Hmm.

Bronze-ranked mana wasn't what I was expecting.

My creatures—just the two kobolds, really, the horned serpent was merrily waiting for her venom to kill her enthralled victim—rose up to celebrate, crying out in their strange, warbling tongue. Mana flowed through them, rising strong and fast from their kill. Strange mana.

I didn't have many memories of my first humanoid kill, all thoughts consumed with Seros drowning in the river I had brought down on both our heads, and even now I could only remember the scraps of her soul and the memories that had come with it. Then the next group, where I had taken more time to split them open and truly examine what they knew; where I had learned the name of both Calarata, the lawless city, and the Dread Pirate who captained it. My mortal enemy.

The man who had killed me.

I took great pains to relax my mana before continuing.

But from what I could remember, while they had clearly had the most mana of any creature I'd yet killed, filling me to bursting with each of their deaths, this Bronze mana was different. Stronger, in a sort of way, but not necessarily more; just condensed. Like brine in saltwater, it gathered thick and heavy at the bottom of my core, weighed down by its own power.

I dragged out a tendril of it, waving it idly through the haze of my second floor; the kobold I swiped it through paused, forked tongue flickering out. His channels inhaled a spark of the mana like the finest of wines.

I withdrew. Something to save for when I needed real work done, then—maybe I could use it to make stronger creatures, although that might have been a fool's hope with the creature I now wanted to replace.

My cave bear had been young, idiotic, and with a head controlled more by a stomach than his brain, but he had still been mine. I couldn't feel him, our liminal connection snapped the moment he left my walls; but I liked to hope he was still alive. I had to imagine he would be.

But at the same time, it was worrying.

I still only had the capacity to hold twenty-five points of mana; I had easily received thirty alone from the two adventurers, and my core flashed in warning golden runes at me; I grimaced but released the excess five points rather than try to wrangle them under my control, letting them drift around the winners of the little duel. If I had wanted to try and create something with it, rather than wasting it, I didn't know what it would do to my core to try and harness more than I could successfully hold.

Only the unranked mana, of course. I wasn't enough of a fool to part with my new toy.

The two kobolds froze, almost shivering as power they hadn't experienced since the old days flooded through them; the female, still holding a shaken rat she hadn't yet released towards Luthia, let it drop as she absorbed the mana. The poor rat, squeaking and trembling, absorbed its own spark as it sprinted full-tilt into the nearest den and curled up. My horned serpent raised her head, already ignoring the man's body as she was familiar with my normal feeding habits; I thanked her with an errant curl of the mana and told her she could keep it. There wasn't anything I could do with the mana I would get from dissolving him, and I already knew I couldn't claim a humanoid's schema. Monsters were fine, somehow, even those with sapience like the kobolds; but the gods protected certain races. I had no idea what the distinction was, which races were safe or not; it wasn't like anyone was going to tell me.

Too many rules to being a dungeon, I was quickly finding. Limitations of mana, on schemas, and now apparently even for my creatures leaving my walls. Just a quick step and I could lose their mana-connection forever–

I paused.

Lose their mana, yes; but what about their soul? That still came from me.

Seros raised his head as I gently nudged our connection, uncurling from around my pillar. His tail splashed through the edge of the canal.

Movement flickered from the corner of the room; the first kobold, blood stained over her claws, abruptly disappeared further into the floor at Seros' movement. Scared of being eaten, maybe?

Or something. I didn't have time to go into her thoughts now.

To the first floor, I urged, pushing thoughts of the cave bear and the rough sensation of our connection snapping. The seabound monitor narrowed his eyes, pushed up to his clawed feet, and slipped into the river.

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Silverheads fled from his shadow as he swam upstream, his burgeoning hydrokinesis shifting the currents to aid his passage instead of tugging him back. My one electric eel, tucked carefully between the growing roots of a vampiric mangrove, called back its electric silverheads to hide as he swam overhead; already the evolutions were breeding, a cluster of eggs growing under the shade of an algae field. I couldn't wait to see how many silvertooths I could get.

