***** Bud’s POV *****

While Broohn got started on training the kobolds in the first room, I tasked a subroutine with claiming and clearing the planned air space inside of my dungeon. I didn’t pay much attention to what Broohn was doing since I had seen him do it many times before. Instead, since the claiming and clearing process didn’t require much of my attention, I continued to take a closer look at my item creation algorithms. The simplest way to do this was by reshaping the mechanical power transfer bits that Broohn gave me.

Don’t get me wrong, all of the parts were top quality and worked very well for their intended purposes, as I’d come to expect from the Lizarolfkang. Especially since these were exo-suit components and the Lizarolfkang are all exo-suit nuts. The problem is that I was trying to use them to make a water wheel, so I needed them to be in a slightly different configuration.

Fortunately, I’d absorbed them with my new Legendary Absorption ability, so the pattern I had for them was actually very clean, as opposed to the messes I had been getting from the normal absorption method. So the very first thing that I tried was to see what happened when I fed the smallest clean pattern I had into my item creation algorithm. For safety’s sake, I did this in the corner of the last room before my core so nobody would get hit by shrapnel if something blew up.

Good thing I did too. The result of my first attempt was an explosion similar to a small hand grenade.

“What on earth was that!?” demanded Tracey, who had been just far enough down the hallway to not get hurt.

Oops. Sorry about that. I thought you’d be thinking for a little while longer, and Broohn has the kobolds all occupied down at the far end of my dungeon. I didn’t expect anyone to be here to get hurt.

“Apology accepted. Now, what blew up?”

Before I answered Tracey, I briefly moved my perspective over to Broohn and told him everything was fine, then jumped back to Tracey.

While you were thinking, I noticed that the algorithm I had been using to absorb things was woefully inefficient, so I improved it and now I’ve unlocked a legendary absorption method. Since that worked so well, I decided to try and improve my item creation algorithm. Unfortunately, unlike the absorption algorithm, it is not immediately obvious to me how this one works or even why it does some of the things it does. So I took a clean pattern I got from the Legendary absorption and fed it into the standard creation algorithm, and then that happened.

“In other words, you were experimenting when your experiment blew up.”

Yup.

“Before we go any further, is it safe for me to keep going? I don’t know why, but I get the feeling that I need to be in your core room for the rest of this conversation.”

Yes, it’s safe to proceed. May I ask how your reflections went?

“Upon some further reflection and prayer, I realized that I got chosen as your dungeon fairy for a reason. Besides, I always wanted to bond with a dungeon. Unfortunately, there are far more dungeon fairies than there are dungeons, so we can’t all bond with a dungeon.”

So what do you want to focus on first? Teaching you how to think my way, or figuring out what is going on with the exploding creations?

“I’d say check for divots left by the explosion first, and then-.”

And then she sat on top of my core.

Initiate AI Thought Process Training sequence?

Buttons must be pushed simultaneously.

Bud

Tracey

Yes

No

Yes

No

Wait a moment and let me check to see what this is going to do before you say yes.

“Ok,” Tracey said nervously.

Let’s see… That makes sense… Huh. I hadn’t thought of that, but it makes more sense than what I was going to do… Alright, Tracey, it looks good to me. Are you ready to do this thing?

“No, not really. But if we waited until I was ready we’d be here for quite some time.”

Then let’s do this thing!

“Wait, what is this going to do?”

It is going to gently open a more direct connection between our minds and set up a bit of parallel thinking on your end. This will allow you to continue helping me figure out the exploding issue while simultaneously watching me think. Don’t worry about invading my privacy. At this point, you’re not going to be able to see much beyond the upper more public layers of my thoughts.

“I assume that it is giving you the same level of access to my thoughts?”

Yes. Just keep in mind that your method of thinking is going to be just as weird for me as mine is for you.

“If you say so. Let’s get this over with then.”

If you start getting a headache, let me know and we can stop. Ready? Let’s push the button on 3. 1… 2… 3!

As soon as we pushed the button, I could sense Tracey’s thoughts alongside my own, and she could feel mine. It was… odd, yet intimate. We both just sat there getting used to being able to feel the other person for a few moments.

Oddly enough, it was Tracey that snapped out of it first.

“As enjoyable as this has turned out to be, aren’t we supposed to be working as we do this?”

Oh, oops. Yes, we are. As you said, let’s start by checking for a divot. I moved my perception over to the corner where the pattern had blown up. Since the pattern should have created a 1 cm thick and 10 cm diameter ball bearing, I expected to find some shrapnel. Instead, I found iron dust and a strong burnt smell from the grease in the bearing. There was also a small divot in the floor, which was the first thing I fixed. It was small enough it didn’t cost me even one mana, but it still cost me something.

Note to self: fortify all surfaces at the earliest opportunity.

“Can’t have people digging around the challenges, now can we?”

Nope. Let’s see, clean up the rest of the mess I made… Alright, let’s look at recordings of that I was making.

“Oh?”

I don’t know how much storage space you have in your head, but generally speaking, it is a good idea to record everything. You never know what might be useful.

“Hmm. I’ll have to look into that at some point. Anyway, you were saying something about looking at recordings of the explosion?”

Yes, I was. One moment here, let me convert it into something I can show you visually… And there we go.

Playing back the recording in slow motion showed the first few motes of mana had no problem, but once the eleventh one showed up it tried to get too close to one of the other motes, causing them to crash into each other. This resulted in the explosion that terminated the creation process.

“Huh. Based on what I’d heard of theory on how dungeons created things, I didn’t think it was possible for two of the motes to run into each other.”

Interesting. Now that I can see what it is doing, it is abundantly clear that part of the reason the original algorithm does things in such a helter-skelter fashion is to reduce the likelihood of a collision.

“Oh? How did you reach that conclusion?”

So I spent a few minutes explaining how the algorithms worked and which line of code corresponded with which part of the sequence.

So that’s how the algorithms work.

“Oh wow. No wonder you were worried about me going insane later on. That’s really intense.”

Yes, it is. Especially since the entirety of that algorithm would be executed in less than a second. Your thought process is just as intense from my perspective. The way that your brain does things is nothing like what I expected.

"Are you saying I'm stupid?"

No, just different. If I thought you were acting stupid I wouldn't beat around the bush, I'd just tell you that you're being stupid.

“Alrighty then, I think I’m starting to get the hang of this. Now that I understand what is going on, is there any way to fix the collision issue?”

I have a couple of ideas for different ways that the motes can try to construct the patterns. With collisions being such a big issue, a lot of the original code is starting to make sense. I still don’t understand the reason for the randomness in what it makes when, but I think I can improve the algorithm as it stands. One moment… Ok, let’s try that.

“Closing my eyes and plugging my ears!”

Here goes!

This time when I tried to make the ball bearing it actually worked. It wasn’t quite as fast as the absorption process, but it was much better than the default creation method.

Congratulations! One-quarter of the Legendary Creation ability Unlocked! To unlock the rest, the creation methods for liquids, gasses, and living things also need to be improved.

Well, that is interesting. I see why liquids and gasses might be a bit of a different challenge. Now which one should I work on next?

Before Tracey could respond, I got a message from Zona containing her conversation with our guest and the map he drew for us.

I took one look at the map and immediately knew who had built this world.

God help us. We're in some deep doggy doo-doo.

Dungeon Map: