This was getting very boring, very fast. All the undead sent in a circle to scout the area showed the same view whenever It checked up on them: devastated plains, seas of corpses, and oceans of tools of war. Cycle after cycle did the corpse puppets walk in search of anything of interest, yet nothing was found. The entity found itself in a literal dead zone.

Turning Its attention to the fairy wordlessly hovering above the Core, It spoke with something akin to frustration, “I need to get out of here. If the Heroes will find my Core regardless of where I am when the time comes, it is of vital importance to make use of that time with maximum efficiency. I can’t afford to waste cycles by doing nothing. Companion, is there a way to relocate the Dungeon?”

“Processing. Under usual circumstances, the answer is Negative, but considering the unique structure of this Dungeon, digging should be possible.” The creature buzzed after a few seconds of silence, its distorted voice echoing through the empty tunnels.

The option was worth considering. On one hand, it meant abandoning the painstakingly created fortifications that It has already established over the past few cycles. On the other, not doing so could result in Its death further along the line. It wasn’t even much a decision to be made.

The ground shuddered as the undead began to untangle themselves from the walls and dig into their former resting places. Since It didn’t know which direction to focus Its efforts in, It could only slowly expand everywhere until the scouts picked up anything of value. Worth noting was the fact that as an army the undead were digging much faster than as a single construct. That particular bit of useful information was definitely going into the ‘research later’ category. It wondered what other differences could there be between a single unit of undead, and several combined together.

The surveillance perimeter on the surface kept spreading further and further apart as the underground web of tunnels slowly continued to expand. Eventually, the entity got bored of doing nothing while the puppets did all the work, and decided to make good on that test It wanted to perform.

Three units of the newly dug up corpses were dominated and brought before the Core. Strictly speaking, It could’ve done what It wanted in any part of the Dungeon, but the finesse gained from the proximity to the Core was always welcome. Also, conducting Its first true experiment at Its very heart felt appropriate somehow.

The bodies were separated into two groups, one of one and one of two. The former was ordered to just stand still and act as a way to compare the result of the test. The latter, however, were faced with the brunt of the entity’s curiosity.

The two corpses were ordered to stand back to back, their armored torsos clanking against each other, and not a second later their flesh rippled. And not only flesh. First, their breastplates fused and expanded to envelop both bodies at once. Then, their spines were shattered and reassembled into one, organs and muscles following to compensate for the new height. Unlike the first time It created the moving mountain of corpses, It was now carefully observing and analyzing the inner structure of Its puppets. Most of the organs had already complete decayed, but even the partially remaining once held no clue as to their purpose. What It saw were simply lumps of rotten flesh, but at least their relative locations were recorded and replicated in the manifesting construct.

An extra pair of legs was considered unnecessary and was disassembled, its materials aiding in the strengthening of the other pair. Otherwise, the undead would probably collapse under its own weight, It mused. The second pair of arms, however, was kept as well as the second head. The latter provided some additional field of vision, since it was located on the ‘back,’ and the former could be used to carry more weapons. Finally, whatever armor remained on the former duo melted like ice under the sun and moved to encase the creature in segmented armor. Special care was given to the protection of joints after they were labeled as weak points. Energies or not, if something physically couldn’t move, then it couldn’t move.

The resulting abomination towered over its unmodified kin, being almost twice as tall. Still rusty armor covered a significant portion of its body, leaving only bits and pieces of muscle visible to the world, as well as four emerald lights that shined from within the two helmets. A spear whose tip was remade to resemble a sword both in length and width was tightly clutched in the front pair of hands, while a sword and a shield were held by the creature’s back. Due to the sheer size of the undead, both weapons, too, had to be modified in order to fit, becoming a great sword and a tower shield respectively.

Observing Its finished creation with a fair share of satisfaction, the entity realized that It had completely forgotten the reason for this test in the first place. The newly created undead clearly wasn’t meant for digging, it was designed to protect the Core. Was the experiment considered a failure then?

It mentally shrugged and fused a couple more copies of Its newest minion just in case. Unfortunately, when It tried to make the fifth one, the now-familiar energy traitorously escaped Its grasp. No matter how many times It tried, the number of four-armed undead didn’t exceed four, coincidentally. When It asked the fairy for a solution to the problem, or at the very least a reason, It was told that the Core was too weak to support more ‘greater undead.’

