The otherwhere in Bossy's mind faded from view, replaced by the boss room in the dungeon.

Here the wolves lounged around on the grass as the paladin and squire visited them in turn, apparently healing them. Stew switched back to his core, trying to make sense of what he had seen.

Achievement Unlocked: Moonglow 13:02

The Bright Lady, mysterious queen of the night, has granted you a blessing, but be vigilant, the light of the Moon may conceal as easily as it reveals. Mark her passage and discover new secrets if you dare.

More time passed in that strange place than he thought. What was up with Bossy? Maybe everything he saw there was filtered through his memories? Either that or Bossy could read his mind.

Not ominous at all.

The Moonglow achievement didn't seem to change anything in the system menus or anywhere in the dungeon that he could find. He would have to ask Bossy later.

Speaking of the dungeon, as he felt around, it was a wreck. Considering everything, his first attempt at building a level may have, almost, worked, but it was also a complete disaster. The only reason he was still around was because it turned out the Big Bad Wolves were actually Good Bois, or at least claimed to be.

Now he couldn't start repairing the damage or healing any of the golems until Lassie and her rangers decided to go save someone else.

He decided to leave all of his other questions for now and just asked Bossy, "How long are our guests planning to stay?"

"Now that they have fulfilled their quest, most of the pack would like to go back to their home on the higher slopes of the mountain." Bossy cropped grass as if nothing happened, but he still detected a hint of humor, likely at his expense.

"Most?"

"To reassure them about my situation, I explained my contract to the paladin and her squire."

"And?" He could see where this was going.

"They would be interested in contracting with you, provided they work under my direction and remain on this level."

These wolves, especially the paladin, were terrifyingly effective. They would be powerful defenders, but he wasn't sure how he felt about having them so near his core. What if this was some sort of trick? Then, a contract should make all of that moot. Wouldn't it? "I might be interested in doing that, but I'm going to have to work to keep up with the mana for this many mo… allies."

"How is that possible? Mana is what dungeons are."

"As you've pointed out. I'm not like other dungeons." He explained the caps on mana and stone, about mana recharge and actions and the action refresh.

"Each point of mana requires your attention and effort. That is very different from other dungeons as I understand them. Your System is, it seems, very deliberately stunted. I wonder if this is because you have not yet earned a name."

That raised all kinds of questions, but he decided to stick to the most important one. "Then the first party of adventurers that comes along, we're all doomed."

"Possibly." Bossy continued to munch grass. "Possibly not. Regardless, what do you want me to tell the wolves?"

"It sounds like we will need all the help we can get. I'll offer them a contract." The contract menu popped up immediately. He started with something similar to her contract and made a few modifications since the wolves wouldn't be bosses and they had asked to report to Bossy, not directly to the dungeon. He talked it through and let Bossy translate, then offered the contract and both wolves accepted immediately.

Despite the details of the contract saying they would report to Bossy, he immediately felt their minds as clearly as Bossy's.

It was so soon after a bloody battle, and he hadn't forgotten what it felt like to be angry with them. The feeling was gone now, but he was still hesitant to change focus and share their minds. He did send a "welcome to the dungeon" and felt a wordless, polite response. Whether that was because they couldn't think in words or chose not to, he wasn't sure.

He saw two mana immediately deducted from his total and used two of his few remaining actions to replace it. He was going to have to do this twice every morning from now on, now that he had more than ten mouths to feed. It had been interesting at first, but he was starting to see how all of this mental clicking was going to get tedious.

The timber wolves remained and rested until late in the afternoon, then, on some signal he didn't recognize, they all stood. The matriarch touched noses with the Paladin.

Without a sound or backward glance the pack turned and filtered around the motionless golems and through the shattered spike trap. Stew retracted all the spike traps and closed Sluice's pit and the pit in room two.

The iron wolves lay back down in the boss room and seemed to have some sort of conversation with Bossy. He ignored them for now.

The pack trotted out the broken door without looking back, but they seemed solemn, not that having the two iron wolves on the payroll gave him any wolfish insights. It was just something about the set of their ears and tails. It was like watching elves walking off into the west, like they should have been singing something low and sad. Maybe they were singing in wolf. Or maybe they were just tired and hungry, and he was still weirded out by Bossy's dreamworld.

Wait. Are there elves? There were goblins, so maybe? Were there humans here? What was the world like outside that door? Bossy mentioned a mountain. Was his front door set in a foothill of some huge mountain, maybe there's a whole range? He hadn't had time to ask.

It was really hard to learn about a place when you can't see out the door and can only talk to a sarcastic cow, even if she was a demi-goddess.

The moment the last wolf stepped out the door, repairs and customization were re-enabled. He had been worried there might be a cooldown after delvers left.

