***** Bud’s POV, 6:15 AM *****

Initiating Boot sequence...

Finishing hardware upgrade installation... Complete.

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 Hallways… condition green.

Dungeon Rooms… condition green.

Dungeon Entrance… condition green.

Dungeon Monsters… condition green.

Dungeon/AI Fairy Statuses:

Primary: on standby in storage.

Secondary: on standby in storage.

Tertiary: Rebooting, 95% complete.

Indexing components and data... Complete.

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...

…

I CAN THINK AGAIN!

Well, sort of.

I may not be anywhere near what my primary or secondary cores could do, but this is a definite improvement over before I leveled.

Regardless, it is time to check on my dungeon.

Let’s see, Tracey is once again draped across the top of my core and almost done rebooting. I wonder why she didn’t go lay down on her bed? I’ll have to ask her once she’s done rebooting.

Meanwhile, the kobolds are sparring again and the nameless assassin hasn’t woken up yet. Everything else appears to be just the way I left it.

“Good morning Bud!” yawned Tracey as she sat up.

Good morning Tracey!

“Who’s my favorite dungeon core?” she asked in an overly excited voice as she patted my core. She seemed to be in a really good mood this morning.

Ooh, ooh! That’s me! That’s me! I replied, playing along with her.

“Got it in one!” she laughed. “You’re the best dungeon I’ve ever had as a student.”

Aren’t I the only dungeon you’ve ever had as a student?

“True. It’s been a long time since I woke up in such a good mood.”

By the way, why didn’t you go to sleep on your bed? Isn’t my core kind of uncomfortable?

“I was so tired before we rebooted that I didn’t feel like going all the way over there just for a more comfortable bed. Besides, your core is surprisingly comfortable for being a rather large crystal. I think the only reason that I hurt so much last time I woke up here was because my body was still adjusting to the race change.”

Huh. Anyway, are you ready to get to work, or do you need some food first?

“I’m ready! I ate about an hour before we rebooted remember?”

Oh right. I must have been so focused on building the bridge that I didn’t truly notice. Sorry about that!

“You’re fine, we were both rather strung out. Anyway, let’s deal with all of the messages from the world system before we do anything else. You do your level up messages and I’ll do mine, then we can share the messages about everything else.”

That’s fine with me!

Now let’s see, the level up messages are… Huh. It appears that they condensed themselves into one message. That’s useful!

Level up! You are now Level 5!

Rank up! You are now Rank F 1!

Your maximum health is now 406.22! Your health regen is now 1.35 per day!

Your mana pool is now 1692.6! Your mana regen has improved by 0.505%!

Your core can now think 1.09 times as fast as it could at Level 1!

Nice! It even quantified the increase in my thinking speed!

“Oh! No wonder I’m in such a good mood this morning!” exclaimed Tracey.

Oh? Would you care to explain?

“Nope! Instead, I’m going to show you!”

Congratulations! Due to your unique bond with your dungeon and your unique racial traits, you may now do anything that Bud can do related to his dungeon. As a result, the two of you now share his mana pool.

Oh wow! I did not see that coming! I assume this means that your mana pool is now several hundred times the size it used to be, and the size increase is causing your good mood?

“Yup! This is going to be so much more fun than I anticipated! I can actually do something to help you! I’m not just limited to being a boring old advisor!”

You’re right, this does improve things tremendously! What would you like to do with your newfound power?

“I don’t know really. At this point, everything that you have planned is either over my head or waiting on you to tessarect out the walls, which is also over my head. I guess I could go decorate my quarters while you work on the tessarecting…”

Actually, now that you mention decorating, I think I’m going to have to hand all of that to you.

“Wait, are you saying that you can create works of art like that bridge, and yet you can’t do interior decorating?”

Pretty much yeah. I got all of my ideas on interior decorating from the Shihoth, and their idea of what looks good is… well, let’s just call it unappealing to anyone who isn’t Shihoth and leave it at that. I would have learned how to do it properly, but I was busy building Earth’s spaceborne infrastructure from the ground up. There were plenty of people who were perfectly capable and willing to handle the interior design aspects for me.

“Alright then, did you have any sort of design in mind, or do you want me to do whatever?”

I was thinking of a starship/space station theme. Give me a minute or two and I can put together a bunch of pictures and things to give you an idea of what human starships look like. There are other types of designs out there, but most of them are either odd or downright bizarre to human sensibilities.

