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I read through the options. Then reread them a few more times. I wasn’t stupid. I knew what Deia was coming to do. She was going to reach my core and put a collar on me. She had tried with Christina before, and now she had come to personally finish the job. If I could somehow stop her from enslaving me, then she would just destroy me. Hell, she might just destroy me outright considering how badly I had pissed her off.

The thing was. This...upgrade. It wasn’t a gift. It wasn’t even a choice. Each option was the same, and I had no choice but to accept. I couldn’t even choose which of the identical options I wanted. That dubious honor was reserved for someone — or something — else.

It felt like such a slap to the face. I was the one who worked every day and night to build my dungeon. I was the one who received seemingly random upgrades and figured out some possible way for them to fit together into a cohesive whole. I did all that, and here this little stinker flies up to me and just...hands me the perfect solution to my current problem. As if it was just waiting for me to start losing so that it could swoop in to solve all my problems in one fell swoop. After all that, it even had the audacity to saddle me with a serious restriction that would force me to do what it wanted.

This was blackmail. I was sick of it. I didn’t even know what making the ‘earth sing’ or the ‘wind howl’ even meant. It was ridiculous. This was stupid.

I refuse.

I reached for the Wind Sprite and wrapped it in a shell of cilia. It panicked, flicking to and fro in an attempt to escape, but I didn’t allow it any recourse. My shell was solid, a perfect euclidean sphere that prevented even a single molecule of air to bypass it.

The Wind Sprite sent me a stream of intent. It wanted out. It offered me a grand gift! Why would I trap it like this? I scoffed. What a ridiculous question.

I made the spherical cage spin.

Faster and faster my fibers rotated around the trapped spirit. Souls were truly the weakness of dungeons. I couldn’t directly manipulate them, and the Wind Spirit was far too slippery for any summoned minion to have a hope of capturing her. But...while I couldn’t directly influence creatures with souls. I wasn’t completely without options.

The spinning cage pulled on the Wind Sprite’s mana. It resisted for a moment, somehow holding its mana within itself. Even with my ultra-dense high-tier cilia it somehow resisted, but I didn’t let up. Every second I added more and more cilia to the cage and accelerated the rotation of the sphere.

It burst. A wave of mana exploded out of its dying body that rushed to fill my reserves. It was a tiny amount. Barely a drop to my vast ocean of mana I could have available to me.

The spirit faded and I turned my attention to Deia. I was angry. Incensed. Never before had I felt so much rage. Not since I had been born as a dungeon, nor in any of my fading memories of Earth. I hadn’t been offered a choice with my upgrades, nor had I been offered much of a choice with Deia. I had simply spawned in an area where my expansion would have guaranteed conflict against that overpowered Goddess.

It may have been a silly thought. As if life wasn’t full of situations devoid of choice! As if people don’t routinely encounter challenges that are born through no fault of their own! I knew all that, but I didn’t care. I was tired of compensating tirelessly for shitty circumstances only to get the honor of witnessing my precious child get torn apart for my troubles.

I was basically a God, damnit. If anyone should get a choice, it was me. All I wanted was to build up my dungeon in peace, and maybe do an experiment or two. But no. This filthy guttersnipe decides that what I have she just must take for herself.

Deia wants to take what I have? Fine. She can have it.

I pulled one last soul from my forest and brought to bear the little mana I stole from the Wind Sprite. I wove the mana around the soul into a mana message. But not just any mana message. This one I filled with my anger. My hate. I infused the message with the memory of Betsy being torn apart. I funneled into it all my frustration and anger at being offered a choice by that presumptuous Wind Sprite.

The construct absorbed it all. It grew and grew, gaining a fractal complexity of infinite twisting patterns that seemed to gain a life of its own. As I worked, the strands reorganized themselves on their own. Each subtle change multiplied the enmity I funneled into it. Compressing and refining my hate into a pulsating core. I approved. The more the merrier as far as I was concerned.

