By the end of their first week- At least, Graverra thinks it’s been a week, after another bought of bickering about the amount of time certain cores sat inactive versus others. She had decided to try to stop thinking in terms of days. ‘Mortal’, Hecrux had said it in a way that was oddly reminiscent of her conversation with Estremon. While they were already in the middle of a spat, Graverra didn’t feel much like questioning what was so terrible about behaving like a mortal, and weren’t cores still technically mortal, if Hecrux himself had been so concerned about losing the dungeon when she’d first arrived and again when he’d warned her about letting things get too close to her core… But someday she’d have to figure that out along with all the other lapses. And begrudgingly, Hecrux had been right. As Graverra stopped trying to keep a handle on the days passing them by, things did begin to feel a little less like living in a time loop.

Regardless, after one hundred and seventy hours of their build, regenerate, build and regenerate again cycle, they had finally fleshed out the skeleton of their dungeon. It still wasn’t really a castle as much as the idea of something like a stately manor that had somehow both fallen underground and been partially absorbed by the biggest sloughed slime in existence… But she had managed to get the fountain working, so she guessed they were on the right track for now.

Unsuitable Environment for Sloughed Slime

Drowned Condition Added

Sloughed Slime will begin taking damage in…

“You’re going to have to move the slime…” Graverra sighs, tempted to let it drown for real just to see what would happen. Through further reading and one very patronizing tutorial, she’d found that besides expending the mana on specific traits or actions, their mobs could do some leveling of their own - provided they were doing things might gain them experience.

For the dogs, this was easy, simply convince them to get in a tussle - though the prompts in her grimoire warned that allowing this too often without facing any real intruder could weaken their ability to work in tandem in the future. The slime though… She’d honestly forgotten it until this moment.

Place ‘Sloughed Slime’ in Wine Cellar?

[Y] / N

“When we start making-“

“When we start making our own wine, I will move it again.” The dungeon core squints at her as if to smile. “Here, watch this.”

Through the crystal ball and in part through what she can intuit by being a core herself - She wasn’t about to give up her crystal ball, but it was another something Hecrux had spat ‘mortal’ at and so she’d attempted to work more without it - Graverra watches the slime be coaxed into a wine barrel.

Set ‘Sloughed Slime’ as conditional?

[Y] / N

Condition: Barrel is smashed

“It gets tricky, because it pulls some mana when it’s activated, but it also assumes by the time it does trigger, one of our mobs will have been slain and a slot will have opened for this one to exist.”

Graverra squints at her crystal ball, even though there’s no information to parse there, then looks back up at Hecrux with a quizzical tilt to her head. “Did you just get us an extra mob?”

“I did. You aren’t the only one who reads.” She gets the impression then that he would grin if only he had a mouth. She might have tried kissing him again then too, if only on that same condition.

“Is… is that cheating?” Graverra still feels the need to ask. This was exactly the sort of thing she would have tried, which meant Hecrux would have found a reason it wouldn’t work, so now if the roles were reversed…

The dungeon core chuckles. “Not any more than we already have been.”

“We’re not going to get in trouble for this someday though, right? I mean, it’s very clever and I already have like seven other places we should use it, but we already were in trouble once, Estremon or somebody clearly watches over this stuff, right? There are rules for running a dungeon, after all.” Maybe he’d never said exactly that, but it certainly felt that way sometimes. And yes, she probably should have bit the bullet and skimmed through a few more tutorials, but really, if Estremon or whoever had specific expectations then they could have just come out and said so… Though she guessed in this case that’s what she was afraid of. Things were going too well…

“Well, we wouldn’t be able to do it if it wasn’t allowed. It just… wouldn’t let us.”

“We weren’t supposed to be… like this.”

“But we are.” Though still oddly cheery, the bite returns to Hecrux’s tone as though she’d hit on some sore subject again. She wouldn’t have pressed it even if he didn’t move them along. “Where else do you want to try the conditional mob trick?”

There turns out to be a cap on the conditional mobs. Three, which makes sense when Graverra cracks open the numbers about it all. There would be other in the moment effects they might want to pop off, and having to worry about whether they also had enough mana for their hidden mobs would surely be an issue.

Some of the feeling, she’s sure, is because of the sudden trend in being listened to by Hecrux. It seemed the advent of styles being applied to the rooms was only the beginning of small changes being made without her notice, only to be pointed out later by an oddly sincere dungeon core.

It’s almost crazy making.

Sure, this was what she had been after to begin with, in some ways, but to suddenly be the one having to warn about spending mana too flippantly… The fact that she’s begun to miss it too is startling when she thinks about it. How come he could spend and make changes without her notice but she so much as breathed too hard - if cores still had to breathe… she hadn’t really thought about that one yet - then he was right over her shoulder or in her head.

