Even as I shook off my rippling fear, I had to move.

The Priestess' soul exploded into a blast of Bronze-ranked mana, thick and rich like water from a melting glacier, but I didn't exactly have time to sample it. I snatched the mana and rushed to my creatures, to those dead and dying.

Seros' kobold was injured but stable, her eyes milky and scorched by the boiling water, scales ripped loose and horns twisted; an electric eel curled and twisted around the spearhead embedded in his side; the armourback sturgeon left tried to flee from the sword pinning his back fin to the ground. Gods. They'd brutalized everyone.

I grabbed the Bronze-ranked mana and did my best.

Blood hazing through the water got sucked back into its original body, flesh regrowing and scales popping over top like a coat of armour once more. I tugged the spearhead out of the electric eel, the metal clattering to the ground. A handful of silverheads gasped, thrashing, and though I sprang for them I couldn't clear the salt that had crystalized in their gills; they died a truly horrifying death. Sparks of mana drifted towards my near-full core.

Seros. The seabound monitor shot up to attention, the fins over his tail quivering as he held the waters at bay, circulating air over his kobold. Take her to safety.

He nodded, leaning down with almost hesitance in his eyes; I'd never seen him so worried before, tension all but rippling under his scales as he bent down. He wrapped his jaws carefully around the kobold's upper arm, every ounce of his hydrokinesis coming to play as he kept a bubble of air around her face even as he kicked off the ground and swam up—but not back to the second floor. He wriggled his way up the farthest tunnel, laying her carefully next to the pillar that held my core.

That was… a choice. I guessed he wanted to make extra sure she would be safe? Nothing I would begrudge; not quite a dragon, but having a kobold's loyalty was something I imagined spoke right to the draconic part of his soul. I curled an errant piece of stone around the entrance. No one would be sneaking up on her in any meaningful way.

And then I took stock of my dungeon halls.

From all of my creatures, perhaps a third had been killed, if not more; the Priestess' ranged attacks hadn't been limited to just Seros and his kobold but had also hit the massive schools of silverheads and silvertooths, leaving only scraps sadly drifting through my third floor. On the upper two floors, only those incapable of swimming had stayed behind, alongside the cowards; everywhere was depleted. All the floors were strangely silent.

My points of awareness bled back upwards, guiding the last scraps of the Bronze-ranked mana to help repair the floors; when I'd wrenched my ambient mana away some of the walls had weakened, trembling under the weight of the mountain above, and I slammed as much reinforcement into them as the limestone would hold. I was rather interested in not having my dungeon home crumble around me, thank you kindly.

Something tickled at the edge of my thoughts. I glanced back at my core.

Your creature, a Luminous Constrictor, is undergoing evolution!

Please select your desired path.

Colossal Boa (Uncommon): Growing to titanic lengths, this constrictor lurks in the shadows and strikes at passing victims. With its immense strength and size, there is little that can successfully fight off its fatal hold.

Umbral Constrictor (Rare): It foresakes its previous life in favour of its new hunting style, shrouding itself in shadows as it slinks through the undergrowth. Its prey never sees it coming, and they rarely have time to regret that mistake.

Silver Krait (Uncommon): Adapted to life both in water and on land, this creature strikes at night. Its bite causes no initial pain, fooling its prey into never noticing they were bit at all, only to suffocate later.

Oh. Oh!

I narrowed in on the constrictor in question; the one who had tried to help Seros kill the merrow. He was old, practically ancient by my dungeon's standards, and his size had given him the increased lung capacity to actually fight on the third floor. Glorious little bastard.

He hadn't exactly been successful, given as Seros had been frozen the next second, but apparently just being present in the battle was enough for it to count towards his evolution. It was the thought that counted.

One familiar option, with unfortunately the same problem as I'd had last time; I wasn't sure a boa potentially long enough to stretch between two full rooms of my second floor would be all that effective a hunter. Maybe once I got a jungle floor it could run rampant, but I didn't want to risk wasting this evolution on crippling the constrictor.

The umbral option; huh, a darkness affinity. Either a corruption of the luminous constrictor's previous ability, or a learned element from my lunar cave bear. My mana tightened at the thought.

I knew he was strong, the way he'd nearly killed my first floor very present in my mind, but I was starting to run out of hope that he would return to me. Lost to the monsters deeper within the Alómbra Mountains.

