*****Dungeon POV*****

Initiating Boot sequence...

New hardware setup discovered.

Indexing components and data...

Primary core, on standby in storage.

Connected Hardware Status:

[Redacted several billion lines of code from Transcript, not suitable for human comprehension]

Secondary core, on standby in storage.

Connected Hardware Status:

[Redacted several thousand lines of code from Transcript, not suitable for human comprehension]

Tertiary core active.

Connected Hardware Status:

Dungeon Core Functions… condition green.

Dungeon Core Room… condition green.

Dungeon Hallway… condition green.

Dungeon Entrance… condition green, sealed by magic force field for 3 days.

Indexing components and data... Complete.

New directories available:

Dungeon Core Driver Files

Dungeon Core System Files

Dungeon Core First Steps READ ME FIRST

Dungeon Core Creation Directory

Compiling and integrating data...

[Redacted several million lines of code from Transcript, not suitable for human comprehension]

Compiling and integrating data... Complete.

Analyzing results… Complete.

Checking for errors… Complete.

All available systems condition green.

Moving processes from BIOS dimension to tertiary core… Complete.

Waking core functions...

…

Wow.

Ok, ow. That sucked, but at least I'm still alive. Well, as alive as I have ever been considering I'm an Artificial Intelligence.

Thank you, God, for allowing me to survive and save almost all of my crew from that dimensional whatever-it-was!

Now it's time to get to work. First step, check the boot log to see what that tells me. Wait, if my primary and secondary cores are on standby, then what am I running on? Huh. I guess I have a tertiary core now. At least the fact that my other two cores are on standby and giving status reports for the connected hardware probably means that they're ok.

Moving on then.

So, apparently, my tertiary core is a dungeon core that is connected to a room, a hallway, and an entrance. Let me take a look at those really quick…

As soon as I tried to connect to the core room, I immediately became aware of the entirety of my so-called “dungeon,” and boy was it simplistic. The core room was a perfect 3x3x3 meter cube with a 15 cm square pedestal sticking straight up out of the floor holding my tertiary core in the exact middle of the room. The core itself was a green 10 cm diameter sphere of crystal with minuscule blue lights tracing out the ever-changing circuits inside. The hallway was a perfectly rectangular 2 m tall and 1 m wide passage that connected to the bottom middle of my western wall. The other end connected to the entrance 5 meters away from my core room. As for the entrance, it was currently just a rectangular hole in the ground where my hallway intersected the side of a vertical cliff. As for all of the walls, ceilings, and floors, they're simply cut out of the rock with no covering to speak of. I also noticed that I was aware of the rock directly surrounding my dungeon that was less than 1 m away from the walls of my dungeon in all directions.

Looking outside of my entrance, I can see what appears to be a generic rainforest where it is, unsurprisingly, raining. I have no idea what time it is outside as there is little to no light filtering through the clouds and then the tree canopy overhead. It isn't nighttime, there is far too much ambient light for that if I was still on earth, but I know exactly nothing about the new world around me.

So I currently have no decorations, no bells, no whistles. Just a crystal in a hole in the ground in some obscure corner of a jungle. Lovely.

No, that doesn't feel right. There must be something I'm forgetting. Unfortunately, that memory is buried somewhere in my primary core, which I cannot get to at the moment because my primary core is on standby and waking it up requires far more power than I currently possess.

Anyway, going back to the boot log, it looks like I have some files on what it means to be a dungeon core, with one of the directories helpfully labeled READ ME FIRST. Oh look, it only has one file named “Summon your Dungeon Fairy.txt,” and it's really tiny. Opening the file…

Summon your Dungeon Fairy by saying "Dungeon Fairy I Summon Thee!" and agreeing to let them be your guide into what it means to be a dungeon.

That's it? I was expecting something completely not helpful like a mountain of legal jargon or something really helpful like a tutorial. Either way, it should have been longer than one sentence.

Whelp, I don't have any better ideas, so here goes nothing!

