I feel a bit stuffed with all of my monsters reabsorbed and the high quality energy from the first human death so I waste no time starting my renovations. My range of influence has increased by nearly a half what it was before, and I find that I can fit a third chamber and a second corridor on the outer edges of my central boss dome. All the plants in my first room got burned away, and that room was a bit of a failure anyway, so I move all the rat fodder into my center dome and tile over the other rooms and corridors. The foot trap room was my most successful chamber so my three normal rooms will be variations on that design. In the first room I make side tunnels hidden by thin tiles where my rats will be hiding. In the center of the room I sink a large pitfall trap covered by more thin tile. Adventurers will have to inch along the side tiles to get across the room, right next to my ambush rat holes. The tunnels lead to the bottom of the pit so that the rats can swap sides or swarm anyone that falls into the pit.

I get the feeling I'll be able to double the amount of mana I spend on monsters so I place enough hollows for six rats to hide in this room. In the corridor my first attempt at increasing the size of my falling block trap fails as the heavier stone snaps the cord under its own weight. I try setting it up with thread copied from the dead man's clothes and find it is a bit sturdier than the plant fibers I used before. It's also a bit thinner and harder to see. I remember to move it up closer to knee height where people won't be as likely to step over it on accident. The new block has a solid core of iron copied from the club's bindings with a thin sandstone tile to make it blend in with the ceiling. On impulse I set up a second tripwire further down the hallway but place the falling block a few feet behind the trigger. If someone triggers that one they will hit the people following behind them, or someone triggering the trap with a pole.

Suddenly the first tripwire snaps again and drops the block. I seethe in frustration as I coax everything back into its' proper place and thicken the cord again. It's a delicate balance but at least these heavier blocks have a chance at killing someone as they fall. I hollow out a space at neck height along both walls large enough for my rats to run around in and leave thin tile over the entire length. I poke tiny holes every few inches for the rats to see through so that they will jump out at their targets rather than entering the corridor and attacking from behind. The Dire rats have persistence but their killing potential isn't very high unless they can snag something vital or have the advantage of numbers. I go ahead and spawn two rats in the wall spaces to test out how well they can see and move around inside. I realize the walls of my outer rooms all border my central dome, so I add more rat holes going from the tunnels in the corridor and the pit in the first chamber to the edges of the dome. My rats will be able to go their for food as well as reinforcing one another if I need to move my forces around.

I leave the second room basically the same with foot traps scattered throughout but I add some soft dirt underneath where I can place some Dire Worms. It will probably be pretty hard to get someone out of the foot trap with a dire worm holding on to his ankle, and they can always crawl up through the openings to fight if I need them to. In the second corridor I put another falling block trap and a dummy tripwire with a pitfall trap on the other side. By this point I think adventurers will be good at spotting them but they might be dumb enough to start jumping over them and right into the pitfall. I decide to put my ambush rats in the ceiling this time to avoid repeating the first corridor, they will expect them at neck height again, so I just put iron spikes at the bottom of the pit. Looking at it I decide to add the spikes to my first pitfall as well. You can never make a pitfall too deadly after all.

I feel a twinge as the false walls in my first corridor break and hear loud squeaking. My viewpoint blurs as I zip over but I only find my two ambush rats already dead. Both of them killed by a single stab through the skull after they leapt out at something.

Holly! Are you exploring the corridor?

"Hmm? I'm right here, Pit." She says, poking her head out of her small home next to my crystal. "Is something wrong?"

Something killed my rats, there's someone in the dungeon. I let my senses wash through all the space I control, searching for the intruder. At the same time I throw mana into the pattern for the rat king. The loathsome beast pops into existence quickly but I keep spawning dire rats as fast as I can.

"Pit, there can't be anyone in the dungeon. As soon as you started remodelling the mana barrier would force out any humans or animals that were in here." Holly looks nervous, glancing down at my assembled host. "I know you've had a scare but if something was here you wouldn't be able to move the walls."

Whoever's here... I'm not letting them get away... The rats scatter into their tunnels to help me look. Whatever killed the rats I wasn't able to sense it before, but they jumped out before they died. A flash of mana jumps back into my crystal as a rat in the second corridor expires. I think myself there instantly but again miss catching the intruder. I respawn the dead rat back in the core chamber, since nothing is preventing me from spending the mana as it returns. One of the rats below squeaks a challenge and starts jumping at the base of the wall, the other rats are attracted by the noise and start looking up as well.

Clinging to the ceiling, halfway up the dome below me, is a flowing shadowy smudge. Like a hole in the ground that got up for a walk its' all consuming blackness traces an amorphous blob against my dim walls. The rats leap with all their might but can't reach the shadow which turns away from them and glides smoothly up towards my core. Holly! Holly what is that?!