Now that he had described it to Bossy he realized his most urgent issue wasn't repairs. Instead he needed to figure out this problem with caps. To give himself a clean canvas, he swapped his core room with room seven, then he reset what was now room ten to default and looked at the "Store Room" in the menu with Stat-o-Vision™. There was more to the descriptions now, but they were still cryptic.

Store Room 17:09

Cost: 10 stone / 10 mana

A basic square chamber providing secure storage space for collected resources, materials, treasures, and miscellaneous magical artifacts.

So it's expensive, and what exactly does "secure" mean? He selected the theme and immediately noticed something odd. The room generated without a doorway. He hadn't noticed any other rooms doing this and he was about to add one, remembering Bossy's warning about mana flow, when he noticed that the room had a small vent with a stone grill, just a few inches across, connecting it to the boss room. Interesting.

The way he built the rooms, having a golem dig each one-after-another, they had always started with an empty doorway or wide threshold depending on the theme he selected. On a hunch, he tried removing the door from his core room, ready to scramble to replace it if it turned out to be a bad idea.

Removing the door seemed to automatically create the same sort of ventilation system. Two in this case, one connecting east to room six and one connecting north to room eight.

All this time, he could have had his core room closed off to any attacker larger than a ladybug? It couldn't be this easy.

He thought about the way the iron wolves had torn through stone spikes, and it seemed reasonable there they weren't the only type of attacker who could dig out or damage stone, so maybe it wasn't perfect protection, but it was better than having a wide open door.

He looked back at the storage room. It was just an empty cube. He checked the menu for fit and finish options.

Store Room Fit And Finish 17:28

Customize your store room with special containers.

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

1. Treasure Vault (10 gold)

2. Wardrobe (10 cloth)

3. Armor Chest (10 leather)

4. Weapon Locker (10 iron)

5. Magical Item Chest (100 mana)

6. Pantry Cabinet (10 meat)

7. Ore Bin (10 stone)

8. Apothecary Cabinet (10 reagent)

9. Mana Glass Repository (10 mana)

Out of everything, he could only possibly create two of the containers. Even then, his action pool was depleted and he didn't have any stone or mana left. Time to get milking.

"I have an idea on how to improve those caps we were talking about, but I'll need some help from you and the kittens." He explained what he saw in the menu. Working together, he and the kittens began to work the milk/action/mana cycle. He wanted to start generating some stone at the same time, but the kittens required all of his attention. It didn't take long to generate all of the mana he needed for the repository, but it was a tedious, repetitive process.

He selected the option and the repository appeared without a sound. He didn't feel like spending mana on a doorway just for an eye to see, so he had Sluice crawl up the wall and through the grill. He was relieved to find that Sluice seemed to have forgiven him for the missed meal earlier.

Using the stone slime's eye, he examined the repository. The cabinet was made of some dark red, polished wood engraved with symbols he didn't recognize. Two doors opened out and away to reveal ten rows of ten slots inside. All of the slots appeared to be carved from a single piece of the same red wood, and each slot was padded with felt, about one centimeter wide, and stood a little less than ten centimeters tall. It looked like a fancy, impractical case for phonograph records or vintage CDs. He checked his stats and didn't see any change to the mana cap.

I've blown twenty mana and I'm no closer to solving my problems. I should have just bought the ore bin.

He moved his focus to the golems and saw he had three undamaged. The others had minor injuries except for two missing limbs and Big John's missing head. All of the injured golems would require stone to heal and he didn't have any. He sent the three undamaged golems to the east wall of the boss room and set them to digging to generate stone until he had enough to repair Big John, then he sent Big John over to help dig while he repaired the rest.

The mining crew quickly generated 10 surplus stone. He used it to create an Ore Bin.

The ore bin appeared in the far corner from the Mana Glass Repository. It was raised a bit off the floor with a sturdy looking stone fence around it supported by four thick posts. It was empty.

A prompt appeared to set an ore type. There were options for iron ore, gold ore, and "raw stone." He picked stone and checked his stats again.

The entry for stone was gone from his main stats page which gave him a moment of panic until he saw the new "inventory" option.

Selecting "inventory" he saw that he now had entries for "stone (0/110)" and "mana glass (0/100)." Did I miss the inventory menu earlier when I created the repository? He decided he probably had, since nothing else had gone missing to make him look.

As an experiment, he gathered more stone and saw that bin fill with small gray cubes. He had seen much weirder things in the past few days, but this felt more magical than slimes and golems somehow. It was nice to know he wouldn't have to send golems to carry all of that to the store rooms.

He made more mana, then used that and the stone to make another ore bin beside the first. His inventory now showed "stone (0/210)" which was a relief. He had been half expecting some new requirement or cap. He wondered if there was a cap on ore bins but now didn't seem like the time to explore that idea.

With his stone capacity increased, he focused on repairing the remaining golems and put them all to work digging. He staggered their activations so that he could just cycle his attention around, click, click, click. Each golem ran for exactly one hour before needing to start again. First they would use up their own actions, not that any of them had any left after the fight. Each click after that used an action from his own store, but thanks to the kittens, he had actions to spare. Big John was no different than the other golems, he just produced twice as much stone in the same time and started with two actions.