It turned out that a Core could grow just like the Dungeon, but instead of digging it had to be exposed to something called Essence, a form energy, or mana as it was apparently called, that was possessed by sapient races. In other words, It had to get the Essence from adventurers or any other sapient race that decided to visit Its Dungeon.

Another bit of information was the fact Its puppets, undead, were divided into three basic tiers: lesser undead, greater undead, and True Undead. The first type was basically unmodified corpses of whatever have you and could be maintained in any numbers as long as one had the mana necessary. The greater undead were the ones that possessed any semblance of higher mental function, such as, for example, coordinating two bodies fused into one. These ones required finesse much more than they did raw mana, which explained the current limit.

Surprisingly, the moving mountain of undead was considered lesser, because each ‘unit’ was made to perform its own function without interacting with any other. A literal mass of roiling undead flesh was deemed to need any advanced mental capacities to function as it did. It was somewhat confusing and definitely worth looking into, but for now the entity decided to allow the mystery slide. Perhaps this knowledge could be used later to avoid the limit on ‘greater undead.’

Finally, True Undead were the most interesting. They were essentially a sapient race all on their own, as they, by definition, had to retain all of their mental functions in order to be considered ‘True.’ Curiously, since they could maintain themselves, there was no strict limit on them either, one just needed to ensure their loyalty one way or another. Unlike lesser and greater undead, obeying the creator’s every command wasn’t ingrained in their very being, which complicated things. Just another puzzle to solve later on.

Ordering all four of Its new creations to stand guard near the Core, just in case, the entity waited. And waited. And waited, until It got bored again.

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The four singular units were called up and then subjected to an attempt to replicate Its first achievement on a smaller scale. Instead of melding the undead in any particular fashion, It just made them stand close to each other and then welded their bodies together into a mass of decay and rust. The resulting ooze wobbled on the spot, seemingly mindless of its surroundings. Though, considering that it was successfully created in the first place, it was likely a lesser undead, which gave a reasonable explanation for its lack of awareness.

Since there were no threats in sight, creating more puppets of such nature was meaningless, and the entity ordered the ooze to wrap around the Core for lack of better things to do. To Its frustration, a small portion of the Core remained exposed to the world, solidifying the fact that the World’s Will was very diligent when it came to enforcing Rule Four.

The Dungeon briefly pondered on what else It could keep Its time occupied with when the feedback coming from the scouts that’s been showing the same picture for a while finally seized Its attention.

One of the undead units was currently approaching a massive rock formation, a mountain, that towered above the ravaged fields like a lonely giant amongst grass. Its gloomy peak ripped the thunderous clouds apart and vanished into the dark skies, ominous crackling of lightning bolts echoing across the plains.

What really attracted the entity’s attention, however, was a barely noticeable cave at the base of the stony titan. Without hesitation, all nearby scouting units were redirected to the newfound site. It took about a cycle to gather a big enough group to be capable of reporting back in the case of emergency, and the twenty-odd undead were sent to investigate. Them being lesser undead, stealth was out of the question, and the moment they crossed the entrance, panicked shouts resounded from within the depths of the cave.

The entity had no idea what all the screaming meant, but, fortunately for It, the Dungeon Fairy came to the rescue, “Translating. Translation Complete. Language Identified: Low Common. Installing Language Module. Installation Complete.”

The moment Companion said ‘complete,’ a burst of information tore into Its mind and unfolded into glorious knowledge. Immediately, all the yelling started to make sense.

“Get the Lord Mage, you maggots, we can’t take on this many without casualties!” A gruff voice rose over the fearful cries, instantly squelching the panic, “You, rookie! Get Albert and Todd in here, we could use our heavy-hitters! The hell are you waiting for, go-go-go!”

Before the scouts could provide a better picture of what was happening beyond the darkness of the cavern, a stick with a sharpened piece of metal attached to it flew out and blew one of the undead’s head right off its shoulders. The rest of the body collapsed shortly after the severed appendage hit the ground.

The entity stilled for a moment to take in the unwarranted hostility, before expressing Its displeasure in the form of ordering Its undead to charge in. Perhaps whatever Its opponents were, they were trying to protect a Core of their own? If that was the case, then perhaps It could sympathize with their action, but not without confirming or denying Its assumption first.

The darkness, which was revealed to be some sort of black smoke, not a simple absence of light, vanished from Its sight after the scouts crossed some invisible border.

Right in front of them, illuminated by several torches lining the walls, were two lines of humanoid organisms, one right behind the other. They were all extremely similar to the undead under Its command, except a lot less decomposed, and with better equipment. The metal on them didn’t even have rust, imagine that!

