A shout would echo through the small underground chamber, several orcs who had been passing by jolting up in surprise as they glanced towards the owner of the voice, a large, floating crystal which would be sparkling with blue light. In front of it, facing the cavern, was a small wall, barely reaching up to hide the guardian behind it.

It had been several days since the two parties had met, the members of the Greenskin clan walking back and forth inside Allen’s small dungeon every day. He had burrowed further into the hill, mountain? He was under, giving them more space to live in the room besides his own. Said room would be filled with crude, wooden structures with a communal fireplace in the rough middle of the square.

‘’Note to self, ask the Orcs where we are.’’ Allen scribbled down the new note in his mind, together with the ever expanding list of things to do. At least he could now scrap away the first step of Phase 2.

During the process, he found out that there was no possibility of him spawning in ore veins, much to his dismay. Instead, he could create only what he had removed once before, for now anyway.

He could smack ground onto stone, yes, or allow stone to form onto ground, but that was about the limit of his current capabilities. Perhaps later once he had found some form of different material, it would allow him to create more.

Even considering this liability, it was still a broken cheat, of course. Still, this did push away his plans for black powder into the near-future. He did manage to consume a rusty sword, testing if through that, he could create an iron vein. No success came from that, once he guided his mana out with the intent on changing the stone, it instead removed the stone and replaced it with a near-exact copy of the sword, rust and all. (though, this could be considered a success in and of itself…)

Rusty swords and destruction of the laws of physics aside, Allen finally was able to deal with the most important issue of them all.

The removal of that fucking square block of a room, or so help me god.

Sending the orcs outside for a moment, Allen let his mana flow freely through the two rooms and their tunnels, the blank walls now decorated with simple pillars and engravings.

The Entrance towards the ‘core room’ (the name could use some more work, he later noted), coming from the outside, had been turned into a classical-era temple style doorway, triangle roof with sharp points at each corner and 2 large pillars on either side. The tunnel itself, while still being a bit bland, now looked more natural instead of a perfectly square-shaped hole. His own chamber held the same theme, though he left the pyramid-like pedestal alone, as well as keeping a perfectly-flat path in each of the four cardinal directions.

To the east, was the Orcs chambers, which he left as it was, leaving them to design it by themselves.

The west held the guardian, the path leading towards a sphere-like room was created, the opening of tunnels barely fitting the spider itself all over the surface of the sphere, allowing the mechanical spider to pop up from any direction.

Towards the north, he moved his core.

Yeah, that was a new one. He could make the mana ‘push’ himself towards a different place, though it had to be a empty room with no other signs of life, Neith, surprisingly, counting as one as well.

In the north-wing, he copied over the now ‘entry room’, and… moved it over one spot.

In all honesty, Allen didn’t really know what he wanted to do with the design of his dungeon yet… Neiths room came from his limited knowledge about spiders, knowing that some species liked to create tunnels to strike out from. The Orcs did their own thing, and he found little interest in forcing them to live in a place where they didn’t feel comfortable. The entrance and first room just got cleaned up a bit and were probably going to be subject to change once he had figured out the style he wanted.

He gave Neith a mental poke, sending her to go get the clan. While they had seen the mana condense together to form the entrance outside, which had quite honestly scared most of them at first, upon entry would Allen hear a few soft gasps of surprise and awe, making him wonder if they were just trying to flatter their homeowner, or his tunnel-making skills were that good.

He didn’t feel in the mood to ask, both options sounding quite frankly, depressing.

One the clan had return to their normal routine, he gathered the three de-facto leaders by sending out a mental note. It seemed that while he could send out feeling towards any members of the clan, Allen could spell out the most details with four individuals; Neith, Turok, Jigi and Ozram. Part of him wanted to bomb the latter three with a mass of mana to see what it would do, but decided against it, outweighing the risks as too heavy, for now anyway.

