I was doing rather well, all things considered.

I had managed to make it to the 55th with very little in the way of inconveniences or unexpected interruptions.

This floor, like the previous two, was a wide-open space with many fliers of different distinctions making their way about the place.

I thought that was fine, as my current assembly of units was more than a match for whatever monsters roamed about.

I had outdone myself with the design of the Swarmlings, as well as their prodigious effectiveness when combined with my other units in coordinated assaults.

Their successes meant that I was free to sit back and focus on digesting the half-dead, parasitized monsters being brought back to me by my Caretakers, Saboteurs and other, lesser units I had roaming about the battlefield.

This was lovely for me, since I was able to keep growing in strength without putting myself at risk. All while progressing far more efficiently than any of the other children had in my position.

The lustful brute had mentioned as much to the child, when they spoke some weeks ago.

Normal children usually took anywhere from 3 to 5 months to fully grow from level 1 to 2 and then another 6 to 11 months to grow from level 2 to level 3. Assuming they had half-decent cores. Stage 3 or better. And assuming they trained hard and with relative frequency.

That additional time between advancements accounted for the slower progression in stats they would see once they'd reached a higher level. As well as the more difficult monsters and more grueling training one would be expected to undertake upon a level-up.

That is to say, a normal child would switch from fighting level 1 monsters, to fighting level 2 monsters for the most part. Once they had levelled-up.

One would, of course, gain more stats more quickly when one fought above one's current level, but this was not a common practice among the children.

The adults found it too risky, for too little in the way of gains.

A monster from the lower floors might give any child far more processed magic upon defeat. This was known.

Depending on the creature in question and how many children were there to absorb it, any given fighter might hope to gobble up twice or even thrice as much magic in one go. However, it would still take time for children to absorb all of that magic and they needed to keep up similar feats in order to keep exercising and consolidating those gains.

Meaning they did not usually level twice or thrice as fast.

The increase in speed was marginal in most cases where single encounters were concerned. A determined child would need to be fighting monsters above their level all the time in order to actually shorten the length of time they spent in each level. Otherwise, any given outlier would be little more than a blip in their long-term development.

The adults saw this and reasoned that a few more stat points and a shorter leveling window was simply not worth the risk of death that came from fighting above one's level.

I was not burdened by these concerns.

Thanks in part to [Assimilate] and in part to how I had changed my body into a pool of acid. I was now devouring upwards of five-hundred nearly dead monsters at any given time. All of them two or more levels higher than me.

Moreover, I was constantly fighting. Not by moving my actual body, but by birthing and commanding my forces. Meaning all those gains were constantly solidified as my units bled and died for me.

I figured that I was now gulping down three times as much magic in any given minute as any of the other children would process in a single day.

I also figured the only thing keeping me from experiencing even more explosive growth was the limits imposed on me by my core.

In truth, I had imagined it to be invincible upon first awakening.

After all, who else could claim to control themselves to this degree? Who else might claim to be the supreme lifeform, if not one that could partake of other lifeforms and transform itself as it wished?

These past few hours had shown me my own folly.

As of late, I felt as thought speeding up my progress, even by the most minute amounts, would lead my core to breaking apart. And that was with me putting aside all other monster cores via my Caretakers.

I could not even begin to imagine what would happen if I brought another core into myself.

No.

Those experiments would have to wait for later.

Right now, I had other problems to keep me busy.

More specifically, the lustful brute.

He had known I was still alive, after coming across the discarded bracelet.

Perhaps due to the overabundance of my creatures on all the floors leading up to that point or perhaps due to my magic still resonating within that floor at the time he found the trinket.

That was to be expected.

What I had not expected was for the brute to sigh and demand my surrender out loud.

I did not answer of course.

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The brute had ended up repeating himself three more times, before uttering an ultimatum.

I could go with the brute right now, and receive no punishment due to my continued work on the farm, despite my aggression towards the children.

Or, he would come down to where I was and drag me out by force.

I had figured he was bluffing, as there was no way for him to find me.

Not when I had taken care to place several more Acid Pools as decoys all along those lower floors. All of them filled with the monsters that had died too soon or who proved too numerous for me to digest on top of my already generous meal plan.

I had even gone so far as to design Swarm Queens for each Pool. In order to run an experiment whereby each Queen attempted to absorb the magic from the monsters as I did, before passing the gains down to me once all the valuable outflow had been digested.

That part hadn't yielded results as of yet, but I had high expectations for what one of the Queens could do with that much overflow regardless.

It would turn out fine even if the experiment went awry.

I had expected the brute to start smashing Pool after Pool then. Busying himself with rummaging through each muscle and sinew of each creation in order to methodically figure out where I was.

Instead, the brute lunged forwards through that floor and the next.

All while slaughtering every moving unit he saw.

All while ignoring the Acid Pools below him.

All in less than ten minutes.

All as if he could smell me out by the singular signature of my core.

I started to panic then. Recalling how the brute was many, many levels higher than even the monsters I was hunting.

I had been doing so well in my corner, that I had not even considered the possibility of him being able to find me out by the sheer prowess of his normal magic senses.

I quickly set about recalling what I knew of the brute. Trying to come up with countermeasures on the spot based on any weaknesses that I was aware of.