The front line was mostly composed of trembling bodies clad poorly stitched leather armor that looked ready to fall apart that tightly held onto their swords with knuckles white from pressure. The back line was made up of three individuals, each carrying an arc of wood with a familiar stick-metal combination attached to a string of some sorts.

The three in the very middle of the formation, however, immediately attracted the entities attention due to being visibly distinct from the rest. Right in front of the first line was a scarred organism almost as twice as large as every other occupant of the cave, individually of course. The leather armor had plates of metal woven into it for extra protection without restricting the wearer’s mobility, and the spiked mace looked ready to crush skulls. What really grabbed attention, was a massive crooked scar that ran horizontally across the man’s face.

Flunking the supposed leader from both sides were two slightly smaller humanoids, but still tall and intimidating enough to whip the rest into obedience with their mere presence. Both of them carried a wooden shield laced with stripes of metal, and a great sword that was easily held aloft with one hand.

“Stand your ground, men! We’ve survived these plains before, and we’ll live through them now! Lord Mage is coming any minute now, we just need to hold them off,” The small fleshy mountain crouched and gripped the mace with both hands, “All survivors get a drink on me, so you better not die to these filthy zombies!”

Interesting, so these undead were called zombies? The entity recorded the information and, as the newly-named zombies rushed the lines of defenders, mentally addressed the fairy.

“I’ve been getting flashes of new data recently. Your work?”

“Affirmative. With the introduction to sapient species, I am allowed to transfer information labeled [Common Knowledge]. The installation is underway.”

Dismissing the companion, It returned to watching the fight. The entity was slightly disgruntled about the Dungeon Fairy doing something without Its permission, but It decided to let it slide this time. The battle was of much greater interest anyway.

The two sides have already engaged in melee by the time It directed Its attention back to them, so It witnessed the sight of zombies throwing themselves at the humans with exactly zero self-preservation. Rusted swords and daggers were used about as often as bare hands, the sole purpose behind every attack being to shove the pointy end as deep into the living flesh as possible. The undead were ravenous, tearing into the men with reckless abandon, clawing, stabbing, and biting all the way through.

In return, they were met with practiced strikes, well-aimed arrows, and, in one particular instance, brutal decimation via a spiky sphere of steel. Despite shaking like leaves at first, the humans got their wits together, supported by the nigh-constant screaming from the scarred man, and the silent presence of the two shield-bearers.

One of the zombies was cleaved right through with a greatsword, but its remains twitched at such a time that they tripped one of the front liners. Losing his balance, the man stumbled deeper into the undead side of the clash and was soon dragged in screaming, surrounding zombies swarming him in a matter of seconds.

A few more undead were picked off by the flying arrows before the formation finally broke and three zombie managed to slip past the defenses and right into the bowmen’s faces. A yell from behind was all the warning the fighters had before their back line went quiet. Now, they were forced to watch to sides at the same time, trapped in an unintentional pincer maneuver.

Through it all, the mace was dancing across the battlefield, swatting aside heads and tearing through bones. At least five of the zombies fell prey to the gigantic man, and around seven more were injured to the point of non-functionality, mostly through complete removal of their limbs. In other words, the leader alone took out more than half of the scouting squad, though not before more than half of his own unit was brought down as well.

The last remaining zombie lunged at the scarred man’s back, but was intercepted by a swift flash of a blade, hitting the ground in two cleanly separated chunks. That didn’t quite finish it off, however, so it still managed to see a shape stepping out of the deeper recesses of the cave and onto the illuminated ground, before its feedback was ended in a burst of fire.

“That,” The entity pondered on how to accurately describe the situation, “Was pointless. Twenty zombies wasted, little to no information gained. Those… humans. They owe me.”

After a short mental command, a unit of hundred zombies was gathered on the surface and sent in the mountain’s direction. Meanwhile, the remaining puppets all gathered facing the same direction underground, and started to dig. Despite the initial waste of resource, the situation could still be turned into a beneficial one.

If the surface zombies arrived in time to catch the humans, It would gain resources, data, and a base potentially close to adventurers and other sapient races. If the humans left, but the corpses remained behind, It could study them and acquire some valuable insight, as well as get a new base. If the cave was empty, however, the entity could still establish itself close to civilization. It was perfect.

“Now,” It echoed to the unresponsive fairy, “We try again. This time, with better results.”