The armourback sturgeon still lived an immensely carefree life, the bastard.

Seros popped out of the canal in the first room, winding his way up the tunnel; the rasp of frills and scales on stone sent all my various prey-adjacent critters scuttling back to their hiding-holes, far too scared to make it to the second floor, let alone face the seabound monitor. A few stayed out, a serpent with channels full of earthen mana and a spider too dumb to know the threat.

One of the stone-backed toads I'd been really quite content to ignore up until now leveled a glare as best he could at Seros, bristling up the mana-stones over his back; he was larger, much more so than his brethren, nearly large enough a luminous serpent would struggle to eat. Mana pooled deep in his stomach.

Seros, still effortlessly dwarfing him, didn't so much as glance over.

A king cared little for the opinion of toads.

He padded up to the cove entrance of the first floor, flicking his tongue cautiously at the darkness beyond. Neither of us knew what would happen.

Not too far, I said, and knew he could hear the pleading undertone. I didn't want to lose him, not Seros—but at the same time we needed to know. If there was a way I could venture forth into the world beyond without fear of losing everything I had worked so hard to maintain.

Seros narrowed his eyes, lashed his tail, and stepped outside my dungeon.

A pause.

He popped his head back inside and warbled at me.

Our connection was strained, to be fair, and I could no longer send healing mana nor see all around him; but our souls stayed together. I could even close off other points of awareness, focus only on the quiet song that sung between us and the Otherworld, and see through his eyes.

It was terrible. I'd forgotten how flimsy and weak mortal eyes were; I far preferred the effortless omnipresence being a dungeon core granted me.

But we stayed connected.

I sent him soothing thoughts of relief and gratitude, taking the moment to peer outside my walls through him; nothing but cold stone, the river rumbling overhead in an ever-present thunder. No visible creatures beyond the buzz of insects looking to feast on my fungal garden.

A normal mountain. No threats for the moment.

My cave bear had run out the other entrance, heading deeper into the caverns in a desperate run for his life; but maybe I could still find him. I had no place for a cave bear anyways, not yet at least; I would wait to create a second until I could make an honest effort to reclaim him. He deserved to come back.

For now, at least, I had well-full mana and plenty of places to use it. The second floor needed to be strengthened.

-

"I don't know what happened," Nicau said, curling his hands in his lap with a quiet little frown spreading over his face. "They just… disappeared."

He was getting very comfortable with lying. Poetic, in a sense, that it had taken Romei's death before he had started to learn from her.

The captain of the Diving Darling matched him with her own frown, one faux silver eye flashing in the light; some kind of detection spell, though Nicau wasn't near versed enough in magic to know what. "An' I guess you're the only one to have seen them last," she said dubiously. "In all of Calarata."

Nicau played dumb. It wasn't difficult. "I– I guess so. I don't know anyone else that would have."

She pursed her lips. "So two of my crew went missing in their mugs and haven't been seen for over a week, and when I start askin' around a pigeoncatcher is the one to have seen them. Any clue where?"

Courage built like a fire in his belly. "I'm not a pigeoncatcher."

"Oh?"

"Just a–" he paused, wetting his lips. What was he? Certainly not a pirate, with no love of raiding; perhaps a trader, even if his only trades had been in lives thus far. He couldn't well just say citizen. "–an adventurer. That's all."

She raised her eyebrows. "Adventurer, then."

"And I saw them near the mountain, where the dragon fell."

That finally cleared the smoke behind her eye; she sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Gods. Of course they were; huntin' for scraps like I don't pay them damn well to serve under me. Scuttlin' around like a proper scavenger pair, I'd bet; the mountain cove, right over there?" She jabbed a finger at the ocean waves lapping against the base of the peak.

"A little lower," he offered. "Right where the water meets the shore."

She growled, flicked a copper piece at his head, and stomped off.

Nicau exhaled, rubbing a thumb over the miniscule payment; gods. It was working, it really was; people kept disappearing and others were beginning to ask questions. Just a few more and he could leave behind his past, truly rise to someone of power, of importance.

Just a few more.