Once we all gathered around the fire and started cooking the fish that Sarah and the goblins brought, we were able to start getting together a plan. The smell of food must have woken Kevin, because he emerged from his tent as the fish were about to be done. He sat down with us without saying anything, and I served everyone on wooden plates that had once belonged to the goblin tribe.

“Hey, Kevin, you said you played a lot of games back home right? Mostly strategy and stuff?” My mouth was full of food so it mostly came out as mumblings and flecks of food occasionally flew into the fire. Sarah rolled her eyes and I felt mild disgust come from our link.

“Yeah, I did. And?” Was all I got in reply.

“Did you ever play the ‘Dungeon Keeper’ or ‘Dungeon’ series’?”

“Yeah they were really good, well until the one we don’t speak of, so many microtransactions, then again look who bought them.” We shared a moment of silence for the game in question. “Why are you so interested?”

“Well I plan on exploring this world at some point and try to see if I can find more information on the human spell that Cilendrial mentioned. Since in order to do that I am probably going to need to leave this dungeon at some point, someone is going to need to be here to help build this place up.”

It took him a couple moments to think about it, “I don’t know. I’m not sure how good idea me helping you is, I mean look what happened when I tried helping with the chief.” He waved his stump for emphasis. His look of depression deepening.

“I mean you wouldn’t be having you take over, I just need someone who has done this before to help me. The core isn’t used to having to make decisions on his… its own.”

“Do you technically have a gender, or do cores even worry about that?”

“I have no need for a gender, Vincent, as cores do not reproduce. You may however call me whatever you wish, I don’t care.” Ahh such a blissful life for a core. “As for your line of thought regarding this other entity lending you a hand,” I nearly choked on my water at this. “You are able to use the dungeon interface to edit his permissions for general abilities and individual items.”

Once I recovered from my coughing fit I relayed the information to the others, minus that accidental arm pun. “What do you say? It will give you something to do in this world and allow me to not be permanently tied to here. Plus if you ever want to go out with the others, I can always stay here and keep an eye on things.”

“I don’t know, I might want to think about it.” He looked down at his plate, where he had been aimlessly moving around the other half of his fish.

“Take your time, I will give you permissions for the dungeon so that you can at least see what you would be getting into.” He absently nodded.

“Keep in mind,” The core started, “I am what is sustaining your consciousness, so you may want to be careful who you leave defending me.”

I felt a wave of shock, then anger through my link with Sarah. “Wait so now I have to worry about this thing dying too?! Jesus fucking Christ can you endanger my life any more?!” She got up and stormed out of the cave barely stopping to snatch up a set of fishing equipment. The wave of seething anger did not lessen any as she left. Ah great I’d fucked up even more. Can’t let that take over my thoughts, got to keep moving forward. Deep breath, and out. I let out a deep sigh and stood up.

Well if the core was still keeping me alive, defending it would need to be my first priority. “What can I do to earn dungeon points right now?” We would probably need to keep a steady flow of Dungeon Points coming in so starting now would be ideal.

“Well with the state of the dungeon, your two availible options are fishing and farming. You can give me any resource and I can convert it to dungeon points for you.”

“Even the extra equipment from the other goblins?”

“Correct.”

I let Sarah know through the link about the fish and got a wall of anger with a slight hint of acknowledgment in response. I winced and started giving all of the old goblin equipment to the core. Kevin and Sam saw what I was doing and started to do the same.

“With all of these resources, you are now up to 22 points.”

I turned to where Tamani and Grathial were sitting, “When you two feel up for heading out again, can one of you show me where the farms used to be?” They nodded and continued eating.

“How much would it cost to buy a couple new goblins so I don’t need to breed them.”

“Ten points can get you a basic warrior, Fifteen can immediately boost it to level 3.”

“Is there an option for like general ones that aren’t specialized?”

“One of the previous chieftains sacrificed that option so that he could get a discount on warriors and higher chance of them spawning as mages.”

Well that limited my options, but I guess a couple of warriors wouldn’t be bad. I could use them as laborers for now and still have them for protection. “I guess let’s grab 4 of the level ones for now. They will probably just be for labor until we actually need them.”

“Affirmative.”

“How much will they actually know?”

“They will know how to follow your orders and they will have the basic knowledge that they would have gathered from reaching adulthood and training to meet Warrior requirements.”

“Okay that should be fine then.”

“Spawning them now.”