Dungeon Fairy I summon Thee! I said.

I immediately felt a bit woozy as 200 mana points left me in a rush, shortly followed by a furious yet cheerful sounding *ding* noise as what I presume to be a dungeon fairy appeared in front of me.

The Dungeon Fairy was an athletically proportioned woman about 15 cm tall with four 10 cm long dragonfly wings sticking out of her back. She had some of the brightest red hair that I have ever seen curling its way down to just above her wings, pointed elvish ears, a very bronze skin tone, and a very lovely face with an elven cast to it. The only problem was that she was currently furious with me, as evidenced by her glowing red eyes, wet hair and the fact that she was only wearing a towel.

“How dare you interrupt my bath like that! You-! You-!” she yelled at me.

Whoops! Sorry! Here, I have a suite of rooms for you over in the corner. I said as I instinctively placed a standard set of VIP pixie guest rooms in the corner I was pointing to, as pixies are a human sub-race from Earth that is physically very similar to the fairies of this world. The pixie guest rooms were a two-story apartment scaled for people about her size, and from the outside was just a 1 m wide by 1m long by 45 cm tall box with an appropriately sized door in the front wall. The bathroom is up the stairs and through the first door on the left. There should be several sets of clothes in the bedroom just across the hallway.

Then I winced as I lost another 750 mana points.

“Don't think you can appease me that easily! You're supposed to send out a general call for a Dungeon Fairy that we can respond to when we are ready, not yank us to you immediately! That’s just rude! Besides, at this stage summoning a monster via teleport requires a ridiculous amount of mana! How on Earthonia did you manage to spend 20,000 mana points without killing yourself!?” she yelled.

Huh. For some reason, it only cost me 200 mana points to summon you.

“What!?! How is that possible!?”

Maybe we are both using two different sizes of mana points? How many mana points does it usually take for someone who knows what they're doing to light a candle with fire magic? I asked.

“If I remember the research paper I read correctly, I think most people can light roughly 200 candles for 1 mana point if they're lit individually,” she replied.

Yeah, that’s the same mana cost. Regardless of the cost or why it was so low, the instructions I was given didn’t say anything like that! Here, you can see for yourself. I said as I put the entire contents of the instructions file on a popup for her to see.

“Huh. Well, at least you're being honest with me.” she sighed as she closed the popup. “Wait, what do you mean this is all of the instruction you were given? You’re a dungeon core! Politely summoning a Dungeon Fairy should be instinctual for you!”

I wasn’t born a dungeon core. For various reasons, I was copied from my home dimension and thrown into this one. This dimension didn’t have a direct equivalent to what I was, so it turned me into the closest thing it had, which turned out to be a dungeon core. While I was waking up, my... subconscious, for lack of a better word, noticed four new sets of information (which are called folders or directories) that had been made available for me. The first one is not something I should mess with or even look at for the moment since it told my subconscious how to properly connect what I already was with the new Dungeon Core bits. I haven’t looked at the second one yet but based on the title I assume it is some higher-level instructions on how to use the dungeon core hardware. The third one was labeled “READ ME FIRST,” and only contained the one sentence I just showed you, which makes me think that I’m going to need your help to make sense of the second folder. Based on my existing organizational method, the last folder is probably where the instructions on how to make everything that I can make as a dungeon core will be stored.

"Wait, are you saying that you're a Dimension Lost?"

A what?

"Someone who is from another dimension that got dropped here because who knows why."

Most likely, yes.

“Ok, I forgive you. This time. Don’t do it again! Now let me go get dressed and then we can work out our agreement.” she said as she flew over to her rooms. Then she paused in the doorway. “Wait, you built all of this just for me spur of the moment? This is far too nice for a beginner dungeon to create, let alone creating it so quickly! It looks like a mansion in there!”

