I awoke on the floor of the cave, next to rather large purple crystal. It probably would have been as large as me if I had been able to stand, but right now that seemed out of my range of capabilities.

  “Holy shit it worked,” I heard Samuel say from somewhere nearby. “Hey man can you hear me?” I nodded, I felt both energized and exhausted at the same time. Must be the connection to Sarah or something. Sam came over to me and knelt down, a look of guilt and concern on his face.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” I barely got out, my tongue feeling heavy in my mouth.

  “There was a lot of damage to your body and your mind after you used that skill. There was nothing else that we could do and I had to take a risk.”

  I squinted up at him, “What did you do?” So far as I could tell I was still in one piece. He hadn’t found a demon and made a deal with it had he?

  “I acted as your mediary and made a deal with the dungeon core on your behalf.” I sighed, looks like I might not have been to far off.

  “Greetings human.” A melodic voice said, it sounded as though it was coming from inside my mind.

  “Did you hear that?” I asked Sam, he looked at me concerned and shook his head.

  “He did not,” The voice continued. “in order to save you he had to make you the new master of the dungeon, and by proxy, the only one who can speak to me.”

  Great now I had a dungeon talking in my head, hopefully Cilendrial couldn’t do the same.

  “I can,” I heard Cilendrial say, though she sounded distant, “I will only speak in your mind when necessary though, since the thought of it seems to bring you discomfort.”

  Fucking outstanding, I had voices in my head. I checked my surroundings. Nope, no padded walls in sight, this was either still real or a really convincing trip.

  I sat up, Sam backing off a bit. “So I now have two things that can communicate with me without anyone hearing, well three if you count the vibes I get from Sarah.” I got a message of relaxation and the concept of being happy to not be soul bound to a vegetable. Ah yes things were working great.

  “So Sam, how did you know about the whole binding me to a core thing?” I asked stretching out my legs before I stood up. My knees creaked in protest, but when hadn’t they?

  The look of guilt won over the concern, it seemed that seeing me stand up was a good enough sign of well being for him. “It's ... complicated.” He said, rubbing his neck. I made a, get on with it, gesture and he sighed.

  “I was only telling you all part of the truth when I said that my family were medieval enthusiasts. The truth is my parents are part of an order that believes that our world was part of a larger one. They trained me and my siblings in the event that the worlds were brought back together.”

  “Well they weren’t wrong.” I said, man laying on that stone hadn’t done my neck any favours.

  “What?” Sam asked, looking confused. I told him about my talk with Cilendrial. “They were right.” He said looking down. “Wait, did she say how many people would be sacrificed in the collapse of the spell?”

  “No, she seemed to only have a slight idea of what was going on, it seems that whoever cast the spell didn’t bother to inform their patron gods what they were doing.” 

  He shook his head at this, “So we don’t know how likely it is that our families are part of the people who die to this spell.”

  This made me pause, I hadn’t even thought about that. “Well, we also don’t know when the spell is going to go down. So for all we know we might be able to find a way to go back and live out our lives, or even find a way to bring them here if we want to stay.”

  He thought about this for a moment, “Well then I guess the only option is to move forward.”

  I nodded. “So,” I said internally, directing my thoughts at the core. “You said something about me being made the master of the dungeon?”

  “Correct,” I heard the core reply. “Since you are not an entity of the dungeon you couldn’t be made the new chieftain, so I had to set up a different connection for us.”

  “So what exactly is our connection? I haven’t exactly gotten a rundown so far.”

  “I am the core of the dungeon, an entity with the power to change, upgrade and cortrol things within my boundaries. As my master, you now control what I do and when I do it.”

  This whole master of the core thing wasn’t sitting well with me, the concept of an intelligent entity being my slave left a bad taste in my mouth. “Is there a way to give you freedom to do as you wish? Kind of like guidelines that you can do what you want inside of.”

  It took a moment for the core to respond, “None of the chieftains ever tried to do that, though the system doesn’t have any rules against it as far as I am aware.”

  “How about this, since you have a lot more experience with being a dungeon than I do, you think about things that would benefit my party and your dungeon, then talk to me about them. If I agree with you then we can go through with the changes, if not we can discuss the idea.”

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  Once again the core mulled this over for a few moments before replying, “This is unprecedented, but I shall do my best. Would you at least like to hear the options that are currently available?”

  “Sure, why not.”

“You have 50 dungeon points that you can spend, the options currently available are as follows: You can buy more weapons, but judging on the quality of the ones you and your party possess, I wouldn’t recommend this. You may resurrect the lesser goblins that used to live here. You may spawn new goblins at a lower cost-”

  “You alright?” Samuel asked.

  “What? Oh yeah, just talking with the core. I’m gonna go sit in one of those tents so I don’t look like I’m just completely out of it.”

  “Let me know how that goes.” He said.

  “For five points I can upgrade one of the tents to have a basic bed in it.” The core said.

