"That was a bit too close for comfort," Kara confessed, massaging her shoulder. She'd taken the brunt of the Nuckelavee's attacks head on, and Zack would be surprised if she wasn't sore tomorrow for her troubles. Curiously, he noted that she was cycling her stamina and mana, even though her health was already fully topped up. He wondered if maybe there were other passive benefits she could gain from continuously moving energy through her body.

"You're telling me," Thursday laughed, dropping to his knees and panting in exhaustion. A quick glance at his status was enough to see that both his stamina and mana were dangerously low. "That thing was way stronger than any fight we ever encountered before in this place."

Laura jogged to Thursday's side and checked him for wounds. Aside from some bruises, he was the least injured member of the team. He waved her off, and she purposely walked past Seth to check on Kara. Zack watched as Seth's dour expression drifted from his healer to his sword, his grip tightening on the weapon's handle.

Zack would never admit it to them, but he had purposely designed the Nuckelavee to invalidate Seth's powerset. Ever since the nerdy swordsman had started delving into the dungeon, he'd been able to kill just about everything thrown at him in one hit. His combination of abilities seemed tailor made to frustrate the designer in Zack. So Zack had returned the favour. He created a boss that, no matter what Seth did, couldn't be killed in one hit.

Clearly that realization was weighing on Seth. It was like he was reconsidering his entire life's choices. Then, miraculously, Zack saw the beginning of a bright blue thread trying to find purchase on his head. It would seem that Seth had learned something, both about himself and his abilities, in the fight with Nuckelavee. Dislike for him aside, Zack was proud that he was able to contribute positively to his powers.

"Do we want to press on deeper?" Laura asked, once she was finally done healing everyone in the party.

Thursday's hand shot up. "I vote no. My launcher was destroyed in that fight. I'm going to need a new one before I can do any serious fights."

"That's what you get for using a plastic toy," Seth teased.

"Bite me, Ross," Thursday snapped.

"For what it's worth, I agree with your vote," Seth continued, ignoring his ally's venomous words. "I want to rethink some things. I need to do some private training."

Laura raised an eyebrow curiously but didn't argue with them. She turned to Kara and gave her the same look.

"I'm all for retreating and taking a break," Kara chuckled. "My pools are mostly empty, so I would need to rest for a bit anyway. Longer than our alotted time, at least."

Laura nodded quietly, and reached into her shoulder bag to pull out the portal key one of the kobolds had given her. That was how Glitch was able to keep track of their movements and open a portal to their location. There was a timer printed on the crystal key's surface, counting down the amount of time left in their dungeon run. They only had about ten minutes before the portal automatically opened and one of the dungeon proctors—Chandra and Greg—informed them that their time was up.

"Oh, nearly forgot the loot!" Zack muttered to himself, spawning a chest in the middle of the group just as Laura lifted the key. The sudden rattle of the wooden box was enough to make all four jump in surprise, wheeling on it curiously.

Thursday was the first to reach the box, kicking open the lid just in case it was a trap. Zack rolled his wisp, but the way Thursday's face lit up was more than worth the momentary distrust.

"Loot tokens, sweet," Seth said, looking over his party member's shoulder at the chest's contents.

"Loot tokens?" Kara asked.

"It's how the dungeon handles prizes and rewards," Laura explained. "Every time you finish a run, you get a set number of them. You can exchange them at the prize counter for things like those stuffed kobolds we saw, or other, more interesting parapernalia."

"Like armour?" Kara prodded.

"And weapons!" Thursday exclaimed, holding up three tokens. Each of them was emblazoned with the shape of a bow and arrow.

Zack felt bad about wrecking Thursday's launcher, and wanted to supply him with a new one. He didn't quite have a pattern ready for it yet, but that was fine. He would need two more tokens to be able to properly afford the prize, anyway.

"Looks like tokens are specifically geared now," Thursday explained, pulling out a few more tokens. "They used to be generic, but now it looks like they lean towards one kind of weapon or armour piece in particular."

Kara strode over curiously and was handed three tokens emblazoned with a shield symbol, while Seth took three with a chest piece symbol. The final set of three tokens had a staff printed on them, and were given to Laura.

Zack was happy that the loot system was so easy to understand. Previously he just awarded a blanket number of tokens, but since revamping his dungeon he wanted to properly reward adventurers that braved his depths. The tokens now served two purposes: either they could be exchanged carte blanche for generic prizes, or they could be exchanged at a discount on their specific item.