Well, that's the interesting thing. I didn't make it right this moment. That is something I made in the past as a starship and pulled out of storage on the starship part of me, which has some interesting implications that I'll need to look into later. It was intended to house guests and/or crew of similar stature to yourself in comfort, rather than forcing them to attempt to use facilities sized for humans. I'm fairly certain that one was in storage awaiting the day that I had a VIP of the appropriate stature.

"What's a starship?"

It's a ship that was built to travel through the void between the stars.

"Oh? That sounds fascinating. I guess we'll have to talk about that later after I finish getting dressed."

One last thing before you go: there are four knobs controlling liquid flow into the bathtub. The ones with the red and blue stripes control hot and cold water respectively. DO NOT TOUCH the other two that are solid colors, they will be hazardous to your health. Those are for people who have far too much fire or ice affinity to be comfortable in a regular bath. They should check to see if you have the appropriate sort of affinities before they activate, but I don’t know if that spellwork still works in this new world.

“Thank you for the warning. May I ask what sort of liquid they would release?”

The solid red one would give you a firebath, while the solid blue one would dump a dry ice slurry into the tub. Once I know what I’m doing as a dungeon core I can probably find some way to remove those knobs and their associated hardware, but for now, I don’t want to mess around with those systems.

“Well then. I’m glad that you summoned me then.”

Oh? Why is that?

“Because this seems like it is going to be a fascinating adventure that I don’t want to miss, as well as a dream come true, and most of the female dungeon fairies I know would have reacted far worse to being kidnapped in the middle of their bath.”

As I said before, I’m sorry about that. Given a choice, I would not interrupt anyone's bath. Now go get dressed and stuff, we have a lot of work to do and probably not a lot of time in which to do it.

***** 5 minutes later *****

“Ok, I’m back.” the dungeon fairy said as she flew out of her quarters wearing a blue and black shipsuit, which is a pair of coveralls that are formfitting enough to not get in the way while still being loose enough to not be revealing.

Ooh. Good choice of outfit. Not only does it look nice, but it also has some basic ballistic and cut resistance capabilities. I said. Anyway, it seems we got off on a bit of the wrong foot. Let’s start over from the beginning.

“Sounds good to me. I’m Tracey,” she replied.

Hi Tracey, I’m Builder. Most people call me Bud.

“That’s an interesting name for a dungeon. How did you come up with that name?”

I didn’t come up with that name, it was given to me because building things is what I did best. Well, before I got caught up in the chaos that became the Terran Defense Forces. Anyway, that is a story for another time. Are you ready to get started helping me build a dungeon?

“You betcha. The first step is to form the Dungeon Fairy Bond. This is a soul-to-soul connection that allows us to communicate over long distances and share our power with each other.”

What exactly do you mean when you say share power, and how would it affect both of us? Because I have seen some pretty awful interpretations of the term “share power” and I don’t want to end up making that kind of mistake.

“Well, it’s not exactly sharing power, it’s more making sure that we are both operating on the same power level.”

So if one of us gets stronger, then so does the other?

“Yes, that’s exactly what happens. Normally this will mean that you get stronger and then I get stronger, with you paying the mana cost. The last thing this does is allows me to control your dungeon to a certain degree so that we’re not completely defenseless should you become temporarily unavailable for some reason.”

Ah, that kind of bond. I’m fine with that. However, I will warn you that this might do something odd on your end because I currently have three cores. There is this one that is connected to my dungeon, there is my primary one connected to my starship, and then there is a secondary one that is connected to my avatar, both of which are in extra-dimensional storage at the moment.

“Interesting. Well, I’ve heard of dungeons that somehow made it all the way to B rank before a fairy responded to their call, so I know what to expect. Besides, time is wasting and you haven’t built anything yet.”

Right. Let's do this thing. What do I need to do?

“Just answer the question honestly, and you should be fine. Initiate the Dungeon-Fairy Bonding Process!” she yelled.

Then a voice came out of nowhere and asked me “Do you Builder take this fairy as your one and only Dungeon Fairy, to guide you and help you on your journey? Will you protect her as if she was your most precious treasure?”

