“Why does he only hate me now?”

Nyx shrugs while Hades has joined her in fawning over the cat.

And it’s pretty clear that my wife recognizes him.

…

And he recognizes me.

Well, I’ll have to ask Hades if she remembers anything else now too.

Later.

For now… I’m still being stared down by an ancient god. Although he does keep casting curious glances at the orange furball.

No matter.

Moving right along… Dungeon configurability.

The kinds of things that make the most sense to me are letting a dungeon administrator limit access to the configuration, because otherwise anyone else could wander in with the right tools and do all sorts of damage.

So let’s avoid that. The implementation is easy enough.

Next I guess we need more configuration? But what else needs configuring?

Hmm…

Oh, here’s a good one. Maximum party size… let’s make that a stored thing… Maybe some dungeons are so massive that a ten or even fifteen person party makes sense, or maybe even larger. But I’ll leave that up to someone else.

Hmm… looks like monster respawn speed is fixed… let’s make that a setting too.

How about a means of cycling monster spawn groups? We could probably make it so that different preset groups of monsters could be reused or moved around… Ah, and that works.

Well, if we’re going to rotate monster groups, maybe we can… ah, looks like the boss monsters are already groups in the current ruleset, so I don’t need to change that…

Treasure respawn rate next… and let’s add in a bit about whether chests will even spawn being optional, or even to randomly spawn… and how likely… I enjoy the thought that a particularly unluck party of adventurers may even traverse an entire dungeon without seeing a single chest!

Let’s do the same thing with traps. Looks like they’re in groups too… And done.

How about hidden doors? Let’s make them… perfect! Hidden rooms can be set to move around now too, to prespecified locations…

I can only imagine how much Rose will appreciate these quality-of-life changes… although it never really expresses much of anything… Which is fine.

…

Ah, there we go. Another good idea. We’ll add system-side tracking of adventurer and monster locations in the dungeon… and since this ruleset is already on the Record, it shouldn’t matter if I’m accessing it directly from here, so I can get that information directly from their Akashic Selves!

…I’m amazed that works, but it does. And so now, a dungeon administrator can actually keep track of where everything living is in their dungeon without even needing a Skill for it.

…

…

I’m admittedly starting to run out of ideas…

Maybe a setting for preset rooms to rotate… it’d be pretty easy to make an inescapable labyrinth that way.

How about hmm… yes, a way to eject all adventurers in one go. And… done.

I stand in thought for a moment, still bearing Vulcan’s gaze practically burning a hole through me, before glancing up to meet his eyes and saying, “This should do for now. Ah, wait.”

A few more quick words and a small booklet appears in my hand… which I quickly offer to him. “Here, the changes I made. It’s kind of technical I think, but I doubt that’ll matter for you.”

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“That wasn’t Spellspeech.”

“Correct,” I reply.

…

“Then what was it? I have my assumptions, but I would strongly prefer you simply confirm it.”

“Noooope!” I offer him the most carefree smile I can manage. “If you want that information from me then you should offer me a favor, instead of demanding them from me to simply visit my wife’s original home.”

Vulcan sighs but seems content to leave it at that for the moment and instead pours over the small manual. It’s existence seems to have been enough to draw Nyx’s attention away from His Royal Majesty at least, and she promptly rises to look over the ancient god’s shoulder.

“Why did you… ah, I see. Hmm, hm. I see, I see, yes.”

…

…

“Well? Is that good enough? I figure you can probably make some kind of runic gadget or whatever to handle the dungeon administrator’s side of this, it seems kind of dumb to tie it all to Skills or whatever that they might not have to start.”

My former Assistant furrows her brow. “Why did you make it like that? Couldn’t you have just made the one thing switchable?”

“Why not?” I shrug. “Vulcan said he wanted to see what I could do, so I figured it’s a test.”

“But like this, even a mortal could manage a… dungeon…”

“Yeah, you see it now don’t you? Why should I have to manage it? Plus my entire plane is a dungeon, if I didn’t have thousands of subcores to manage it can you imagine how annoying it’d be to have that one core manage it all? Not to mention slow! It’d be so much faster if I could just delegate it to whoever I want, as long as I’ve authorized them through the control system. By default, the god that owns the dungeon has full access and it can’t be removed, so all they have to do is pick a deputy of sorts to handle it. See? Easy, convenient, streamlined.”

