14)

Then there’s my other plan. Late that night a dish of fresh diced squirrel bits was pushed out from below the fridge as an offering. Buttercup eyeballed it with suspicion. But the greedy monster soon begins to fill its gullet.

“Yes. Feed my little friend. Get fat and slow.”

The fatter the better as far as I am concerned. And getting used to eating the food I give it so I can add in something lethal later on.

There doesn't seem to be any difference if I add goo cheese to the meat. Magical beasts seem to be immune to the lure of magical dungeon food. Recreated meat however seems just suit them just fine.

I make it to ninth level before I run out of squirrels. Once there they drop down to two points, and I’m in a hurry.

Time for Randy. One of the local raccoons had managed to catch and eat one of my roach gatherers and was making a determined effort to track down more of them. As magical beasts were worth more points, he seems a good target.

For him, it was an open panel in the back of the house, and a gauntlet of full-sized spike bottomed plates. Nothing but the best for my little friend.

It had taken a lot of material to build all that up. But since I now know about the local humans obsession for low cut, well groomed land. It had been a service to cut down the open field of wild plants in the rear yard of my hose. Each stalk and leaf nibbled down and carted off by my mice minions.

Best of all it didn’t even bother Iris since her neighbor had been cutting the grass in her front yard for years.

He did seem confused when she thanked him. She even wagged a finger at him and pretended to scold him a bit for going into her back yard without permission when he tried to deny it.

At least this Hector gentleman seems to be doing something to help an old woman. I should do something nice for him. Like, send a horde of roaches over one night to clean his house.

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Randy made it pretty deep into the house before he found an entire pile of goo cheese that I had left for his last meal. The sound of the washing machine and drying being turned on by a set of mice made him nervous enough to bolt for the exit. But he had already passed the traps on his way in.

When Ivy came down the stairs to find out why her appliances have turned on all by themselves, the sound of the machines managed to drown out any sounds Randy made as he died.

[ Congratulations. You are now a copper rank dungeon core. Rank 1]

[ You have acquired new abilities.]

[ You have acquired new spells. ]

[ You may choose a starting category of monsters. ]

[ You are being pulled out of your locus for a meeting. ]

“What… what?”

Once again I found myself in a meeting room with my old green friend.

At least he seemed happy to see me.

"Tark, good to see you. You've been doing a wonderful job developing your core. You weren't quite a record setter at first. The automaton cores took an early lead, but you raced ahead in the late stages.” He shook his head sadly. “Or so I was told. When you started in with the copper spikes I couldn’t bear to watch the daily reports.”

I grunted at him. “Why don’t you skip to explaining why I'm back up here..." I tried not to feel too much hope. "Is Alelan done with her charge? Can we be together now?"

The green angel gave me a sad smile. "No Tark, she still seems intent on continuing to guide her little girl. I mainly brought you up to congratulate you and give you mental health break. A chance to talk to someone before you dive back into that world.”

I took a deep breath. “Yeah. A conversation sounds good. How about we talk about why I got dropped off in some old woman's kitchen instead of down some deep dark hole like most dungeon cores start off in? Or at least that's how i thought it worked."

Clemons struggled to hold down a smile. “Oh, that was officially a sort of accident. You should have ended up down in the sewers near her house. But one...” He held up his finder. “I was able to convince a few friends that we shouldn't treat one of our few volunteers so badly by sinking him into raw sewage..."

I nodded. “I appreciate that. Was there a two?”

The angel nodded again. “And two. Iris Deslover is the only other living relative of your Alelan's ward. Other than the girl's mother, who the girl does not get along with. With the girl turning eighteen soon and clinging to a promise Miss Deslover gave her as a little girl… well I still can’t promise you will see your wife, but this is the best I could do to try to bring you back together.”

He managed to get to his feet by the time I got around the desk. I was never the one to hang back on a well deserved, or needed, hug. He deserved to get one and I needed to give him one.

“Is there anything else you need Tark?”

I might have sniffled a bit. "Nope, just get me back down there. I got a dungeon to build for Alelan's little girl. And thank Clemons. You're a better man than I would have guessed and I apologize for all those things I thought about you."

That got an amused look from him. Then I got sent back down to Earth.