It mutated and became more. A seething ball of indescribable fury that I continued to feed. Deia neared. Her tendrils dug painfully, but I didn't care.

All things that grow require fuel, and so I granted it my paltry knowledge of the soul. I imbued within it the soul-crushing greed of the Dagger of Geas and the covetous nature of Deia’s Soulcatcher. Together the concepts strengthened and tightened the multidimensional matrix forming the construct.

The thing was. Both the Dagger and the Soulcatcher required human interaction to trigger their skills. That wouldn’t do. I reached into my skills and summoned a Nothic. Its creation was complex and multifaceted, but I stripped all the extraneous bits away. I needed just its eye. Not even. Just the ability to affect others through mere sight. I fed my newest creation the concept of the eye melded seamlessly with concepts of change and growth. This message wouldn’t merely be sent to one person. I wanted the world to know my wrath.

The fractal globe imploded upon itself. It contained so little mana. Just a handful, but I had managed to spin those sparse threads into thousands of thousand scintillating strands. It was a construct of infinite complexity. Dredged in my very essence to the point that it pulsed with life.

< You have crafted < Weapon Artifact > >

All my anger drained away. I felt empty. Hollow. Devoid of the drive that I had instilled within the artifact in my grip. Even the rush of successfully crafting an artifact after all this time felt dulled.

With a contemptuous flick of my cilia, the mana message condensed down to the smallest point. I absorbed it into my mass, directing it down my mana channels until it reached Deia’s tendril.

Suffer. I ordered, then threw my memetic weapon across the border.

Deia recoiled. Her tendril convulsed and I heard a heartrending scream through the connection. The tendril slammed into the stone ceiling of my cave, shattering stone as it frantically retreated back to the rift in the sky. My connection to her shattered, but even from a distance, I knew her pain. Before the tendril could fully retreat through the portal it stilled, then jerked back before slowing once more. It continued to retreat in fits and starts until it finally managed to make it through the rift. The portal snapped closed, freeing the sentients in my domain from Deia’s forced silence.

Noise and movement flooded the forest town as people tried to understand what had happened.

I couldn't care less though. I hurt and I was tired. Creating that artifact had taken much from me. More than I had expected. It wasn’t a simple item. I had literally funneled my emotions into it. Those emotions didn’t magically come back once the craft was complete. They weren’t permanently gone. I felt them distantly. Recovering in the background, though it would take days to recover fully.

For now though. I was incapable of feeling hate. Of feeling pain or anger.

And so I felt nothing. I felt nothing and waited for [Monstrous Generosity] to return Betsy to me.

----------------------------------------

Hours passed, and Betsy didn’t respawn. I waited and waited. But my beautiful girl didn’t come back to me. Somehow because she was stolen from me before she died meant that [Monstrous Generosity] didn’t respawn her.

Stupid broken skill.

I rebuilt Betsy’s body from scratch. I modified the form of a Nothic. I enchanted its eyes. I gave it the gift of flight. It was a perfect replica of Betsy, down to the last hair.

But this new Beholder wasn’t Betsy. It spoke to me with the same voice and it moved around in the same manner as her. But it wasn’t the same. It was missing things. Memories. Experiences. The boundless exuberance that had lit up my mornings. It didn’t matter. Betsy was gone.

Despair and regret clung to my thoughts like dark stinking tar. Somehow the lack of anger or pain made the emotions starker. I looked upon the land with my telescope and saw the endless wave of black that I had unleashed. By now the insects had moved on from many areas, leaving the land dead and dull in their wake.

I had always known that the insects would cause devastation. That had been their original purpose. Sow enough discord that any response to me would be anemic. It had worked too. Even now, I could see streams of people making their way to me under little bubbles of protection. The few that were armed kept their weapons sheathed, trusting in the scent of citrus to get them to safety.

There were no war parties coming my way. There were no angry armies, nor crowds of mages charging their spells. The locust swarm had thoroughly broken the back of humanity.