Four pillars of light came up around the core and after a couple of minutes the pillars faded and in their places were goblins. The goblins all wore basic leather armour and had crude hammers that were just sticks and a rock. Ah yes the intimidating goblin warriors that would protect us from so many invaders. Fuck.

“So as of right now all four of you will be assigned to help us with the farming of dungeon points. You will be overseen by Tamani and Grathial, who will give you tasks and teach you as I see fit. Understood?”

“Yes Master Vincent!” They replied in unison. I sighed, not this fucking master thing again.

“Huh so I guess you really are a Dungeon Master then, where are the dice?” Kevin quipped.

Now that he mentioned it, I guess I was a DM, didn’t make being called master any better buuuut, “You four are all to either refer to me as DM, or just Vincent. Got it?”

“Yes DM.” Came the second wave of responses.

I turned to Tamani and Grathial, “Do you think that the two of you could split up and teach them how to fish and farm?” They nodded. “Cool, when whichever of you is going to teach them farming heads out, ask the core to tell me. I am going to be trying to see what else I can do.” I turned back and addressed the new guys again, “Do the four of you have names?” They shook their heads. “I’m going to leave that to your bosses, don’t give them issues and they might make them good. One last thing before I leave you to them, those four smaller tents each belong to one of you, they are all the same so try not to fight over them.” They all nodded their heads. Talkative bunch these ones.

There was still something on my mind though. “Hey,” I thought concentrating on my link with Sarah. “can we talk? I kind of want to say something in person.”

“Sure.” Was all I got back. I still felt anger from her, but it wasn’t nearly as strong and it didn’t feel like it was directed at me. I walked all the way to the fishing cave and found her sitting on a rock that was next to the lake, but also had a line of sight with the entrance. I walked over and sat on one of the rocks near her.

“Hey.” I said lamely. No response. “So I wanted to talk with you about this whole soul link and bound to the core thing.” More silence. This was going to be fun. “Look I’m sorry that I fucked up and got you bound to me, and I’m sorry that I ended up using that skill against the chief and made myself reliant on the core. I don’t plan on recklessly endangering myself or anything, I am currently working on a plan to get some defences going.”

“I heard, or felt rather, it’s hard to tell at this point. Sometimes it seems like the amount of information coming through the link is growing” She let out a sigh, the anger fading a little more. “I’m not really angry at you, it’s more anger at myself. I couldn’t have known that we would wind up linked when I went through with the mana thing, but at the same time I should have thought about it more since it was messing with something inside of me. Plus you using that skill on the chief saved us, and being bound to the core was the only way for you to not be brain dead. I’m more angry that I now have to rely on you, someone I didn’t know a week ago, and trust you with my life.”

“I’m angry that there is nothing I can do right now that will get me home. I’m worried that my family is probably worried sick about me right now, and I can’t even let them know I’m alright. Not to even mention that whole spell thing that your goddess friend told you about.”

“It's been a long time since I’ve had any friends in the human race.” Came a voice in my head. I ignored it for now.

“The mana thing was partially my fault, I only had a theory of how magic worked here and very little evidence to back it up. I should have thought about it more. As for the whole being angry at relying on people thing, we are all going to have to rely on each other for a while, that doesn’t mean we have to completely trust each other, though. That being said if you have any input on the decisions I make for the dungeon I’ll listen. Your life is quite literally tied to me and the core.” She nodded and I felt more of her emotion mellow out. “If you want to talk more, just let me know. I’m going to work on securing our camp a bit more. Oh, I almost forgot, we have four new goblin warriors now.”

“I know, I felt you purchase them through the link. Same with the fish giving points, thing.”

“Oh, right. I guess I’ll leave you to fishing then.”

She nodded and I got up and started walking back. Half-way to camp the core let me know that Tamani was ready to head to the farm. I had it tell her that I was already on the way, and picked up the speed a bit. We headed out as soon as I got back, taking the other tunnel. It only took us a couple of minutes and we got to another large cave, this one with its floor broken and replaced with dirt. The dirt was dry as a bone, and the crude hoes and scythes were covered in rust.

“It will take a bit of work, but we can probably get this place up and running again. We can use the water from the lake for irrigation but that will take buckets and require many trips.” I sighed.

“Hey core, do we have the option to make fertilizer? This dirt looks like it won’t sustain much.”

“If you want, you can save for a basic farming crafting station, where you can make it. The station is 10 points.”

“Thanks for the information.” Out loud I said, “Well we have a goal in mind. We live off fish until we can trade them for a bench then we get this field restored with fertilizer.” Tamani nodded and lead her goblins off to go fish. Well at least now we had a plan.