I was faced with a dilemma.

I had used these past two days to spread my influence much, much further. Relying on the Masterminds to act as batteries while the Subverters and Saboteurs slowly eradicated all resistance on lower and higher floors.

When the time came, I would connect my own magic with that stored inside the Masterminds, and use the surge to push into the floors. Conquering them fully and using the Dungeon to [Spawn] more units in place of the regular monsters.

Given the disparity between the regular monsters on these floors and my own units, I could bring them in by the thousands every hour. The excess magic that should have gone to raw power going to numbers instead.

I had been so successful that my body was no longer able to keep up with the constant [Assimilation].

I had been forced to give new orders, that all defeated monsters be brought to me alive, so that I could make the fullest out of each and every kill.

I then changed my form to that of a colossal pool, filled with the most powerful acid and bacterial slime that I could produce.

The monsters died within me, one after the other, and my body absorbed their lifeforce through [Drain], [Assimilate] and the act of me consuming what tissues were left.

I designed a new kind of creature called a Caretaker, and made a few hundred of them.

I made it so that they could swim and crawl through the primordial soup unimpeded. Their task being to watch over me, in case any monsters found the strength to mount a last desperate stand.

That, and to remove the monster cores from the brine.

I had begun to feel curiosity, regarding cores and now planned to put the small mountain of them I'd acquired to good use.

I loved how well this new arrangement worked, as I could conquer floors without leaving the safety of my current nest. All while gaining more and more stats on the bracelet through the killing pools.

I also gained a new kind of comprehension for the Dungeon. A new kind of lust and hunger.

The tide that had nearly led to my death was beginning to recede and I could feel the draining effect on the very floors and walls of the living undergrowth.

Soon, they would reach a critical mass once again.

Soon, the Dungeon would undergo another round of expansion.

I did not feel fear when faced with this reality, unlike before.

Instead, I wanted that power for myself.

All these energies must have been coming from somewhere, deep below the earth.

The Dungeon itself, had a core. One more powerful than anything I could possibly imagine.

I wanted it.

I knew I could take it, given enough time.

If I could count on a lack of interruptions.

If.

The children on the higher floors had made it past all my units and traps and tribulations as soon as my connection had been snapped.

They had used those with mental-manipulation magics to confuse and dominate my own monsters. Turning them against me, now that my voice could no longer reach them.

What's more, they had brought in hundreds of the farmers from above to help. Arming them with spare weapons and draping them in the carapaces of my dead units.

In the enlarged chambers, these tactics had done well.

But they only managed to make it to the new 24th floor.

I had believed them to be a minor nuisance at this point. Nothing more.

I was forced to re-assess my situation, when the lustful man and the gloomy man appeared on the surface.

The children and the farmers had been forced to fight for days at a time to reach their current floor.

The lustful man caught up to them in less than 8 minutes.

Therein lay my dilemma.

I wanted to go deeper.

I wanted to conquer and subvert the very heart of the Dungeon for my own ends.

I felt I could do it.

I knew, I could do it.

I also knew that the lustful man would never entertain such a notion.

He would take me and the child back to the surface, whether I willed it or not.

I knew he would do so, as soon as he stopped talking to the children.

I did not think there was anything I could do to stop him.

Even in my most optimistic simulations, the brute would annihilate the tens of thousands of units I had on this floor in less than 10 seconds.

He was simply that strong.

However, I believed I had another option.

I could still keep descending, if the brute did not find me.

And the brute could only track me and the other children, based on the bracelet.

I had grown brains under the limb, but left the limb itself mostly intact so that I could keep track of the rising numbers.

Now that choice presented a dilemma.

I was sure the best solution would be to hack off the limb and move down a few floors. It would be quick and it would be easy and I could grow another limb without any effort on my part.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The brute could not bring me back if he could not find me.

Yet I hesitated.

The lustful brute and all the other adults were fools, but they had shown themselves willing to nurture the child.

I believed there was much left to be gained from them as a whole. Resources and education and answers to questions that plagued me even now.

The other children might be angry with the child due to the continued assaults, but I was sure this wouldn't change any of the adults' opinions by itself. Not when I had avoided killing any of them and not when they believed they had things to gain from the child.

That said, I feared the brute might become angry with the child, if I purposely misled him.

Moreover, there were the other adults to consider. The child's family.

I did not care whether they lived or died.

But the child did.

The child would definitely suspect my presence upon waking, given the advancements and the new units.

But if the child came to suspect my true feelings...

I might not re-surface for months, or perhaps even years. If the child allowed me to re-surface at all.

So, I hesitated and wracked my mind with the possibilities.

I felt the tendrils of my mind drifting from my new body, to the walls and floors and ceilings of the Dungeon. To all the floors I had conquered and those I had yet to conquer.

I felt my consciousness drifting upwards, to where the older children were ranting to the lustful man.

I tasted the air around them from my perch inside the walls and was disappointed by how little magic there was to be had. How much weakness there was in those upper floors.

Then, I turned my attention downwards. To the floors below me. To the seemingly impossible landscape of the 52nd floor, where gravity could turn against my units at a moment's notice, and titanic lizards roamed the false sky and the oddly colored jungles along the bottom of the floor.

I tasted just a whiff of the air through the nostrils of my units.

And I hungered.

I decided then that the risk was worth it and promptly cut off the blood flow to the forearm I had left mostly human all this time. Then I commanded the flesh to knead into itself and separate from the joints.

The forearm and hand fell. Along with the bracelet.

While I shifted my body back into a movable state and prepared to run.

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

I found the 52nd floor to be the largest one yet.

