It had been four years since I died and I was just starting to feel that I wasn’t pretending to be a dungeon instead of a wolf. I was still at eighteen floors but I had enhanced them greatly. The surface was technically my first floor and I had pushed the sparse trees to grow into a tangled maze in which creatures and people both could get lost and my outer packs could hunt. When I reached the edges of my influence I found that I was actually at the end of a wooded ravine that opened up onto the larger forest. The wood was patrolled by three [Lesser Alpha Wolves] made with those little knives the old man gave me, each had a pack of a dozen wolves that they conjured around their own hides. In addition I had a few owls that I conjured that would attack anyone who made it to my clearing. This outer guard also took down enough small prey to keep the edge off my hunger. They also had managed to bring me all but two of my larger meals to date, including several Highland Elk, those boars who used to destroy my bushes, and a pair of humans with packs of belongings. After those last I had many different metal patterns to choose from. I found the little round disks humans carried to be the most useful.

Inside my cave I had the “boss” of the floor. He was an experiment that I was still unsure of. Star had mentioned that we could combine patterns and decided to try it out by combining the pattern of a wolf with that little knife. I thought that it would give him fangs or claws that were made of iron but instead it changed his fur. It did armor him, a regular wolf could no longer bite into his hide, but it made him slow. I named him Graymane, by which I meant He of the Rough That Is Gray Like Iron, and I made him my first “boss” as Star calls them. She says that I can have a “boss” every floor and they will be stronger than the wolves on the next floor without needing any more upkeep, but if I only have a boss every few floors that I can make them stronger. I resolved to put one every three after the first.

Oddly enough, once I made him a boss there was a void in him that I had to fill with additional patterns of objects. I used his iron hide, the medicine I got from the old man, and amethyst stone I found exploring the forest. The one time he had to face combat I found out that when he died all of those would be dropped where he fell.

That time was the only one where a creature got into my dungeon. It was a bear, dark of fur and with a core bursting with potency in his chest. I had just finished laying out the birch wood hills and ravines I was using for my seventh floor, about a year after I had become a dungeon, when this thing killed my outer pack like they were nothing. He similarly swept through Graymane. I watched as he strolled through my second and then third floor with not even any effort. This beast was Strong. He suffered his first injury on the fourth floor when all seven of the [Dark Wolf Alphas] swarmed him with their full packs. Still he moved forward, pausing only to soak in the Essence of those he slew.

I knew instinctively that he was after my Core and felt real fear for the first time since dying. Then I recovered myself, I was NOT prey. The fifth floor was swampy. I had my [Mossfang Wolves], a more successful experiment, harry him and lead him into the deeper mirk. Soon the shaggy beast was slowed by the mud and dragged down into the water and drowned along with half the wolves holding him under. I rewarded him for his valor by making him the fourth floor boss. His core and hide were enough together to anchor him. I named him Struggle, by which I meant He That Struggles In The Face Of His Inevitable End.

A year later I had my second invader to breach my depths. This one was a true monster, a goblin. The worst part was the vile little thing refused to die honorably. I had finished my fifteenth floor and was working on testing different trees for the forest of the next when I got a strange feeling. One of the rabbits I had put on the fourth floor for my wolves to hunt had died when none of the packs were nearby. At first I thought it was a fluke but then it happened again two days later. Curious, I started watching the area where the rabbits had died. Two days later I saw, or rather failed to see, something not there kill one of my rabbits. As soon as the corpse dropped it vanished and something started to take in the small amount of Essence. I called in my pack, but they found nothing, not even a scent of the dead rabbit.

I played cat and mouse with this thief for another two months, with it randomly appearing every two days on the third or fourth floor and stealing a rabbit. After screaming in frustration for the hundredth time, I lamented to Star over the invisible thief. I don’t know why but I had not mentioned our interloper to her until this time.

“Well,” she said, “it sounds like it is killing the rabbits for food. Why don’t you just stop making the rabbits drop meat? It is not like your conjured wolves even need to eat.”

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

This revelation hit me harder than it should have. I knew that my pack were not real wolves. Only the boss wolves like Graymane and Dream even had real personalities, but it hurt to realize how much I had been deluding myself. I would make this thief pay.

