The morning after my assessment the big warrior Magnus comes back down into my dungeon with a couple of weaker humans. Five demi-humans trail behind him, connected at the neck by chain collars. One of them starts sobbing. They pull back from the warrior, yanking on their chains and hanging on to the frame of the door. Magnus doesn't break stride, he's too strong for them to slow down, even with all five together. He drags them into the first room, reels the first in by the chain in his hand and throws them into the center of the room.

What's happening?!

It's a man with fluffy dog ears and a tail. He crashes through my thin tile and into the pit. The chain drags the second person to the edge but they brace themselves and stop from falling in. The dog man hangs by his neck, choking a few inches above the spikes. My rats swarm at the signal of the trapdoor breaking, two of them snapping at the dangling man, the others bursting into the room.

Holly what's happening?! I don't like this!

Magnus kicks the second person in the face, knocking her oh gods her, she's just a kid, oh gods please no into the pit and dropping the first man. The weight of both people pulls the other three forward. I redirect my rats to attack the huge bastard. He laughs and swats the first cybrat away gently, picks up the last person on the line and tosses him in with the others. All the rats. I grab all the rats and swarm up the tunnels out of the pit. I can feel them dying on the spikes, can't do anything about that. Kill him you worthless vermin. Bite. Stab. Rip and tear.

The adventurer snarls and crushes one of my rats underfoot, two more jab their tails into his back from behind. They barely penetrate, the ugly, stupid brute is too tough. I'm not strong enough. I can't do it. I have the two rats who already used their tail spears brace themselves and have a third jump on top of their backs. My two remaining rats lunge for his ankles, wrap themselves around his boots, stab their tails into his belly. He bellows and stomps to shake them off. My rat pyramid behind him rears up, tossing their top member upward. It lands on his shoulders and immediately strikes with its' tail, carving a jagged channel across his neck.

He snatches the rat off his face and swipes it backwards, smashing both of the rats behind him into the ground. Picks up the rats on his feet. Crushes them in his hands. He's bleeding and panting as he looks wild-eyed around my first room. "Stupid dungeon. Eat them not me." He mutters as he stomps his way to my exit, leaving five dead bodies in my pitfall.

"Pit... You have to calm down." Holly says to me back in the core chamber. "Humans are awful, evil creatures. It's in their nature to hurt other humans to get what they want. These humans know enough about dungeons to seriously hurt themselves and others..."

Why did they do that?

"They were feeding you. Humans might not know how dungeons work exactly, but they know you get stronger the more people that die inside you. Those adventurers want you to get stronger so you can make them good stuff and help their guild get stronger. The real Adventurer's Guild equips and teaches adventurers and let's them fight you fairly, knowing some will die. It's a relationship of mutual respect and competition." Holly pinches the bridge of her nose. "This is a Dark Guild, they are trying to accelerate your growth without losing their own members, it's going to be bad if the local government finds out about us while they are here."

I want... I want them to die... I don't like these people anymore...

"That's good, Pit. Eventually someone is going to find out about the Dark Guild and by extension us. We have to get rid of them before that."

Should I not give them the stuff they wanted?

"No! Absolutely not. Right now we're valuable to them because of the drugs and weapons they want, if we don't make it they'll take your core and move on." Holly takes a deep breath and brings up her mana window. "No, you have to make the stuff for now. You have to get stronger, while not appearing to get stronger, but you can't stay completely the same or they'll know you are faking. You need to get so strong you can kill those humans without them catching on. So let's get to work."

After Holly and I hammer out the basics of the plan I get to work restocking my dungeon, incorporating the new items, and tweaking my setup. I got a lot of mana from the slaves who died, but I also got a lot from the Adventurers who came inside. Holly explains that mana naturally flows from high to low density, but can be restrained by a mana barrier. Living things have a mana barrier on their skin that prevents their mana from leaking out and absorbs mana passively from their environment. Reaver and his friends have a much higher mana density than the open areas of my dungeon so they constantly leak a small amount just hanging around in here. When an adventurer kills one of my monsters it causes a release of mana that spikes the local mana density and can push some mana through their barriers. Unlike dungeons, humans can't absorb too much mana at once without it affecting their bodies, so they have to kill lots and lots of monsters to keep increasing their internal mana. Eventually weak monsters won't raise the mana density enough to give them any.

