Material Absorbed DP Gained Kate, Priestess x1 40DP Gained Seamus, Thief x1 25DP Gained Summer Dress x1 5DP Gained Silver Ring x1 3DP Gained Peasant's Clothes x1 2DP Gained

The core was confused. First, the gnome had returned, and seemed excited about his new monsters, but then she taken out a tube, and made music? And for some reason, more people followed her in, but they died, and the gnome wasn't mad about it? It didn't understand what was happening, but the voices seemed sure that the gnome had sacrificed the two to it, even if it didn't understand why. Some of the voices said to work with her, others said she was dangerous, but they all agreed that this was important.

Of course it was important, though! It had gotten 75 DP all at once! That was more than it got from all the animals that had wandered in so far! Clearly, humans were a great source of DP, and not just when they died. Just their clothes were worth as much as some of the animals it had absorbed. If it could find some way to take things from people when they enter the dungeon, it wouldn't even matter if they survived, it would be able to grow just from them coming in! It would need to think about this later.

For now, the dungeon had suddenly managed to get exactly what it had wanted- enough DP to increase its MP storage and regeneration for a second time! With this, it would be able to create more monsters to defend itself. With a thought, it purchased the upgrades, before following up with Greater Numbers, so that it would have enough spyders to have monsters for fighting while still controlling its traps- after all, that was how it killed the priestess, and she was worth way more than the thief.

As it made the purchase, the small horde of spyders, who it had collected in the chamber with the pillars, suddenly doubled, eight now scuttling through the large room, while a ninth appeared near the entrance before making its way to the cave in room and attaching itself to a wall on its own initiative. The core wondered about it, before deciding if the spyders were copying the orders of the ones they copied from, that one needed a trap of its own.

The voices had really liked the idea of the combination, so it decided to create one in the pillar chamber, in front of a door leading further in. First, it decided to include the combination earlier in the dungeon, to keep it cheap- after all, it wasn't like the core was going to be hiding behind this door. It carved a tunnel from the back of the room heading deeper in, before focusing back near the entrance. It carefully considered the events that had just occured, before carving the face of the priestess above one of the arrow slits, barely large enough to see from a couple feet away- this way, someone might stop and look at the slit once they passed the pressure plate, letting the spyder activate the trap! Then, it moved to the cave in room, and carved the face of the thief into the wood at the bottom of the chest. Now anyone wanting to go deeper would need to open the chest, and risk the cave in. Finally, it returned to the pillar room, and set about creating its combination lock.

It stopped, however, and considered. The only kind of doors it could create were [Basic Wooden Doors], and [Weak Iron Barred Doors]. If it wanted people to have to solve the puzzle, it only made sense to use a stronger door, and there was only one way to do that. It spent nearly an entire day, arguing with itself back and forth, before deciding to spend the DP, and unlocked Advanced Dungeon Construction. It excitedly opened the menu to learn what its splurge has bought it.

Constructions MP Cost Reinforced Wooden Door 6MP Standard Iron Lock 3MP Medium Wooden Chest 6MP Iron Bars 8MP Iron Barred Door 16MP Stone Door 10MP

Stone Door really was exactly what the Core was looking for, and it splurged to make one that would slide up into the ceiling when the combination was put in. Then, it added an arrow trap aiming at the door, and with everything in place, it purchased the combination lock. While it only had three inputs for now, it spent the price for a six entry combination, unsure if it could make it larger later, spending another twelve mana. Each of the inputs was on a different segment of the door, split into pie-slice chunks of the door. Each segment showed a different feature- one showed the entrance with arrows flying, one showed the spiked pit, a third showed the cave in room's chest with an unsteady ceiling, while a fourth showed the pillar room itself. The fifth one was the cave room that was currently empty, and the sixth showed the room the core was in, though it didn't include that in the drawing.

It used the faces of the three people who had entered as possible options for its combination, allong with a blank option, and a few faces it made up on its own, then put the priestess and thief as the answers for the entrance and cave in, before making the gnome the answer for the core room, since she was on the treasure there, which the combination lock seemed to accept.

Unfortunately, that used up most of the last of its MP for now, so it settled in to wait, trying to come up with more defensive techniques.