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

"I... I don't know!" She screams as the shadow beast extends a limb towards me. It brushes its' tip against my surface and I recoil in revulsion. Much to my surprise the stone reacts, pushing the beast away with a rapidly growing pillar of sandstone. It pushes off the pillar and floats in the air then whips around, stabbing with two limbs at my core. Desperately I draw the sandstone around me in a shield, the twin impacts knocking craters out of the material like it was rotten wood. I push my viewpoint down and enter my Dire Rat King, immediately snagging the nearest rat by the tail I spin it in a circle and throw!

The rat sails through the air and is intercepted by a lashing tentacle which shatters the poor creature's spin and smashes it to the floor. The shadow beast descends towards my boss casually as my minions swarm it. Stabbing limbs make quick work of the rats that get within range, one of them manages to bite one of the appendages but it just swings the rat around and smashes it against the floor. I don't stand idly while it shreds my army, rushing the monster the rat king whips his tail forward and unleashes the rat swarm, covering the beast in frenzied biting vermin.

I feel their teeth cracking as they try to bite through the hard carapace but the beast seems equally distressed, struggling to scrape them off its body without being able to use its full strength. With the beast distracted I exit my boss and focus on the ceiling, making a large block of iron above it and removing the surrounding stone, it strikes the body of the monster with an extremely loud crack, snapping something on its body and painting it with the viscera of a dozen crushed rats that were on top of its' body. It darts forward and impales the rat king through the eye so quickly I don't even register the movement before the king is dead, then makes a break for the corridor.

Oh no you don't, you're not leaving! You're mine now! I think as I focus on my entrance tunnel, quickly pinching the walls together to seal off any chance of escape. As the last ray of light closes the creature reaches the hall and smashes into the flowing stone with all six of its' spear-like limbs. I reel in agony, feeling my stone body shatter under the force of the blow. I reach for more stone, trying to crush the creature before it can dig through, a battle I am quickly losing as the monster's rear limbs easily shatter my pillars and gouge chunks out of the encroaching walls. Light appears as it manages to punch a small hole to the outside.

In my despair at losing again I almost fail to notice a familiar feeling. I realize that I'm beginning to feel the creature, not how I would feel an intruding human or animal, but the way I feel the stones and the sands of my home. I can feel something similar to pottery, copper, hot sand and a strange tingling yellow energy. It's not the mana that I eat but something that feels right to me. I reach out to the energy and watch in amazement as a bolt of lightning erupts from inside the monster's shell and is absorbed by my walls.

The monster drops to the ground, unmoving. I don't know if I can call it dead since I never sensed any life from it in the first place. I feel Holly poking at the shield back in my boss room and I open it for her. She flies out and joins me in the entrance corridor, examining the thing.

"How very strange... Pit can you feel its' core?" Holly asks as she hefts one of the monster's limbs with her tiny arms. "Every monster has a core, if you absorb it you should get a bunch of mana and the pattern to make more of these."

It doesn't have any mana. It's made of pottery and metal and... lightning? Do you know how I did that?

"Some kind of golem then? The second part is easy enough, your natural elemental affinity is lightning, a combination of fire and wind affinity. I hadn't planned on going over elemental affinities until we had some minions capable of magic, but with your affinity you will be able to make and manipulate lightning for some of your traps, and your minions will share that affinity and use basic lightning spells if you ever make mage rats or something similar." She peers through the large crack in the top of the creature. "I've never known a golem to be powered by elemental energy rather than mana and runes. Most people won't send golems into dungeons anyway, without souls they don't have any protections from your power. You could..."

Holly slaps herself in the head. "Pit, you could have absorbed it from the beginning! It was never alive!"

Well how was I supposed to know that?

"I'm sorry, that is my fault. From now on you should probably try to absorb anything that comes in just in case. Sometimes adventurers drop things or put them down, and it's a good habit to be in to punish them for letting things out of their reach. Now absorb this thing, it's made of some weird stuff that might have some uses in the dungeon." Holly steps off the carcass and flies back towards my boss room. I mentally shrug and tell all the monster's parts to go into my core where I keep any item I don't want to have around right now.

Polycarbonate high-tensile carbon fiber microtransistor motherboard solid state drive flash memory ferrofluid cursed lich-coin non-newtonian impact gel radio transmitter radar beacon global positioning uplink thermal camera mining laser dagger of septic wounds rapid access memory central processing unit

A torrent of information from the monster floods my awareness, flashes of understanding for hundreds of individual parts as well as dozens of samples stored in an interior compartment. Faced with the overwhelming amount of knowledge my mind shuts down and the world spirals into darkness.