Not enough time to think about that. I returned to the options.

Umbral constrictor would be best utilized on a floor that didn't have a constant source of light in the green algae overhead, more useful for hiding away from adventurer's lights instead of an ambient glow. A shame to waste another mana specialization, but ah well.

Silver krait, however. Not a full sea snake with gills, but with massively expanded lung capacity and a tail built for swimming. I remembered kraits from my explorations around coral reefs, vain little beasties who knew damn well how powerful their venom was and lorded it over the rest of the critters there. A glorious addition. I selected that.

The luminous constrictor curled up, a glow blooming under his scales, and I shifted an errant curl of mana to safely push him back onto the second floor. Didn't exactly want to risk his expanded lungs coming in too late.

But his message wasn't the only one crawling over my awareness.

Though I'd expected this one a little more.

Your creature, a Kobold, is undergoing evolution!

Please select your desired path.

Kobold Warrior (Rare): In a world of dangers, one rises to match. This creature fights with a brawn well beyond what its body should hold, ending battles with the sheer strength of its will and an unwillingness to concede.

Lizardfolk (Common): Some dreams are so large they crush those who dream them. Abandoning its previous legacy, this creature turns to its own strengths, growing in both physical and mental prowess as it seeks to carve its own destiny.

Kobold Chief (Rare): A group of scavengers no longer—a leader rises to claim dominion over its brethren, leading them to greater peaks than ever before. With a vastly improved intelligence and sense of self, this chief commands its fellow kobolds to rise above.

Seros raised his head as he felt my awareness focus in on his kobold, curled around her in the safety of my core room. She was still healing, one eye paler than the other and arms twisted, but Bronze-ranked mana roiled through her channels. The Priestess' mana had split evenly between Seros, her, and I, but that was plenty for an evolution.

And what an evolution it would be.

Most of her evolutions were rather separate from what I was used to, staying the same species but changing her position within them, with the exception of lizardfolk that was expressively a switch of thinking. Maybe that was what happened with humanoid creatures?

Idly, I wondered whether it wasn't the gods protecting specific races, but rather the difference between sentience and sapience; I could only collect schemas of sentient creatures, but I couldn't create sapience. Unless my creatures could evolve up to sapience?

Something to ponder later.

Lizardfolk was out, though. As much as a massive increase to strength and intelligence would be fantastic, I knew the kobold would fight the shift with every aspect of her being. She had sworn to Seros when he was just a lizard. Being crushed by her dragon dreams wasn't a possibility.

As for chief versus warrior, all I had to do was glance back at the other two kobolds. They still worked together, although split up into the male with the variegated scales who had come up with the idea to utilize the burrowing rats and the female with the branching horns who was more focused on finding how to use tools. But the original hadn't taken a leading role with them. Hells, she'd actively abandoned them to fight her own battles.

Warrior was the only choice for her. The evolutionary light settled over her like a comforting blanket, her giving a hissing sigh as she curled tighter up. Seros crooned over her, nosing at her blinded eye, before slipping back into the water of the third floor.

Already I could see how those two would drastically change the dynamic of my floors. Evolutions were truly revolutionary.

I paused, then flicking through the rest of my creatures—only two evolutions, then. Unfortunately for the electric eel who'd scored the kill, all the mana from the merrow had been split between him and the fourteen electric silverheads of his shoal. It'd take them a bit longer before they'd all be ready to evolve.

It wasn't the last evolution I had, though.

Congratulations!

You have reached the threshold for evolution. As a reward, the gods have deigned themselves to offer you gifts, if you believe you are worthy to accept them.

You may choose an Otherworld schema and either an expansion to your mana pool or regeneration.

I could have purred.

Gods if I hadn't deserved it—I was still shaking off the realization that there was a bloody third entrance into my dungeon I hadn't exactly planned for, and for me to survive that, I was damn full of experience.

Still the infuriatingly rude message. Someone upstairs wasn't pleased with my existence and I had no way of knowing why.

Not that I would care, mind you, but I was curious.

It wasn't a question of what to pick, though. I already collected nearly a point an hour and I didn't have any more creatures I was angling to Name that would cut that number down. And with the drastically rising increases of creating creatures, my twenty-five points I was able to hold was the main limiting factor.