  “How basic are we talking?” I asked. One of the tents grew in size and the cloth looked like it became less patchy.

  “See for yourself, this is only temporary and will not stay unless you confirm the change.”

  I walked into the tent and found that the floor was covered in a mismatched carpet of pelts. It had a bed on the left hand side that looked, as the core had said, basic. I sat on the bed and found that while it wasn’t nearly as nice as the one Cilendrial had treated me to, and was only about the size of a twin, it was much better than the stone floors.

  “The bed is made of wood and the mattress itself is mostly woven straw mats that have been stuffed into a cloth cover.” I nodded. At the foot of the bed was a small chest that the core said could hold five items or five stacks of items. On the other side of the tent was enough room to fit another bed and chest if I wanted to.

  “Go ahead and upgrade enough tents for the party, and have a fifth one upgraded to include a second bed and chest set for Grathial and Tamani.”

  “In total this will cost 27 points, do you wish to proceed?”

  “Yeah go for it.”

  I felt the air around me hum, and when I stepped out of the tent I found that four other tents had transformed to look identical to mine. I smiled, we finally had a base of operations. I looked around for Samuel and found him kneeling on the floor next to where Kevin was lying. I looked a little closer and saw a look of guilt and grief on Sam’s face. Oh god.

  I walked over to them and as I got closer noticed the rise and fall of Kevin’s chest. At least he wasn’t dead. When I got next to them though, I noticed that Kevin’s left sleeve was tied in a knot just below the elbow. Oh.

  “What happened?” I asked kneeling down opposite Sam.

  “After you hit the chief, he got paralyzed from the waist down. You must have shattered his spine. Kev rushed in to try and kill him before the chief could take me out in his fury. The chief must have seen him coming because he stopped thrashing at me and swung at Kev. He blocked a couple times with your shield but he must not have had much stamina, because he missed blocking the third swing and the chief took his arm off. I was barely able to get up and kill the chief before he ended Kev. Tamani rushed in as soon as the barrier fell, and was able to save him, but she couldn’t do anything about his arm. She was most of the way through dealing with him when you came to the first time, I think that Grathial ended up casting a sleep spell on you so that they could finish working on him.”

  “Is there anything you can do about his arm.” I asked the core.

  “Unfortunately not the only reason I could save you from your comatose state was because of the deal the Samuel made. If he had chosen the other boy, you would be dead to the world.”

  That was twice now that people's lives have been changed since getting here, because of me. One person’s soul and life were now linked to mine, and another person was missing an arm because I couldn’t even finish the chieftain. Not to mention that I once again almost killed myself and left someone soulbound to a vegetable.

  “You saved us you know.” Sam said, interrupting my guilt train.

  “What?”

  “I said, you saved us. We wouldn’t have stood a chance if you hadn’t used whatever skill you pulled out your ass to paralyze the chief.”

  “Sure doesn’t feel like it, Kevin is missing an arm now because the blow couldn’t even finish the job.”

  “Yeah and I couldn’t even get up in time to finish the chief while he was flailing on the ground. If Kev hadn’t gotten his attention I’d probably be dead.”

  “Your point?”

  “My point is we did our best and still didn’t come out unscathed. This world isn’t going to change, and instead of dwelling on this like I have been, we need to work on lowering the chances of this happening again. Hell if we actually keep getting stronger and exploring the world, we might be able to get Kev his arm back, or at least something to act as an arm.”

  I nodded, “How long has he been out?”

  “He woke up for an hour or two while you were passed out, so not long. He was exhausted and losing his arm did a number on his mental state.”

  “We should move him to one of the tents that I upgraded, the stone is going to fuck up his back.”

  Sam looked at me confused, then turned to where the tents were, “Shit, I didn’t even hear or feel anything.”

  “Upgrades to the dungeon are only felt by the core, the dungeon, creatures of the dungeon, and the dungeon’s master.” I heard the core say in my head.

  “Could you stop calling me your master? It feels weird.”

  “What would you have me call you, ma-? Sorry.”

  “Don’t sweat it, you can just call me by my name, Vincent.”

  “I will make sure to do this.”

  I nodded then speaking to Sam said, “Apparently only the dungeon, the core and myself can actually feel when stuff gets changed.”

  Sam nodded, “And how do we upgrade stuff?”

  “There are these points I can spend, but I don’t know how to earn them.”

  “We should probably figure that out. Who knows how long we are going to be down here before we can break the seal that Tamani told us the chief put up. We will probably need to get that farm she told us about going again, just in case.”

  “We should probably get the others back here so that we can try to get a plan together.” I felt a tug at my connection with Sarah and got the feeling she was heading back to the camp.

  “Hey core, can you ask Tamani and Grathial to head back.”

  “They are already heading back with the female member of your party.” Came the response.

  Well I’d spent who knows how long passed out on the floor after the fight, time to get back to work.