Perhaps it was partially because I was a dick, but I felt the strongest urge to change absolutely everything the second Nicau left my walls. The ickle brat had gotten a touch too comfortable sitting in the kobolds' den and eating their food; that wasn't how my dungeon worked. You had to be strong to earn comfort.

Which was another reason I was sending him out on that mission. Hopefully he'd get a backbone and start contributing beyond just a fleshy schema-collector.

I wasn't completely certain on how my Names worked, but I knew they provided a massive boost to the creature if not a complete overhaul; and given how Nicau hadn't doubled in size like Seros had after being Named, I had hopes that his changes were more internal. Some powers a little more than Communer and all that.

There was still a little bit of fear, though. I knew that Naming creatures bound their soul to mine, and although I certainly wasn't going to test it, I had hopes that even in death, I would keep their souls. Something about binding their soul to my core.

But even though I had my suspicions about that, I rather doubted that it would come into play if said Named creature was outside of my dungeon when they died. Not exactly a lot of room for me to grab onto their soul before they fled to whatever afterlife they deserved.

So as much as I was planning on grinding Nicau into the stone until he emerged a new jewel, I did rather hope he didn't die.

But I would prepare for his return, and I'd do it with a plan I'd been holding off on for a while now.

With both the Drowned Forest and the Underlake completed with boons of their own, the shame of having them and not my first floor was starting to set in. Time to switch that around. The Fungal Gardens needed their own strength, and if we were about to increase our number of invaders, I'd want to be ready.

Of course, I'd mainly be focusing on the geography of the first floor. Whatever Nicau brought back from his adventures could be added here, and I didn't want to lock myself into a full godly patron before I'd even seen what new creatures I could claim.

With any luck he'd return shortly and I could finish this thing once and for all.

So I shot back up to the first floor, passing through the Underlake and the Drowned Forest—including the strangely empty first room, hadn't there been a mangrove in here originally?—to poke my head back into my starting area.

A little nostalgic, in a way. I'd carved out the place already but my impeccable memory could still point out the small hollow that Seros had carried me to, his original den in this lonely mountain back before we'd met. The little entrance where I'd laid down my first whitecap mushrooms and green algae. Back when I'd been so wonderfully excited about claiming my first cave spiders.

And now look at it. I preened at the new power I'd claimed, because I rightly deserved it, but now was the time to develop even more.

Currently, it was a cavern maybe three hundred feet long, a third wide, with numerous side tunnels and various dens. The twin bears snoozed away, stomachs full and rivalry still burning; handfuls of rats scurried around, collecting gems but not yet brave enough to venture to the lower floors; stone-backed toads died in droves by hungry luminous constrictors. A little haven.

Alright.

I zipped back to another point of awareness down on the third floor, where Seros currently darted through the Underlake, testing his hydrokinesis. Come up, I requested, overlaying the vague sense of going outside; the seabound monitor perked up, abandoning his languished sprawl in favour of twisting the currents around him, flying with all speed back up floors. Glorious little bastard. He'd come equally as far as me.

Well. Not equally. I was still heads and shoulders above dead.

Seros yawned as he arrived back to the Fungal Gardens, peering around curiously as my mana diffused stronger where my focus was; all the other creatures got one glance at his enormous form and promptly fled back to their dens. Cowards. They'd have to shake off that fear if they were ever going to make it to the lower levels.

Step outside, I said. Make sure I don't break through.

Seros blinked. Which, fair. I hadn't asked him to leave my dungeon halls hardly ever, and with Nicau gone, that would mean I was out all of my direct avenues of communication. Not far, I amended. Just watch the walls.

I was, to be rather frank, far too proud of how far I'd advanced my communication. The failure with Nicau had bit harder than I'd thought.

Seros nodded, a touch of hesitance brushing over our connection, and padded towards the cove entrance. One last glance back, his lantern-esque eyes gleaming, and he disappeared into the gloom beyond.

Immediately, I felt our connection waver, drawn taut by distance; his thoughts disappeared, the vague awareness I always had of his emotions fading away. Through the algae-light I had on the first floor, I could vaguely see the shadowed world beyond, but Seros immediately turned left and I lost him. A rather uncomfortable feeling, I'm sure you can imagine. I wasn't a fan.

Fan or not, I had work.

Carefully nudging away some creatures with a few spectral loops of mana, I reached into the stone surrounding my floor and started to dig.

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It was difficult, expanding a floor that my core wasn't on. Normally, my ambient mana would rush to fill in the new, unclaimed space, granting me more control over it and letting me dig further, but my mana was much thinner up here, untested and not as quickly replenished. Still very far from weak, mind you, I imagined the mana was full enough to make any mage weep; but I was used to stronger. Annoying.

But onward I tunneled, shaping the cavern out; I was trying for a sort of wide open space, one large enough to have the edges lost in shadow and the corners obscured. That way I could hide the entrances, keeping those bloody invaders rightfully stuck once they'd made the foolish decision to enter my halls. Served them right. And after that, I’d be–

A thump answered me.

I paused my digging, shuffling a point of awareness towards the entrance; Seros poked his nose back into the light and shook his head. Fair enough. I threw up a layer of granite as some extra protection from whatever fourth entrance I was about to carve into my precious hall and started digging elsewhere.

