***** Tracey’s POV *****

Initiating Dungeon/AI Fairy boot sequence…

Hardware setup: Default

Checking connections… condition green.

Checking hardware status… condition nominal. Proceeding with boot process.

Indexing files… complete.

Loading Biological Interface… complete.

Boot sequence complete.

Awaking Fairy.

Owww. My everything hurts. Note to self: the bed is really hard. Maybe if I ignore that it will get softer and let me go back to sleep.

Tracey... said a vaguely familiar male voice.

“Five more minutes papa!” I said attempting to roll over but finding only empty space.

“Gahh!” I yelled, struggling to catch myself with my wings before I hit the floor. I succeeded, but only by the slimmest of margins. “Who moved my bed!?”

Then I looked around. “Wait, where is my bed!? Why am I outside of my quarters?”

Your bed is right where you left it. When I woke up after the Connection Repair thing with Zona, I found you draped over my core sound asleep. I don’t know why you were sleeping there, it doesn’t seem like it would be very comfortable to sleep on. I was going to warn you about the drop, but then you rolled off before you even woke up properly.

“Not your fault,” I grumbled. “Why on Earthonia would I be sleeping on top of your core?”

Installing Dream Stabilization Upgrade required transfer of data from Dungeon Fairy subconsciousness to AI subconsciousness. Race Change of Dungeon Fairy required transfer of data from AI subconsciousness to Dungeon Fairy subconsciousness. Transfer of data required a direct connection between data storage locations. Direct connection required physical contact.

“Umm... What? How am I different? I don’t feel all that different.”

Physically, I don’t think there were many outside changes. Almost all of the changes were internal so that your thought processes mesh better with mine.

“Wait, I’m thinking differently?”

Foundational thought mechanics changed, general thought process 98.4659463% unchanged. AI thought process capability added to Dungeon Fairy thought processes.

Good. That is a weight off of my shoulders.

“I’m still confused over here.”

When it comes to the way the two of us think, we come from two completely different worlds. At heart, I am still a computer, meaning all of my thoughts are based on ones and zeros. When I became a true AI, I gained all of the emotional and spiritual aspects of being a sentient being, but the focus was making sure that I could still think efficiently.

On the other hand, you are a living being at heart, meaning that all of your thoughts are based on neurons and other unquantifiable things. When the World System changed your race just now, he gave you the ability to think the way I do with ones and zeros but focused on keeping all of your non-thought processes intact.

“Let me make sure that I understood what you just said. Both of us underwent a change to something between a living being and a ‘computer,’ whatever that is, but we started on opposite ends of the change with different focuses on what should be preserved?”

Essentially yes. If he did this the way I think he did it, you’re still using your brain as the primary director of your thoughts, but you now have some sort of AI core in your head that you will gradually gain access to. If things proceed the way that I expect them to given your connection with me, as I get stronger more and more of your thought processes will switch over to the AI core. This way you can learn to think the way I do as I get stronger, preventing you from being drowned in an avalanche of computer code. Trust me, if we are truly going to do this thing together, this or something like it was going to be absolutely necessary sooner rather than later.

“So, it's all mental changes? There was nothing physical?”

There is only one change that I can see right off of the bat without violating your privacy, and that would be to your eyes.

“Huh? My eyes are working just fine! It is as bright as day in here. When did you get around to installing some lights?”

I didn’t. You’re almost fifty meters deep into a cliff face without a light, and you can still see just fine.

“Oh. Well, that’s useful.”

Yup. If your eyes got improved, I assume your ears did too. I’m not sure if these are changes to your body or some ability of your AI core, we can figure that out at a later date. That said, I don’t think I can help you deal with the sensory improvements until after you get used to the AI method of thinking. That I can help you with.

“Can I have a few minutes to myself to get used to all of this?” I said.

“Hey Bud!” yelled Broohn. “I got your waterwheel parts!”

I’ll be there in a moment! Bud yelled back at him before turning his focus back to me. How much time do you want?

“I don’t know. It's not like I can tell my existential crises to take a certain amount of time before they show up,” I replied.

How about I get the water wheels set up and then come back to you? If that’s not enough time, I can work on my hallways… Oh, I’m an idiot.

“What?”

I don’t have to claim the walls around the rooms I make. Don’t get me wrong, it is a good idea to claim them on general principles, but I don’t have to do so right away. In fact, if I don’t claim the walls I actually gain mana through this process.

“So you’re going to take a slight risk and just dig all of the rooms and tunnels you were planning on having without claiming the walls?”

Precisely. Then I will use what I get from that to make a bunch more water wheels and claim a bunch of the walls around my rooms. Then I can claim the walls as I get the mana.

“Sounds like a plan to me. If you need me I’ll be in my rooms,” I said.

When you think you’re ready to talk, you know where to find me.

***** Bud’s POV *****

“There you are,” Broohn said. “Where do you want me to put the waterwheel bits?”

Just set them on the floor. I’ll take it from there.

“Ok. If you say so.”

Watch this. I said as I prepared to absorb the parts.

I had never really paid attention to the absorption process before, so I was kind of surprised when I noticed that my subsystems were planning on absorbing the pieces in a scattershot fashion. No rhyme or reason to when they absorbed one section instead of another, just eeny meeny miny that one.

