Delvers, I want more Delvers, All the Delvers. I feel like I've been robbed of so much easy power gain, all because of one stupid rat, literally in this sense. Every minute they spent in the Dungeon added more supply to my already massive stockpiles of atomic mass. Elements I had some fictional knowledge about, and some I didn't know about, things like Adamantium, Mythril, Tocidium, Delemium, and the sweet, sweet Trancinium. Tocidium is a metal like steel, but it holds an edge and can bypass Dungeon Walls, it's what the arrow heads were made of, Delemium is a metalloid crystal hybrid. I only spent some of it on the morningstar for Jason, but it definitely had an impact. It puts off its own microgravity, making whatever it is attached to or part of weightless in comparison. Trancinium is the star here though, I had to ask Sym what it was and the answer is what makes me want to have people inside me (get your mind out of the gutter) all hours of the day. Trancinium is what increases the capacity of a Core for evolutions. I hadn't had an evolution for two years, but I always went through with it as soon as I noticed it was available because it came with new abilities and better control of my existing abilities.

The secondary goal for all Dungeon Cores, according to Sym is to evolve to control more domain, and eventually ascend to a state vaguely of godhood. I attempted to multiply my Trancinium as I did before with Divinium but it doesn't get the 1.5x boost for consumption. It also isn't a physical material, it was hard to understand at first, but it's like a tax that is gained from people entering into the Dungeon paid by their souls at a very small gain when not in combat. A decent gain when in combat, and a large gain when the soul in question completes the task they have assigned. It's experience. That is how I wrapped my head around it at least. As the Delvers gain experience and improve themselves a bit of the experience they gain is sent to my inventory. That is what is needed for more ascensions, more abilities, more power.

I've been told by Erifis that I seem very strong for a Dungeon Core of seven years. I kind of just shrugged it off and decided to ask Sym about it later on, then forgot about it until we had the chat about all the new elements being added during the Delvers trek. He explained the resources Dungeons use, Masaara, what I call mana - collected from the atmosphere and the souls of the dead, in various forms based on how the pathing to the Core sends it. Which is the gray wispy lines I can see with the purple fire eye I regained the use of when I arrived here, at the entrance to the Spiral of Madness, the circular tunnel with the seamless teleport trap in it.

Some of it filters through the stone formed water drains in the spiral turning to brown mana, the gray Masaara that makes it to my Park of Serenity takes on green tint, and then down through the underwater maze some of it turns to blue mana. The aligned mana can filter through the Dungeon wall inside of the spider pit and enter my Core directly, while the gray unaligned Masaara can't pass through it, continuing down another thousand feet to the bottom chamber where the Delvers took the watervator/getmethehelloutinator/savemyassinator. (Inator at the end of things just makes them sound better.) The unaligned gray Masaara passes through the door of Temptation, my carefully engineered door that is meant to trick greedy people into breaking the rules of my Domain.

It splits off at this point into two solid streams, one goes through the main floor, changing to a lavender alignment or a teal alignment, the other flows up the hidden stairwell across from the pile of very firmly in place gold bars (which are now hollow tungsten bars with a thin layer of gold covering the outside), and into the lair of what I had considered to be my only actual monster. A giant pitch black gecko. She roams the caverns of madness, often times hanging out on the ceiling or getting scritches from Erifis when she comes down here to look out at the ocean floor. Eri was livid when she found out that I hadn't named her, and started calling her Myst, which she assured me is short for Mystique. I argued that she wasn't blue with orange hair and then had to explain the joke to Eri. Ahem, the stream of unaligned Masaara flows through Myst, some of the gray becoming red aligned and some of it becoming pink aligned. Before heading to the cliff face leading one thousand feet up, almost vertically - to my Core room. I had designed the area while very depressed and lonely, with no company but my own mind, and it's evident when I look at it since this whole area is so full of traps and random paths I would get lost if I didn't have a full map available in my DIEsight, and y'know if I couldn't fly through walls.

That's the mana explained, one of the resource types Dungeons utilize for poofing shit into place, enchanting traps and equipment, or poofing up monsters to defend them. The other more notable resource that Dungeons use, and I use far more often, almost solely - is simply called Will. Most Dungeons don't have alot of Will, because to have Will is to be conscious of being alive. Sym is just starting to understand being alive, I have my entire past life as a human as experience. Will is what let's me have a body, fly around and effect the world around me. Will let's me choose whether I'm visible or not. While the Sym controlled Reapers are visible to the better eyesight of beastkin, if I try to be invisible, really try to - I can sneak up on Erifis. As a contracted entity she typically has an inmate sense of where I am generally but if I focus on it I can definitely trick that sense, much to her annoyance and my own amusement.