I chuckled miserably. I won in the end. The people had given up totally, without even a single aggressive foray from any of the human cities. I had won, yet it didn’t feel worth it. I hadn’t really gained anything I wanted. Land? People? I had never desired much of either. I had been content with myself as I was. Why had I gotten so...righteous? Turning the land black and dead didn’t seem worth it to push back Deia. Losing Betsy didn’t seem worth it.

I didn’t want to look at the death I had sown any longer. It was selfish, I knew, but I was tired and I knew of a way to get rid of the darkness chewing on my thoughts. I reached deep inside myself and collected all my regret and horror and sadness. I pulled them out and infused them into some of the mana I had collected in the interim.

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I worked slowly this time. There was no rush, and I needed time to think. When I had unleashed the swarm, I had fully expected the humans to be able to deal with it. Worst case, I had been sure that Deia would have stepped up. It baffled me that they didn’t. That she hadn't. Were the swarmlings that strong? I supposed to them they were.

Not to me though. The Shadow Swarmlings were fragile creatures. Immense in number perhaps, but oh so delicate. There were a dozen ways I could imagine to defeat them. Their minds were weak. They were susceptible to area effects. They died without a continuous source of food. It would be so easy to destroy them, but I guess none of the humans had thought of any of those.

I chose a different option. It felt fitting in a way. To defeat the swarm with another swarm. A virus that would spread amongst the population and bring it to its knees. With a virus, I could be specific. I could make sure that no one except my Swarmlings would suffer from my solution.

So I pulled another soul from my forest. I didn’t truly understand what made an artifact yet, but it felt like a soul was part of the requirement. Or at least emotions were required. Maybe they worked together. Both the Dagger of Geas and Deia’s Soulcatcher oozed emotion like water. So it felt like a safe bet.

I wove the threads of mana around the soul as I gathered up one of the deceased Shadow Swarmlings. All living organisms contained DNA, but many eons ago, some enterprising cell had discovered that having a massive chunk of static genetic information was limiting. Instead, it was vastly superior to be able to shift around pieces of the DNA to the locations where they were needed when they were needed. And so, mobile genetic elements and the first viruses were born.

It always struck me as odd that people possessed such a phobia of viruses when they themselves used primitive variants all the time to ensure the proper functioning of their cells. The only difference between a mobile genetic element and a virus was the ability of the gene to leave the cell and propagate by itself.

So with deft motions, I located one of the more prolific genetic elements and...modified it. I attached to its end several pieces that would encourage the creation of protein-based capsules that would protect the fragile DNA outside the cell. I ramped up the signal responsible for replication to infinity and modified certain areas to be more efficient. I had no need for the virus to directly kill cells. Starving them of all resources was more than enough to kill the Swarmlings.

After all that, I brought the mana-infused soul and worked to connect it to the budding virus. I pulled the mana strands taut and gently wrapped them around my prepared segment of genetic code. It was then that I paused.

All the artifacts I had encountered so far had been fueled by hate. It saddened me and I didn’t want that for my current creation. I was creating a weapon, no different from the locusts I had unleashed. The difference was, this time my weapon’s purpose was to fix a mistake. To cleanse the land of a scourge. To heal what was broken.

So I channeled my regret and sadness into the soul, instead of any anger. Even if I had wanted to fill it with hate or pain, I had neither in sufficient quantities to spare anyway. Regardless, the virus would be uncompromising. It would spread across the land and remove the locusts but it would do so gently. It wouldn’t mutate and spread to any other species. Nor would it cause undue pain in its passing.

I locked in my will by tying the last mana thread around the virus. It snapped closed with a sense of patient finality, taking with it all my regret, sadness, and horror.

< You have crafted < Weapon Artifact > >

I inserted it into a live Shadow Swarmling and waited. Within minutes the little insect died. It had no hope against a tier-five artifact designed specifically to destroy it. Its many brethren fed on its corpse and spread it far and wide.