Laura checked the chest one last time and pulled out the final item. It was a crystal portal key, almost identical to the one she already carried. Unlike her current key, though, this one had a paper tag attached to it by a thread. "Good for one free skip of the meadow zone," it read. The party seeemd more excited about this than the loot coins, because it meant that they could skip straight to the area that was properly designed for their level. Zack had considered letting them skip Nuckelavee, but watching this party struggle against it had solidified his decision in the matter.

They could handle the forest zone, but they weren't ready to face the revamped manor.

Satisfied with their loot, Laura lifted her portal key and twisted it in midair. That was the signal Glitch needed to open the portal and usher this group back to the lobby. A shimmering purple gate opened in the air before them, and one by one they stepped through. The gate hadn't even begun to shut before Zack began respawning the mobs in this zone, sensing that another group was nearly finished fighting Thumper.

While he worked, he shot his awareness into his lobby, just to watch how things proceeded with the group as they exited. Chandra was already explaining to them the finer details of the revamped loot system, and though they were disappointed to learn they needed five specialized tokens to buy gear they were nonetheless excited by the prospect.

"Ember, can you create a better potion launcher for Thursday?" Zack asked, speaking telepathically through his connection. He fed her images of his old one, and felt her tense up as he brushed against her mind.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"I can do that, yes," Ember said, keeping her voice quiet to avoid drawing attention to herself as she outfitted a group of teens with armour. "It will take me some time to create a suitable alternative, but it shouldn't be difficult."

Zack thanked her, then turned his attention elsewhere in the dungeon. He didn't bother respawning the Walk Behind, since it didn't actually fight anything. It was still going through its cycle, wandering into the clearing as soon as some unsuspecting adventurers chose to take a break. He was still reconsidering how to use it, since it was clear that it wasn't going to work the way he had hoped. That would have to wait for when they closed up for the night, though.

For the first time in a long while, Zack realized that he actually had a moment where nothing required his immediate attention. Archie was off seeing to Matt, and the dungeon was running optimally without his interferance. He could focus on doing something exclusively for his own enjoyment. Sighing in relief, Zack relaxed his grip on his wisps and allowed his awareness to pull back, until he could view the entire layout of his dungeon in its entirety.

It was weird being able to see everything from such a perspective, but at the same time it felt entirely natural to him. He didn't have organic eyes anymore, and so he wasn't bound to the limitations that came with them. Hell, he didn't even have an organic brain anymore. If he had to compare himself to anything, he suspected he was a lot closer to a computer in structure now than he was before. His crystal body was able to hold a vast amount of information, and could process it all lightning fast. That was the only reason he could think of for why viewing his entire structure didn't overwhelm him, at least.

Curiously, Zack decided to check on his status sheet, just to see if anything had changed recently.

[Status]

[Name: Zack]

[Core type: Dungeon]

[Level: 19]

[Integrity: 108%]

[Mana: 77/125]

[Upkeep requirements]

[Influence: 100 mana per hour]

[Monsters: 20 mana per hour]

[Advanced Spawners: 40 mana per hour]

[Aether intake]

[Influence: 85 aether per hour]

[Ambient: 75 aether per hour (+55 aether per hour from harvesters)]

[Recovery: 15 per hour]

[Aether recovery and upkeep requirements have reached a stable equilibrium. Growth increased.]

If Zack had eyebrows to shoot up, they would have shot into space. He was so used to seeing a warning about aether intake exceeding his upkeep requirements that he had almost neglected to view that part of his status. He checked it again, just to make certain and… No, he hadn't misread it. The numbers added up, too. His aether intake was one hundred and seventy-five points per hour, while his upkeep costs were one hundred and sixty.

His aetheric intake exceeded his upkeep costs, but only because of his natural mana recovery. Everything else was properly accounted for. He had finally reached equilibrium. Zack let out a quiet woop of delight, even though he knew that he would need to stay on top of this. There was no way this was a permanent boon, and more than likely he could expect to lose this balance sooner rather than later.

Still, for now he was excited to see what it meant by growth increased. If he had to guess, it was likely a direct improvement of his crystal core. He focused his awareness on his core room, just to check, and was immediately met with the sight of his crystal heart.

When he first woke up, he'd been nothing more than a thumb-sized chunk of quartz. Now he was larger than a person's head in size, and still growing. Geometric shapes stretched out of his crystal surface and shined with multicoloured light as threads of mana and aether were released or sucked into his surface. He could tell the two states of magic apart with ease, now. Mana threads were thin and solid, concrete shapes holding them together. Aether strands, on the other hand, were looser and less defined. Fuzzy seemed an appropriate term.

