Construction, or deconstruction, depending on one's opinion, was going well. I absolutely could just reform the walls and floor of the room to my will, but that would cost mana. And why would I waste mana digging a hole when Rab could do that for me!

Unfortunately, I had nothing that could then take the rocks he created and form them into something useful. Mana could do that, but again, same point applies. At most, Mimi was able to stack them into vague piles. Not exactly what I was going for.

Originally, I was planning on having Rab cut me out a series of alcoves lining either wall, and then within those alcoves I would create a statue or something. However, I quickly noticed a flaw in that plan, as one of the walls was being shared with the room next door. And I couldn’t just keep my core within my original alcove and use the wall the humans came through, since that wall was also likely being shared with the neighboring room.

Since my mind was stuck on statues however, I tried to figure out ways that I could implement them within my room while maintaining some form of aesthetic. In the end, I settled on just having the room act as a sort of island. With Rab digging a trench out along the border of my room, save for an edging path between the two exits at the corner, I could create guardian statues along the edge of the island instead of within the walls.

The layout began taking shape in my mind. Rab continued to dig out the perimeter, and I had Mimi lay out several piles of rocks where the statues would eventually go. The ceiling wasn’t that tall, and I didn’t want to restrict the movement of the statues by making them too big.

Because obviously the statues would move, that was just a given.

Which begged the question, what would they look like? What would their weapons be? I mean typically you’d see statues wielding swords and the like, but in reality I don’t think I could justify a frail stone sword. And a baseball bat just seemed wrong for fantasy. I could just have them all without weapons. Swinging fists around still hurt when you were ten feet tall and made entirely of stone.

I heard some splashing coming from the pond and went to investigate. A large number of my fishies surrounded the remains of the three human corpses they were using as food. Even my trout were there. Well, one trout, one barracuda. The one that ate the dead magic cores didn’t evolve, while the other opted to go for ‘bigger is better’ and just changed into a big fish with pointy teeth.

They splashed again, clearly directing the water to the clothes and armor we had reclaimed from the intruders. My eyes drew to the mace, sitting nearby. Suddenly, a wicked idea formed.

I see. Thank you for directing me. I told the fish.

They splashed angrily.

What?

More splashing.

If you wanna say something, learn to speak to me.

I could be patient and try and sus out what they had to say, but this was my dungeon, and I treated it like how I would with any dream I had.

By hyperfixating on whatever interested me most at the moment.

I didn’t have time to translate! I needed to create some statues! I had ideas that needed to be made reality!

I started by making Mimi drag the loose stones that weren’t being used as markers over to the statue that would eventually be closest to my new alcove. She piled them up for me, and I melded them together as she went. Before we got too far, I had Mimi adorn the pile of rocks with the armor the leader paladin once wore. Eventually, the pile reached the approximate volume I desired, and I sent Mimi away to do the same with a second pile on the mirroring side of the room, along with the swordsman's armor.

I pictured the leader paladin as he was when he still lived. I imagined what he looked like under the armor. Each muscle, every detail as exact as I wanted it to be. The stones of my dungeon molded to his form, sliding through and filling in the armor as if he had never taken it off. An hour later, after it was absolutely perfect, Mimi placed its mace back in its hands.

The statue wasn’t animated yet. I didn’t know how to do that just yet, and I had a lot more to do without wasting it experimenting. Over the course of a few minutes, I manually had the statue curl its fingers around the handle of the thing and hold it upright in front of its face. Well, ‘face’. I couldn’t remember his facial features really well, so his head was just a smooth shape, reminiscent of a mannequin. I smiled when Mimi placed his triangular hat back on.

Perfect.

And in my eyes, it truly was. There wasn’t a detail I didn’t want or want for. This stone statue wore the paladin's armor. And now he would use it to protect me. Well, eventually anyways. I had to do this at least once more.

But I just couldn’t. There was one more thing I needed to do first!

Practically vibrating with excitement, I gathered all the power I had within me. The largest pile of rocks, situated not-so-coincidentally behind my paladin statue, rumbled slightly with movement. The stones flowed like water, clacking against each other as they climbed up higher and higher. Air rushed out from the gaps between them until the core of the rising pile became pure stone. The legs formed first. Stone armor melded with the stone body, forming one giant body. Further and further I went, forming every bit of stone exactly as I saw it before me.

And just like that, a giant, 8 meter tall replica of the human sized paladin statue loomed over its smaller counterpart. It looked exactly the same as the statue, including its armor, cloth, and every muscle. A blank head bowed slightly in prayer to the head of the mace it wielded.

