My core has grown quite a bit. Right now, it’s about halfway between a baseball and a basketball. So, like a kiddy sized football? Man, not having a frame of reference sucked. Doubly so for stuff like gunpowder. I knew some random facts about gunpowder, but not nearly enough to know how to make it from scratch. I knew it needed sulfur, but how the hell did I make that? Could you just find it lying around? I didn’t think so, but that wasn’t my expertise anyways. My engineering background was far more physics based than chemistry.

Well, to that benefit anyhow, I knew how light behaved very well. High School and college did me well in those respects, so explaining how night vision worked took a little time, but I did manage to get the point across to Owyn.

And I did have to explain it too. I couldn’t just show him my admittedly fuzzy memories from school and expect him to know everything I knew. He’d just forget everything by the time the memory session was over. I suspected it had something to do with how memory worked. Something about memory being well worn pathways in the brain. So Owyn could remember concepts, like a classroom, or a teacher, because he could correlate those concepts with things he recognized. But he couldn’t tell you what a proton was because he had nothing to compare it to. Maybe, over a long enough period of time, I’d be able to just download memories directly into his brain, but for now, I had to teach him the long way.

Probably for the best. With the way he’s muttering to himself so often, I think I may have given him a touch of legitimate eldritch madness.

Kinda a weird feeling, being the eldritch being rather than the hapless mortal. I liked it.

Anyways, Owyn was now staring at the great wide world of the stadium sized cavern, now with heat vision. The mere concept of ‘heat is something that can be visible’ just blew him away. He’d entirely forsaken his helmet to the workers that were milling about in favor of just seeing things through heat alone.

Take a few steps and look at your foot prints. I suggested with a cheeky smirk.

Owyn did as I said, staring at the ground with fascination. I obviously couldn’t see what he could see, but I had no doubt he was marveling at his own footprints as they faded over time behind him.

Actually, what was stopping me from seeing in infrared?

I couldn’t find an argument against it, so I decided I wanted to see in infrared! Suddenly, the world went blue, with hints of green and red. The body of Owyn reached down to the ground, placing an open palm on the stone he stood on. After waiting a few seconds, he let go, marveling at the imprint he left behind.

I left him to his devices for a while, judging myself. Heat vision felt like a rather easy thing to do. Why was that? Where was the line drawn for ‘easy magic’ versus ‘hard magic’? Was there a difference between humans and dungeons?

I alter the terrain behind Owyn, raising a thin pillar of stone to about waist height. Again, an easy task. Standing right in front of his face, I point a finger gun between his eyes.

Fire. I mutter to myself.

“Huh?” Owyn stands upright, looking down on my core tucked beneath his arm. He grins. “You’re green!”

FIRE! I grunt with exertion.

A small candle flame appears at the end of my finger. With the relative coolness of the cavern, it practically acts like a flashbang to Owyn’s thermal vision, startling him. He cries out in surprise, stumbling backwards until the pillar I made rams him right between the cheeks. Mycroft laughs, as much as her chittering allows.

However, I crouch in front of the pair, holding my chest. The pain is dull. Bearable even, but it’s there. It makes it hard to breathe, not that I have to in the first place. It’s just a natural reaction from being human for so long. Like my dreams though, I recognize the fact that the pain isn’t real. I command my body to ignore the limits of being human and to stop requiring breath. The pain ebbs, fading to nothing, and I’m able to unconsciously resume regular activities.

“Asshole.” Owyn mutters, holding his ass. Mycroft chitters, jabbing him with her tentacles.

Thanks for not dropping me. I say blandly. I’m still thinking about the arbitrary line between easy magic and hard magic.

Owyn rolls over, exposing his belly to Mycroft. She apparently takes that as an invitation to sit on his lap. Owyn yelps in surprise, trying to get out from under the giant crab, but it’s too late. She has him pinned. With playful chitters, she swipes her tentacles around his face, causing Owyn to bat them away like a cat. My core rests on the nearby moss. I give Mycroft a command to roll me over to Owyn.

I take it you like the new spell?

“It’s great.” Owyn grunts with exertion. “Leaves out a lot of the details, but at least I can see stuff now.”

And how does the cavern look? Were you able to make out the other dungeons?

Owyn snorts. “It’s actually kind of weird being able to see more than ten feet away from myself. But yeah, I can see them, for the most part. Mercy’s undead are… weird. Their joints glow more than the rest of them. Otherwise, the bodies are just blue, like the background. They’re actually difficult to make out if they stand still.”

That’d be the friction. I surmise. Can you tell where her core is?

“No clue.”

