In the Marms village is a lot of confusion. The pirates are reluctantly gathering the islanders on the beach.

“Why are we doing this again?” Asks one of the raiders to a comrade.

“Because the captain said so.”

“But why did he gave this order?”

“I don’t know. Go and ask him if you want to know this much”

The Marms on their side are fearing for themselves and trying to tend to the wounded among them.

“Why are they gathering us here?”

“I don’t know, maybe they’ll going to kill us.”

“Why bother gathering us for that? They could do it anywhere.”

“It seems their captain is the one who ordered this, they don’t seem to know why.”

“Please… kill me…” One of the Marms ask the others, she’s a young one that the pirates have used a lot.

“Shhh, sleep and rest, I won’t let them take you back. I promise.” Answers an old one.

Ones all the surviving Marms are on the beach the pirate’s captain approaches and stands between them and the village. His officers behind him.

“You are lucky! There is a powerful entity on this island, and he cares for you. He bargained for us to release you and we accepted. I won’t tell you exactly what he offers us to free you, but we accept. You are now free, but be warned, if you raised a finger against us, we will kill you all and I will personally search and destroy him. I have the power to do so.”

Lo walks to the side of a stone house and give it a simple punch. The stones break and the house crumbles.

“I am a Third, and I have the power to kill everything on this island. I could raze the mountain to the ground and kill the entities living there. So don’t provoke me.”

The Blood Ram turns to his men and talks to them.

“Okay guys, we’re leaving! Let’s go!”

A few minutes later, while the pirates are leaving the village some of them go and ask the officers on their respective ships to explain the decision of their chief.

“You know him, he told us almost nothing. He made a deal with the what was reported to be a dungeon to free the Marms and we’re going on the other side to receive whatever we’re getting out of this deal. Go ask Gormskar for more if you want, he was with the captain.”

“Yeah, no. I don’t want his fist on my face.”

---

Hruin’s meditation is broken by a sound of moving stone, a rush of fresh air and a ray of light on her closed eyelids.

She opens her eyes and looks at the walls. There is an opening on one of them and light and moving air are coming from it.

Hruin stands up and stretches out, then she carefully walks to the opening. She can see a long corridor that reaches a staircase on one side and a dead end on the other side. On the corridor are other openings and through them are walking some other forms, she can recognize some of her crewmates. All of them are bruised and scratched and looked tired and beaten.

The pirates are looking at each other, each time one of them leave his cell the opening closes itself behind, forcing them to stay in there.

“What is that? Where are we?” Asks one of them.

“I don’t know, but we don’t truly have a choice. We can stay here or go up the stairs.” Answers Coslo, one of the two officers in this place.

“We should go up.” Adds Hruin.

Colso nods and starts to walk to the stairs. The six other pirates follow him.

“The corridor’s closing behind us.” One of the pirates informs the other. “That’s freaky.”

Hruin annoyingly looks at him. “Shut up and walk in silence. We don’t know what we’re going to encounter up there. So, focus on your senses.”

Three hours of silent, boring and nerve-wracking stair climbing later the pirates found themselves at the top of the stairs. There is a wooden door. Motioning the men to stay silent Hruin sticks her ear to the door and listens.

“I hear nothing.” She whispers. “But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing on the other side. Be wary.”

She puts her hand on the handle and opens the door.

On the other side of it is a gigantic cavern with a lake of at least three hundred meters length and fifty meters wide. They’re in the middle of a side of the lake, near a lot of houselike structures of different sizes. And enough docks to moor at least ten ships.

“It looks like a mountain village.”

“Did you see the opening over there?” Asks a pirate while pointing to the right side of the lake where an opening big enough to let pass two galleons is letting enter the light of the sun.

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“Where are we? Why are we here?”

“I don’t know. And stop asking stupid questions.”

“Look at the lights, they’re the same as in the tunnel back there. And there bats sleeping on the roof.”

“And look in the water, there are a lot of fish. And over there, fruit trees and a river.”

“Good, I was hungry.”

PWWOOOOOOOHHH!!!!!!!

A foghorn resonates in the cave, making the pirates look back to the entrance of the cave. The arrival of their ships is a great reassurance for them, they’ll be saved. The seven free pirates wave to their crewmates on the ships and run to the docks.

All the ships are moored and the pirate captain is standing on his ship’s bow, ready to give his crewmen some explanations.

“Alright guys, calm down! We’re here ‘cause I made a deal with an entity living on this island.”

“The dungeon?” Interrupts one the newest crewmembers.

“No, not the dungeon, but the something controlling it.” Lo answers with a sigh. “ Now don’t interrupt me again. It’s a young dungeon, but a powerful one, I could defeat the dungeon and kill its master. But, like you can guess, I’m the only one who could do that. And this it is smart enough to know that, so it bargained for his life.” The crew is mumbling, wondering what the entity had to offer for its life.