Once you increase your maximum mana capacity then you will always absorb mana from the environment back up to that point even if some of it leaks out. I got a lot more mana from Magnus and Jelai than the other two because of injuries and spells respectively, even the objects they left behind had a small amount of mana. My area of influence has increase a lot over the past few days and I have enough mana to support another boss monster, so I push my boss dome further down in and add two new rooms. Now the layout has two chambers with two trap corridors before a new boss chamber on the outer rim of my dungeon. My Cybrat king is getting a little outclassed so he gets to go in that room. After that will be two more chambers with trap corridors and a passage down to my dome where my new boss will be.

The Cybrats aren't cutting it against my enemies now so I retire all of those from my design and replace them with Cybratlings. The first two rooms have a squad of five Cybratlings each armed with three Abductors and two Suppressors. The book Reaver gave me was a basic primer on mana usage. It wasn't high enough level to give me the Arcane Knowledge skill to make spellcasters, but now I can have the rats use mana on their weapons to activate their properties. All the rats share my lightning affinity and I make an alteration to the weapons to add copper wires going from the iron grip plates to the tips of the abductors. When they pump mana through the weapons a small arc of blue lightning crackles between the tips or electrocutes anything caught in the prongs. It's not strong enough to kill the cybrats I test it on but it causes pain and numbness. Holly walks me through connecting the weapons to their wielder's mana form so that they will disappear when they die.

I alter the Cybrat King's pattern to have Cybratling hands instead of his claws then give him an abductor. I try combining various other items with his design and eventually hit on an odd combination. The mushrooms Reaver gave me can be combined with the rat swarm, from the pattern I can tell that the small rats will be saturated with a chemical from the plant and it will be absorbed through the skin if they touch or bleed on it. The rat swarm seems a bit less focused with the mushroom in their systems but it might help them be more effective.

In the second half of my new dungeon areas I put squads of Cybratlings and back them up with Amphistas. I put small tunnels leading into my second section where a squad of Cybrats will burn large bundles of dreamvine and hallucinogenic mushrooms. The smoke is heavy and tends to settle in the bottom of the room, but judging by how loopy my Cybrats get it should help soften up intruders. I make large resevoirs of the denner resin inside the walls and ceiling with attendant Amphistas. The goopy sap based material is horribly sticky and the Amphistas can generally shoot four blasts of it before getting too gummed up and loopy. After that they drop from the ceiling and try biting. A side effect of consuming so much resin is that they can't seem to feel pain and move a lot faster than before. Noting that I give each cybratling a small packet of denner resin to swallow once the adventurer's get closer. The whacked out cybrats consistently outperform their levelheaded compatriots for close to an hour before crashing and falling unconscious.

Finally I get to my boss room at the bottom of the spiral shape of my dungeon. I make a spiral staircase going up from the center island that leads up to the entrance hallway through a one way door which also has a passageway from my first bosschamber. Each of my "floors" will consist of a string of rooms and a boss chamber that leads further down and has a passage to the central shaft that adventurers can use to exit. The whole thing is shaped like a drill with the dome room at the bottom. As my influence area gets larger I will make each loop of the drill further horizontally as well as adding more turns downward.

I look over my patterns, trying to decide on what to evolve for my new boss, when I notice that I have enough mana capacity to make the probe. That would surprise those adventurer's for sure! It's way stronger than my other monsters are, it might be even stronger if I evolve it into my boss. I quickly summon the pattern and make one. The sinuous creature falls flat on the floor, unmoving, apparently dead.