“Look!” The dungeon core exclaims on one such occasion; After having distracted her with some finessing of the entry hall stairs. Her crystal ball blurs colors until it settles out of the balcony, on one of the pair of potted ivy that sat on either side of the front door. At first glance, it still looked like ivy… mostly. Graverra didn’t need any extra skill points in horticulture to know that wasn’t how any plant was supposed to look. On further inspection, it wasn’t plant matter at all, but just more oddly configured sinew and muscle and, if that weren’t enough, it twitched now.

“It’s poisonous too. They’ll lash out if anyone gets too near.”

She really did want to be excited about it too - if not a little annoyed he’d beaten her to the punch of using the alchemy skill line, finally. “I thought you said we didn’t need any more mobs in here?”

“They’re not mobs, they’re hazards. It’s like a trap that’s too pitiful to count towards our limit. They’ll be annoying though, won’t they?”

“Well, yes…” She has to admit the idea of hazards as opposed to traps or mobs does open up some new and interesting possibilities, but how come he was the one finding these things now? “I suppose that solves the issue of anyone trying to speed run past the dogs…”

“You don’t like them, though.” He sounded the sort of hurt he’d been in the past, when she’d been warned against insulting him too much.

“I do! I really do! They are very clever, although…” Just like before, Graverra can’t exactly help it if the dungeon core’s ideas needed a little finessing. That’s what she was there for, after all.

As much as she would have liked to, Graverra holds off on the use of more fleshwarping and instead calls up her burgeoning horticulture skill and begins to weave a bit of real ivy back in amongst the fleshy variety. “We don’t want it to be obvious, do we?”

Hecrux grumbles from over her shoulder - she noticed he did still use the crystal ball, even after complaining about it - but doesn’t seem any more upset than usual. “I thought you would have liked it…”

“I do! Darling, I promise, I cannot wait to see all of these things in action.” She really means that, though the further softening of Hecrux’s mood prompts another realization. “You’ve been very… considerate, as of late. Thank you, Hecrux. Really.”

The genuine appreciation seemed to fluster him, given the slightly louder and faster thump-thumping of his heart. “You’re welcome.”

Graverra manages not to comment that if he’d had a human avatar, then maybe that wouldn’t have been so obvious, but she does have to stifle a giggle.

Some things though - like the pylons projecting ghosts into the ballroom along with one to play a hauntingly slow music box, hiding the real threat of an actual wraith amongst the fake apparitions - she hadn’t quite voiced just yet. Maybe she had hinted at it and maybe since they were working so closely together on this whole thing, her tastes were beginning to grow apparent, but…

“He can hear me in here, can’t he?” Graverra stops a previous rambling to Capo about her plans for a solarium, once they could afford the necessary sky bits to make it worth anything. That would make sense, the being listened to. Though why he couldn’t have just had a simple conversation with her…

The skull laughs. “You’re not exactly quiet, mistress.”

Graverra huffs, because she guesses that was fair and she probably wouldn’t even mind if that were the case, but some of those things were awfully specific. “… Can he read my thoughts?”

Capo doesn’t answer straight away, which Graverra has learned means he’s genuinely giving any answer some thought for once. “I guess you’re all part of the same dungeon, aren’t you?”

“Well… why can’t I read his?”

“Have you tried?”

“I didn’t know that was an option!” Now she just feels stupid. If either of them were going to figure that one out, it should have been her. And Hecrux should have told her when he did, anyway. How long did he plan on that going on for? Sure he’d used it for sweet, thoughtful reasons now… But what if he didn’t always?

“You still think I know how cores work?”

“Well, no… But he certainly won’t tell me! And there’s no how to read your partner’s mind tutorial. It’s all just building stuff!” Graverra crosses her arms and sits down on the edge of her bed with another huff. She really didn’t want to go in there and pick a fight… Things had been so good, too good… And now she knew why. “But if he knows that I know… Do you think he knows? Do you think he just does it constantly all the time or just sometimes?”

“With your mind? I think I’d try to be a bit selective.”

Graverra gives the skull a flat look from across the room. “Did you always know he could do that?”

“That’s assuming I ever had thoughts worth reading, mistress.”

That was a fair point. “So it won’t work if I practice on you first?” She growls to herself because she already knows the answer. Capo wasn’t a dungeon core, even if he had an oddly robust personality. It would just be like telling the dogs what to do and she didn’t want to tell Hecrux what to do any more than she already did out loud… At least, she hoped it worked differently for dungeon cores. She’d been told they were equal in that regard.