier drinking, and generally making things look a little nicer. The room was also far larger - forty feet from the sitting area to the dungeon opening.

One addition, though, he gave a curious look to.

“What’s that?” he asked, as he walked over to the rock outcropping.

He examined a lovely altar, lined with crystals and gemstones that caught the light in exquisite ways. Behind the altar, on the right side, was a smooth stone pillar. They were right in front of the Do Not Enter hole that went to her dungeon proper, on the opposite side of the room from the sitting area. It served to make it even harder to get inside, without actually blocking any mana flow.

“It’s pretty,” he said. “But I’m not sure what it’s for.”

She nodded and gestured at him to stand back, next to the seats. He did so without hesitation. She did a quick test, and she could barely affect the altar with him there. Even from forty feet away, his presence blocked her. But, she realized that she could affect things on the other side of the wall just fine. Seemed like having separate rooms would be a good idea. In the meantime, though, this was good enough for her demonstration. It’d be more mana costly than it had to be, that was all.

Her avatar picked up a tiny, razor sharp knife with her modified forepaw. Another rabbit bounced over - a small created one, since she didn’t want to lose any of the born rabbits. The avatar pantomimed tying up the created rabbit, and dragged it over onto the altar. Once there, she slit the throat of the created rabbit, and bounced back, next to Ephraim.

Amy absorbed the rabbit back. The stone pillar next to the altar glowed faintly, and amethyst formed at the bottom - a simple progress bar.

Next, the avatar bounded back over to the altar and squeaked strangely, mimicking speech. She bounded away again. Once it was at a distance, Amy produced rich green grasses. At the same time, she “lowered” the progress bar by absorbing back most of the amethyst. The avatar bounced back, grabbed the grasses, and stuffed them into her mouth. Then she looked at Ephraim.

“A… trade system?” Ephraim asked, and her rabbit nodded. “You’re wanting me to bring animals here, and kill them for the mana?”

Interesting that he used the same word for magical power that she did.

She hesitated and then nodded slowly.

“Yes, but,” he said, musing. “I’m going to guess you want other things, too.”

She nodded.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s test this out. Is something small okay?”

She nodded again, feeling like bouncing in excitement. He smiled and headed off with Lucky into the forest.

Barely half an hour later, he came back with a prize - a squirrel. It was dying from an arrow wound in its side, but hadn’t quite perished yet. Ephraim was sweating, looking like he’d just been running back at full tilt from the forest.

“Not… sure… if… it’s… in… time…” he panted, putting the squirrel body on the altar.

He put his hands on his knees, gasping for breath. The squirrel died before he’d fully recovered from his run. Amy wanted to do a dance in delight as the knowledge and mana flowed into her. Apparently, while his presence blocked her ability to do anything with the altar, it didn’t block her knowledge and mana absorption. Despite the fact that squirrels weren’t all that impressive, she was still excited. Squirrels had a major advantage over rabbits - they could climb.

But she couldn’t get the material with him so close. When he caught his breath, her avatar pushed him back to the sitting area. Once he was far enough away that she could effectively use her magic again, though only just, she absorbed the squirrel body and raised the progress bar.

“So that column - that represents how much credit I have stored up?” he asked, pointing at it.

She nodded.

“That’s brilliant,” he said, sounding impressed.

Amy felt a little awkward at the praise. She’d stolen the idea from the vast number of progress bars she’d seen in her life… it was nothing special, to her.

“So I can ask for something, and if you think it’s less than the credit I have stored up, you’ll make it for me?” he asked, and she confirmed. “Huh. Well, how about a new bow?”

She nodded and directed him to put his bow on the altar.

“Oh, but I don’t want to give up my old bow,” he said.

She sighed to herself. It wasn’t like she could explain that she had no idea how to build a bow without absorbing one in the first place. So, she kept gesturing at him to put the bow down.

Finally, he relented, though he seemed uneasy. She shoved him back and then absorbed the bow. Knowledge of the structures of various materials flowed into her, and as soon as they did, she recreated his bow. But she valued knowledge, so she added a little to the progress bar for him.

“You’re paying me, for… nothing?” he asked, confused, as he walked over to pick it up. “Isn’t this my bow?”

