Graverra finds she can’t quite sleep through the time it would take to regenerate all her share of the dungeon’s mana. As luxurious as the silk sheets surrounding her are, she wonders if being a dungeon core now has dulled some of her physical senses if she wouldn’t mind leaving it now.

Still laying on her back and staring up at the underside of the bed’s canopy, Graverra first considers summoning her grimoire to her to check on things, but decides against it. She’d want to learn to just intuit these things the way other cores apparently could sooner rather than later.

It takes a moment, but eventually…

Dungeon Will Be Placed In… [346:01:27]

Almost nine hours was plenty of sleep as a human, and the longer she lay now, the more she felt an intense desire to be up and working on the dungeon.

“How much mana do I have?” She realizes that speaking her questions or requests had worked just fine before. Talking things out felt natural enough to her, at least. Another thought strikes her just as the information is pulled up. “Oh no… Capo.”

Secondary Core Mana Reserves: 1,890 (7% / 1hr)

That had to be enough to do something. Only a couple of days ago, her cap had been in the hundreds, not thousands. And if Hecrux had been only level one and able to do what he did before… She could at least work on familiarizing herself with more of this stuff. Maybe not be so bothersome to Hecrux again.

“… Dungeon? Whatever you are… Can you tell me if my darling primary core is awake?” It really doesn’t matter what tone she uses, she’s alone - at least she hopes she’s really alone in her own chambers - but there may have been a hint of bitterness in the request.

Primary Core Status: Inactive

Graverra grumbles to herself, then summons her grimoire to sit on the bed in front of her. Statuses and notifications she could hold in her head just fine, but she did still appreciate being able to read through lists of things.

She pulls up the map first, taking a moment to feel self satisfied with the work she’d done. It certainly wasn’t a castle… yet, but given the state the dungeon was in before she got there and the fact that she’d never helped build one before, she felt justified in a little pride over it. As well as just eager to see how combat might work in there.

From the dungeon layout, she expects to be able to find a list of mobs - as far as she could gather they were essentially just more dungeon furniture, but no such list existed there. What did catch her eye this go around were the items that could boost their mana regeneration. Most were statues, stones, or pillars, and the more sightly options currently locked off to the dungeon’s current tier.

Chunk of Fallen Meteor

Mana Regeneration Boost - 0.5%

Cost: 250 mana

Can be leveled up with increased Mana Mining skill line

Graverra chews on her lip again, considering the benefits of starting this whole Mana Mining skill line sooner rather than later, and they would make it back rather quickly… And maybe she just hadn’t finished with her decorating.

She pushes her view of the dungeon back to the entrance and zooms in on it, already a little quicker than the last time she’d tried manipulating the map. She really hadn’t paid their admittedly very small dungeon entrance much attention before, not to mention even if the chunk of meteor was very sparkly it didn’t quite go with the rest of the courtyard, and she does still want to see where that skull had gotten to…

Place Chunk of Fallen Meteor in Dungeon Entrance for 250 mana?

[Y] / N

Mana Mining Skill Line Unlocked

One Skill Point Allotted to Mana Mining

“He can’t get mad at more mana.” That was, after all, basically the entire basis for their relationship in the first place. Graverra leaves the map focused on the entryway, really about to go inspecting it when a head rush accompanied by a knowing that the primary core had just switched itself back to active nearly startles her off the bed.

“Oops…” Graverra shuts the grimoire and prepares to have to do some explaining in the other room, but Hecrux’s voice projects itself just as well in this one, it would seem.

“Graverra…”

Though her eyes go wide with some thoughts about that and what it might entail, Graverra begins to demurely inspect her nails. “Hm?”

“We’re trying to wait for the rest of our mana before placing mobs.”

“I know. I’m just looking.” She was just looking at first, so it wasn’t even a lie. She would probably continue just looking, like she had planned, if allowed.

“You were fussing with the entrance.”

“I was looking for Capo. Did you get rid of him? I sort of promised him a body if I ever-“

“The skull is still here. He no longer registers as a mob and I would rather not spend the mana to fix that now.”

“I wasn’t going to do that now. I just thought he’d be getting lonely…”

“And a… chunk of fallen meteor is supposed to keep him company?”

“It helps regenerate mana! And I started the mana mining skill line, which, if we keep on with it, means we can level the meteor, or, or, get something not so basic looking. Although I figured that might hint at our having some decent loot further in, which I know is getting ahead of ourselves, but…” Graverra has to pause to breathe. “But I really was just looking for Capo and won’t place anything else until you’re ready.”

“I thought he was getting on your nerves.”