"I'm getting big," Zack chuckled to himself. "I'll catch up to you sooner than you think, Akasha."

Zack suddenly paused, confused. Akasha? He didn't think he knew anyone named Akasha. Did he maybe mean the Akashic System, to which he was connected and drew his power? He wanted to shake off the daze, but he didn't really have that capacity anymore. He couldn't shake himself without also shaking everything inside his dungeon. Instead, he settled for beaming the need to shake to Jean-Claude, who very suddenly shivered in front of another group. True to his functions, though, Jean-Claude didn't skip a beat and continued his explanation even as he twitched from nose to tail.

Chuckling to himself at the sight of his kobold emote button making a fool of himself, Zack retreated to one of his many labs in the dungeon. If he had downtime to spare, there really was no reason he couldn't continue to experiment. Especially considering he earned himself a bunch of new patterns from the aetheric manifestation.

There was still one of his previously absorbed Witchwolves wandering around in his lab, and he cursed himself for forgetting it down there. Thankfully, the monster didn't seem particularly bothered by the absence of stimuli. Judging by the various blast marks littering the room, it had simply busied itself by hurling magic at anything it could reach.

"Let's try this again," Zack chuckled. He absorbed the ornery wolf and then spawned a fresh one in its place.

It really was a beautiful creature, though obviously magical in nature. It looked, for all intents and purposes, like a perfectly ordinary wolf. The only difference was that its body was lined with veins of blue light, and its eyes shined with the same magical energy. Curiously, Zack let the creature pace around the room some more, before conjuring a second one.

The moment the second creature came into being, he cut off its willpower and life, then proceeded to unravel it. Everything in his dungeon was created by knitting mana fibers together to create facsimiles of life, and mobs were no different. As he removed the outer layers to reveal the wireframe within, he came face to face with three brand new spell nodes. He promptly absorbed them and added them to his growing list of abilities he could bestow.

[Moonbeam]

[Spell, Light]

[Sear a target with a beam of moonlight.]

[Cost: 2 mana]

[Night Eyes]

[Spell, Light, Toggle]

[Gain the ability to see in the dark as though it were light.]

[Cost: 1 mana and 1 stamina per minute.]

[Silver Fangs]

[Spell, Light]

[Conjure a set of light fangs over your mouth for 15 seconds. While the light fangs are conjured, you can use them to execute a bite attack that deals Light-aspected damage.]

[Cost: 5 mana]

"Now that's interesting," Zack muttered, as he filed those abilities away for later.

His only prior experience with Witchwolves was from Chandra, who had brought them up a couple times. Accordingly, this was the kind of creature that had cursed her with lycanthropy. And yet as he examined it, he was surprised to find that all of its abilities were Light element. That wasn't to say they didn't have the capacity to do great harm.

Light was one of the high elements, and as such existed as a dichotomy with its polar opposite. In this case, its opposite was darkness. Any spell that was aspected to light could therefore be used as though it were also darkness, and vice versa. It was this dichotomy that made wielders of high elements, like Salazar and Laura, such valuable members in parties.

It was weird, then, that these spells were all focused around the more destructive aspects of light. Zack idly wondered if maybe this had more to do with how the Witchwolves behaved than the use of light itself. The monster he absorbed was not actually a proper Witchwolf, but rather an aetheric manifestation that took the shape of one. The way he understood it, manifestations of that nature were a lot like the patterns he used to create monsters—only, instead of using stable mana to create them, they were formed from chaotic clumps of uncycled aether.

This would require further experimentation to fully understand, for now he simply turned his attention back to the broken down wireframe of the Witchwolf. There were still a few nodes in it that he hadn't noticed before, but they were smaller than the others. These he recognized as lesser ability nodes. He had extracted similar effects from his spiders and converted them into full-on spells. They were essentially abilities that the Witchwolf naturally posessed by virtue of what it was, rather than through any magical advancement.

Zack collected lupine senses, pack hunter, and resist diseases from the the lesser nodes as he continued to break down the Witchwolf. He was hoping that maybe he could find a node to give him access to the light element, but no such luck. Elemental affinity was proving to be the biggest gap in his knowledge, and the hardest thing for him to fill. He still only had the one element—fire—and hadn't a single clue how to get more.

"I guess that's a problem for future Zack," he grumbled in defeat, dismissing the Witchwolves entirely. After all, he still had more monsters to go through.