Bah. Useless then. I thought she would glow with heat a little, like I was, but maybe my core was just borrowing heat from Owyn. Oh well, I’m sure I can draw her out eventually.

The question was just becoming how? Subsonar’s reports were constant, never changing. A new balance had been achieved between the five great dungeons. Mercy, myself, plus the three others. Mercy controlled the center with her undead, jealousy hoarding any newly spawned dungeons for herself. Her mana was growing steadily, but her forces were weak. The other three dungeons wanted to grow as well, so they challenged her for the dungeons closest to them. They’d lose troops, Mercy’s lose troops, she’d reanimate the dead, and everyone was back to square one.

The only dungeon she didn’t challenge was me. And it didn’t take a genius to understand why.

I wanted her dead. She recognized that I wanted her dead. However, so long as she didn’t pose a challenge to me directly, or to my humans, enthralled or not, I wouldn’t have an opportunity to attack her either. Was she aware that I didn’t control most of the villagers? I couldn’t organize the villagers to attack her under my command, not like I could with my thralls, who would do so not just without question, but with fervor if I so decided.

Of course, that all changed if Mercy decided to attack me.

She wouldn't dare attack me for fear of her own life, but then again, she wouldn’t not attack me if her life depended on it. Which meant in order to goad her into attacking me, and therefore getting the villagers to assist in her downfall, I needed to become a veritable threat that couldn’t be ignored.

Give me back to Mimi somehow. I told Owyn. And work on the cannon spells. You have four cores. Make them count.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“It should actually be very easy.” Owyn said, pulling me back just as I was about to leave. “The protection spell is the easiest. Protection from an explosion, in one very specific, concentrated direction. It’ll take some quiet for me to concentrate, but building that spell isn’t the issue. The problem comes from the explosive spells. I can convince them to explode, but the problem happens once I succeed. After a magic core is created, it instantly casts the spell it was created for. For simple spells, like light, or creating water, nothing special happens. But if you want something violent? You’d better be prepared for it to activate instantly.”

I considered the implications. Yes, I can see how that’d be a problem. Certainly, it’ll attract attention-

“That’s not it. What I’m saying is, if you want the biggest explosion possible for a core to create, we’ll get one shot. No practice. Well, one shot per core at least. After that, the core will exhaust their mana and die, regardless of if it actually works or not.”

Ah. So you’re saying we have three shots. Period.

“Period.” Owyn repeated.

But you can guarantee they’ll work?

“I can guarantee the third one.” Owyn said. “The first two… they’ll be close enough.”

It’ll do.

I did intend to leave him with that. I had other matters to attend to after all, Damian was catching bats for me to convert, and I had a few in the back waiting for their evolutions. I should be focusing on those, since it was the most effective use of my mana, however the topic of magic entrapped me. Doing magic in my dreams was merely a matter of course. I literally did it in my sleep. However, it destabilized the dream, causing me to wake up. Doing magic here though? No such risk.

Mycroft finished playing with Owyn, and settled for petting him, which he passively accepted. I crouched down over him.

Why does magic hurt sometimes? I ask.

“Hm?”

Magic. I snapped my fingers, pretending a candle flame would appear at the end. Some things are easy, like shaping my territory. But summoning fire hurts. Why?

“It hurts you?” Owyn raised an eyebrow. “Why?”

I irked. I’m literally asking you!

Owyn smiled, but then looked thoughtful. He came to a conclusion rather quickly.

“Maybe that’s why magic cores have a lifespan, but dungeon cores don’t?”

Care to elaborate?

“We use magic through the medium of dungeon cores. Yet, after a set amount of use, dependant on the user, the spell, and the core, the magic core dies. It, uh, runs out of battery?”

Yes. I praised him for his correct use of the saying.

Owyn nods. “So what if dungeons could always use magic, but they don’t since it shortens their lifespan? What if, by forcing cores to use magic, we’re actually the ones killing them?”

Ironic then. I said. Dungeons enthrall humans to have bodies, and humans enthrall dungeons to cast magic.

“We don’t enthrall dungeons!”

I cock an eyebrow. Hypocrite.

“It’s not!”

It’s enthrallment if a dungeon subjugates a human, but it’s conversion if humans subjugate a dungeon? Sounds hypocritical to me.

Owyn recoiled at that, but seemingly accepted it. “So does you using magic mean you’re going to die?”

I don’t think so. I observed my hands, though the gesture was rather meaningless. I mean, any damage I have I can just repair. I think that enthralled cores are missing some form of ego. They lose the will to repair themselves, so they degrade over time.

Owyn pulls out the core he was using for his thermal vision. A green plumbus. He considers it for a while. “This suddenly feels less right.”

