Zack's friends—he wasn't entirely sure when he started thinking about Greg and Chandra as friends, but he couldn't deny that's what they were to him—bombarded him with questions the moment they spotted his wisp. He stayed close to Archie, worried that if he drifted too far, he might succumb to slumber again. Despite his bloated mana, he felt weak and distant. It was like his body was present, but his mind was still a million miles away.

"What did you do that knocked you out like that?" Greg asked. "How can we avoid it again in the future?"

Zack bobbed his wisp in place as he tried to process the question. He hadn't even formulated an answer before Chandra was asking him another.

"What will happen to your dungeon if you shut down like that again?"

He wished he had hands to clap over his ears. He still didn't understand what had happened to him, or why he lost so much time, but here they were, grilling him for answers he wasn't sure he could give.

"Where's Alex?" Zack asked, grasping for the one sense of comfort and normality in this otherwise confusing world. "I want to talk to him."

Greg and Chandra shared a look with one another. Chandra checked her phone, but shook her head. "No answer," she declared, offering Zack a feeble, apologetic smile. "I messaged him the moment you woke up, but he's out right now. It might be a while before I hear back from him."

Zack held in a mental sigh. Alex was his own person, with his own needs to handle. It wasn't like Zack or the dungeon were his only priorities. Still, Alex had been there the first time Zack woke up. Part of him hoped his friend would be there again now. Alex's absence stung, but it wasn't something Zack could let stop him. There was work to be done, and he had a dungeon to clean up.

"I guess, in the meantime, how much of a mess have you made of my dungeon?" He asked.

No sooner had he said it was he aware of how bad things were. It wasn't so much that he could see every corner of his dungeon, but rather he had an instinctive awareness of the state of things. The lobby was filthy—the floor covered in dirt and grime from customers tracking mud in on their shoes. Three Medibolds were situated in the meadow, patiently standing around waiting for orders. The spider warren looked abandoned, as even the spawners were shut off.

Strangely, Archie's burrow looked largely unchanged from the last time Zack had seen it. It would seem the mob hadn't made many changes to it in his absence. Maybe Archie felt bad for excluding him, or maybe it was worry Zack would disapprove.

Despite his awareness being localized to a single point in the hub, Zack understood the state of every inch of his dungeon. Sight felt like an extraneous sense that held him back more than helped him. He was limited to a single point of view in a single direction. He could extend his field of vision if he wanted to, but that didn't help him see more of his, just more of his surroundings.

"Did you guys not do any cleaning while I was gone?" Zack asked. There was a frustrated edge to his words that he hadn't exactly meant to use, but he couldn't deny the annoyance. He worked hard to keep his dungeon in working order, and it had fallen to disrepair in his absence. It would take him a while to clean it all up.

"We, uh, sort of forgot," Greg admitted, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly. "I hate to say it, but we sort of depended on you to keep the place clean. Since, you know, you can just absorb all the dirt and stuff off the floor. It seemed like a waste of money to get cleaning supplies…"

Zack turned to Archie, who crossed his arms and shook his head. "Don't look at me. I told them they should do a better job taking care of things. My hands were full handling the mobs." The rabbit raised his nose haughtily, as though cleaning floors was a task somehow beneath him.

This time, Zack let the sigh tumble from his wisp. He wanted the others to know how annoyed he was at their apparent disdain toward keeping him tidy. Still, he couldn't exactly argue. Cleaning floors was an effortless task for him—it didn't even cost any mana. Just a slight exertion of will, and the lobby floors gleamed like they were freshly polished.

The abruptness of the task actually gave Zack a moment of pause. Normally when he executed a function, he had to do it in localized amounts. Cleaning floors, as easy as it came to him, took concentration and focus. Or at least, it did before he fell asleep. Now, he found that he didn't even need to think about it very hard.

The floors were dirty and needed to clean. Poof, it was done.

"Greg, clean your shoes," Zack ordered. "Chandra, wipe your paws."

Both of the others checked their feet in surprise, though likely they couldn't see what Zack did. Both of them were tracking minute dust particles on the floor. He wasn't about to become a neat freak, but he'd appreciate a bit more care from his fellows moving forward.

Unlike the others, Zack had a certain level of control over Archie. It took very little effort to clean the remaining dust out of the rabbit's fur, which earned him an appreciative smile from the mob. He wasn't done there, though.

"Archie, why is there a pile of corpses hanging out in your burrow?" Zack asked, noticing the mountain of dead bunnies blocking the path down the stairs.

Archie's ears twitched and his eyes bulged. "Ah, well, you see. I cannot despawn things as you can. Not all of our patrons are capable of absorbing mana. The monsters they slew persisted after death, rather than be absorbed and dissolved. There was nothing I could do."

"We tried to absorb them ourselves," Chandra said quickly, rushing to Archie's defense. "We couldn't re-kill what was already dead, though."

