“Alright!” Graverra’s grimoire flops onto the blanket she had summoned for herself with a bit of a bounce, thanks to the fleshy floor underneath it - black crushed velvet, with tiny stitching in silver to create spiderwebs, technically it had cost, but it was such a fraction of mana to summon that she’d made it back before Hecrux could say anything. To her delight, it falls open to the exact page she had been planning on showing off. Technically, it always had done that, but there were hundreds more to pull from now. “I’ve done some reading.”

The dungeon core hovers lower and leans in to be able to see the page as well. “So it would seem.” He even sounds impressed. Perhaps the rest had fixed that.

“We won’t have to worry about the skill lines too much when it comes to mobs, the only ones that really matter there are the animal husbandry and the monster taming… Unless we want to arm them, which, maybe… But later. I think the first has more to do with our ability to buff their physical stats and if we press it, the number of mobs we’re allowed to have. If we were adventurers, it’s more about a mount or companion, but I was never in to that. The monster taming has more to do with things like attacks and, oddly enough, their willingness to work with direct commands from us. There’s not really a skill line like that… Unless it’s a ranger class thing? Estremon really must have borrowed a lot from the whole adventurer skill line thing, because the names don’t make a lot of sense for dungeons, do they?” She looks up from the grimoire once she’s gotten it all out, hoping that little dig at Estremon’s choice to over complicate things put them more on the same page.

“No… they don’t. I’m lucky to have you to try and make sense of it all.”

Graverra sits up a little straighter, a prideful tilt to her chin. “Yes, you are. I’d also like to take this opportunity to note that I shaved nearly two hours off our regeneration time.” If they opted to build more rooms, or expand upon what they had, she might just be able to upgrade it already. It seemed greedy, but she guessed if it was available to them, then that was somebody else’s problem to balance.

“Noted and appreciated.” The core’s heart bobs beside her. “I take it then you have ideas about how next phase?”

“Well…” Of course she did, but Graverra still felt overwhelmed by all the possibilities and the idea that they might not agree on all of it. She expected as much when she’d chanced a thought about the logistics of this whole arrangement, but until the recent reassurance that she wasn’t altogether disposable, it had weighed a lot harder on her ability to choose anything. “That depends. Are we going to expand further? I mean, obviously, but do we know how much yet? Should we just fill all our mob slots now and keep improving on them as we go?”

“The system won’t allow us to over crowd any one area of the dungeon. Apparently, being ganged up on by the dungeon’s full forces all at once isn’t very fair to adventurers.”

“Oh… Makes sense.” Though she frowns at herself for not having found that.

“I think, after alls said and done with your decorating, we’ll have enough for two or three more major areas. How likely are we to level before our time is up?”

“That’s the thing!” Graverra snaps out of her self pity quickly, glad he had brought that up. “Did you used to be able to see xp because I can’t! And I did try to find it. If we were pulling from an adventurer’s stat sheet I could see it then…”

“I could. I suppose that’s another one of our handicaps…” Hecrux grumbles to himself and the ground beneath Graverra’s blanket. She fidgets uncomfortably at the sensation and the fact that this also seemed to be a by-product of making her secondary core.

“Well, at any rate, more building should level the skills we need for… well… more building. Traps are going to get interesting, because we are a bit handicapped if we want certain things, but! Because of your whole… flesh… thing… We can build a very gross variation of a sand trap and if we really do some work, that awful smothering thing you do.”

“I would think a necromancer would appreciate that sort of thing.”

“I did. Well, I still do, just not when it happens to me.”

“To be fair, you were being uncooperative.”

“And what if I’m uncooperative now? What are you going to do then?”

Hecrux blinks, not a reaction she had been expecting. The question appears to have stunned the dungeon core and takes a moment of deliberation. “I- You won’t be. You haven’t been. You’ve been very well behaved since you’ve become a core.”

Graverra frowns. That she hadn’t been expecting either.

“You have not been any less moody, however.”

“Me? You took a fifteen hour long nap before you spent all your mana!” If she were feeling fair, Graverra might have to admit she had taken plenty of power naps whether the rest of her party had wanted to do the same or not. But this wasn’t her old party - if they even counted as a party, really - this was the dungeon core she had more or less pledged the rest of her life to… The least he could do was not be so difficult himself.

Hecrux picks up on none of this, it seems, still emoting as if to give her a teasing grin. “Thirteen, dearest, you fixed that for us.”

She’s not sure, but that could have been another dig at the fact she’d placed the meteor at all. “You don’t mean that.”

“Which part?”

Both but if he’s picking up on the idea that calling her dearest sounds strange… Graverra chooses not to answer, about to get them back on task when Hecrux tries again.

“You’re doing very well as core, Graverra. I mean it.”

“You’re mad at me.”

“No, I’m not.”

“It’s my fault everything is complicated now. You just wanted the extra mana and now you have to figure out skill lines and you haven’t even looked at what I did to the courtyard, have you?”