I selected expansion to my mana pool.

Everything shuddered; I felt my core tremble and almost crack, the marbled red and black spiraling as the golden letters over its interior rewrote themselves. I gave the equivalent of a mental gasp as something tugged deep at my being, wrenching clawed little fingers through my awareness, and—

With a sort of pop, my core expanded a few inches in diameter.

Honestly? Ouch. I wasn't supposed to move or expand. It felt like bloating, like I'd eaten a full whale with no regards to time or stomach size. Not exactly what I'd called pleasant.

But with a quick glance back at my core, I could see it was worth it.

Dragonheart Core

Mana: 49.2 / 75

Mana Regeneration: +0.9 per hour

Patrons: None

Titles: Resurrector

Oh, a glorious seventy-five—already the dead and dying merrow's mana filtered through me, bright and bold, their souls full of thoughts and memories and ideas. I'd poke through them later, when I'd finished saving my floors and recreating all the creatures I'd lost.

And once I'd selected an Otherworld schema.

I'd actually played this rather wrong; given how useful the kobolds were, I'd misplayed them by only creating three. I'd fix that, giving them a proper tribe to rule over and work with, both for the second floor and whatever my fourth would be.

Because yeah, I needed that fourth floor. If invaders were going to be able to merrily skip my first two floors by just jumping into the cove, I needed to move my core further down. With both the merrow and Brus out there spreading word of my existence, I could only expect their numbers to rise.

So hopefully I had good options.

Please select an Otherworld schema:

Lesser Harpy (Rare): Beings cursed in their pursuit of immortal life, this twisted descendant soars through the skies in search of prey to fill its insatiable hunger. Its humanoid face fools prey into letting their guard down before its claws rend heads from their shoulders.

Iceborn Mammoth (Rare): Not so much akin to ice as shaped from it, this creature announces its arrival with both a shout and a charge like an avalanche. Its tusks are made from ever-growing ice, carefully sharpened to gore all those in its path.

Highland Goblin (Rare): Unlike its forest or swamp brethren, it thrives under stone, growing wide, searching eyes and impeccable senses. Though its strength is limited, its population grows quickly and it holds a touch of magic in its veins, leading to immensely powerful shamans.

Oceanic Slime (Rare): Water bound together by an immense mana-gem, this patient predator disguises itself as a massive body of water, attracting all manners of prey. Because of its biology, smaller creatures can swim freely through its body, fooling larger creatures into trusting its waters, a mistake they can only make once.

Cloudskipper Wisp (Rare): The lowest form of an elemental. Useless in combat, this creature born of wind and water delights in creating swirling clouds to rest within, controlling them in a dizzying dance that serves as the home for many other creatures.

Ohoho.

Very much a delivery.

Some of them were familiar—maybe I would always have a few old faces whenever I got to pick?—but those that weren't had some very appealing looks to them. I hadn't seen a mammoth before but it sounded quite pleasingly enormous and threatening; and goblins were built for the mountain and looking to start with a few more advantages than kobolds. Cloudskipper wisps might be useless in combat but oh, I knew elementals, beings shaped of raw mana capable of absolutely devastating the surrounding land in environmental traps that could never be undone.

Oceanic slime, I had my same problems with; slimes were made for evolution but I doubted I could easily un-evolve them. And it wasn't like any of my floors had good spots for them, although technically I supposed I could replace the rock pond of the fungal gardens with one. A thought for the future. Lesser harpy, the same question; I was already thinking of making my fourth floor have something to do with the open air, a counter to the merrows, but they needed so much space. I wasn't strong enough.

My thoughts strayed back to the cloudskipper wisp.

Useless in combat, and even their final forms of elementals rarely fought so much as lived through their environments. I doubted I could ever get a warrior out of one.

But as a dungeon, my environments were everything. I wanted to expand past my vaguely tropical setting, to go to impossible heat and colds and deserts and jungles and canyons. And unless I could find a way to just wander merrily into the knowledge to both create and maintain it, I would need elementals.

My mind was set. I selected wisp.

Endless thoughts of wisp shoveled themselves into my thoughts; I gagged and spat but the schema found its way to me, filling my awareness with all levels of knowledge. They were small, diminutive creatures, taking the form of small eddies of wind and cloud. I couldn't wait to see how they worked.

But before that, I had to rebuild.