The day passed in quiet as I watched the swarm fade. Billions of corpses littered the land. Coating it in a thick black blanket that decomposed at an unnatural rate. For a single day, the earth suffocated beneath the weight of bodies, but then they decomposed, returning to the earth all the nutrients they had stolen during their brief lifespan.

The humans celebrated the destruction of the swarm. Many people stepped out of their walled-in-cities, while even more packed up their things to settle within my domain. All the food had been eaten after all. So many migrating would be a problem. I had leveled to 68 in my brief struggle with Deia, and my regular cilia would tear the lifeforce from all the newcomers in seconds. To combat that, I quickly installed a cilia razor on each of the arches leading to my fourth floor and dragged much of my second floor under the earth. It still touched upon many plant roots, but it wouldn’t endanger the more fragile lifeforms traveling above.

Days passed and no further attack came from Deia. I noted that but didn’t try and target her anymore. I had other mistakes that I had let fester that I wanted to fix while I was in the mood. Namely Christina. I had collared her a long time ago, and with my new proficiency with artifacts and souls, I was sure I could return her to a healthy state.

I spun my perception down to my forest to search for her but was distracted when I noticed all the life. Trees and other plants were in abundance as usual. The difference was the animal life that had spawned while I was preoccupied.

More mana than ever before had pooled in valleys and streams as the human town had transformed into a city. So much so that the mana had congealed and formed...souls? Tiny little water elementals swam gleefully down the streams as alien plants uprooted themselves to skitter through the underbrush. In the sky, the very air appeared to have gained sentience as hundreds of tiny little sentient leaves and spirits of air danced and twirled with every gust of wind.

I marveled at it all. Somehow, while I was focused on the darkness I had inflicted, a transcendent beauty had spawned on my doorstep. I giggled as I watched them. Content to laugh and watch as the magical creatures of the land reacted to my amusement.

Mana was key, I realized. In the world I found myself in, mana was life. Not in some metaphorical, philosophical sense. But literally. Enough mana floating around would spontaneously condense into a soul that used mana to fuel itself. Without mana, there could be no new life.

And...

Dungeons consumed mana.

In that instant, I realized just how damaging dungeons were to the ecosystems of this world. Their presence choked the land. Literally siphoning its lifeblood just by existing. There were plenty of regular living creatures running around, so clearly the dungeon stranglehold wasn’t lethal. But there wasn’t nearly the density or diversity of life that had spawned in days within a mana-saturated valley.

What had spawned in a couple of days of collecting mana was beautiful and exactly what I imagined a magical fantasy world to look like. It was something to be cherished and nurtured. If dungeons were preventing this then they would need to go. They were already stupid and mindless so I had no compunctions about destroying them all if it would fill the world with life.

Besides, I still needed to defeat Deia to satisfy the conditions of [Chaos Untold].

Perhaps this is what the skill meant by chaos. Another word for chaos was disorder, and filling the entire world with an uncountable slew of unique creatures definitely could be considered chaotic.

How poetic.

For the third and final time, I reached into my forest for souls to craft with. This would be my greatest challenge. Defeating Deia’s controller was a simple matter of applied anger. Culling the Swarmlings was more complicated, but still within my capabilities. This though was far more difficult. Dungeons were far apart. They were protected by miles of rock, minions, and cilia that actively repelled life. What could I possibly do to defeat them all?

Suddenly it came to me. My sweet little girl had been learning to whistle. She had even succeeded all by herself but I had been too busy to properly celebrate with her. If I had any regret left, that thought would have hurt deeply. Alas, I was out of such commodities.

Whistling was such an innocuous thing, yet it held the secret to defeating dungeons. To test my theory, I produced a single clear note of sound using mana beside my crystal. Hours passed as I modulated the tone up and down. I raised the volume, messed with the waveform, and so much more in that time. Eventually, when the sound I produced was far beyond the range of human hearing, I felt a spike of pain as my gemstone began to resonate with the sound.