That was when I realized that I knew precious little of the lustful brute.

I knew that he was lustful and that he liked shapely women.

I knew that he was a brute and that he was cruel to his students without actually causing them any permanent physical impairment.

I knew that he was loyal to the old man and that he followed orders. That he had met the old man after being recruited. After he had come back from some war or other.

I decided to grasp on the first and last notions.

I created another units and had some of the Queens I had stationed at the entrance to my current floor birth them in short order.

They were human in appearance. Being completely indistinguishable from females the child had seen in his life.

Then I smoothened out their features as they were being born through my connection to the Queens. Enlarging certain body parts while taking care to get the proportions just right.

Then I had them stumble on and pretend to be vulnerable.

The idea being for them to feign emotions like fear, so that the brute would be charmed into taking them back to the surface.

I thought this idea was ingenious.

Until it didn't work.

"Fucking Hell Cecil!" The brute bellowed upon making contact. "They're amazing! Incredible! Magnificent! I know they're not people! But.... DAMN!!! Holy shit! Since when could you do this!!?? Could you give them cores!?"

I had no idea why that was his first question.

I also had no intention of answering him. Figuring that they were failures since they did not have cores to complete the disguise.

Those copies were still able to buy me a few minutes while he gawked, but that was as far as their use went.

I determined to experiment some more with cores inside my units and moved on to my second plan.

I recalled the brute had been recruited after coming from a war in Vietnam.

I had also been inside the brute's house and seen the picture frames of men the brute had called brothers. Those who had come back and those who hadn't.

The child had also seen some movies and documentaries on the subject.

Moreover, the child had learned of a debilitating condition that had to do with some faulty human brain pattern. Something about re-living trauma.

So, I re-created the brute's dead friends a bit further in and forced the floor to grow rows upon rows of clustered trees in their vicinity.

Then, I had the copies beg for the brute's assistance and for their lives. Programing them to act as the brute remembered then based on his long-winded stories. Re-creating some injuries on them to sell the performance.

Then, I had the trees grow mouths and start shouting in the few words of the foreign language the child had seen.

Then, I had all my units open fire around the copies and within the new cover in order to complete the picture.

The brute found them after dispatching the failed experiments near the entrance to the floor.

I was not disappointed with the results.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!" The brute had exclaimed upon seeing a particular copy without legs.

"MIKEEEE!!! MIKEEEEE!!! HOLD ON MIKE!!! I'LL GET YOU TO SAFETY!!!!"

I felt a rush of giddiness.

I then ordered the copy to grab onto the brute and begin weeping.

"Russell. Russ. I don't want to die. I... I want to see Gloria again. I want to see my kids Russ. Don't let me die."

The brute shouted even louder. His hands scrambling to cover up the wounds on the copy in some poor effort to stem the bleeding.

In the end, he spent so long on that copy that I was able to make it to the next floor. Clear it of most monsters. Burrow myself into another hideout. And fill this following floor with even more trees and wailing copies.

The plan being that they would lead the brute downwards, so that he destroyed the monsters in front of my army, while I sat back and collected the wounded, before brining them back to my own underground Pool.

I thought it was the height of cleverness.

Then, I toped it off by having one of my Swarm Harpies fire their Bio-Rifle at the copy the brute was holding.

The copy's chest exploded and the brute fell silent as the grave.

All while I filled the floor with the sounds of gunshots and explosions. All while the trees were shouting in their Vietnam words and accents.

I did not know what the words meant, but I could see the effect they had on the brute.

Even now, he knelt there in front of the copy.

Stunned speechless.

His hands started quivering. Grasping the limp arms of the copy.

The brute tried to speak, but his words died in his throat. Coming off like guttural half sobs, half howls.

Snot and tears ran freely down his face and they would fly off every time the brute shook and hugged the limp body of the copy.

All while the brute kept whispering the name.

I had enough time to send more units downwards and half conquer the next floor, before the brute got a hold of himself.

"CEEEEEEEECIIIIIIIIILLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!" He bellowed.

His cries shattering the bodies of the other copies and drowning out the tree's voices all throughout the floor.

Indeed, the shockwave was so potent that some of the nearby trees were ripped off the ground or had their leaves sheared off.

An impressive display of raw power if I'd ever seen one.

The brute then made several threats while hugging the body of the copy. All while slowly getting to his feet.

I had all the trees grow new, larger mouths and had then redouble their cries. With some of them mimicking the cries of that one copy pleading for help and sounding as though they were being harmed.

The brute lost whatever reasoning he'd had left and rushed downwards like a tsunami of violence.

Ripping apart everything in his path.

It was a good thing he did so as well, because I could feel the Dungeon getting closer and closer to another growth spurt.

If I found myself surrounded by even stronger monsters, my Saboteurs might not be enough.

But that would change.

If I could lure the brute into clearing the newly empowered floors for me.

So, I lay in wait and relished the brute's newfound rage as it fueled his mad rampage.

My stomach fluttering with glee as I saw that he wasn't bothering to finish off the monsters on the floors below me. Merely swatting them aside like flies in his quest to get at me.

I got ready to move once he had placed three floors between us, while my newly grown units brought me my new meals.

All while I dreamt of meals yet to come.