All three members of the clan held stark differences in their behavior, upon meeting at the new core room, Turok would take a brief kneel at the pedestal, Jigi gave a brief bow and Ozram just… stood there, looking like the idiot he sometimes was while scratching the back of his head. Yup, Allen found out one thing during the days when the Clan had moved in, Ozram was clumsy. Multiple times had the yells and screams of the Orcish men and women sounded throughout the dungeon as the youngling in question had dropped an item, or tripped right into someone else.

‘’Jigi, Turok, Ozram.’’ Allen’s voice sounded throughout the room, coming from no direction in particular which only added to their opinion of the dungeon core being a ‘mystical object’.

‘’I’ve gathered you here to answer a few questions I have… do you have the time?’’

‘’Of course, Master Allen’’ All three answered in sync. It seemed that both Turok and Jigi held great honor in their knowledge being required by the being that had saved their clan.

‘’Where… exactly are we?’’

Silence was the answer to the question, all three orcs looking at one another with a questioning look before Jigi would speak. ‘’Master… could you… be a bit more specific? There are multiple answers to that question…’’.

Allen would give a mental sigh, before responding with a short ‘’All of them’’.

The orcs looked at one another, before Jigi would crouch down ‘’Master, a field of dirt, if I may?’’

The dungeon core accepted the request, a thin sheet of dirt forming over the flat path leading up to the pedestal. Using a staff-like object, he’d begin sketching a few simple shapes into the dirt. The ones standing out the most were a few triangles next to one another, a large amount of squiggly lines interjecting with one another, a small circle infront of the largest triangle of the group, and two arcs being in between the group of squiggly lines and the triangles, littered with small squares in no specific shape or order. A few orcish letters, or atleast what Allen assumed they were, would be written besides the different shapes.

‘’While it is a simple map, this is the collective knowledge our clan has gathered.’’ Jigi would begin.

‘’The triangles signify the ‘Blacksmoke mountains’, with the largest being the ‘Heart’s exhaust’. They are named as such because of several peaks within the range spewing out smoke, according to legends they do this every few years. We’re currently at the base of the largest, which is said to be connected straight towards the heart of the planet.’’

‘Those are not mountains, they’re volcanoes. That should mean the deeper I go, I might encounter basalt… and lava, for that matter.’ Allen thought to himself, thinking of the possibilities he could do in the case of his ‘replication ability’ expanding to liquids as well.

‘’In-between the Blacksmoke mountains and the realms of men is the ‘frontier’. Here live the Orc clans, Dwarves, Elves, monsters and the remainder of the beastmen herds. Our clan of itself was situated right about… here’’ Jigi would draw a small cross around 2/3rds of the distance away from where they were now, being closer to the realms of man then the mountain range.

‘’While the frontier itself is filled with nations and cities of all races, their constant state of war makes it near impossible to accurately map it. Nobody there cares for borders or race, and the area between cities is filled with bandits, monsters and migrating clans or herds. It is often called the end of civilization.’’

Considering their situation, Allen found it both relieving and worrying that they were in the absolute middle of nowhere. At one point, the chance of being found or worse, destroyed, by the system had shrunken with a magnitude of Old man knows how much. Yet there was that mention of the ‘Goblins’ and the like which had chased the Greenskin clan all the way over here in the first place. On the downside, there was no easy access to all sorts of exotic materials for his core to absorb, and replicate.

The fact his home was built on top of a volcano was a similar issue, granting both boons and worries. Anyone with knowledge about the things could guess what the worry was. The whole… exploding thing these forces of nature were known for.

The boon came in the shape of the different minerals found in the vicinity. The chances of finding Diamonds, gold, aluminum, obsidian. All useful in their own way. Maybe not right now, but useful none the less.

Allen sighed, wishing he still had his body only to rub his forehead while nursing a nice, cold beer. Or some nice cooking from Ali-. He cut of that thought, the bubbling undercurrent of depression and sadness rising with every chance it got. He had suppressed it for this long, and would continue to do so by focusing on his work, not thinking about the past.

Though… It seemed with every victory gained, 5 problems popped up…