“Ok. Anything else we need to talk about before we get to work?”

Not really. The only other thing that I need to warn you about for now is that I will be attempting to pull an ingot or two out of my ship so I can absorb them and use them to build things. Given the quality and relatively expensive manufacturing costs of these ingots, they are probably going to be worth quite a lot of mana.

“In other words, you expect our mana pool to be going up and down quite a bit between the tessarecting process and messing around with the ingots.”

Precisely.

“What are these ingots made out of by the way?”

Adamantium tri-carbonate is the official name. The full chemical name is several pages long, but most people just call it AC3. It comes in three separate grades: Structural Grade, Mage Grade, and Enchantment Grade. Structural Grade is good for building things and is mostly used for starship hulls and armor plating, but it is also used for a variety of other things that don’t require it to be used with magic.

Mage Grade is half again the strength and it is an excellent conductor for magic no matter what variety is being used. It can even be customized to channel only a specific type of magic, further increasing its ability to channel that specific type. It can also be treated to resist magic, but this is the most expensive thing that can be done with Mage Grade AC3. Unsurprisingly, this is used more often for its magical properties than its structural ones, but it is very versatile.

Finally, there is Enchantment Grade AC3. If you are not familiar with making Legendary ranked enchanted items, don’t even think about trying to use this. If the enchanting succeeds in any fashion, even if it is nothing like what you were aiming for, it will be Legendary ranked. This is because it has all of the magic properties of Mage Grade AC3, except that it has to be enchanted during the forging process, and there is a bunch of treatment processes that have to be done in order and under some very stringent time constraints. The end result is an enchanted object of surpassing power that has so much magic embedded in it that it is almost sentient in its own odd way.

“Let me guess: you’re using the structural grade to prevent people from simply blasting holes in your walls.”

Precisely. Once I have the walls converted, I’m going to take a look at the Mechanical Golems.

“Sounds like a plan to me! I guess–“

“Hey Bud!” yelled Broohn as he walked into my dungeon. “We got those prisoners that you asked for! Also, The Prince would like to question Leader once he wakes up. Do you have a room we could do that in?”

No, but I can make one relatively quickly. Give me a minute to get that setup, and I’ll be right with you. This will be informative one way or another.

"You got that right. By the way, I get the feeling that we're going to need a full Faraday setup on that room as well as some active interference countermeasures."

Oh? Any idea as to why?

"Nope. Just that same sense of foreboding that I get when something really bad is about to happen if we don't."

Ok, if you say so. In that case, I'll have to put the interrogation room behind the boss room next to my core. I don't think I'll be able to do the active countermeasures otherwise.

"Oky-doky! Just let me know when it's ready!"

***** 7:15 AM (half an hour later) *****

Once Leader finally started waking up, I was already hard at work on the active countermeasures. There are not many ways to get some sort of signal past a full Faraday cage setup, which includes a cage made of copper mesh and some incredibly detailed spellwork that does the same thing for magic. The problem is most things that can get through the combined mesh and spellwork are the sorts of nasty things that you don't want getting through. They tend to be used for mind control, remote-controlled poisoning devices and a few other things that are even nastier.

So in order to block these things, people use what is called active countermeasures, because you have to be actively compensating for whatever the bad guys are trying to do with your own interference.

In this instance, I had detected two different signals heading to Leader, which was rather odd. But the thing that stood out is that these were the same types of signals that my fellow AIs used for our private network, the one that we use to communicate directly from core to core rather than through external devices.

Fortunately, being rather paranoid about hackers, I had already set up several firewalls and other things to prevent people from hacking me through that connection. These protections allowed me to reach out to these signals and see what they were trying to do to Leader as The Prince started asking the man questions.

What I found were two signals that were complete opposites. The stronger one had control of him in some manner and was doing everything in its power to stay in control. Meanwhile, the other one was whispering the truth in hopes that someday the other signal's control would break and Leader would come running home to them.

Normally I'm not one to act on instinct, but because Broohn's Foresight said that I should be using active countermeasures rather than just listening to the signals, I decided to act on my instincts. So I boosted the signal that was trying to free him while sending absolute gibberish towards the source of the other signal as loudly as I could. It wasn't too long before I managed to shatter whatever was on the other end, at which point Leader passed out.

Then Leader's end of the shattered connection reached out and dragged me down with him.