"It's fine. I can't absorb them right now—I'm a bit too full on mana. I'll have to deal with them later. What about the Medibolds? Why are there three in the room?"

"Emergencies," Greg grunted. "You weren't around to hold mobs back, so we had to make contingencies."

"I commanded the Medibolds to stand watch and intervene immediately when someone is injured," Archie declared. "I'll admit, they are a tad overzealous, but better safe than sorry."

Zack bobbed his wisp in the air, considering that. There was something about Medibolds that he was working on. Something important. Why couldn't he remember? It was like a sheep was draped over the memories. He could just barely peek inside, but it was too vast to get the full picture.

What am I missing? What happened to me?

"Zack?" Archie snapped his fingers, drawing Zack's attention to him again. "You're slipping again."

"What? No I'm not."

"Your wisp is on the ground."

Zack mentally frowned, and looked down. While his awareness hadn't budged from its place at eye level, the wisp was resting on the ground. The light coming off the tangled knot of mana fibers winked on and off, as though it were about to fade out of existence. Quickly, Zack snatched it up again and brought it back into position, earning a relieved breath from all present.

"Sorry," Zack said quickly. "I don't know why that keeps happening."

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"Might it have something to do with why you went silent in the first place?" Chandra asked.

"Maybe? Probably. Like I said, I don't know. When I try to remember it's…" Zack stopped himself, once more mentally ramming himself against the sheet. He wished he had a head to shake, just so he could try to clear the fog from his brain. Sensing Jean-Claude nearby, he called the kobold over and had him perform the gesture.

Jean-Claude made a gurgling sound as he violently shook his head, before stumbling to the ground under the force of his own jerking. He swayed dizzily as he upright, before staring blankly into space.

"Feel better?" Greg asked, cocking an eyebrow at the prone kobold.

"Not really, no," Zack grumbled. "There's cobwebs in my brain and I can't get them out."

"Well, maybe you should do something to take your mind off it?" Archie suggested. "There are certainly more tasks that need attention. Likely expending your mana will help clear your mind."

"Are you just saying that to make me feel better, or because the dungeon is a disaster and needs me to fix it?"

"Can't it be both?"

Zack regretted making Archie for a split second, before the emotion aside. The rabbit had a good point. There was little Zack enjoyed more than the process of creating things. Maintaining and updating them was a close second, though.

Without moving his awareness out of the room, he quickly scanned the spider warren again. Chorus was exacty where he left her. Really, the only issues were the spiders themselves and the state of the room. Like the rabbits, the oversized arachnids had a series of pre-programmed behaviours that would trigger while left to their own devices. One such behaviour, it would seem, was to reproduce.

The sheer number of spiders in the room had more than quadrupled. Worst of all, more than half of them appeared to be toad-spider hybrids. It would seem that Chorus had been busy in Zack's absence. Curiously, he reached in to try and absorb some of the spiders, only to recoil as their internal mana bit him.

"Okay, that's not good," Zack mumbled. "Archie, how long has the spider warren been sealed off?"

"A fortnight, why?"

"In English, please."

"Fortnight is an English word, you provincial dolt." He let out a sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose, as though to lament his bad luck at being bound to such an uncouth dungeon. "It means two weeks."

"Roughly as long as you've been asleep," Chandra elaborated. "We shut it down the day after you didn't wake up."

"Cool. Great. Gross. They reproduced," Zack lamented.

Chandra blanched, her tail immediately snaking between her legs. Her ears flattened against her scalp, and the fur on her neck stood on end. She realized a second later how ridiculous she must have looked, but rather than try to control her lupine tells, she simply shifted back into her human form.

"And you can't absorb them," Greg noted, when Zack didn't bother elaborating any further.

"It's weird. I can sense that they're part of my dungeon, but I can't touch them," Zack explained. "Archie, you're the expert on independent mobs. What do you make of this?

The rabbit tapped his chin in thought. "If I had to hazard a guess… The process by which new mobs are born can affect which ones develop independent thought. I hypothesize that my own evolution is due in no small part to being both the first unique monster pattern you created, as well as the first boss monster in your dungeon."

"That's a lot of big words to say nature affects the outcome," Zack said, translating for Greg and Chandra.

"I'm not stupid, I know what he meant," Greg grumbled.

Archie cleared his throat in an attempt to draw attention back his way. "Essentially, these monsters were born out of a series of pre-programmed reproduction functions. Zack had no hand in their creation, ergo they have no loyalty to him. Despite technically being part of him, they see him as nothing more than a hostile force that seeks to do them harm."

"It's attached to the pattern, I definitely didn't turn this on," Zack said quickly.

"If this is the case, then how come the bunnies aren't reproducing like crazy?" Chandra asked.

"Well, for starters, spiders have a faster gestation period than rabbits," Archie explained. "Secondly, Zack already ordered them not to reproduce."

