Despite her rising frustrations with… everything, dungeon building fell into a more recognizable rhythm from there on out. The next two cycles went back to focusing on more details, namely filling out the entry hall with a series of interesting, possibly trapped, items. The crypts saw some more finessing as well, but there was only so much they could do there… Except maybe argue about the need for a mob or trap.

Hecrux’s chief argument had been that the confusion would work in their favor, much like the long hall of nothing actually attacking them. This was disarmed quickly by the reminder he had already built them one tunnel to seemingly nowhere.

“When do we get a sky?” Graverra asks while they’re on the subject. Whether they actually went somewhere, everything was still just tunnels…

‘Dungeon’ had become a loose term for any set area run by a core that involved battling monsters, usually with the promise of unique pieces of armor, or at the very least, unique trinkets and loot. The higher tier ones had entire quest lines and could take a party days to clear. Delves remained, as ever, a simple smash and grab. Easy ways to get the generic mob drops for crafting never took longer than an afternoon to clear. Mazes… Graverra hadn’t messed with and it seemed she might never now.

“I thought you were just frantic. We were biting off more than we could chew? Honestly, our ceiling height is a bit extravagant, already given our tier.”

Graverra can’t help it. She snorts at the word choice, laughing harder than she has in a while now. “Well, I already did. But you’re right… I just… Am I homesick? Can cores get homesick?” She half expects the dungeon to pop up some factoid about what cores could or couldn’t feel, since she had phrased it as a question, but nothing happens and she’s left to stew before Hecrux answers.

“You were an adventurer longer than you’ve been a core… I imagine that sticks.” He sighs and she can’t tell what it is about the tone… Patronizing or bitter, she can’t decide.

“What do you think you were first?” The question slips out. She knows she probably shouldn’t have asked it so bluntly even as she does, but… They were going to have to start filling their down times some other way beside alone. “You said you’d only been a core for a few days before I fell in, but you don’t remember some of the things I do.”

“If I remembered, I probably would have told you, wouldn’t I?” Bitter. It’s definitely bitter, she decides.

“Estremon knows, doesn’t she? She had to decide to let me keep my memories.”

“Graverra…”

“I’m just saying, there’s something to all that isn’t there? She acted like she knew you, but if you’d only been a core for a few days… And you didn’t pick your theme, and I certainly don’t think you’re mad, or bad, or particularly dangerous to know, I mean you are a dungeon core.”

“Perhaps if you keep talking…” Hecrux sounds as though he’s speaking through gritted teeth again.

She lets him spend the rest of that down period alone… And fills her own time theorizing with Capo. With the skull’s limited knowledge of things outside of this particular dungeon, there really isn’t much to be found there… But at least someone had heard her out about it. She liked the idea that he had been a wizard, before necromancers were a thing, and this was how he was finally being allowed to play with that side of magic... or something like that.

When they reconvene again, it’s to make an effort towards finishing their rooms. By then, they both agree that hallways to nowhere don’t incite much confidence in anyone trying to clear a dungeon without getting cornered by mobs. After building out what Graverra dubs the great room, Hecrux demolishes the tunnel to nowhere to recoup the mana, which Graverra is more than happy to turn right around and spend on her latest fascination - carpeted tiles and curtains. The first runner down the entry hall had unlocked them the textile skill line, though that made her wonder how the items in her chambers had come to be.

“It feels unbalanced now…” He still grumbles after it’s done.

“It does, but I don’t quite know what to put there yet…” Graverra remains focused on her great room for the time being. Through some finagling, she’s able to turn an amount of cut stone tiles and a fire trap into a decent-looking fireplace.

Masonry Skill Line Progressed

One Skill Point Allotted to Masonry

“Ah! There!” Graverra smacks the dungeon core’s meaty body with the back of her hand, as if he didn’t already intuit the same notification she had.

“I still like our work arounds better.”

“Well, darling, there are other things to look forward to.” She begins her list of things to replace with nicer stone almost immediately. The great room is surprisingly easy to finish furnishing as though it were a real one, pulling from both the textile and woodworking skill lines for things like velvety couches and shelves full of books that someday - once they had progressed a few tiers - they could actually fill with lore.