Two days later the monster committed bunnycide. It started out just as usual, an invisible killer broke the neck of my unsuspecting little tooth candy, but instead of a delicious rabbit corpse he got a stick. And not even a good stick, this one was only a few inches long with a sharp bend in each end so even my sister couldn’t find a use for it. So the thief killed another bunny, then another, and another. Soon there were no more rabbits on the fourth floor save one. When that one was killed I knew he had fallen into my trap.

That last rabbit was only a few yards from the stairs to the third floor. I gave it a few moments then had my wolves move in. blocking off the bottom of the stairs. They then started walking forward shoulder to shoulder, five rows deep, as they randomly snapped at the air. Their brothers from the floor above were doing the same coming down. I heard a scream from in front of the upper floor wolves and then one of the fourth floor wolves bit something. The rending that followed was a thing of beauty. Only bloody scraps were left of the interloper. I only know it was a goblin because absorbing the remains gave me a pattern for goblin teeth.

A little more than a day later I also claimed the pattern for a [Spymasters Ring of Concealment]. This item ran on pure Aether, which is why I gained non from the intruder until the end. It rendered the wearer invisible and removed all traces of their passage. If this was what a goblin had, I was concerned about what an adventuring party would have. I went back to my previously finished floor and made traps to catch anyone trying this kind of thing again. They were simple things at first but as I went deeper and got more practice they got more devious.

Last year I had finally finished my eighteenth floor. It was more of a deathtrap than Star was happy about, but I considered my seventeenth floor and Dream to be the end of my dungeon. The eighteenth floor would force a mortal to crawl on hands and knees through a literal maze of brambles. Any time they took a wrong turn there was a deadly trap. Meanwhile they were being hunted by twenty packs of [Dire Wolves of Darkest Fang] I made by first combining the goblin teeth with snake venom and then with a wolf being conjured around a beast core. I wanted adventurers to come, but I never wanted one of them to touch my core. The very thought made me feel cold and dirty.

Now that my floors were done, and I had made all of my pack that I could, I found that I had another problem, boredom. I was also just barely taking in enough Aether to survive so I was always hungry. I almost regretted eating that man with the missing hand, almost. With nothing to distract me from my hunger I lasted a week before I was begging Star to tell me how to stop it. She told me to go to sleep, and so I did.

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I woke to an alert from one of the lesser Alphas on the first floor. A two leg had come. I was instantly awake and ordered her to kill it so I could eat. I then watched as the two leg used a strange long claw, not a bow like my sister but just as powerful. He also killed the two of her lesser wolves that were in the process of ambushing him. The rest faded away before they could attack with the death of their alpha. I would have to work on that problem.

The man looked confused for a moment before he suddenly looked scared. He quickly breathed in the Essence and gathered up the knife and pair of wolf skins before leaving the dungeon. It was then that I noticed all the Aether left in his wake. He was an adventurer. I quickly drew in the Aether, it was a better meal than I had had in years. I couldn’t wait for him to come back with his party.

“Star” I yelled into my core room, “wake up.”

“What’s going on?” she asked. “Are we under attack, is it another bear?”

“Better, an adventurer found us,” I said. “He fought a few wolves on the first floor and left, but I think he just went to get his party. My sister used to go ahead and find things to fight for the red woman’s party.”

“That’s good.”

“I know,” I said, “I haven’t had any worthy prey in too long. I wonder how they’ll taste, will they be full of savor like the bear or will they be salty and rich like the old man?”

“Sky Dancer, maybe you should slow down,” Star said calmly, “I don’t think we should kill this one or his party until they bring more adventurers here. If you just eat him, who knows how long it will be until another finds us and can spread the word.”

“I guess you’re right.” I said. I was disappointed. I just really wanted to eat someone. I imagined what adventurers would taste like. Would the armored one taste metallic like hot blood, Would the magic one bare the spice of their lighting and fire in their veins. Would the red woman’s brother taste as bitter as his words. I wanted to taste them all and let the sweet and savor of their being slide into the center of me to keep me sated for the long lonely years to come. I would wait, for I was a patient hunter.