She nodded, since she wasn’t sure what else to do. He was shoved away from the altar again, so she could make him his new bow.

It’d take experimentation to make an improved material for this purpose, but she could make him a copy that was at least a little better. She made a few little adjustments, removing a few instabilities and impurities in the material, though not to the extent that it would wreck the wood. Once she was satisfied that it would definitely be better, she created it. It took most of the rest of her plant matter reserves.

The amethyst progress bar dropped to nothing, and a new column appeared, on the other side of the altar. This one was carved with images of leaves and grasses. Using one of the varieties of aluminum oxide gemstone she’d discovered, which was green, she filled in the very bottom of the column. Amy tried very hard to make her rabbit appear to be sad as it looked at the pillar.

Ephraim frowned as he examined the pillar.

“You’re showing me how much plant stuff you have?” he said after a minute.

She could have cheered, but settled for vigorous nodding.

“So you couldn’t make me another bow?” he asked, and she shook her head. “You absorbed the first one - was that so you could know how to make one?”

She nodded.

“Well, that’s easy,” he said, looking pleased. “Do you want me to bring you wood?”

She nodded again.

“Oh,” he said, his eyes lighting up. “That’s what you want. Animals, for the mana, but also resources. Right?”

She nodded slowly again.

“You want those, but also something else, too?” he asked, and she nodded eagerly. “I’ll figure it out eventually. What materials do you want?”

With him standing inside her dungeon, she could do this all day.

She created more pillars, with them all showing quite low reserves. One was covered in animals - rabbits and squirrels, since she couldn’t make a decent drawing of anything else - marked with a dull brown quartz. One was covered in swords, hammers, and fire, trying to capture the idea of metal, though the art was awful. Its progress was marked with shiny aluminum. One was covered in books, in hopes of capturing the idea of knowledge. It, too, was low, but used the brilliant blue sapphire of one of her aluminum oxide gems.

“This is absolutely brilliant,” he said again, marveling.

He approached once she was done, examining the pillars in detail.

“The flesh of plants, the flesh of animals, and metal,” he said, which she confirmed. “Books, though? I’m not sure how to figure that. And what about your mana level?”

She wasn’t sure she wanted to share that knowledge, but she could always lie if she had to. She nodded, and pushed him back to the stone chairs, so she could make another one.

This one she made of pure quartz, and its progress was indicated by adding impurities to the quartz, making it a lovely, dusty rose hue. She made it higher than the others, but still uncomfortably low.

“Other than the pillar of books, I think I’m getting this,” he said. “We trade materials and mana to you for purple credit. We can use that credit to build anything you know how to build.”

This time her nodding was emphasized with happy bouncing.

“I’ll go test this out,” he said. “I’ll bring you some things, get a sense of how this works. I’ll be back soon.”

She waved goodbye as he headed off. While he was gone, she started working on part two of her plan. A secret room was under construction, right next to the entrance room.

Over the course of the day, Ephraim brought back many delightful things. Trial and error revealed to him that each new donation raised the knowledge pillar only the first time, and he was able to figure out that it was knowledge. Every addition, whether it gave mana, knowledge, or raw material, all raised the credit pillar.

He gave her all of his possessions to gain the knowledge from, which she gave right back. The absorption and recreation did cost some mana, but the knowledge was worth it. The arrows, especially, looked promising. They were flimsy things, made of regular wood, obviously with the expectation of not being reused. She quickly figured out a way to make them out of carbon nanotubes, fletched with carbon fiber. She suspected that even with a glancing blow, the carbon fiber fletching could slice someone open, thin as it was. It also didn’t need an arrowhead - she just made the tip get narrower, until it was a fine point, only a single, thin carbon nanotube wide.

Ephraim asked for an improved copy of every one of his possessions, to see what she could do with it. When he asked for arrows, she created a normal sort of improved one and a carbon nanotube one. He examined the carbon arrow with fascination, and accidentally cut himself on the tip.

“That’s sharp,” he said. “Do those cost the same as regular arrows?”

She nodded slowly.

“Close to the same,” he amended, which she confirmed. “Let me go try this out.”