I laughed maniacally. This looked awesome! In the literal sense of the word too! This thing inspired awe within me! My poor human hands could never have made something so perfect! Being able to directly translate my thoughts to reality was such a cheat!

I formed the swordsman in much the same way. His pose felt a little off, since he had a shield, unlike the paladin, but whatever. Eventually, when I was happy with his pose, I formed his giant mirroring statue behind him as well.

And then, with a malicious grin, I wrenched my hands with a savage tearing motion.

The statue crumbled from the waist up, collapsing into the trench Rab had already dug.

Rab looked up at the carnage with surprise. He didn’t want to have to re-dig out all that stone!

Relax, this is intentional. I told him. It’s going to stay like that. After all, losers shouldn’t be revered.

The paladin killed Faux. And for that, I respected his strength. The swordsman however, died to Rab without having accomplished anything for his team. It didn’t feel right for me to show him the same respect as I did the paladin. I was a dungeon after all, and that meant I had a role to play.

It didn’t mean that I missed Faux any more than I did my guppies. His worth to me was nothing more than a pair of opposable thumbs, and now that Mimi had those capabilities, his worth sort of dropped off. Supposedly I could continue to question him about details of this world, but I kind of rather gather the information for myself. Maybe I could turn it into an adventure of sorts!

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Ha, that’s funny! A dungeon! Taking on an adventure!

I considered it for a minute. Then, I sighed. As much as I wanted to, I was rather attached to my core, pun intended. That meant the only part of the adventure I could participate in was the ‘giving the quest’ portion of it. I suppose I could give quests to my own monsters, but it just didn’t feel the same.

Dreams never required me to control all of the characters within it! The characters in dreams were supposed to do their own things! Sure, I could ask them to do things if I wanted to, but that would degrade the dream.

Being able to control every aspect as I could while being a dungeon was boring! There needed to be some sort of external force to react to! Some sort of storyline to follow! So what kind of storyline was I trying to fit into here? Some sort of mushy, feel good “the dungeon is our friend” style story? Nah, that didn’t seem fun. Not enough conflict.

I found myself wishing for the church to return again. Being allowed to actively antagonize some sort of organized force felt good. Maybe that made me sound like the bad guy, but I was a dungeon! I’m a bad guy by design!

So what was I doing, being all friendly to Abby and Owyn, and by extension Setterton? Simple. I needed to grow more powerful. And having allies meant I’d have an easier time doing so.

However… now that I thought about it, wasn’t there another way for me to grow more powerful, while also experiencing the joys of conflict? Enemy dungeons! Sure, each one wasn’t particularly difficult by itself, but I noticed a pattern with the dungeons that Faux conquered. The deeper down I went, the more powerful they seemed to be. Surely that couldn’t be a coincidence!

I decided that exploiting more dungeons would be my next source of entertainment. Of course Mimi would go, but Rab was rather stuck where he was. His massive shell couldn’t fit through the doors. If I was right though, and the dungeons really were getting stronger the deeper we went, I didn’t want Mimi to go alone. However, the only other minions I had were the guppies. And of the three or four dozen that had land mobility, only like four of them could last outside of water long enough to be useful, and of those, none of them were properly equipped for a fight. Not on land at least.

I had an idea then, and teleported to my pet dungeon.

Its little mouse had properly turned into a giant rat. Something about the size of a cat actually. It still killed the bugs around the room, but now it seemed to be targeting the other, larger creatures it could find as well. Mice, rats, whatever it could find. In terms of fighting ability on land, it was by far more capable than the guppies. I wanted it.

No! My pet dungeon cried. Mine! Die!

I found its pitiful efforts to be rather endearing. However, I wanted the giant rat, and therefore I would have it. In fact, I could also use this opportunity to experiment about the rules of a dungeon even more.

Mimi? If you would please bring my core over to the giant rat down in room five?

Mimi wandered over to my core, picking it up with both human hands. Now that I had something to compare it to, I noticed that my core did indeed seem to be larger than before. Still a marble, but like, a large marble. Mimi held me gently, cupping me in her hands as she scuttled through my dungeon.

The giant rat hissed to the air before disappearing into the hexagonal dungeons domain, hidden from my view. I smile a bit, and attempted my first experiment.

Mimi, would you mind sharing with me what you see?

