This was brilliant. I revelled in the violence and intensity. The final battle had been hard fought and had pushed both competitors to the limit and now I had been given the perfect way to reward the victor. Though I was a little disappointed that the victor wasn’t as impressive to look at than the larger looser. It did help me with choosing what to do next. The system message was still pending waiting for my response and without hesitation, I selected “yes”.

Dungeon notice: Victor of tournament declared. Do you wish to name victor? Naming a creature will have a cumulative effect on its future development. (Y/N)

I was then given a waiting space that hovered in front of me, waiting for my choice on names. The phrasing of the system message suggested that the name would influence how the named creature grew. It was a golden opportunity to “fix” my small victor. My understanding of language was going to pay dividends here. The entry box contained limited space and I want the best opportunity to improve the creature. I needed to include as much information as possible into the name, but I also still wanted to reflect how it had earned it. I dived into the etymology of two words that I thought would be a good base. “victorious” and “giant”. My reasoning being that the first part of its name described how it achieved its current position while the second part was my aspiration for the creature. Reflecting what I would hope the creature to develop. My decision made I finalised the name. The system going a little overboard in response.

Dungeon notice: Creature granted name “Vicit Gigantum”.

Dungeon notice: Named dungeon creature has reached minimum required experience necessary. Automatically promoted to boss rank.

Dungeon alert: Unbound dungeon boss detected. Prepare for battle or flee.

Clearly simplistic but I wanted the name to be clear and its effects easily measurable. Given the amount of enjoyment I had experienced organising this tournament, I wasn’t going to stop. So hopefully that would give me plenty of opportunities to try this again with future victors.

However, the results left me a little overwhelmed by what was happening. I received more dungeon notices and then the first ominous dungeon alert. Initially, I had no idea how bad this was going to be. First, my newly named creature shook movements jerky and uncoordinated before it burst into a mad frenzy. It had stopped following my instructions completely and started attacking everything around it.

I could still feel my link to the creature the only change being that it drew in more of my mana. Moreover, I could no longer influence it the same way as before the naming. Vicit tore through worked to wipe out whole populations of my different creatures. Attacking other adapted Rotifers and cyanobacteria, all their defences unable to stop the rampaging creature. There now seemed a gulf between the abilities of my normal creatures and this… Boss?

Mabey this was what the Dungeon notice was talking about. Vicit Gigantum was a rank above the standard creature. Being faster, stronger and all around a better predator. It was carnage. The boss had already been proved as the toughest creature in my immediate vicinity. All my other dungeon creatures fell back before it. Or were killed, initially, this had been accomplished in much the same way as its tournament win. By ramming and then taking chunks out of their insides. But every win influenced Vicit. Each victory resulted in the boss growing a little bit more. Already it was twice the size of any other creature. Now it was punching holes all the way through the others leaving gaping holes behind it. In most cases, because of its size, this essentially tore them in half.

Though it seemed that the difficulty of the battle affected how quickly it grew. Now each victory being so easy resulting in only the smallest of expansions. Having cleared a patch of my surface it turned its attention directly to my body. In scale, I was thousands of times larger and its random charges had it continuously bashing its body against me. Achieving nothing more than being bounced off. For now, my larger body appearing to be adequate protection from this rampage.

Eventually, the futility of the attack must have dawned. And the newly created dungeon boss turned its mindless aggression back towards the other dungeon creatures living on my surface.

I starting to get concerned. The boss I had created was getting larger and the mindless aggression was showing no sign of abating. If nothing changed it may eventually grow to be a threat even to me. It needed to space. Room to think of another solution or to develop other creatures strong enough to defeat it. Currently, almost nothing was developing other than the quick reproducers. Populations wiped out as soon as they started to recover.

Making use of its mindless aggression may just be the way to influence it into giving me some space. I turned my focus to as many creatures as I had links to. While Vicit was amazing at destroying the other creatures on my surface. However, it was still too small to deal with my scale. It takes time to move across my surface hunting and how quickly the creatures reproduced meant while decimated I still had thousands of creatures still under my control. And that was my edge.

I reached out to all my links to the different creatures. I almost immediately realised that the number of links had grown far beyond my control. Even though thousands fell under my will I was aware of hundreds more just beyond the limit of my focus. Settling myself I shook the links and all the control creatures stilled. As I sent my commands. My controlled creatures twitched and then frantically started swimming towards and around the boss. I was thinking back to my experience of the limited senses of my creatures. This swarming zoo of different creatures confused the boss as it still attempted to attack. I twitched the links again and the creatures changed direction away from me. The boss following in their wake. Pushing my control, I aimed the creatures into the far distance till they were out of my range of control. My only way of telling they still existed being my thinning links to them.

Eventually, they must have reverted to more natural behaviours as I could feel they were no longer moving further away. Hopefully trying to track down all those creatures would keep Vicit busy for some time. I continued to scan into the far distance just to make sure the violent creature didn’t turn around instead. Though, through the greenish mist, I occasionally saw a vast shadow. I did not see Vicit return.