“Master.”

Oh! You’re much more… clear, now. Is it because of those memories I gave you earlier?

“Yes, Master. I have grown into your designs. However, I have some questions, based on the information you gave me…”

Yes yes, of course, ask away, I promise to indulge your curiosity as much as possible.

“Then… One of the adventurers seemed to think dungeons and monsters were inherently evil, but the druid did not think so. I want your opinion on which is correct.”

Hmm. That’s a difficult subject. Anyone who would claim they aren’t evil is automatically biased, but anyone who claims they are evil is probably correct for entirely different reasons than they think. Does that make sense?

“No. Everything I have seen would suggest evil is something tangible, that those adventurers and the druid understood intrinsically.”

Then I would caution you to judge for yourself if I am evil, or if you are. You are my spider queen, Cytra. I would not claim you to be evil since you have acted under my order.

“Hmm. I will think on it, Master. However, calling me a queen like that… Do you mean the same concept those men have for that word?”

Perhaps yes, perhaps no. You are my finest and my favorite, perhaps princess is more applicable? But spider queen sounds more intimidating, so I’m sticking with that.

“Hmm.”

I can tell you’re still thinking, take your time, I’m not going anywhere.

Now then… Back to work.

My potential lake is more or less dug. If there is a layer of stone underneath this forest, it’s pretty far down, as my lake is at least ten feet deep currently, and I plan on going deeper. Filling it with water using my mana would take an inordinate amount of time, which is why I’m lucky to have found a single stream I’ve been working to divert.

The small amount of water already in my lake, plus some high-nutrient soil infusions from my plant and blood mana, and the ducks have taken to the water already. It’ll be a while yet before it’s nearly as vitalized as my breeding pond is, but it’s large, and the ducks like it. I’m happy.

The flesh pit, which I’ve resigned to just let be the place I grow my blood mana, is once again ready for harvest. I have no idea what would happen if someone fell in there. I mean flesh pit literally, I’d imagine it would feel like crawling inside an animal carcass that’s still warm. Truly horrific. I’ll see if I can’t make a specialized plant to cover it with a giant leaf or something.

The spider army is undergoing its humble beginning, and some of the weavers, which were made to be the smarter ones, have even started ‘talking’ to Cytra. I think they’re still dumb beasts, but they listen to Cytra’s orders when she gives them, which is good. My queen will come to understand her role on her own, I’m proud.

Grazers are doing well, ducks as mentioned are fine, spiders proceeding apace, what’s next… Ah, right, I wanted to try making a tunnel to turn into a cave. I’m a dungeon, even if I don’t have spooky ruins, a cursed forest should have at least one cave. I think some of the spiders would live there, too.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

I don’t think Cytra would, she tends to hang out on the branch closest to where my core is within the tree, but her less minded servants seem less comfortable just sitting on random webs.

As for all the soil that I’ve been displacing while digging, I was initially just erasing it, even though I didn’t get any mana from doing so, but I think I have an idea of what to do with it now. Compression.

Indeed, the only thing that separates beach sand from beach rocks is how compressed they are, so, I’ve been thinking, what if I compress the dirt into… Compacted dirt?

I’m trying that right now, and I think part of the problem is how moist the dirt is, plus how ‘diluted’ it is. Even if I wrung every last drop of water, every bit of loose organic mass, all I’m left with is ‘less dirt’ than I started with.

Hmm… Maybe a different approach, I’ll make dirt… blocks. Compress the dirt into blocklike shapes, like legos. They don’t deform until I let go of them, so if I just… Don’t let go of them, they’ll keep their shape.

It’s working, kind of. An hour of work and I have a stack of sixteen or so blocks of dirt, varying degrees of wetness. It’s slowed down digging tremendously to try and save the material instead of just atomizing it or whatever it is I do.

I think I should try making clay out of the dirt. Shouldn’t be hard, it’s just separating clay from the rest of the dirt using water… I could make my tentacles the ‘bowl’, use water mana like this…

The sun set at some point and I had to switch to manavision, but I’ve done it. From the sixteen dirt blocks I started with, plus a couple gallons of water worth of water mana, I’ve got some.

Two big lumps of clay, equivalent in mass to two whole dirt blocks from earlier…

That’s a pathetic rate. Also, how am I even going to use it? I don’t have a way to harden-

Yes I do! I did it earlier with the dirt when I sucked the water out, right? Claystone is just clay, but with no water, right, plus a ton of compression? I can do both of those things. Rocks, here I come!

…

I have a rock. One. It’s actually more or less the size of a cinder block in terms of overall volume, and I have no way to measure density, hardness, or anything like that. But it is a rock. And I have placed it in the garden. Based on yesterday and last night’s efforts, even if I’d started this method when I began digging the lake, I’d only have…

Five more rocks. Ok, so my dirt to rock efficiency scale is like… 2%. Fuck.

“Master… Why are you struggling so much with rocks?”

Because I can’t make them efficiently or easily enough for what I want. It’s frustrating.

“The memories… They seem to think dungeons do that sort of thing with complete ease, is it something you’re missing?”

I don’t think any part of this is easy, so I don’t know. Probably. Even if I went about turning plant and blood mana into dirt, using water mana to extract clay, then compressing and draining the clay into claystone, it still takes drastically more mana than I can safely harvest in a day just to get one rock of that size.

“Master… None of those things you just said match how those people thought dungeons work. The druid and leader especially, they thought dungeons just used what they already found around them, without creating anything new.”

Hmm… That concerns me more, then, because that implies there is a whole lot of ‘dungeon stuff’ I will never know. I don’t suppose the druid or anyone else in there knew how to make matter from nothing using magic?

“I don’t know what matter means. It’s not a word they used.”

Then how did they organize mana, hmm… no, different question. What type of mana is a bone made of?

“Bone mana.”

Metal?

“Metal mana.”

Fire?

“Master… I don’t know what information you’re fishing for at this point… But… they organized magic into different categories than they organized mana.”

What categories are there?

“The druid’s spellweaving was called Life magic, concerned with Air, Blood, Bone, Plant, Water, and some other types I can’t quite make out. Used to do stuff related to life. It’s like that. Arcana uses fire, water, some other stuff…”

I think I get it… Then, what’s the point of that? Am I a life dungeon or something? Only able to use Life magic!?

“No… It’s… I don’t know… I’m sorry…”

No, no, I didn’t mean to sound so angry… I’m sorry to you, my queen. So… Do you know if you can use any magic, with this new information?

“...no…”

I won’t force you to answer… but… you’ve reached the point where you can do stuff like that with your telepathic voice? Interesting…

Life magic, Arcana… I’d bet they’re divided up based on what types people are good at. That girl, what was her name… Erika… that’s right, Erika. She was probably a druid not because of any sort of class system like in games, but simply because the type of magic she used and was best at using was life magic. Then a wizard would just be someone good with arcana, a necromancer would use death, that sort of thing…

So fine, then, let's assume I’m only ‘good’ at using life magic, next steps… Experiment with life magic. How so? I’ve done everything I can think of with what mana I have on hand, so nothing of that sort. But that wilting spell Erika used against me… It’s cruel, but I need a test subject… Hmm… I’ll make one especially for this.