Through the connection I had with Mimi, I began to see a new image form in my head. Like a second set of eyes, I saw through Mimi’s eyes. Somewhat funny enough, the secondary vision felt rather natural to me, since I used to do something similar in my dreams to look behind me.

The black veil wasn’t there in my secondary view. Instead, what I saw was a pyramid of rocks with a pink, hexagonal crystal poke out of the top like a sort of spire. The giant rat stood in front of the crystal, claws out and at the ready. It looked directly at Mimi, hissing. Through my normal vision, I watched as Mimi stepped into the black veil, her legs and lower carapace vanishing within.

Eep! The dungeon squeaked.

At its command, the giant rat spun around and snatched the pink core between its teeth. It darted away, running in leaps for one of the exits of the room. Mimi gave chase, much to the pink cores horror.

I grinned. Time for the second experiment.

Mimi, please touch my core to the rat.

Mimi adjusted her hold on my core, pinching it between three fingers and reaching forward. Her speed wasn’t much better than the rats, but it was enough. My core slowly entered the enemy cores domain.

The instant it was fully inside however, I felt my own domain disappear behind me. My vision restricted itself to the immediate area around my core, as well as whatever Mimi could see. Distantly, I felt Rab react with equal parts surprise and anger.

Relax buddy. I told him. Experiment gone wrong. I’ll be back soon.

This was good to know. When entering an enemy domain, my own domain was entirely restricted within theirs. I could absolutely muscle my domain back, beating down the enemy domain, but that cost mana. Well, more mana than it would take just claiming unclaimed space. I would keep that in mind and never let my core enter another domain’s territory again.

Mimi finally caught up with the rat, and touched me to the back of its fur.

Die! The enemy core shouted at me.

Obey… I muttered.

No. The giant rat responded in time with its core. The rat pulled a sudden stop, spinning in place. It lunged for Mimi, placing the pink core against her leg.

Obey! It demanded.

I didn’t even need to assist Mimi.

She looked down on the enemy core in disgust. Weak…

She placed me back against the rat.

Obey. I said, a little harder than last time. And with a rush of mana leaving me, the rat came under my control.

No! The core shouted. Obey! Mine! Obey!

I smiled gently at my pet core. The rat wasn’t strong enough alone to refute the pink cores claim to it, so I had to aid it somewhat. Gently, of course, I didn’t want to damage my little pet. I didn’t know if I could, through the proxy of my new minion, but I didn’t want to chance it. I gave my new rat minion its first order, to place the pet core back in the room it was originally from. I then also asked Mimi to find a random mouse or something. She did, and captured it with her crab hands after a short chase. She followed the rat into the other room while I spent some mana reclaiming my previous territory.

My giant rat placed the pink core down against the pyramid of rocks and backed off.

No! The core shouted. Come back! Obey me! It sounded rather desperate.

So I gave it an offering. I had Mimi place the mouse she captured against the core.

Obey! It pleaded.

And the mouse fell under its control. With fervor, it scrambled to release itself from Mimi’s grip. Once free, it collected the pink core and scampered off.

Oh… I thought, watching it run. Maybe I should have tried to trap it. Oh well, lesson learned.

I wondered if there was some sort of material that dungeons couldn’t manipulate. If I could get my hands on that, I could trap my pet dungeons where I wanted to!

My domain ballooned outwards, far faster than the mouse could run. It traveled down the pathways into deeper and deeper caves, when suddenly, I encountered a dungeon blocking my path.

A powerful dungeon.

My consciousness slammed into it with full force, giving me the equivalent feeling of running face first into a pole. I quickly shook it off however and teleported my avatar over there to take a look.

The inky veil stood in a doorway, exactly halfway through. Its domain and mine met in the center, both harder than the stone walls surrounding me. I felt its attention turn to me. It didn’t seem impressed.

Kill. It grunted.

Nothing happened right away, but soon, half a dozen giant rats gathered at the entrance. Most of them looked the same, but one of them looked nothing like the others. Its proportions were closer to that of a human, with longer legs and larger hands. It walked on two feet and carried a stalagmite by the tip as if it were wielding a club. It sniffed the air and looked around while being surrounded by its lesser cousins. Once it found nothing of interest, it screeched and pointed its club further in.

The rats were on the move.

I grinned, teleporting my avatar back to the main room. I quickly glanced at the maps to confirm what I suspected.

I now occupied every last room from here down to the end where Abby and Owyn had marked. Going further, going into the other dungeon, was uncharted territory.

Which meant obviously I had to go there. The only problem was that I was severely outnumbered.

For now…