That limitation hit harder than I’d thought, really. It felt like every time I tried to make progress in one direction, Seros would pleasantly tell me that no, I needed to stop digging over there, actually. I considered the usefulness of opening a fourth entrance just to have a more symmetrical floor as I begrudgingly shifted positions again.

But in the end, I had at least something worth enjoying.

Easily a thousand feet long, maybe eight hundred wide; less than a third the size of the Underlake, but I had much smaller creatures in here. Said creatures were, to put it in short, very confused by the massive changes rippling through their previously quiet home; all of their dens had been ripped out as I changed up their walls, their little garden patches uprooted and shuffled off to other corners, even the silverheads in the rock pond cowering as I carved a new extension for their territory to fill. I’d taken great pains to keep up my cohabitative relationship with the mountain river, tunneling around it with the utmost caution and never weakening its surrounding walls. Already I was siphoning plenty of water from it, filtering through my halls to keep refreshing the water and not overflow, and I was still fed a fair diet of silverheads and electric eels from deeper within the mountain. No, that river and I needed to stay good friends, and I hoped I did my best to maintain that.

So that led to a very uneven floor. That was fine. I wasn’t that bothered. Mostly.

I shook my points of awareness. Not the time.

My creatures started to filter around the new space, though hesitantly; even with stone-backed toads and luminous constrictors directly next to each other, they were a bit too thrown off from the new changes to capitalize on the scenario. I gave the mental equivalent of a sigh but helped guide them to their new dens, growing little trails of mushrooms and algae like a glowing beacon. A fair trade, considering I was tearing up a few patches of mushroom to shape the way for a trickle of water, but with the lunar cave bears, it wasn’t anywhere near evolution. Not a waste in any regard.

…there was one lacecap, though.

It was easily double the size of its peers, squat and sprawling, with a pinkish cast compared to its pale brethren. I prodded my way closer, inching a point of awareness around the desiccated rat corpse at its base. It had some vague sort of awareness, similar to my vampiric mangroves or the bloodline kelp and its burgeoning hatred. Almost sentient.

But not yet.

I left that one alone, perched near the middle of the room as it was, and grew a little stalagmite to hide it from immediate view at the entrances. Hopefully that would give it more of a chance to thrive.

Perhaps sensing his part was completed, Seros padded back into my halls. I absolutely did not relax as our connection returned to its previous strength, his thoughts and emotions washing over me. Not in the slightest.

But now it was time for the details.

-

She rose, horns gleaming in the dark.

Around her, dozens and dozens of fellow serpents slithered, a writhing mess of scales. Though they were lowly, still relying on mere flashes of light to hunt, they served her, and that was enough.

This new floor was becoming familiar, its twisting tunnels and living plants no more a threat than the smallest drop of power within her, but still she hungered for territory. Creatures lost in the labyrinth found themselves tugged towards her, following her psionic call without question, but that was simple. Her lowest servants could accomplish much the same, though without any of her elegance and skill.

She wanted power.

So ever they slithered on, hunting through the endless tunnels in search of greater land. Not particularly fast were they, unfortunately, and prey was scarce enough here they often needed to backtrack just to eat. But she could feel that they were reaching the end, spending enough time they had seen all there was to see of these upper levels. Soon they would reach the end.

And, as with everything she desired, she reached her goal.

The passage before them dipped low, breaking from the identical forking trail of every other one before. She raised her beautiful head, all of her serpents moving alongside; her horns flared with command and the fastest of them shot forward to investigate this new space. She would hardly risk herself in an unknown confrontation.

They waited, tongues flicking, until the constrictor returned. She pressed into his mind, flexing the new skill that the dungeon had shown her with Nicau, and examined his thoughts; he had seen a wide-open room, one with flickering heat signatures and the smell of prey.

She hissed. How dare some upstart claim what territory was rightfully hers? Fury coursed through her psionic powers and every serpent making up her great army arose in a rage, slithering forward without care nor self-preservation, pouring into this new room.

It was beautiful. Emerald green over every wall like the tunnels outside, but with enough algae- and quartz-light to actually see it. Great stone trees, reminiscent of her previous floor but without the nasty little habit of stabbing anyone who got too close, rolling hills of billowing moss. Glorious.

With one lone little inhabitant.

One of the rats, but… different. Taller, fur more sleek and rich, eyes an impossible green. The horned serpent flicked her tongue out; there was mana in the air, coming both from the Core and this wretched little thing. Some sort of pretender. Did it really think it had more power than her? That it was deserving of this territory?

She thought not.

Her serpents followed her fury and flung themselves forward, desperate to kill the thing that had dared to insult their empress. She allowed it with a hiss that promised a reward to whoever brought back the rat’s corpse—something she had learned from poking into Nicau’s insipid mind. Followers tended to want gifts for doing what they were told to do. She didn’t believe they always deserved it, as it was clear they needed to follow her and that should be reward enough, but until she had more direct power over them, she needed to buy loyalty.

But it was coming soon. She could feel it, the mana welling up inside; soon her evolution would strike.

She could only imagine how powerful she’d be then.