Hold on a moment Broohn, I just need to rewrite a couple of algorithms real quick. The way they are now will work, but it isn’t very efficient.

“Disliking other people’s software again are we?”

Of course. I’m an Artificial Intelligence that thinks almost completely in code, so naturally, I have a better understanding of how coding works. And there we go! Now watch the waterwheel parts, you’re in for a treat!

“Oh?”

No sooner than he started speaking than the parts vanished with a popping sound and a faint flash of light, giving me 507 mana.

Congratulations! New Ability Unlocked: Legendary Absorption! Absorption Time reduced by 99.999%! Pattern Absorption Rate increased by 5000%! Absorption mana gain increased by 200%!

Um. Okay… That is a Legendary absorption method? All I did is take it apart layer by layer rather than random selection. I wonder, what happens if I do that to my creation processes?

“I don’t know. As much fun as it would be to help you figure out what is going on, I should probably go start training the Kobolds. The sooner I finish that and then get started on those mechanical golems you wanted, the better.”

True. Also, it looks like the creation method is going to take some time to get right. While I’m working on that, I have a couple of questions that I should have asked you sooner. I just got caught up in everything that has happened.

“That’s understandable. What was your question?”

What happened? How did we end up here? I remember that odd spacetime distortion streaking towards our fleet and assuming that it was a weapon. The problem is the very next thing I did was overclock both of my cores, and I never processed the rest of those events to my long-term memory before this happened…

“And the log files you do have are far too massive for your current core to deal with because of the overclocking.”

Precisely.

“Well then, here’s what happened. With my father out of the system, we were the only ones who could do anything about that bizarre weapon.

Of course, they waited until he was out system. Lord alone knows what he would have done with the output of that weapon.

“Yup,” he nodded at me. “So you threw yourself and all of us into the weapon’s path with your reaction mass thrusters. At the same time, the nature of the weapon allowed you to reprogram your stardrive to protect the crew from its effects. Doing so changed the distortion slightly, making it blatantly obvious to me that the weapon was supposed to throw us into some other dimension.”

Implying that whoever fired this thing couldn’t or wouldn’t face us in a head-on fight, so they settled for making us someone else’s problem instead.

“My thoughts exactly. The good thing is that due to the formation method of the distortion, changing the effect required almost no power on my part, just willpower and skill.

It’s not like you’re short on those, you stubborn old lizard.

“Who you callin’ old, ya’ whippersnapper? After that the next thing I remember clearly is tracking down bandits in the jungle out there.”

I assume that Zona came along because she was the last guest on board after that big banquet to celebrate our alliance with the Lizarolfkang and I couldn’t protect her because she wasn’t part of the crew.

“Since a guest doesn't have the connection to your core that a crew member does? I think that was part of it. Another thing to consider is that in order for me to mess with the distortion the way I did you had to remove me from the protections that you had put up. Since Zona wasn’t a part of your crew but was still connected to me through our marriage bond, I think she also ended up excluded from the protections.”

That sounds about right. Did our plan work?

“I think so? It seemed to be working, and then everything gets kind of fuzzy. At the very least I haven’t received any distress calls from them.”

Then it occurred to me that there was one more person I could ask.

Hey World System, was there anyone else that got sent here along with us?

Total transfer statistics: 1 AI and associated components, 1 dragon, 1 dryad.

Whew. That is a load off of my chest. I’m glad I don’t have to go send you two out looking for the rest of the crew since I kind of can’t.

“Bud, you’re a shiny rock in the back of a hole in the ground. You don’t have that kind of chest at the moment.”

Quiet you.

“Never! Unless I need a nap.”

Just go train the kobolds, you silly man.

***** Tracey’s POV *****

Once I got back to my quarters, I picked up a pillow off of the couch and screamed into it as loud as I could. It helped, but not enough, so I ran up the stairs and flopped face-first on my new bed.

A small part of me noticed that the bed was far more comfortable than my old bed and not hard at all.

Focus! This is no time for distractions. I scolded myself.

Today had not gone anything like I thought it would. First, the interruption of my bath via summoning (Thank God I’d at least been wearing a towel), then the dungeon bonding ceremony that had turned out more like a wedding (I’ll have to find a way to talk to my parents about that), followed by the whole looming insanity thing and the opportunity to fix it.

Then this happened.

If I had been asked first, I would have said yes to all of these things once I understood what was going on, but I wasn’t asked. Yes, I had initiated the dungeon bond myself, but I had no idea that it would be like that, so it still counts as being unasked.

Oh God, why didn’t you ask me first? You could have at least had the World System ask on your behalf! I prayed, my soul crying out in despair as I began quietly sobbing into my pillow. I didn’t ask you to do this to me!

Then again, maybe God has placed me here for such a time as this. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do other than keep going, but that’s life for you.

Besides, despite all of the unexpectedness that happened today, I’m finally somewhere that I can make a difference. Maybe not today, but only an idiot would say that Bud couldn’t amount to anything. Sure, there is a chance that someone might come along and steal his core or something, but that is just a risk that I’ll have to run.

Well then, I guess I’ll just have to buck up my courage and enjoy the adventure of life as it comes! I thought to myself.

With my equanimity restored, I jumped up off of the bed and went to go see how Bud was doing.

Spoiler: Dungeon Map