“Well, yeah, but I’ve been a little hard pressed for conversation again.” She means it to be a comment about his attitude as of late, but if it lands right, Graverra can’t tell.

Hecrux hums at least in acknowledgement she’s been heard. “We’ll want our full reserve to work from with mobs, especially if the systems have been changed on us. It won’t be so long now…”

Graverra’s expression falls a little, not sure if that had meant to be some passive aggressive comment about the meteor chunk, but it was whatever. “You’re going inactive again?”

“If you’ll let me.”

“I can’t sleep anymore…”

“Just don’t spend anymore without me, alright?”

“Alright…” There’s probably an argument in there about how if they have separate mana pools, technically, then all she did was spend the mana she already had a right to… But that could be hashed out later, she guesses.

Graverra feels dizzy again as Hecrux goes inactive, but she thinks it’s already getting better. And maybe being a bit babied in terms of what did or didn’t register in her brain - or she guessed that was all her core now? - Might have been a kinder move in hindsight.

With the dungeon layout pulled up in her grimoire once again, Graverra returns to familiarizing herself with the dungeon entrance. She does desperately want to revisit the idea of theming there - beyond just their stated ‘Grotesque’ theme - especially now that she’s realized the doorway can be customized and there is a perfectly serviceable wrought-iron gate within their means. That would probably have to wait until closer to their deadline, but it might also get their Metallurgy skill line going, if Graverra hadn’t found something else before then.

While still distracted by the options, Graverra finally notices a tab labeled ‘Inventory’. Maybe she’d missed it before. Maybe it was tied to the specific location the items were meant for, but either way, Graverra eagerly opens it to find only one item listed.

‘Capo’ (Basic Skull)

Dungeon Trinket (Unique)

“Dungeon? How do I move items between rooms?”

Begin Dungeon Building Tutorial?

Y / [N]

“Nevermind…” Graverra huffs. If it were anything like her necromancy tutorial, it would take ages and include everything but her specific question.

Place ‘Capo’ (Basic Skull) in Dungeon Entrance?

Y / N

While still keeping her hold on the item in question, Graverra manipulates the map back to her chambers. While it is almost every bit vertigo inducing as she’d feared, she manages… And only has a few moments panic that she nearly dropped the skull into the blank nothingness of the map and what might happen if she did that to any other item in the future.

Place ‘Capo’ (Basic Skull) in Dungeon Entrance?

[Y] / N

While she had aimed for her table - either specifically returned to her by Hecrux or simply… was meant to be there, she wasn’t sure - she hadn’t quite realized she had to take the height of her placements into account. Something to worry about later with the rest of her decorating, but for now the skull pops back into existence and tumbles down from the table into its matching seat with a distinct ‘oof’.

“Weren’t you just saying something to the bossman about gentle? Geez girlie…”

Graverra laughs, and this time is able to quickly navigate to her chamber’s space on the map and place the skull properly on her table. “Hello, Capo.”

“So it worked out alright then, didn’t it? I get to call you bosslady now?”

While she feels there might be something to what the skull did or didn’t know before getting her to that point, Graverra waits on that for the moment. “I’ve grown rather fond of ‘Mistress’ as of late.”

“You already got other minions to call you that? You two have been busy, huh?”

“No!” Graverra’s cheeks flare at the implication, though damped some by the surprise she could still blush at all, if being a core had technically killed her and at least for a moment there made her undead… But regardless, maybe the skull living in her chambers was apt to change. “I haven’t been allowed to summon anything yet… Though I might have an experiment for you later.”

Technically, Capo was made of bones - or, maybe two at best, she wasn’t sure how the jaw factored in there - and if she needed pieces to summon her undead… But they could get to that later.

“I’m all yours, mistress.”

The use of the title does get her to smile genuinely.

“You happy then?” Capo sounds oddly concerned in the moment.

Graverra shrugs, “I think we’ll both be a lot happier when the dungeon is finished, er, finished enough for the deadline.”

“When’s that now?”

Graverra considers pulling up the exact timer, but in reality, that hadn’t progressed all that significantly. “About two weeks.”

The skull whistles, somehow. “You’d think bossman would be thrilled.”

“I think he expects I’d make things easier, but all I’ve done is complicate them.”

“You? Easy? Who would ever get that impression?”

Graverra scowls, but she’s also fighting off a smile. The bit of familiarity is nice… “If you don’t start being nicer to me, I can banish you back to the front of the dungeon, you know? That’s where he was keeping you! In inventory!”

“No, mistress, not back to inventory!” He still seems to find it funny, but she guesses that is half the intent, anyway.

“Good.” Graverra picks up her grimoire and seats herself at the table. “We are going to figure out animal handling and monster taming before Hecrux wakes up.”