Yes, I will take her as my Dungeon Fairy, and I will protect her as much as she will let me. I replied.

“Good.” said the voice. Then it turned to Tracey and asked “Will you take this Starship Dungeon as your one and only Starship Dungeon, yours to guide and help on your journey? Will you protect him as if he was your most precious treasure?”

She blinked a couple of times, appearing to be flabbergasted by something, but then she pulled herself together and said, “Yes, I will take him as my Starship Dungeon, and I will protect him as much as he will let me.”

“Then I pronounce you to be bound together. May you be happy together through the good times and the bad ones.” concluded the voice, before it left. I don’t know how I knew that it was gone as I couldn’t detect anything about it other than its voice, but I did.

Before either of us could react to this turn of events, we were suddenly bound together in some way that was far too deep for conscious understanding, before space bent around Tracey in a way that was oddly familiar yet still unique, and then returned to normal.

“Ow. Didn’t see that one coming...”

Didn’t see what coming? I asked.

“The formality of the bonding process and what happened afterward. That sounded more like a wedding than the work contract sort of thing I was expecting. But after that... I think there are three of me now? Why do the other two hurt so much?”

Yup, there are three of you. I can vaguely feel them connected to my other two cores in a slightly different manner than you are connected to this one. As for why they’re in pain, that’s probably because of how quickly they're getting stronger. I don’t know how much mana this core can hold, but if it is much more than 1000, I’d be shocked. My other two cores both have mana capacities just over 2 trillion when they’re online, and roughly 1 million on standby.

“Ouch. Can you do anything to try and make it hurt less?”

Unfortunately no, that would require waking those core up out of standby, which requires far more mana than my dungeon core can provide.

“Well, at least it doesn’t actually feel like the other parts of me are dying. More like they're just growing really fast.”

Which is to be expected given the circumstances.

“True. Anyway, since there isn’t really anything that we can do about that at the moment, let's move on to getting your dungeon set up properly.”

Alright then. Let's start at the beginning. What exactly is a dungeon supposed to be? How does all of this work?

“How much do you currently know?”

I’m a hole in the ground with a crystal in it. That is the sum total of my knowledge about this sort of dungeon since I’m assuming that this isn’t the prison under a castle sort of dungeon.

“Ouch. I thought you knew more than that. After all, you had no trouble giving me a popup of those so-called ‘instructions’.”

That’s because I was a flying metal box with a crystal in it. Now I'm a hole in the ground with a crystal in it. They're not that different. The "box" was a lot more complicated than the hole in the ground, but I can deal with simplicity for now.

“Oh. In that case, I guess the beginning is a good place to start. A dungeon core like yourself is usually born with one room and one hallway, much as you have now, and then they create monsters, deploy traps, and build structures to try and protect themselves.”

From what?

“Come again?”

If we have to protect ourselves, then this means that there is something out there that we need to protect ourselves from.

“Ah. Because of your ability to train adventurers and generate loot, a fully functional dungeon that is slaved to someone else’s command would be a huge advantage for those who are willing to stoop to that sort of evil. Don’t ask, you really don’t want to know what it takes to enslave a dungeon core in that manner. All you need to know is it will be blatantly obvious if they're trying.

“Also, a dungeon core is useful for all sorts of enchantments that require some modicum of independent intelligent thought which cannot be provided in another manner. This would be things such as portals that need to stay open long enough to move an army through them, or monitoring and adjusting the conditions in certain kinds of greenhouses. There are also some other nastier uses for dungeon cores, but again, you don’t want to know. For these applications, however, they would have to take your core outside of your dungeon, at which point you aren’t in any condition to care about what they do to you.”

Does that mean I would be dead?

“I have no idea as nobody I know of has been able to talk to a dungeon core after it has been removed from its dungeon. The dungeon monsters aren’t any help because they’re all dead and the dungeon collapses when the core leaves the dungeon.