Hecrux blinks, his answer stuttered. “I- I thought it would be a bit easier with a bit more mana, I’ll admit, but- but you figured out the skill lines yourself, and we’ve already established I wasn’t doing the best on the aesthetics front. You saw what I did, I shudder to think what I’d spend it all on now…”

It struck her as odd that after all that deal was made by Capo about not criticizing the core’s choices too harshly; he was able to admit it now himself. She was better at it than he had been. It was nice to hear it admitted.

“Why did you make Capo?” She chances the question, while his mood seemed to allow it.

Hecrux huffs as if it’s a burden to admit to, “I hadn’t quite figured out the whole regeneration thing and I thought have more intelligent mobs might give me an advantage and then you turned up, so I had to spend it all on… you.”

“Oh, well…” She almost apologizes, feeling as though they had just backtracked to what a drain she was.

“A wife is much more useful to me than a wise cracking skull. You’ve gotten me more time and more mana than I was initially given… You’ve given me a second chance, Graverra.”

Graverra looks down at the grimoire again, definitely still emotive as she had been as a regular mortal and trying to hide it. As long as he remembered what a boon she actually was…

“Then- Then let’s stop wasting it.”

“Let’s.”

“I think I was wrong before. I think we should place a trap here.” She points to the sort of antechamber she had first envisioned holding a mob. “And I have an idea for it too!”

Next Graverra pulls open the list of traps and pulls up an extremely generic and out-of-place sand trap, but under the material aspects shows she’s actually able to choose from more than just sand. Setting that to ‘oozing flesh’ - whatever that even meant in reality - meant two things; One, the cost went down thanks to their ranks in fleshwarping, and two also added the slowed condition for a few extra seconds after an adventurer had gotten themselves out.

“In the future, I think we should be able to make it do something like acid damage, but I haven’t figured out how to get our alchemy started yet…” She huffs at the memory of herself and her former party arguing about who should be responsible for that… Maybe now she wished she’d volunteered, but only so long as they never found out about it.

Hecrux bobs slowly beside her in a sort of approving nod as he looks it over. “Oh… That’s… Very gross.”

Taking that as an official okay, Graverra places the trap and is nearly startled by the fact that they wind up making a few mana back. Despite being over their limit, the mana stays within their reserves. “How did that happen?!”

“Replaced the floor tiles… Too bad we don’t get more of those. That is clever. We should be careful about going over our cap like that, though. I was already warned against it once.”

Graverra feels there must have been a story there, but chooses not to press it for now. Something feels off about it though, so she doesn’t question the concept. “Then I guess we’d better spend some more before I try my next trick.”

“Oh?”

Graverra shakes her head, because it really did feel like more of a show idea than a tell. “If we’re not doing all our mobs up front and we started with the trap, something medium for the courtyard?”

“Courtyards aren’t very grotesque…” Hecrux muses.

“This one will be. We’ve only just started. Here, look at these.”

‘Mastiff Defender (Undead)’ - Cost: 1,150 Mana

Type: Canine (Undead)

Theme: Loyal Protector

XP Granted: 225

Loot Dropped: Bonemeal, canine tooth, 5 copper, vial of ichor

Damages Dealt: Physical

Actions: Sprint, Dodge, Claw, Pounce, Bite

Resistance: Necrotic

Health: 500

Pack Tactics - Canine mobs benefit from other canine mobs, when attacking the same target gain a bonus to damages and chances to crit

“We get two? Maybe three? Again, once I get alchemy unlocked, we can get them to do acid damage… I think they should be able to do necrotic damage, not just be resistant to it, but even with our bonuses that makes them a little pricey right now.”

Hecrux leans in a little closer, till Graverra can almost feel his somehow clammy and at the same time warm flesh on her bare shoulder. He doesn’t have to read when she assumes all this is beamed right into his core, so he must have just been playing along. “Those are gross… And I guess they fit your courtyard thing. What does the fountain do?”

“Oh.” She’d also thought, even if she had just gotten on his case for not looking at what she’d done earlier, that he’d just be able to intuit some things. “Nothing, right now. We have to build a whole cistern for it, which I will, eventually, for the moat.”

Hecrux hums. “We could put a slime in it.”

Graverra slams a hand down beside herself. “Absolutely not.”

“What? Why not? That’s the perfect spot for a slime.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Of course it is. You walk in, you look around, while you’re admiring the fountain, bam! A slime’s sucking the life out of you.”

“Nobody’s going to actually stop for the fountain. I was an adventurer once, remember? I would know.”

“I bet I could make it cost nothing, make it out of flesh.”

Graverra whines, because that was a fair point and something like that went nicely with her idea for still getting their balcony… “Fine. One slime for the fountain. But when I can make water features work, it goes.”

Hecrux nods enthusiastically. “One slime to ooze out of the fountain.”

“Why can’t you pick another perfectly good, not gross mob?”

“That’s exactly what we’re trying to aim for, dearest.”