***

I should have known better. Nothing is ever good enough, not for an inventor.

Needless to say, between Vulcan and Nyx I’ve been continuously adding and modifying bits and pieces of the core dungeon ruleset. It’s practically unrecognizable now… but I’ll admit that even without having seen it before, the inventor god’s understanding of this underlying system is an order of magnitude better than my own.

So I won’t complain. Resources are resources, and if he’s going to make himself a resource to me then I’m going to use him for as much as he’s willing.

…

“That should be enough for now.”

I let out a long breath. “Gods, I hope so. It’s been literal days. You’re lucky I can talk cat food into existing or Philip would be very upset.”

“Your cat will be fine.”

“MY cat,” Nyx corrects.

I give her a look. “OUR cat. You said it yourself; WE have a cat.”

We glare at each other for a moment, interrupted by Hades picking up the cat in question and setting him on the ashen bed I’d made for us… it hasn’t been used since Vulcan started picking and choosing changes to the dungeon ruleset, at least not by me.

She’s definitely still been using it, which is fine. The looks she’s given me while I’d been busy though…

She wants me there.

I quietly sigh. “I’m not going to argue about this, I don’t really care. It’s just what you said before anyway.”

Nyx opens her mouth to argue but I cut her off. “He’s living with you anyway. I’m not going through the trouble of telling every single damned monster in my plane not to eat him, and I don’t trust the adventurers not to make sport of him either.”

“Good.”

“Good,” I echo.

…

“So can we enter the plane or not?” I direct toward our unwilling host.

…Who stands and thinks for a moment. After all that, he still has to think about it!?

“…Yes,” he finally says.

“THANK you! Can we just leave now? I assume we have to walk or whatever, if I try to travel the space between all your sirens and guards are going to happen again. I’d like to avoid that if possible.”

“Yes, you will need to walk. Make use of my public transit system as well, it exists for a reason.”

I sigh a cloud of ash, and then quickly recall it into myself as the old god raises an eyebrow.

And then I turn to my wife. “Hades, dear. It’s time to go. Is that alright?”

“…Alright,” she answers while hesitantly releasing His Highness.

I disperse the bed and resting cubicle I’d constructed. “Well, you know how to reach me or whatever, Nyx probably isn’t going anywhere for a while so just have her act as a message service-”

“HEY!”

“See? Perfect. She’ll let me know right away just to reduce how much time she has to bother with me.”

Under the weight of my former Assistant’s glare, I usher Hades toward the teleport pad that we entered from, and in a flare of light we’re right back in that secured room.

The guards don’t seem worried about us this time, one of them even guiding us to the entrance and opening it for us.

…Leaving us right back at the checkpoint line, which is much longer than the last time we were here.

Because of course it is.

Oh well. I guess this is an excuse to spend more time with my wife…

Huh.

Speaking of which…

“You remembered Philip, right?”

She looks thoughtful for a moment before answering. “It’s blurry, but… I think so. Some.”

“Do you remember anything else?”

…

…

“We used to live in the portable house with him, didn’t we?”

I nod.

This is good. This is very good.

“And with… Omorth, and Pearl, and… What happened to Elobahn? What happened to… to…”

“There, it’s alright,” I say while pulling her into a comforting hug. “You don’t need to force it. Nothing good comes of that, I’d know.”

Hades leans into me and lets out a relaxed sigh. “It’s frustrating. It feels like something is just out of reach… for so long there’s just been nothing there, and I want it back. I can tell I’m supposed to remember this.”

We hold each other in silence for the next however long as the line continues to move. I simply lift her with me and we both drift along with the current of humans.

Mortals.

Most of them aren’t human. Many of them are unsurprisingly indra.

…

“Without forcing it… is there anything else you remember? Maybe about here, or growing up here?”

Hades remains silent for some time, continuing to bury her face in my shoulder.

…

I guess not.

But it’s going to be alright.

It has to be.