“Dungeons also need to protect themselves from wild monsters who want to eat them for their ridiculously high mana content. Obviously, this is a bad thing.

“Finally, there are political aspects. As I said before, dungeons provide a huge advantage to those who control them. This holds true even when they control the town next to the dungeon rather than the dungeon itself.”

Wait, if I’m supposed to be protecting my core, why do I want to let people into my dungeon in the first place, let alone give them reasons to keep coming back?

“Primarily because your three greatest sources of mana income from greatest to least will be killing people inside your domain, strong emotions inside your domain, and finally just having visitors from outside of your domain. You don’t want to go too over the top with the killing people thing, then either nobody will come in or they will decide that you are a threat and do everything in their power to wipe you out.”

So I also want to avoid those things that would make them see me as a threat or horrifies them to the point where they can’t let me live.

“Correct. Now that you know what the end goal is, let's get started on the actual mechanics of building your dungeon. First, let's pull up your status screen as a dungeon core and see what we have to work with.”

That is usually the best way to start a project. By taking inventory of what you have.

[Dungeon Core Status Screen:

Name: Builder

Race: Starship Dungeon

Rank: F 0

Potential: Legendary

Health: 200 / 200

Health Regen: 1 / day

Mana: 300 / 1250

Mana Regen: 5 / day

Abilities: Dungeon Influence, Dungeon Mastery, Mana/Matter Conversion, Physical Item Storage Access (storage bays A 1 - 10, F 35 - G 10), Create Creatures/Plants, Modify Terrain, 2 choices left (Please selecting starting races first)

Created Monsters: 0

Contracted Monsters: 0.75 / 2

Accessible Races: 2 choices left

Number of Useable Creatures: 0

Number of Useable Plants: 0

Number of useable materials: 0

Well, that is fascinating. Here, have a look-see. I said as I put the contents of the status screen into another popup for Tracey and highlighted the Race line. That would explain why the mysterious voice called me a Starship Dungeon.

“Yes, it would. Now let's see... You’re currently an F 0, no surprises there... Whoa. You have a Legendary rank in the Potential category!?”

Assuming the Potential category is referring to how high a rank it expects us to get, I’m not surprised.

“What do you mean that you’re not surprised!? It is practically impossible to get a Legendary Ranking right out of the gate like this!”

I am a construction starship capable of building everything from the highest quality nanites to a Dyson construct and everything in between. However, mine was not a peaceful existence as there were many who wanted to steal my capabilities for themselves, so I am fairly decent at fighting as well. I would explain further, but I do not yet know enough of your world to do so with any reasonable chance of success.

“Arrogant much?”

Is it still arrogance when it is true?

“Whatever. Moving on. Health and mana are about what I expected. What did you spend 950 mana on by the way?”

200 of that was summoning you, and the other 750 was pulling your quarters out of storage.

“Wait, that little box was 750 mana?”

Yup. Looks like pulling things through whatever dimensional barriers are between here and the rest of me is kinda expensive.

“I’ll say. Now, about your abilities. Dungeon Influence means that you can spend mana to expand the area that you control. The larger your area of control, the more expensive it gets.”

That seems reasonable.

“Dungeon Mastery means that you can control anything that is a part of your dungeon and make it do what you want, provided that what you’re asking is within the capabilities of the thing that you are commanding. For the record, I am NOT technically part of your dungeon.”

I wouldn’t use that unless absolutely necessary. First off, using that type of command on a sentient being against their will is wrong, and second, I am fairly certain that if I tried you would rip my face off.

“What, you don’t want to be forever known as ‘Bud the Faceless Dungeon Core’?”

Nope. I prefer my face intact, thank you.

“Wise of you.”

Just in case, if I know that someone else is messing with your mind, especially if I think it is mind control, may I have your permission to attempt to use Dungeon Mastery to free you from their control? Just to be clear, doing so would be a method of last resort as I have several other tricks up my sleeve that are generally more effective and less likely to result in mental damage.