“We’re going to sell it the slaves we have on board. And it will force the dungeon to produce gold, silver and other stuff for us. Its payment should be ready and waiting for us to pick it up in the warehouses in here. So take the prisoners out of the ships and search for the treasure.”

---

When the last pirate ship leaves the cave and the cove I quickly raised back the reefs I had put down earlier. I also lower the cave entrance, only allowing water to flow beneath it, with fish and crabs of course. The bats can fly through small cracks in the rock.

I have gained a lot of test subjects for my experiments, and even if they are not in individual cells, they’re locked in the cave. I let them alone for now, I have urgent things to do.

I open the Marms’ cave and let them free, they can wonder on their island safely now. Then I start to claim the rest of the island, the land under the sea up to one hundred meters so I can raise a reef all around the island and claim the water inside and all the animals and plants on the island or in the water inside the reef. It will take me a few days to do it.

I have a few bugs and rats on the pirate ships, some of the bugs already came back and I learned that they’re planning to come back in five months. That’s the time I have to find a way to grow strong enough to beat the captain or at least to fight him on an equal footing. But I don’t lure myself, he will come back with a stronger crew and I won’t be able to deal with them in the same way I did with the others.

Another possibility is that my next visitors won’t be as ready to deal with me as the pirates were. I must change the island in a stronghold. That’s why I raise reef all around it and try to summon a fog around it, it’s easy to do but hard to maintain, a simple wind can blow it away. The plan is to hide the island in the fog and wrecked the enemy ships on the reef. Unfortunately, the pirates are too good navigators and sailors and will be able to spot it. Their captain will be able to reach the island no matter what I throw at him, if I want to face him, I’ll have to do it on land, with strong servants.

---

Two days after the events, in the Marms’ village. The villagers are working to rebuild some of the destroyed buildings and are taking care of those still under shock. A few of them have come back from the forest after managing to live there on their own.

The villagers talk between them and exchange hypothesis. The two new chiefs of the village, the shaman Klopri and Klamtu - the newly appointed Goddess’ priestess - are discussing.

“Do you feel it? The Goddess domain is extending through the forest.” Said the shaman.

“Yes, I feel it. It seems like she wants to expand her area of influence, she must want to protect us.”

“I’m not sure of her goodwill yet.”

“She managed to repel the pirates.”

“No, from what the pirates said to the other, it wasn’t her. It was some masculine entity. And it was through some sort of barter between the life of our brethren and something else. Do you know of a male counterpart of the Goddess?”

“I don’t remember, but I’ll search through the village archives and ask the other elder if they know something. It could also be a trick from the pirates.”

“It would not surprise me.”

“But we have other things to do than talk about the Goddess. We must take care of the village and rebuild everything. I will continue taking care of the wounded and the traumatized and you will keep taking care of the work.”

---

Under the mountain, is my new and underground village known by almost no one. It is completely made out of stone and the cubic houses are austerely furnished, with unmovable stone beds, stone tables without chairs and a bit of luxury in the fact that all houses have toilets with flowing water. Even if I don’t want to make the slaves comfy, I don’t want them to dirty my domain too much.

There is a river flowing through the village and discharging the waste of the inhabitants in the lake, where it will be useful to the growth of the algae. At the water’s edge are growing a lot of diversified fruit trees pollinated by my bees. Through the river and the lake are swimming all kinds of fishes and walking different kinds of crabs.

I can see and understand that the ‘inhabitants’ of the village are still wondering what will happen to them, they’re numbering just under the hundred - 97 to be precise - and were all slaves, they are mostly young woman, as they would have reached a higher price on the slave market, but there are some men. Some of them have heard that they have been sold to some strange entity living on the island but nothing more. I’m not surprised that they are frightened by the situation.

Now that the expansion of my domain through the island have started, I can put back my attention on my new test subjects.

Their first test is to free themselves from their shackles. The pirates let them chained to each other…

The first thing I need to do with them is to find a way to claim them as my own. The fact that they are eating, breathing and drinking stuff infuse with my mana will probably ease my attempts to do so, like for the animals. I think the harder part will be to break through their bubbles of mana. The former slaves’ ones are even stronger than most of the Marms’, I think it’s due to the fact the Marms were unconsciously weakening it a bit as they were believing to be in their Goddess domain, while the test subjects are wary about their environment.

When I’ll succeed in claiming them I’ll be able to see if the fact they are sapient modifies things in how I can access and manipulate their minds. After all, they have much more complicated minds and brains than the animals.

If I can control them I will make strong and intelligent fighters out of them and they’ll become my last line of defense against invaders, mostly against the pirates’ captain if I can strengthen them enough before his return.

If I can’t control them, I still have ideas about how to use them. Some of them in particular. I already noticed that when a creature gives birth to an offspring, it is already mine and even if the parent wasn’t mine, the child is easier to claim. And some of the former slaves are pregnant. I think that some of the Marms are also with child.

The children should be easier to claim, manipulate and shape their bodies and their minds to my likings.