With dimensions so large they eclipsed the farm up above.

The ceiling was so high up that all the giant lizards could fly through the gravity storms with near impunity. Due to them being able to adjust their flight patterns before striking any other surface. With ample time to spare.

I vaguely recalled hat the child had called such creatures dinosaurs.

I allowed the thought to drift away, as I prepared myself for the onslaught.

I created another creature, one with a thick, tree-like body.

The bottom portions were a mixture of slug and octopus, as it could anchor itself to any surface through a combination of webbing and adhesive bacteria, while still having sizable tentacles to drag itself along whatever it was climbing.

The upper portions ended in two separate sections. One, a massive womb, covered in different kinds of eyes and ears and noses. Each as big as a human head. The other, a gun. A very big, bio-gun. So large that it could fire Cannonlings without flinching. However, I realized that the dinosaurs above might be able to dodge larger projectiles with ease, so I gave the creature the ability to [Transform] itself and adjust its own organs. To switch between one big gun meant to fell giants and many, many smaller guns that could fire very quickly.

I created a smaller, more aerodynamic variant of the Napalmlings to act as the smaller ammunition, with a larger variant to act as the main cannon's ammunition.

Then I named my new pet the Devastator and created seven more.

Ordering them to fire upon any winged monster that got too close.

I had no illusions that they would actually kill any of them of course.

I had created them to be bait for the Subverters and Saboteurs. Those units that could actually do something with such a high level disparity.

I then feared that such bait might not last enough to stall the monsters if too many were attracted at the same time, so I set about creating a different, more economical kind of bait.

I made this new creature to be small. About three times the size of a human hand.

I then made its body arrow-shaped. With seven pairs of insectile wings resembling those of dragonflies.

Like dragonflies, they were to have large compound eyes and an unerring precision to their movements.

Unlike dragonflies, these units would have rows upon rows of needle-like teeth meant for piercing flesh, bone and scale with ease, before injecting a neurotoxin I'd fashioned after the jellyfish that had almost killed me.

Unlike dragonflies, these new units would hunt in the tens, or even hundreds of thousands.

Unlike dragonflies, these new units would happily fly straight to their deaths, so long as they could buy my other units a few more minutes.

I topped up the design by giving them a foul irritant to use as pheromones. Like those the orange spiders had used on the 12th. I made it so that each individual unit smelled so foul that none could ignore them and I went further by making their insides extremely adhesive once their bodies were compromised. A monster that bit into one of the new specimens would be biting down, not only on a load of paralytic poison, but also on a mushy concoction of organs that refused to separate from whatever they touched. A monster that swatted one aside would see the offending limb coated in the same concoction. Like an instant webbing effect, once the proper compounds came together.

That, and I added a thin scratching membrane to the wings that amplified the sounds they made as they flew, so that one would come across as a dozen and a dozen would come across as a thousand.

I called these new units, Swarmlings and moved on.

Then I created larger, smarter creatures to lead the Swarmlings while tides of them crashed against monsters in the air. Just as an added precaution in order to keep my bait from being scattered in the cases where they flew too far away from me or other commanding creatures.

I could not be too careful down here, with this much magic saturation acting as interference.

I fashioned them as winged Saboteurs and called them Swarm Harpies.

The final piece of the puzzle had to do with two additional problems.

The first was that I could no longer simply grow units out of the ground anymore, as too many body parts were fashioned from living animal tissue. However, I would not expose myself to risk by continuing to birth thousands of Swarmlings while staying in one place.

The second had to do with how wasteful the whole endeavor would be. Even assuming the layers of planning resulted in perfect ambushes and brand-new infected puppets, the cost in magic and bio-mass would be too great. The going would be too slow.

By the time I descended two more floors, the Dungeon would be ready to grow again and the endeavor would have been for nothing.

I fixed these issues by creating a creature that could [Spawn] other units independently of me, could [Assimilate] and [Drain] other monsters independently of me and could [Heal] other units independently of me.

I called these new units, my Swarm Queens.

Then I settled into the safety of the Dungeon Floor, and allowed my new formations to show their mettle.

I was pleased when they exceeded my expectations.

I saw that the Swarmlings were too light to be affected by the sudden changes in gravity while in mid-air.

I also saw that a few hundred of them made enough noise to drown out all other sounds on the floor.

A few thousand, as I soon realized, were a menace in and of itself. Far more so than their fangs.

When a Swarmling bit into a dinosaur, they wouldn't do much due to the thickness of the opposition's armor and the density of their magic.

The difference in levels was just too much. But the sensory stimuli still managed to get through. Causing far more pain than the prickles the bites left, as far as I could tell.

I relished the discovery.

I was made even happier when so many dinosaurs died after swallowing several units from the swarm at once.

Their throats would be closed off by the sticky insides once the Swarmlings exploded and that was that.

If the dinosaur could not breathe, the dinosaur could not fly.

I felt joy at seeing so many stronger foes meet their demise.

I felt twice as happy when the Subverters began picking off he smarter variants that had begun spitting fire or arcs of lighting from a distance.

The monsters would then dive, coated in crackling energy and they would mince away at my units. Killing dozens with every passing second until none remained on the surface.

But they would leave infected.

I knew that was as good as any victory. Because those that were infected would be killing their fellows before long, until their bellies burst and they gave birth to even more units.

This pattern continued for two more hours.

Until the skies of the Dungeon floor were cleared of fliers that did not belong to me.

Until I was choking on all the still-living bodies thrown into the newly grown pool.

I smiled and ordered my Queens and Masterminds to advance.

So that they may bring me dinner from the next floor.