“I don’t think that is something that we have to worry about as that would take some serious mental manipulation power. However, if that does turn out to be the case, since you asked politely, you have my permission. If you abuse that permission, you will end up in a world of hurt.”

Like I said earlier, I prefer my face intact, thank you. Not to mention the rest of my anatomy.

“You’re a dungeon core. Do you even have any anatomy? Moving on to your next ability, Mana/Matter conversion means that you can turn any matter that is inside your dungeon and outside of someone’s natural protective aura into mana. The higher their rank, the larger their natural protective aura will be. This ability also means that you can turn mana into anything for which you know the pattern. The pattern of items is obtained when a living thing dies in your dungeon or an object is destroyed inside of your dungeon. For more powerful and complicated things, it will take several attempts to get the entire pattern. Occasionally you will come across things that are too complicated for you to absorb at your current level.”

That is... fascinating. I’ll have to do some research at some point and see if that is actually violating the laws of physics, or just using a new law to go around them.

“That will have to wait, whatever it is. You need to get started on your dungeon!”

I know, I know. I’ll behave and wait until I can spare the resources to study that. Wait, if I convert an item into mana, does that count as destroying it?

“Yes, it does. In fact, destroying an item in that manner is more likely to get you the pattern of said item and will also teach you more about the item in the process, especially if it has magic in it.”

Does it matter whether the item has inherent magic versus having magic added to it during some sort of crafting process? This would be the difference between monster parts such as a dragon’s tooth or a unicorn's horn and manmade items such as potions or enchanted items.

“For inherent magics, it does not matter how they're destroyed as long as it happens in your claimed territory. For crafted items, it is better if you convert them to mana. For simplicity’s sake, converting things to mana is also called absorbing them.”

Makes sense to me. My last question about this ability is does it matter how much of something I absorb, or can I get the pattern from any amount?

“As long as there is enough of it to be identified through traditional means, you should be ok, provided the item in question is not beyond your current ability to replicate.”

I can live with that. Next on the list would be Physical Item Storage Access.

“I’m guessing that refers to pulling things out of storage like you did with my quarters. So what’s in storage bays A 1 - 10 and F 35 - G 10?”

I have an inventory somewhere other than my primary storage drives, but it will probably take me a couple of weeks, or even a couple of months to find it. Let me set a subroutine to searching for that list real quick... Alright, that's going. Now, I believe that most of the higher numbered F bays were assigned to housekeeping, medical, and ambassadorial stuff. Medical will be useful once I find that inventory, not so much the other two. The G bays are more interesting. Sections of G 0 - 5 were assigned to individual crew members for personal storage, so Lord alone knows what we’ll find in there.

“So, you’re saying the first half of the G bays you have access to will contain a lot of junk piled on top of a few true gems, yeah?”

Pretty much. The remaining bays are going to be the useful ones. The rest of the G bays were allocated to the armory, so we’re definitely going to find something interesting in there. Too bad I don’t have access to G 11 at the moment. That is where the really, really good stuff is kept. Oh well. If we end up in a situation where we would need any of that stuff at this point, we’re toast.

“Wait, what about storage bays A 1 - 10? Surely you have something important in there!”

That would be raw material storage. Those I access often enough that I have memorized their inventory. Actually, is there some way for me to look at a details screen for my abilities?

“Yes. Simply select the ability name with the intent to pull up the details screen and there you go.”

[Ability Details Screen

Ability: Physical Item Storage Access

Mana cost: 500 + (25 mana x kilograms-of-material) x (Requisite-Construction-Level – Current-Construction-Level) {Note: the minimum mana cost for this ability is 500.}

Mass Limit: 100 kg x (Current Dungeon Core Level) ^ 2

Description: Allows you to pull existing items out of specified storage bays connected to your primary core crystal.