Twenty minutes later, he came back with wide eyes.

“It went straight through a small tree,” he said. “It took everything I had to yank it back out.”

She shrugged.

“What is that stuff?” he asked quietly, staring at her. “The bag, too, is that same pitch black color. It’s tough as nails.”

Since her only answers were “yes,” “no,” “maybe,” and awkward pantomiming, she just stared at him.

“What I’d give for you to be able to talk,” he said, sighing. “Can you make other things out of that stuff?”

She nodded slowly, then shoved him back to the seating area. This time, he sat down, looking comfortable.

How to express that she needed time…

She created a large mural behind the altar out of quartz. While she wasn’t an artist, she didn’t need to do a great job. She used simple air bubbles to make the lines white, so as to avoid using any valuable materials. On the left was half of a sun. The top was a full sun. The right was half a sun again, and the bottom was a crescent moon.

She created a silvery line out of aluminum to point at the current time of day, which was only an hour or so before sunset. She pointed at it, but didn’t let him walk over.

“That’s a timepiece,” he said, peering at it to make out the details. “Interesting.”

She nodded, and then used magic to create a line on it. It made a circle, moving clockwise, to indicate time passing. Then she pointed at the knowledge pillar.

“Oh,” he said. “It takes time to figure out how to use materials in new ways?”

She nodded eagerly.

“You’re something special,” he said, shaking his head. “You can figure things out over time. It’s like you’re actually a person. It makes it weird calling you Miss Dungeon. Do you have a name?”

She nodded, then shrugged.

“Not like you can tell me, huh?” he said, smiling ruefully.

She shrugged again.

“I’m glad it’s not upsetting you,” he said and stretched. “I have to admit, I’m kind of tired from running back and forth to the forest all day. I may want to head back soon.”

She shook her head, and he raised an eyebrow. He was not leaving an instant sooner than he absolutely had to, if she had any say in the matter.

She gestured for him to sit, and then squeaked in her pretending-to-speak way.

“You want me to talk?” he asked, and she confirmed. “About what?”

She pointed at him.

“About myself?” he asked, and she nodded. “I suppose that makes sense. You’re probably as curious about us as we are about you, huh?”

When she nodded this time, he settled into the chair more comfortably and filled a glass with water. Lucky stretched out on the floor, looking relaxed, though he kept eyeing the rabbits.

“Let’s see,” he said. “Where to begin…?”

Amy’s rabbit was a very good listener. It helped that she could easily split her focus, allowing her to work on new ways to use carbon nanotubes while remaining perfectly attentive. She asked questions, nodded, and otherwise reacted at the right times. Questions were easy to ask - all she had to do was get his attention when he mentioned something she was curious about, he’d make a guess about which question she was trying to ask, and when she confirmed, he’d answer.

He happily chattered away for hours. She learned about his youth, about dungeon delving, about how other dungeons usually operated, and about the continent they were on.

Turned out, they were on the same continent that had been used for the “divine dungeon war” of centuries past. The war had gone so badly that what remained wasn’t really habitable for humans, and so had been abandoned. The various temples had advised people three months prior that the land was suitable for habitation again, with a few stipulations. One was that neither the priesthood or “magocracy” were allowed to have a presence here for some time, and recently, they’d found it was for a year. That didn’t mean that they didn’t have an effect - messages could be conveyed, and agreements could be made.

The magocracy made Amy nervous. They were a ruling body of mages that had influence in every country, due to the fact that they had an effective monopoly on magic.

The part that made Amy most nervous was learning that humans could become mages in one of two ways. They could be born with the talent… or they could consume a dungeon core.

It was illegal to kill dungeons in virtually every country, because of the resources they could provide, unless the dungeon became aggressive enough to warrant a death sentence. That said, the law typically only slowed the process down. Some dungeons became powerful enough to keep themselves safe - Ephraim knew of some dungeons which were centuries old. No one made it to their cores anymore.