The memory of his rabbit mobs commencing salicious antics upon first construction of his dungeon made Zack chuckle. "I can order the spiders I created not to reproduce anymore, but I very much doubt the others will pay attention to me."

"So we have to clear out that room before you can do any amount of maintenance on it," Greg muttered, tapping his chin. "How many spiders are we dealing with?"

"More than any of you can reasonably handle," Zack said. "It looks like… two hundred and thirty-seven. Make that two hundred and fifty-three. A sack of eggs just hatched."

"Aren't they all around level five or something?" Chandra asked. For a moment, it looked like she might suggest they go in and cull the spiders themselves. Then, she realized what she asked, and took a step away from the others.

"Levels can only help so much. In this case, the numbers far exceed what levels can do to assist you," Archie tapped a foot in thought. "Though, maybe we do not need to handle the matter ourselves…"

"What do you mean? Of course we do," Greg grunted.

"Well, a goal of that room was to provide a challenge for more high level customers, no? I say the room might be enough to challenge a group of four that are around… level twenty, maybe? In this case, quantity above quality."

"Oh yeah, I see what you mean," Zack said. "Even if they're able to fight off the spiders, there are still so many that they'll quickly get overwhelmed. Not to mention there are a ton of a arachnitoads like Chorus hanging around."

Chandra couldn't hold back her shiver of digust. "I don't suppose you can order her to turn on her progeny, could you?"

"Eh, it's worth a shot."

Zack reached out for Chorus with his senses, feeling the boss monster in her room. She was still perched upon the ceiling, clinging to her sticky webs and watching the smaller monsters frolic around her space. With a mental shove, Zack tried to order her to kill her babies.

No.

It wasn't a vocal answer, but Zack felt the denial to the core of his being. He felt that if he continued to pressure her, Chorus might snap and turn on him instead. He didn't like that idea, especially since she was already his dedicated boss monster for that room. He would have to completely unmake the spider warren before he could create a new boss monster pattern. Even then, doing so would take up his last remaining boss flag, since he couldn't remove it from Chorus.

"Not gonna happen," he sighed, turning his attention back to the others. "She won't attack them. If anything, she'll fiercely defend them."

"Likely you could unravel those pre-programmed behaviours, but it would require you despawn Chorus first to do so," Archie said, once more tapping his chin in thought. "I find it hard to believe she will allow you to do so if she has the ability to reject your commands."

"Is she intelligent?" Chandra asked, instant worry in her eyes.

"Not in the same way as Archie. She's aware of herself, though, enough that pressuring her might only make things worse," Zack said. "The only other thing I can think of is maybe I can destroy the walls and bring the room crashing down, but there's no guarantee some of the spiders won't survive. And since I can't control them…"

"They would be free to reproduce infinitely," Chandra shuddered.

"Yeah. It would basically be a spider bomb. I've had some bad ideas in the past, but that's definitely one I'd rather avoid."

"So our only choice is to go in and clear them out the old fashioned way," Greg sneered, grinding his teeth in frustration.

"Well, there is technically one other option. I can't say that I like it, though," Zack admitted. "We've already disabled the spawners, which means the dungeon created spiders will eventually run out of mana and die off. The offsprings, meanwhile, are running off functions isolated from their magically created counterparts."

"Sooner or later, they'll run out of food," Archie said, a cold edge to his tone. "That is not an option. That is cruelty."

Chandra looked like she was about to protest, before a buzzing from her pocket interrupted her. She held up a finger as she retrieved her phone again, a relieved smile tugging at her cheeks. "Alex will be back shortly, he's leaving now."

"Good to hear. Maybe he'll have a better idea tha us," Archie said, crossing his arms. "Surely a pyromancer would have an easier time incinerating spiders than the rest of us, no?"

Zack bobbed in place. "Okay, let's wait for Alex to get back. In the meantime, is there anything that needs taking care of, aside from the underground corpse pile?"

"The Medibolds can use a refresher," Archie said quickly.

Zack gave Jean-Claude the mental command to snap his fingers. "I just remembered something important! Archie, I need your help with the Medibolds."

"Pardon?"

"Come meet me in my lab, this will only take a few seconds," Zack said, banishing his wisp. As his awareness shot off through his dungeon, towards another isolated room, he could feel the others talking.

"He is far too easily distracted," Chandra said. Zack couldn't hear her words, but he felt the vibrations they made as the sound touched his walls and floors.

"I'm worried he'll go back to sleep if someone doesn't watch over him," Greg agreed.

"I will keep a close eye on him, I assure you," Archie declared. Zack sensed him bow, before turning tail and running towards the manor room.

As he reached the lab, Zack had to pause and take a moment to think. How long had he been able to sense his dungeon on such a profound level? He couldn't remember ever being so aware before his two week slumber, and yet it felt so natural to him.

"This is a problem for future Zack to ponder," he sighed. "For now, I've got monsters to modify."