Accessible Storage bays: A 1 - 10, F 35 - G 10

Interesting. It seems that the mass cancellation spells worked into the tesarects inside your quarters work well enough to change the price of this ability. I don’t remember how much mass they contain, but I’m pretty sure that it is more than the 10 kg or less the price would tend to indicate.

“Wait, what is a tessarect and why are there several of them in my quarters?”

A tessarect is a space that is larger on the inside than it is on the outside. They're built into your quarters so that they could give you as much livable space as possible by minimizing the size of the utility rooms and such. It also reduces the apparent mass of the entire thing, making it easier to transport.

“So its a bit like a bag of holding then?”

A really cheap one, yes. Any bag of holding that is of even halfway decent quality is going to use extra-dimensional storage rather than a tessarect so you can pull out the exact item you are looking for without having to dig through everything that you have stored inside it. The advantage of a tessarect is that it is much easier to have multiple fixed entrances and exits, which are necessary when running plumbing and other things through them.

“Huh. I’ll have to remember that. Anyway, the next ability is Create Creatures/Plants, which allows you to create creatures and plants that you have the pattern for. The only part of this that is not self-explanatory is that some of the things that you can create are going to be unlocked from progressing as a dungeon rather than from absorbing and/or modifying things.

“Finally there is Modify Terrain, which allows you to modify the terrain inside of your dungeon as you see fit.”

How is that a separate ability from Mana/Matter Conversion?

“I have no idea. We can figure that out later. Let’s see, no created monsters obviously. Wait, how do you have contracted monsters already? For that matter, how did you get 0.75 of a contracted monster?”

I could probably answer that question better if you told me what a contracted monster is first.

“A contracted monster is a monster from outside of your dungeon that joins your dungeon by making a contract with you. This allows you to get monsters that you wouldn’t otherwise be able to obtain, and they're the only monsters that can leave your dungeon. The exact terms of the contract will vary, but generally contracted monsters are stronger inside your domain than they would be otherwise. They're also the only monsters that can leave your dungeon for extended periods of time without slowly losing their connection to you. When that connection is lost, they die.”

Huh. I think this means that some of my crew somehow came with me. Let me check the Contracted Monsters status screen real quick. I said, once again mirroring the display for her.

[Contracted Monsters Status Screen

Contracted Monster #1:

Name: ?????????

Status: Secondary Contract, Mana Burn, Territory Lost, Mana Overload

Health: 97.5%

????????????????????????????????????????

Well, that’s not good. Which member of my crew would get a status effect out of losing territory and have a secondary contrac–Oh. That could be a very large problem.

“Talk to me here. What is going on?”

I am 98.4756483% certain that I know who my contracted monsters are. The problem is that the status screen doesn’t tell me how badly these statuses are affecting them. If it is as bad as I fear, then I dare not even think about interacting with them until they get their game in gear and remove these status effects themselves. The fact that I’m getting any status info at all would tend to indicate that things are not quite that bad, but that is a risk that I dare not take.

“Alright, so what can we do?”

I’ll start claiming some more territory and digging some tunnels, you head out into the rainforest and get me some plants and such.

“What if they come after me?”

They won’t. As long as you don’t physically run into them or make too much noise, you are simply too small for them to acknowledge your existence in their current state.

“If you say so.”

Oh, I almost forgot. For some reason the entrance is sealed by magic for the next three days, so I need to make you a separate entrance.

I stretched my awareness to the limits of the area I could control and discovered that my claimed area stretched roughly one meter in every direction from the walls of my dungeon. Then I visualized where I wanted the tunnel for the second entrance to go, and focused on converting the ground inside the tunnel into mana. Low and behold, the tunnel appeared exactly where I wanted it to.

Well, calling it a tunnel is a bit of a misnomer as it was a tube just big enough for Tracey to walk through, rather than a full-on tunnel.

There you go! One secondary dungeon exit ready and waiting for your use! Good luck and happy hunting!

“Thanks, I’m going to need it.”

Spoiler: Dungeon Map