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I didn't have an understanding of mana at all in my first years, so everything I've done was done through the force of Will alone. Sym gets on my case about how everything is classified as a Dungeon Feature and every day the list grows more than Sym is able to organize the new additions. The importance according to Sym is that to use Masaara to summon something it has to have a classification in their system/catalog/whateverthefuckyoucallit, and a description. Syms' biggest complaint on that front is that I have apparently one point two one million bricks, and each one is its own feature, with very small differences to the other bricks. Syms' second biggest complaint is that I mess around with already completed areas of the Dungeon, for the sake of "ambiance" the air qoutes are there because it sounds sarcastic when Sym makes the complaint known. Sym is starting to grasp ideas like sarcasm, emotions, and the idea of self, but I still can't get Sym to tell me it's preferred pronouns, and Sym still uses the monotone voice it had when it tried to eat me. It's a matter of contrition with me, since if it doesn't decide soon I'll just start referring to it as Dude, since that js gender neutral and a wide ranging term.

As the sun rises I start watching my resource count in my DIEsight. It's been only two days since the Delving journalist team had been here, and I want to see if my second attempt at breaking the system will work today. I float up and out of my Core room up to the burgeoning city above me. As the residents wake up I start receiving resources, smiling like a maniac since my plan worked. I try to hold it back but a cackle escapes from me. See- my dungeon gives me resources from people being inside of it if they aren't a contracted entity - and the city is part of my Dungeons' creation, but without having a challenge the people didn't gain experience and therefore didn't give me any either. Now there is a challenge, and it Is stupidly simple.

I installed deadbolts on everyone's door and locked them all. When they unlock the deadbolt to get outside they are completing a puzzle - according to the system, and then are awarded with a very small amount of experience, which a cut of is given to me. I had originally tried to give a few people the quest of, "Have a good day today." but It didn't work - either they didn't have a good day, the system deemed it too vague, or perhaps not difficult enough since most things they need are provided for them. Regardless, I'm in this for the long haul now, with the end goal being divinity I'll be trying my damnedest to grow my city, increasing the number of "trapped" doors and the population so that I can profit. I really want these people to succeed and if I can make the world a better place by giving a metaphorical pair of concrete shoes to some assholes, that's what I'll do.

I'm looking forward to the next group of Delvers, and I hope, with every iota of Divinium in my Core, that some of them deserve to die for being horrible people. According to Sym the gain of Trancinium is increased massively from having a death in the dungeon, another reason to make sure the city prospers. People die of natural causes all the time, and Sym seemed certain that all of their memories and levels increase the amount of Trancinium gained on their departure. How good of a person they were gives a slight bonus to the Trancinium gained, with the biggest bonus coming from the far ends of the alignment chart. Pure evil and pure good souls give the biggest bonuses, but I don't see myself intentionally killing any good people who aren't trying to end me first, and if they do then I probably deserve it. There is no way of knowing a souls alignment before claiming them I wish it wasn't the case, and Trancinium is only gained from lives ended inside of the Dungeon. Ambient souls from the sky or areas outside of Dungeon territory give nothing.

I'd say the best way to determine a souls alignment is just more of what I've already done. Give people places to show their true nature and observe them as they go through the trials. It leaves me wondering though if souls can change alignments or if they're always locked in once they are there. Sym didn't know, and if I had to guess, Sym didn't care.

More people in the city have taken to calling me The Guardian, or The Core. The more observant ones call the blue-eyed-Sym-controlled-puppets, The Enforcers. I'd definitely be overwhelmed with work without Sym as much as I give the poor entity shit. I can't split my mind like he can, at most I can control two Reaper puppets, and my own body. Sym is piloting and aware of things witnessed by at least a thousand of the puppets. Tasked with watching for laws being broken and enacting a equal punishment, or if Sym can't decide a punishment, letting me know where to go and what happened. I wish my city back on Earth was like this. I doubt people will use the locks on their doors here, so I'll probably have Sym work the Dungeon magic voodoo to make the locks reset when the person inside falls asleep or something.

I'm still interested in seeing what is wished for by the first person/group to complete the bounty I had posted on myself. Surprises are always fun and I'm looking forward to trying to monkeys paw it, unless it's something heartwarming of course. A ring for a wedding, food or money for a Kingdom that is lacking or stuff like that. The greedy people can be crushed under their mountain of gold, those that wish for power can die from electricity, which is something I'm teaching myself how to use mana on. It's difficult to grasp the idea of magic since I'm from a plane that didn't have it in anything but fiction. Electricity is easier to grasp and since I'm familiar with it, learning that branch of magic is easier. Well enough piddle-farting around. I have one hundred and thirty six people who sent word of their intentions to move here, and they'll need houses, with lockable doors.