Every seven and a half minutes he had to remember which golem was next and catch it just as it finished or risk losing a few seconds and throwing off the rhythm. After the first cycle, he was dearly missing a timer. Watching the clock had him itching to optimize things. He really needed a timer and alarm to do this right.

Or something much better than a timer? What if he could delegate the whole thing? He checked the kittens, but they worked about the same as the golems. He could ask them to do something, but it consumed an action. It just happened that one of their actions could indirectly create more actions, but those went to his pool. They didn't seem to understand him when he asked them to do something more than once. Then, they were kittens, however spooky, so that made a kind of sense.

"Bossy, can you try starting one of these golems digging? I'd like to hand-off mining to you to supervise if I can."

"I do seem to have the ability to direct them." She replied. "This one has stopped. I'll try it."

Golem three, the one next to Big John, stopped then started again.

"That's great. Please start Big John again when he stops in a few minutes, and so on around the loop." He felt a rush run through him. I finally figured out something useful! This was going to make a big difference, especially if it meant she could also do this with the kittens to generate mana. He'd have to ask–

"It didn't work." Bossy sounded disappointed. "It was a good idea, but whatever an action is, I only had one, and I used it on the first golem. I don't have another to spend on Big John."

"Thank you for trying."

"Such a polite child." Bossy's tone felt sincere. "I am sure you will figure it out."

The moment's relief made his frustration cut that much deeper. He opened Big John's stats to click him and get him started again.

Big John

Mining Golem: Level 2

Mana Cost - 1 / day

Health 13/13

Agility 2

Strength 7

Constitution 5

Actions: 0/2

Action Recharge: 2 / day

Special ability: Prospect (20 Mana)

Assign Task (1 action):

1. Dig

2. Defend

3. Delegate Action

There it was, right in front of him.

It had been there all along, but he had never stopped to think what that might mean. Then again, he had been pretty busy trying to survive, so he could cut himself some slack. Big John was the wrong golem to try this with though. He needed Big John for his digging output.

The next unnamed golem, number 5 in line, finished and stopped.

Stone Golem - Level 1

Mana Cost - 1 / day

Health 10/10

Agility 2

Strength 5

Constitution 3

Actions: 1/1

Action Recharge: 1 / day

Special attack: Bash

Assign Task (1 action):

1. Dig

2. Defend

3. Delegate Action

"3."

Delegate Action

This golem may delegate actions from your pool of available actions. Delegating will cost one additional action to begin, and that delegated task will run until the action pool is depleted or the golem is commanded to stop.

Specify action to delegate (Y/N)?

After the earlier frustration, he was only cautiously optimistic.

"Yes."

Tell the golem how to spend your actions.

That was pretty freeform. Just how much would a golem understand? "Do I need to learn some kind of programming language?"

The System didn't answer, so he decided to just try to keep it simple.

"You, um." He realized that talking to a golem about other golems was going to be alot easier if he gave this one a name, so he backed out of the menu and did that first, coming back to the action prompt.

"Johnny 5. I want you to keep all of the other golems digging until I tell you to stop."

Without hesitation Johnny 5 stepped back from the wall where they had been digging and stood behind the line of golems. Big John and number 6, which had stopped in the meantime, began to dig with the others.

"Whoop! Yes! That's the way!" If his core could bounce he would be bouncing around like a dot over a bunch of song lyrics. That made him think of music, and he basked in the glow of his own brilliance while the tune to "Powerhouse," a busy song they used to play in the factory scenes in old cartoons played in his head.

Cartoons. Crap.

Instead of busy machines, he suddenly had visions of brooms carrying slopping water buckets. Did I just create a Sorcerer's Apprentice situation here?

"Johnny 5, stop!"

Nothing happened.

He started to panic, then realized he had only told Johnny to stop clicking on the other golems. It would take another few minutes for the next golem to stop. It was a very long five minutes.

Number seven stopped and did not start again. "Ok, good to know." He had burned an action point, but it was worth it to know he hadn't just started a tunnel to the next continent. The pause also let him spot how the gap in the line where Johnny 5 had stepped away was going to turn into a division in the middle of the tunnel as the others dug deeper.

He focused on each golem in turn down the line and shuffled them to the left as they finished digging. It would leave a notch on the far right, but he didn't mind. He set the golem now in slot five to dig the division away until the whole mining face was even again. It cost him an hour, but it made him feel better.

He was only thirty stone short of full capacity now, so he created another stone bin, just to have room to try again.

He wondered how much he had to explain to the golem this time? "Johnny 5, start them again."

One by one, each of the golems in line started digging again.

This opened up all sorts of possibilities. "Hey Bossy, guess what!"