Well, she’s asleep again. Got so many questions but can’t do too much- poor dear seems a bit mentally fragile. I mean, can’t blame her, what with the whole friends dying and having part of her worldview flipped. Plus me accidentally jiggling her soul and sorta nibbling on it a lil. By accident. It turns out that my tentacles can suck up souls too, but only in tiny amounts. This soul sucking isn't filtered through my mana stomach so I absorb little bits of their thoughts and feelings.

I’m gonna pass on that. I have enough identity issues as it is.

Seeing the battle has shocked me into something: I’m thinking almost entirely as a dungeon and not as a man. It’s like Wash formed the foundation and Zeke got stacked on top of it. Sure there’s a lot more Zeke but it doesn’t exceed the limits of the foundation. Or maybe it’s not a soul thing- maybe it’s just an effect of being in a dungeon brain with dungeon senses?

I should experiment- perform some bodyswaps on animals. On the other hand that might be cruel and unusual. I’m not sure- I adapted without too much fuss, but like, I’m a human- I was a human- capable of rationalizing things and using logic and such. Would a bird in a rat body act as a bird or as a rat? Would it slowly adapt? Are these questions worth my time? No. Not right now. Got a couple more pressing issues.

Borb has apparently decided that he is a baby. The feeding thing only reinforced this feeling. Immobile and confused? I must be a freshly hatched chick! Not quite that simple because he was an adult bird- well, a multitude of birds, I’ve been dumping every songbird soul I get in there to increase his musical range. He sings for pleasure a bit, but it’s mostly some confused territorial and mating calls.

The snails had very little cognition. They mostly felt a mild confusion they couldn’t slime around and content because they’re not hungry. And occasional alarm when they spot something they might consider a predator. Also, they appreciate moss. I should check on the ones I scattered- I’ve got a second batch brewing and I’ll need to know if the experiment worked before I toss more out.

Again, I’ve been mostly thinking as a dungeon using human skills to augment that. It works and if I wasn’t being threatened by an empire I’ve no doubt I could be happy that way, just digging and playing with animals. I miss human life much less than I expected but I need more tools in my toolkit. I think the Sahii will gather the scattered clans and help defend me, but empires tend to have a whole lot of weight to throw around and the longer they fuck around the stronger the clans will become- both by force concentration and by exploiting my essence.

Something I had missed before is that essence doesn’t just provide resources to everything, they seem to strengthen them on a very basic level. I wasn’t paying enough attention. Birds still eat bugs but now the swoops are twice as fast. My ant colonies are tunneling through stone instead of dirt. The Sahii kicked the ass of a better trained and equipped troop. A bunch of random hunters and villagers vs professional soldiers- and they were outnumbered. I swear I saw spear thrusts skittering from their seemingly useless little scales.

Another thing- the drake. Drakes? I had figured they were just random desert animals that wandered in but the woman holds them in awe and the boarsaur slaughtered a group of adventurers singletuskedly. Wish I had been paying attention.

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Now that I’m actually analyzing them they’re works of art- perfect killing machines. Dense muscles, denser bones, Ms. Kittysaur has no heart, the boarsaurs have two each. The boarsaur have an organ next to the lungs- it’s filled with an oxygen-rich fluid. Should give them absurd burst power, though they’d overheat fast. There’s much more that I can’t figure out at a glance. Their pattern- their DNA, I think? It’s friggin ORGANIZED. Concise, none fluffy bits that I have trouble figuring out. Junk DNA stripped out?

I think I’ll copy bits and pieces of their code onto lizards and see what happens. It would be unwise to experiment on them directly, due to them being irreplaceable. I’m not sure how rare they are but none have entered the dungeon since the day I bust open the wall.

Agh. There it is again. I start thinking about how I shouldn’t just think of dungeon things and then bam! Cool animals, time to focus all my attention on that! Bah. Not that I’m a stranger to obsessive interests but there’s a time and place for such things and the week before finals is not it. A lesson learned the hard way, twice.

So first of all, humans 101: Money makes the world go round. There are a variety of methods by which money can be turned directly into power. The adventurers had coins on them. The coins are made of bronze, silver, and gold, so far as I can tell. It could be copper or brass but I think those are softer and these coins are in fairly good shape? So, since I can apparently turn essence into materials, let’s ruin the economy!

...I cannot make gold. Making water is easy. I think water, I point my tentacles, some runes inside me light up, bam! Water. When I try to make gold a few runes light up but nowhere near as many as when I create water. Hmm. The create stuff and find relevant recipe sections activate but then it pops a 404 Au not found? Where's my documentation.

I make dirt. Whole buncha shit lights up. I make rich black silty soil. Slightly different stuff lights up! Image matters, the more specific I picture it the more control I have. Plutonium? Nope. Probably for the best. Silver? Nooope. Tin? Ye. Iron? Yes, easy. I make carbon. Carbon is made. How about diamond?.. Ye. It’s hard and takes much longer per pound of diamond than a pound of carbon. What about nanotubes? Yessss, with great effort. Granite and sandstone? Yes. I mean, they’re both mainly silica anyways.

So! Preliminary theory: I have the tools to create the materials for life and stone, but I am restricted from things that aren't dungeony. Makes sense. I highly doubt dungeons are natural things. If they were I’d expect there to be magical critters all around me turning things into mana and I really can’t see any. Nothing is even interacting with souls except for me. Or the warp pipe. Something to think about later.

In any case, I can’t simply print money and get the Sahii to hire mercenaries and buy supplies. Pity. I could use bronze but I doubt it would be worth the weight. There are plenty of money-making schemes available but they all have the extra step of selling the goods for money before the money can be used. Depending on the Imperial response, this will likely involve smuggling. Maybe damascus swords since I can make buckyballs? Drugs? Can I make heroin? I made heroin. I don’t want to sell heroin. I’m just gonna toss that in the water.

Money strategies aside I think I'll make a little fortified city for them. Get mah dorf fort on. That'll involve moving to the dig site and I'm not going to leave this chick alone. I think it would be ungood if she got out and spilled all my secrets. Have to think of a way to imprison her that isn't just locking her up...

Well, until she wakes up I’m just going to start, uh, enchanting my second drillplugrockthingy. Magic drill. Though it doesn’t drill. It just dissolves stuff. This time I’ll aim for a place where I can't see warp pipes. I’ll fill the hole with a few feet of warpstone sand in case there's one way down deep. I can learn from my mistakes.

Nothing can go wrong! Again!

I should wait for the girl to wake up before I set it drilling anyways.