To her horror, taxidermy animals, even the kind that could be mobs, still counted towards textiles… which she wouldn’t complain about out loud to Hecrux… But that had to be an oversight on Estremon’s part. In the off chance her initial idea of reanimating them for mobs at a later time really could still work, she places two large exotic cats with saber fangs and a surprisingly vibrant coat pattern.

The fix for the crypt feeling like a dead end came as a not so secret passage from the great room into a wine cellar - there didn’t seem to be an appropriate skill line for actually stocking it, but then Hecrux went and reminded her that food or drink no longer had the same effect on her as a core - and from the wine cellar down into the crypt.

“We will have to stick a mob down there now. It just makes sense.” Graverra notes after that round of building. Though she can’t tell if in the end it just served to agitate the both of them more with regard to the wait times, now they at least spent more of it discussing their next moves. “A big one, I think… Something with some reach… Those caskets will be so annoying to navigate through and fight.” There’s almost a maniacal laugh behind her words.

Through some more deliberation, Hecrux assures her he has a plan when they’ve recovered the mana for it, but chooses not to say what it is. Graverra accepts, genuinely curious, but also having begun to doze again after working out how to make their passageways work just so.

She wakes again to the sensation of mana being spent without her.

Construct 25 Dungeon Segments for 200 Mana?

[Y] / N

“What are you doing?” She asks, still while blinking owlishly and stretching herself back up to a sit. “You said you had a plan for the crypt mob?”

“Funny, I thought you’d sleep through that, given you think I can through your spending…” It should have sounded more passive aggressive, she’s sure, but Hecrux is still too distracted finagling this new series of tunnels under the crypt.

“We said no more tunnels to nowhere! We’re building up, not down!” Graverra nearly howls. They had been doing so well before…

“Just a minute…” He moves on to the mobs list, spending enough time there that Graverra knows he must be really customizing something and then, darn it, she’s curious.

Place ‘Ravaging Homunculus (Undead)’ for 5,000 Mana?

[Y] / N

Graverra nearly shrieks at the cost, but by then it’s a bit late. If she absolutely hates it she decides it’s only fair to unsummon it while Hecrux went inactive… which he would be very soon after spending all that much at once and not on building.

But as the thing is sketched in, Graverra begins to see the point of the tunnels… And if that weren’t enough, Hecrux begins to explain.

“The ones where you’ve left the lids off the caskets it can attack from there. It’s made from- “

“So many bodies…” Graverra finishes for him, on the verge of being in awe. If she had been a plain old necromancer, still something like this would only have been possible in her fifties, easily. Levels, that was. It was a terrible, hulking mishmash of limbs and mouths and eyes. It didn’t have to have hair in places, but it still did. Truly befitting of their dungeon’s theme. “Oh… This is… Terrible. I love it.”

Hecrux doesn’t respond, but she thinks she can feel his sense of pride over it, at least until she’s distracted by the distinct and odd feeling that something about the great room had just changed without the use of mana.

“Did you know we got styles? They’re like themes for rooms.” Is all the dungeon core says by way of explanation, while Graverra turns her focus there.

The great room looked like home. Drethi, where she’d started. Right down to the way the wooden legs of the furnitures were carved, to the style of stitching, to the way the books were bound.

‘Great Room’

18x16

Mobs: 0

Traps: 1

Style: Drethiaq

“Well… Well, what did you do that for?” It’s almost so thoughtful it’s confusing.

“You thought you were homesick.”

She had been. And though maybe there was some argument to be made that the great room and the rest of the makeshift castle wasn’t really her home if she wasn’t even allowed to spend any real time it, the gesture made her heartache. He had listened. He’d listened so hard he’d even remembered some small detail of her sheet even now. She wondered if she’d ever be able to do the same…

“Is it wrong? Did you hate it there?”

“No, I- I guess I’m the one with the mouth in this situation.” Graverra does lean up and give the dungeon core a quick peck. They really, really were going to have to revisit the avatar discussion soon.