It worked.

I installed four vibration dampeners around my gemstone to protect me from the high-pitched resonating waveform.

I then summoned a Spectral Nothic and a Treant at the same time. As the hybrid creature formed, I shoved into it the soul of a powerful tree and shaped its body. I expanded its mouth and lungs a thousandfold while attuning its vocal cords to the tone I had discovered previously. Then I removed its arms and legs and attached to its back the same flight harness Betsy had used.

< You have merged two minions into < Spectral Shrieker >! >

< You have crafted < Consumable > >

I didn’t bother pulling up the creature’s stat block and instead continued my work. I took a soul from the forest and fused it with the Spectral Shrieker. I took care to deny my newest creation any of the tiny amounts of negative emotion that were slowly recovering within me. Instead, I flooded it with all the happiness and joy I felt upon seeing life blossom. It was a monstrous creature made entirely of a mouth and lungs, but its purpose was to protect all life.

The creation solidified with a snap as I launched my creation westward toward the human plains after filling it with all my remaining mana.

< You have crafted < Artifact Consumable > >

I watched the ghost vanish beneath the surface of the world as it hunted for dungeons with a deep sense of emptiness.

< You have destroyed [4] dungeon(s)! [Chaos Untold] grants +4 to physical level! Physical level: 84 >

I had no more anger.

< You have destroyed [2] dungeon(s)! [Chaos Untold] grants +4 to physical level! Physical level: 92 >

No more regret.

< You have destroyed [5] dungeon(s)! [Chaos Untold] grants +4 to physical level! Physical level: 100 >

< Error: Max level reached! >

No more joy.

< You have destroyed [3] dungeon(s)! [Chaos Untold] grants +4 to physical level! Physical level: 100 >

< Error: Max level reached! >

I just wanted to close my eyes.

< You have destroyed [4] dungeon(s)! [Chaos Untold] grants +4 to physical level! Physical level: 100 >

< Error: Max level reached! >

Rest for a bit, if I could.

< You have destroyed [3] dungeon(s)! [Chaos Untold] grants +4 to physical level! Physical level: 100 >

< Error: Max level reached! >

But I couldn’t. I was a dungeon, and I no longer possessed eyes that could be closed. I hadn’t slept in a very long time.

< You have destroyed [1] dungeon! [Chaos Untold] grants +4 to physical level! Physical level: 100 >

< Error: Max level reached! >

< Condition met: You have destroyed Deia! >

I felt something snap inside of me. A part of me that I didn’t even know I had faded as [Chaos Untold] removed my connection to whatever entity was choosing my skills.

I did one final pass over my domain to fix some small things. Repaired the damaged sections of my maze. Brought up some more water for the forest. Made sure the humans were doing fine. Then when all was said and done, I retreated my perception to my core room and began to craft.

I poured thousands of points of mana into a pool of shadow. From the pool, I pulled out thin fibers which I wove into a thick, comfortable blanket that I draped over my core. I had little emotion left, but there was one resource I had yet to tap into.

Exhaustion.

I grabbed it all and gently infused the strands of the blanket. The shadows lengthened. As if the sun was getting real low at the end of a long, hard day. I embraced the feeling as I pushed it deep into the fibers of the shadow blanket.

This item would be powerful, and I had no desire to sleep for eternity. With a few quick motions, I melted the last of my steel into a thick leaf spring. I wound it round and round, then attached it to a cascading series of gears. Given the natural cadence of the mechanism, it would take hours for it to fully relax. Once it did, I made sure that the last rotation of my rudimentary clock would drag the blanket off of my core.

It was done and I was ready.

< Upgrades pending: 1 >

I dismissed the blinking notification as a problem for tomorrow.

Wake me if you need me, I whispered to Cortana, then finalized the artifact.

< You have crafted < Artifact Armor > >

Huh. Apparently, you don’t need a soul to make an artifact...

At last, I slept.