Being a dungeon was becoming very busy, and Kazue was glad she didn't need to sleep. For over half the day she was simply skipping her attention from place to place to keep track of what was going on and give small nudges to her inhabitants when she felt it necessary. A significant portion of her attention was devoted to keeping track of the three young teens, a task she shared with Mordecai as they wanted to walk the line of pushing the trio's limits without significantly endangering them.

Then there was the thread of attention taken up by being in frequent communication with Moriko while she and Kazue's other self traveled. It wasn't so much normal conversation as status and information updates, but it was important to Kazue to make sure her wife was kept in the loop. Mordecai helped here too of course, but with so much going on that Moriko might be interested in and so much for Moriko to share in return, it could still take up a surprising amount of her mental bandwidth.

Though her conflicted feelings about the whole thing might be part of the issue there. She was slightly jealous of her own avatar, which made no sense logically. Once they re-synchronized, then all of her memories would be fully shared rather than the fleeting impressions and vague dream like memories she collected from the connection with her avatar. It was like her left hand being jealous of her right hand. Not that she had any actual hands at the moment.

But, not having her avatar here sort of allowed her to focus on being a dungeon more. Normal dungeons needed avatars to learn how to be better at being 'people'. Having the avatar portion of herself leave made it easier for her to focus on her existence as a dungeon. It did make her wonder if she really should have made her illusion platforms; they sometimes felt like a bit of a crutch. But they also felt so natural to use and puppet, so much so that her emotional reactions were often shown before she consciously decided to do so.

She used them more when the delvers were less active, it was easier to spend the time and focus on manifesting them when there was less to keep track of. But there were still other things to manage during the evening. For one thing, she and Mordecai rotated through checking in with their inhabitants to make sure everyone was taken care of. Leaders were checked in with more often as they should be aware of any issues with their underlings, but the cores had a mental list of all the inhabitants that they went through slowly to try and spot-check.

The idea of being this deliberate was relatively new, born more of her concerns than any experience of Mordecai's. His instinct had been to simply trust that any issues would be brought to him, but dungeon instincts weren't perfect, and Kazue felt it was better for them to have a more direct personal touch in this matter.

And there was the constant matter of enhancing their inhabitants. There was still a constant tax on their mana, but their reserves were slowly filling and they could fill out a few gaps. One of the early ones was to upgrade more bats in the outer zone, creating 'bronze bats' as weaker versions of Belle and Freya.

And then there were the other animals in the zone. Creatures like insects were simply incorporated as part of the background life of the dungeon, but creatures with stronger spirits had become sapient inhabitants even without being enhanced. For now, Kazue and Mordecai were making them stronger, faster, and healthier versions of themselves to provide an adequate challenge for any hunters. The bats could be mistaken for simply a new breed of magical creature, but if a lot of new magical creatures started appearing, it would give away the secret.

They had also had a few laganthros who had become usagisune, like Betty was. Aside from the mana cost and the question of who wanted the upgrade, they were restricting it to the oldest of the various tribes; those who had been adult rabbits when Kazue had first awakened as a dungeon. They would ease up on that restriction slowly, but right now they wanted to be careful about combat interactions with delvers and more humanoid inhabitants and were having them only work roles in the noncombat path.

Betty wasn't an issue at the moment, she had been on 'vacation' for several weeks now, and looking pleased about it. This left Umbrowl as the only active boss on that floor, and the dungeon was supplementing the boss room with combat teams to keep the challenge to the right difficulty.

Kazue was conflicted about Betty's condition. Part of her said it was selfish for a floor boss to get pregnant without warning, but she immediately countered her own thought, asking herself what right she had to interfere with someone else's personal choice like that? And the other female inhabitants were able to make that choice freely.

At least Carmilla had been willing to take a protective tattoo; the fairy witch had no interest in that sort of responsibility.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

The whole issue had brought up one of Mordecai's few blind spots: he didn't actually know if the unborn would be included in the dungeon's reset process. Distinct spirits didn't develop until well into gestation, and souls generally didn't form until after birth. He didn't know if they registered as individual inhabitants before that, though he suspected any with spirits formed would be fine.

