Avery comes to, only an hour after using the possession ritual again, only to find that the invader has come back again, has taken her core, and is sitting on it next to her body.

“Hey! What are you doing back already?”

Last time he had gone out to check on where the city was, it had taken two hours just to get up to where he could see the place and get back. She had only been alone long enough to make two puzzles and use her spell oh right she had forgotten to make the beds. That was easily solvable, just as soon as she…

“And where did all my mana go? Why is my mana regeneration so low? What did you do?”

“To answer your questions, I took the minimum of detours to and from your domicile, probably the slimes, and killed some slimes.”

“Slimes, what do you…”

Checking her map, Avery goes through the various sections. Puzzle rooms, clear. Empty rooms, clear, pit, clear, second floor… Covered in slimes and exploded slimes.

“There’s slime everywhere!”

“I’m aware. Now, about those beds-”

“There’s no mana for anything because the slimes are using it all!”

“Well, can you maybe just seal off the slimes and ignore them?”

“No! Maybe! I don’t know but probably not, that would be too convenient to actually work.”

“I can see that being a reasonable assumption. What if I go down and pop them for you?”

Avery Inspects the invader with suspicion.

Invader Statistics Name ??? Race ??? Soul Power ? Health Points 8/??? Mana Points 0/??? Strength 4 Intelligence 18 Dexterity 7 Constitution - Special Qualities Special Features Telekinesis (Lesser) Multitask Elongating Tail Unfazeable Mana Gain from Dungeon Presence -42

New information, though nothing really important. She had most of that information before, and had gathered half the new material on her own.

“Why would you do something like that? You have no incentive to help out with my problems.”

“That sounds a bit familiar. Is it that far-fetched that I’m just generous? In that case, it’s because you need the mana to make my bed, and I need that bed to sleep. I mentioned already that I can put off physical needs as long as necessary, so staying up for a few minutes to get a bed isn’t too great a hardship.”

“In that case, if you go down to pop the slimes, I can clean the place up and make a bed for you as soon as you leave again.”

“It’s incredibly dark down there though, you don’t happen to have a torch or anything like that laying around you could direct me to, do you?”

“Speaking of that, I am mildly upset that you went down and took that gem! That thing is my ticket to magehood, and you had better not have any ideas about taking it.”

“Far be it from me to take the object so important to you it’s held your soul in this place even after your death. The light?”

“Give me a minute.”

Avery goes through her Build menu, finding that the torch came at a rate of one hundred per mana, whereas an everburning torch would go for one hundred and ten mana for one. Since an ordinary torch would last for about an hour, she could set stationary scones for the burning sticks at set intervals, and then refresh the objects when they burnt out. Probably. She hadn’t gotten the automatic renewal to trigger on purpose yet, but considering how easily the blankets brought up the notification, she reasoned that it wouldn’t be too difficult to set the torches to do the same. Oh, and if she set several torches as levers in the maze on the third floor, she could add another layer of convolution to the eventual puzzle down there.

“Alright, I found it. Just go outside, and I’ll set up the entire lower area with light.”

“Hey, just a thought, but how about you try to do that without me leaving first?"

“I think I know what I can do a little better than you do.”

“You’ve been dead for all of like a day. I highly doubt that.”

“You are very annoying, you know that?”

“That particular fact has been made clear to every member of my species.”

“What are you anyway?”

“Not important right now. What is important is that your cave is infested with slimes.”

“Technically, I’m going to have to accept that as a non-answer.”

Giving up on that thread of conversation for the moment, the necromancer spends two mana to put a four torches in every room of the second floor, to the right of each wall’s center. That would assist in navigation a bit, such as that one could figure out which direction they were going by the rotation of the torches, and ensure that each corner of the rooms were lit. With how many puzzles she was planning on stuffing into that floor, hidden pieces would just be unfair. It was bad enough that she was going to have certain bits be reused in various puzzles, and force certain states to be reached before others would become solvable. With that bit of work done, Avery focuses again on the top floor.

“Just because you were right about this particular matter doesn’t mean you know more than me. I’m a necromancer, and don’t you forget it!”

Her skill set was more suited toward actual magic and breaking down theoretical constructs into their constituent pieces. Induction and actual generation of theories and spells were less intuitive to her, and she would need to spend more time and effort to predict what would happen if she made changes than what would happen if she took knowledge she had already gained and deduced optimal uses of the pieces. It was why she was able to break down the complex spells that required far more mana than she could feasibly come up with and use much lesser, weaker versions that were nonetheless useful when utilized correctly. Speaking of that, now that she knew about the separation of floor and invader, she could ignore the guy’s presence and just work on things where he wasn’t. Once the first floor was clear, she could build a bed in the fake final room, Demolish the gemstone, and make her boss token.

“Anyway, it’s done. Go on, I can keep myself amused while you have fun poking things.”

The invader bends over in a mocking bow.

“I very much appreciate your benevolence. I’ll take this and put it back where I found it.”

“You do that.”