Pah, who cares. You farm animals, don’t you? Raise them for slaughter? What’s the difference? Some form of sentience? Then where’s the justification in war? Humans all seem to make this whole ‘morality’ thing to be out bigger than it really needs to be. I want something. You’re not willing to give it to me. Conflict ensues. Simple as that.

Owyn dropped his hand. He rolls his head to look out into the cavern’s void. No doubt eyeing up Mercy and the other dungeons in the distance. “It’s not that simple. You need to care for people’s feelings. You need to consider negotiating for resources so that conflict never arises. I’ll agree with you about the farm animals being raised for slaughter, but it’s different for them. They can’t think like you and I can. They’re not human.”

I grunted. Humans. Is that where the line is drawn? I’ll have to disagree with you there. Now what happens?

“What?”

I disagree with you. I’m human. Now what? Do we go to war? Am I going to be forced to subjugate you?

Owyn rubbed my core a little, thinking. “I think I’m beginning to see your point.”

I stand fully upright. Peace is only ever dictated by the man with the bigger, better stick. Humans started with spears, and then we moved to swords, bows, and now I’m introducing the cannon. We have the bigger stick, which means in this enclosed space, I am the one who dictates the terms of peace. I alone decide when we go to war.

I teleported away then, leaving Owyn with my not-so-cryptic message. Perhaps I had been a little on the nose with him, but it was important for him to know. Only the powerful get to decide things. Everyone else is merely forced to follow suit.

Time to put my God-like powers to use.

The first, obvious target of my attention went to the bats. My little bombardiers. They needed to be strong fliers, capable of carrying heavy loads. Nothing more. I held air superiority, Damian and Subsonar would protect them if necessary.

Next, some bits of my mana went to the guppies up in the upper caves. I gave them no direction, fully intending for their individualities to shine through. The large ones would get larger, the toothy ones would get sharper, whatever they wanted. They could draw inspiration from the little biology I knew, forming monstrosities of the deep and from fictions. Nothing was off limits to them.

Mimi and Rab’s children were next. Not all of them, unfortunately, just the ones that had shown promise. The leather worker anthropomorphised, their body slowly growing into one like a human child, with dexterous hands to better assist with their work. Several of the friendliest crabs I likewise allowed to form human bodies, more matching what Mimi looked like. Crab centaurs that would play and assist the humans in whatever tasks they wanted.

Finally I focused on the warriors. The ones that had gone out with the humans on their expeditions. The ones brave enough to face the outside world and the dangers it held. They were granted unique evolutions, according to their tastes. Their claws became hammers, swords, shields, and lances. They couldn’t grow too much yet, but I wanted them to at least match ratkin in size, for protection.

But this one. This specific crab, apparently, had something to tell me.

I’d only noticed it recently, a few hours ago, when Owyn first tried out the thermal vision. He’d spotted Owyn working directly with me as I shaped stone cannons on the walls and out of the stone floor, trying out designs to Oywn’s liking. Owyn spotted the passive observer far away from the castle, meaning it was certainly following him, and had likely done so before.

But even now, it maintained distance. Just watching Owyn and Mycroft. Owyn set my core off to the side when Mycroft finally got off him. The pair fully went into play mode, with Owyn chasing Mycroft around, ducking and dodging around her limbs to tag her underbelly, right where she was ticklish. The rule was, Mycroft could bar Owyn, but not hold him. A very tiring looking game of tag between two people.

I crouched next to the secret observer. Their eyes flicked back and forth between my forgotten core and the two playmates.

What do you want? I asked it.

The small mimic crab leaped, scuttling in a circle in a panic. It probably didn’t know it had been spotted. A fair assessment, since Owyn only recently became less blind than a bat.

I held my hand out at head level for it, smiling as it passed back and forth through my hand. It almost looked like I was petting it.

Sorry to scare you. But you know you’re allowed to approach them, right? And me?

The mimic crab violently shook its body, like it was shaking its head. It was shy. Well, it wasn’t like I was forcing any of the mimic crabs to be friendly with humans. I just insinuated that was the best way for them to evolve.

What’s the matter? I asked. Anything I can help with?

The crab looked at its claws, clicking them together in thought. It looked up at the castle, then back to Owyn and my core. Back up to the castle. I followed its gaze to where a few of the humans were investigating the cannon we’d formed earlier.

Regardless of if it was this crab's intention or not, I suddenly got an idea.

Do you want to become a cannon?

The mimic crab hesitated. But, after gathering courage, it nodded with its full body.

I grinned like a mad scientist. Excellent. We’ll start by making your shell as hard and tough as physically possible.