Dungeons were generally simple minded brutes. Ephraim said they were about as smart as dogs, usually, and the oldest ones became about as smart as a human eventually. Even the divine dungeons, which were intelligent, operated in the same general way. They created rooms and mazes, populated by monsters, to protect their cores. It was usually the same basic layout, too - a series of rooms per floor, where each floor was tougher than the last, and usually a particularly tough monster at the end of each floor. This monster generally provided an especially nice prize when defeated, encouraging delvers to try again on harder floors. They tried to find a balance of deadliness and treasure that kept humans coming, but also kept the fatality rates as high as the population would tolerate. If a dungeon proved too lethal, no one would enter it for years, which tended to make them more reasonable. If they stayed too lethal, then an edict would be given, allowing the dungeon core to be taken for its mage-making properties.

Amy had to admit that this was pretty much exactly the result she’d expect if she followed the pressure of her new instincts. The setup was ostensibly to protect the core, but by its nature, it invited people to approach, and invited the attitude of making it possible to overcome the traps and kill the monsters. Practice makes perfect, which meant most dungeons were perfectly good at making traps and monsters with critical flaws. If they avoided those flaws, they were punished with years of starvation, with nothing but their own monsters for mana.

Probability made it practically inevitable that eventually, someone would make it to the core who’d be tempted enough by its power to claim it as their own.

It was a good setup for having the exact same outcome, over and over again.

A little after sunset, Ephraim started sounding rather sleepy. By that point, Amy’s avatar had been sitting in his lap, “fighting” with Lucky for head rubs for an hour or so. She knew that it’d be best to wait until at least the next day for part two of her plan, but… she just did not want him to leave. He was too delicious. She decided to go for it.

“... which is how Chief Wade became the leader of Morin,” Ephraim finished, and then yawned hugely. “I’ve been here a while. I’m beat. It’s been nice chatting, one sided as it’s been, but I should be heading back to the camp.”

It was time. She’d been practicing. She was ready.

The rabbit nodded and then gave him the perky-eared look she’d been using for “excitement.”

“Oh?” he asked.

Amy was nervous about his reaction to this idea, but she kept the avatar looking excited. He was pushed away from the seating area. Once he was far enough away that she could do her work, she absorbed part of the wall there. It revealed a nice quartz-and-aluminum door, which was currently open. Her rabbit presented it with a flourish.

He cautiously went inside and as soon as he saw the details, he laughed.

There was a bed with rabbit fur blankets and pillows, which had taken so much material that she’d needed to create it from the raw elements. Quite costly, that! There was a window, a fireplace, a chair, and another door, opening to the bathroom. Everything was made of quartz, carbon fiber, rabbit fur, and what amounted to dried grass, depending on the texture desired.

The bathroom had an aluminum mirror above a sink with a very simple faucet, which her rabbits had tested to her satisfaction. The toilet simply had a deep hole underneath, but it would be fine, since she could absorb the material when he left the room. The part she was most pleased with was the hot tub. Temperature, she’d found, was easy to magically adjust.

“You’re asking me to move in?” he asked.

Her rabbit nodded enthusiastically and gave him an over-the-top cute expression. It had taken some work to get it right on a rabbit’s face.

“But…” he stammered. Aha! It was working! “But I mean, I’m supposed to be at the campsite, and… and I…”

She continued to use the power of irresistible cuteness.

“It might be dangerous, though, I mean,” he continued to splutter.

Amy’s rabbit cocked her head, as though she had no idea why it might be dangerous.

Perfect. He actually blushed.

“Not that I’m saying that you’re a normal dungeon, or that I don’t trust… um…” he said, raising his hands in awkward apology.

The rabbit snapped her head back as though hit with a realization. Then her eyes got wide and her whole body sagged. She was the most adorable image of sadness that Amy had been able to devise. She nodded forlornly and dejectedly hopped away.

“I do really appreciate it, though!” he said. “It’s so nice of you, and I think it’s a good idea -”

He was obviously about to clarify that statement, so she cut him off by spinning and giving him another hopeful expression before he had the chance.

His voice trailed away and he scratched at the back of his head sheepishly.

“You understand why I have to be careful, don’t you?” he asked in a low tone.

She sighed and nodded her head. She hopped over to him and lay her head against his leg. He knelt down and pet her.

“I feel like a cad, rejecting something that obviously took a lot of work,” he muttered.