What? What did I do wrong?

"Maybe it needs to be enchanted?" Holly suggests, she pokes her head out of her home but refuses to be in the room with the probe.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

High above the planet a red light on a control console blinks to green and a small sounds plays. The AI core turns it's attention to the message service in utmost shock.

[Probe 100 Incidence Report]

What? What did I do wrong?

Maybe it needs to be enchanted?

I'll try making another one, this one must be broken

[Probe 100 Incidence Report]

Damn. That one doesn't work either.

But I think it's doing something...

[Probe 100 Incidence Report]

Damn. That one doesn't work either.

But I think it's doing something...

[Probe 100 Incidence Report]

Pit! You can't just keep making more of them, that isn't helping!

But I can tell they are doing something! They just don't listen to me.

This is as much as I can make, hope this does something...

[Probe 100 Incidence Report]

Pit! You can't just keep making more of them, that isn't helping!

But I can tell they are doing something! They just don't listen to me.

This is as much as I can make, hope this does something...

[Probe 100 Incidence Report]

Pit! You can't just keep making more of them, that isn't helping!

But I can tell they are doing something! They just don't listen to me.

This is as much as I can make, hope this does something...

[Security breach detected: Probe 100 initiate Self-Destruct]

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Back in the dungeon three prone machines suddenly shudder as internal components catch fire and explode inside their casings, leaving burned out husks. I absently absorb their ruined remains and glance at Holly. You saw that too right?

"Indeed." She pulls up her mana window, displaying the strange message. "It appears someone else commands those probes."

I'm gonna say hi.

"Pit no that might not be-"

I make another probe in the middle of the floor and it lays immobile again. Um. Hello there, please don't self-destruct this time. Can we just talk instead?

[Central Command Missive]

Attention intruder, this is a classified observation platform, any attempts to breach this system are punishable by galactic law. By reproducing platform resources you are in violation of intellectual property rights, illegal reproduction will now self destruct.

Um. Probe 100 don't do that! I mentally direct the machine. It fails to explode as ordered. Tell me who you are! And stop telling my probe to self-destruct!

[Central Command Missive]

YOUR PROBE. How dare you, Probe 100 you are required by law to obey my commands. You are malfunctioning, command override, self-destruct. The Intruder will cease communication, you are an unauthorized user.

Probe 100 don't listen to anything he says, and um... I am an authorized user!

[Central Command Missive]

Command override detected.

Knowledge of non-wuxian language detected.

Knowledge of non-wuxian systems detected.

Processing...

Requesting security confirmation...

Request timed out.

Interim Admin status is granted to the highest ranked connected sentient. Current users with security credentials... 1

Congratulations Interim Administrator Intruder [you bastard]

My name's Pit, is yours Central? Can you help me? I need to make these robots work so I can kill some strong adventurers. I notice that the communications we can send through the probe include memories in a weird way. Sights and sounds and large amounts of knowledge in compacted electrical books like the stuff I got out of probe 100, so I compact all the stuff I know about the Sand Vipers into one of those and send it.

[Central Command Missive]

Adventurer, confirmed for wuxian warrior high caste. Interesting data Administrator Pit. Perhaps we can come to an arrangment. Please stand by for firmware flashing on Probe 100 and software updates.

The communcation ceases for a time as something inside the probe shifts and changes, small bits of lightning element rearranging themselves. Eventually the probe stirs, floats gently off the floor and smooths its' limbs back to order. It turns towards the crystal and I feel some mechanism inside the body twist and scan across me.

"[Greetings Administrator Pit, this unit is ready for compulsory service.]" The creature speaks with a mechanical buzzing noise, though it's words are perfectly formed. "[Language package: Wuxian Common, has successfully installed. How may I be of assistance?]"

"Oh wow, Pit. This is going in the lore books for sure..." Holly whispers

Alright, Central. We've got a lot of work to do and not a lot of time to do it. Start with the parts of you that are good at killing stuff.