The reason he didn't know the answer was that it had never occurred to him to worry about it. It wasn't part of what he'd thought about as a dungeon. He had just let his inhabitants live their lives, and by the time he'd become more introspective he had large tribes of kobolds who were very good at regulating themselves while making sure all their duties were performed. Why would it have occurred to him to worry about it?

Kazue found this mildly frustrating, whereas Moriko thought it was a hilarious sort of blind spot for Mordecai to have. But she wasn't the one who now had to manage the possible consequences of that concern, and no one wanted to perform any tests to find out the answer.

Then there was the other issue regarding Betty's pregnancy. That was Gil's child, and they were going to be raising it here. How would he feel about the idea of his own child being an inhabitant? Kazue or Mordecai could make a deliberate decision to not let the child's spirit and soul attach, but then the baby would be less safe.

They could let the child bond and then remove the bond later if Gil or the child asked, but removing the bond between inhabitant and dungeon had almost as much potential for mental upheaval as establishing it with an adult sapient. And Gil probably wouldn't be this way again for a long time according to Mordecai, the child could well be an adult by then. What if Gil was upset but the child wanted to remain? They would support the child of course, but that might cause actual conflict with Gil.

This was one of the few issues where she and Mordecai differed significantly. Mostly in that he didn't see this as being a problem. Gil might not be the most responsible adult ever, but he was an adult with worldly experience. If he didn't want to risk having a child, he knew how to be protected. And he saw no reason to not let the child bond the same way any other infant born of a dungeon inhabitant who was in their dungeon's territory would.

Moriko wasn't sure what to think about the situation, in part because she didn't have as deep an understanding of what the bond between inhabitant and dungeon meant, but she had said something privately to Kazue. To Mordecai, this was a normal aspect of a dungeon's existence. Kazue's bias, like Moriko's, still leaned toward an outsider's point of view. Was there really any issue with Gil's child being an inhabitant? Why should it matter if the father of Betty's child was an outsider or a fellow inhabitant? Her child being an inhabitant would be normal to her.

Kazue hated the idea that she might be prejudiced here, but she couldn't deny the possibility. She wouldn't be surprised if Mordecai had had a similar thought to the one Moriko expressed, but if he thought he might hurt her feelings and sound accusatory by saying it to her, then he would keep the thought to himself. Well, unless he thought that it would make an important difference.

For now, this particular debate had been kept between the three of them, and unless they otherwise decided to change things, there was no need to concern Betty. Not taking any action otherwise meant that her child would be born as an inhabitant. And despite her concerns, Kazue couldn't argue that preventing the bond would definitively be the better choice.

The only other thing that demanded a lot of their attention right now was the integration of the kobolds. Not that there had been any major issues thus far, it was just something that Kazue wanted to make sure went well. Loyalty to the dungeon did not mean that there couldn't be issues with an individual or group feeling that they were the more suitable ones to fill a role or otherwise be better at serving the dungeon's interests.

The age of most of the kobolds seemed to help here, though only because they had self-selected to be part of the dungeon. These were the old folk who had mastered their egos, and were ready to just provide their wisdom and do what they could to help out. The sort of old folk who got ever more self-righteously stubborn were the sort who wouldn't be inclined to become a dungeon's inhabitant.

They really were a great help too. They had a lot of experience and knowledge to share and the restoration of their youthful health had left them feeling invigorated. Kazue expected crafted goods bearing the marks of their craftsmanship to start showing up in trades within the week.

And those weren't the only new things that would be coming out of the dungeon. Mordecai had finished some of his experiments and had refined the results into very worthy prizes, but they were going to be difficult to hand out as fair prizes for a while. This led back to the teen trio, and why they were pushing them so much, including a bonus round they would be offering at the end. Kazue had worked with him to come up with even more ideas, and they'd needed to observe Derek closely to better understand his powers and work out how they could best help him.

She was pretty certain that they were walking a fine line with giving Fuyuko special prizes, but she was working hard for them. She deserved as much as anyone else working this hard, and she was not a contractor yet.

And one of the prizes they intended to make for her was going to be a design test. Just having her claim it would tell them much about how well it worked, and they could apply that knowledge forward to other prizes. This one was going to be very new even for Mordecai, though he had done something a little similar previously, under very different circumstances.