Amy felt the tiniest bit guilty for intentionally making him feel that way. But his mana was so delicious… And besides, it wasn’t like she was actually going to hurt him. The sooner he believed that, the better.

“Maybe we could compromise?” he said, and she looked at him hopefully. It was the first honest expression in several minutes. “See, the issue is two parts. On the off chance that you are trying to trick me into falling asleep where I can be more easily hurt, I need to be able to escape. The other - the bigger issue, really - is that I’d look like an idiot for sleeping here on the second night.”

She nodded slowly. Sounded like he trusted her on a gut level, but didn’t want to be caught with his pants down, as it were. It suddenly struck her how strange it was, that all it took was to spend a day together, have hours of conversation, combined with some physical affection, and he trusted her. That kind of reaction had been true and normal in her human life. Now that she was intentionally manipulating someone - however non sociopathic her intentions - it creeped her out how easy it was to do.

“So… I don’t know, maybe if it’s opened up to the outside?” he said. “If you are a dungeon - and I only say that because I can’t imagine what else you could be - then your power is strongest when it’s inside of walls, and can’t go through walls easily. So if it’s opened up, I could get out easily, even if a monster showed up.”

Her rabbit nodded eagerly, even as Amy wanted to suppress a disappointed sigh. A monster? Really? If she wanted to kill him in his sleep, why would she use an approach that might wake him up? She could think of half a dozen ways off the top of her head, just with the stuff she had. She didn’t have the really dangerous stuff yet, since she didn’t have the materials, but life was rather delicate. And it was practically impossible to get a chemistry degree without knowing about the dangerous stuff, since safety training was such a massive part of the process.

Brushing off that chain of thoughts, she absorbed away the door and the window. Now, both an empty door frame and an empty square made for an easy escape.

“That’ll do, yeah,” he said, giving her an awkward smile.

Her avatar made a happy squeak and then hugged his leg. He couldn’t help but laugh, reaching down to pet her again. As she bounded forward to help him settle in, he sighed and shook his head at her.

Amy giggled to herself. That reaction looked like he believed she couldn’t see him, which meant he’d begun to think of the rabbit avatar as actually her. That meant that he’d be more likely to trust her on a gut level. Who could distrust an adorably fluffy bunny?

Muhahahaha, beware the power of adorableness! Amy cackled to herself. She was feeling unreasonably smug about that.

Ephraim moved his camp to his new room. Amy assured him that she would watch over the horse overnight. The horse could fit in the entrance room, so if it wanted shelter, there was no issue. Between that and her jawtooth flies, it would be fine. Lucky was the first one on the bed, to her amusement.

Ephraim decided to clean up, first, though he’d apparently never had a bath before. The avatar rabbit had to show him the point of the big tub of water. Amy was worried about the temperature - she’d made it slightly too hot for comfort for the rabbits, but hadn’t had a human to test it on.

She must have done a good job, since Ephraim thought it was heavenly. He sank into the smooth stone depression and kept talking about how wonderful it felt.

Amy was fussing with a part of her self identity that she’d not really thought about since becoming a dungeon. Here she had a good looking, fit man, naked, easily visible, and she didn’t know how to feel about that. Part of her had such a strong expectation of being attracted and embarrassed that she almost felt it. But… it wasn’t real. She didn’t have a body that reacted to those things anymore. Her instincts just didn’t care that he was naked, other than that he looked easier to kill.

Sexual orientation and gender were major parts of a human’s self identity. Now, she didn’t have either. She was playing up the female idea to make it easier for people to trust her, but all the parts of herself that she thought of as “female” didn’t exist. Was she a woman anymore, by any definition? Was she human still, at heart? What did it mean to be human at heart?

She tried to laugh at herself at having an identity crisis over there being an attractive man in a bathtub. Still, it had shaken her. Her mind was fundamentally who she was, in her opinion, but her mind had been changed. Her instincts and drives were different.

Who am I? she thought anxiously, watching him shift position and sigh in contentment again. Am I even Amy Barnes anymore?

Thoughts plagued her while he enjoyed his bath.

After a while, Ephraim’s skin got wrinkly, and he decided to head to bed. He kept his shortsword, bow, and Lucky with him as he settled in to sleep.