The unnamed scorpion skittered across the pedestal base, moving slowly and steadily to explore its new area. Soon, it reached what was once the edge he had climbed up, and instead found a new structure. A grid-like lattice of hardened clay formed a structure that grew around a core of loosely packed sandstone. The lattice twisted farther above and around the pedestal, terminating in a ridge that circled the lower edge of the Core itself.
The Scorpion scratched at the surface, and felt a sense of… interest. Of ‘Mine’.
With aplomb, and with energy that most scorpions would never possess, it began to burrow into the honeycombed sandstone and clay.
Its new nest awaited it.
And under its shell, in its flesh and blood, the mana it had taken from the core, the contract it had unknowingly accepted… began to make its first changes.
Because this close to the Core- the dungeon’s Mana began to harmonize.
‘A source of warmth and life, seeping out into the hive around it.’
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“Well, if nothing else, it seems to enjoy the structure,” His God commented, as Chase stretched his nonexistent muscles after the ache of once more assuming ‘direct control’ of the crafting process.
“—don’t even have tendons. Why the fuck does it ache.” Chase was complaining more for something to do than for real issues. Besides, the sandstone nest around the pedestal was only part of what he had set up.
But, as the scorpion began to burrow, Chase couldn’t help but hear the mental ‘ring’ of something in the menu being shifted once more.
Tapping open the display, he glanced through the menu tabs.
Status, Material, Building, Minions…
He was almost positive it was… there.
A little focus and he was clicking open Buildings, where he found the change. He had officially unlocked a ‘Scorpion Burrow’, sitting right next to ‘Dungeon Heart Pedestal’ in the Structures subtab under the menu. Tapping the label, a short description came up, and Chase scrolled through the page, reading anything of note for His God to hear. “‘Desert Burrowing Habitat, unlocks Scorpion Recovery point, allows upgrade of ‘Scorpion’ Pests and Minions of sufficient level—’ which is great, but not important because our Scorpion is still level Zero, ‘—can be used as a template upon further Minion acquisition.’ Huh, are normal Scorpions just classified as pests?”
“Perhaps, but acquiring them seems somewhat prudent. Perhaps further generation of scorpions would provide more potential benefits?”
Chase gave a nod before glancing back at the tabs and ‘clicking’ back to visit the Status page, and the red ‘Six’ next to his Mana count. “Before we start recruiting, we need more Mana. Acquiring our little bossman over there took a full point of Mana, and until we get more, I don’t particularly feel like experimenting with how our luck tends to be.”
“Explosive and double-edged?”
Chase paused and sighed. “Yeah, that’s a fair description.” Tapping to double check the explanation… “Right, we get one unit of mana per day at… ‘Solar Noon’. Is there a reason for that?”
Glancing across the night sky, His God hummed slightly. “Celestial light is often revered for its power and effect on the land. The brightest light of the day contains much power, including mana. Without an array, we are limited to but a touch of such radiance. Even deep below the earth, the light of this world’s sun would grant you a touch of mana.”
That… was interesting. “Huh, good to know. Thank you, God.”
“Of course.”
As His God continued looking up at the unfathomable void of space, eyes burning white lines in the darkness… Chase turned his attention away, focusing inward.
Looking back at the menu, Chase couldn’t help but give a hum of consideration, clicking through menu screens until he was back in the Building tab, opening the Excavation sub-tab and pulling up the map of squares he had set to dig.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
The foundation digging had started on the external four rooms while Chase had been directly crafting the burrow, and progress had slowed remarkably. Digging straight lines? Consistent rate of excavation. Digging rooms? The square cube law was in visible effect. Something to the tune of three and change as much effort for every foot ‘outwards’ from the mouths of the hallways, multiplied across four separate paths? His already slow pace of consumption had tanked.
But that was fine. Time was the one real resource that Chase currently expected to have, and without a single direction to take threats from in the dead center of the desert, he could handle a slower build time in exchange for more robust foundations. It gave him time to do some… more involved preparations.
Namely, he had to figure out measurements.
A single unit of the dungeon was… about three feet? A meter? Something around there. Some unholy measurement that was between Standard and Metric from his old world.
There was a big secret to measurements though: it was all dependent on reference. A ‘Meter’ only makes sense because all your measurements are directly related to that size. Foot, Inch, Yard, Mile, Fathom—all measurements are solely useful in comparison.
Chase and the Dungeon had a built-in measurement of Units. Normally, Chase might be fucked trying to do conversions for that, but the Dungeon menu had the solution. It had decimal values.
And if he could split a unit into 100 equal pieces across a single face, then he could do things to scale.
But first… he needed a table.
Good thing he had designed one while he was building the Burrow.
Selecting it, Chase dragged it until it lined up with the northeast corner of the core room, and settled its ‘impression’ in the sandstone corner. There was a gleam of light as golden energy that had begun to look interestingly like very fine glowing sand flowed from the core to form an outline and then solidified.
Dusky red clay replaced the dungeon light as the color rose up from the ground and through the glowing shape. In seconds, it had crafted four legs that were fused into the ground itself, each only a very simple square pillar of red stone. Those legs stretched and reached up a full unit before turning at just over waist height and connecting. Red strands ran along edges, stretching out like spilled paint until the four legs supported a square surface of the same thickness as the legs.
The real trick was the top. Lines were etched across the surface, nine equidistant shallow lines one way, another nine perpendicular the other.
Across a table surface that was perfectly one unit squared, that left one hundred perfectly square tiles behind. Grinning, Chase leaned his incorporeal arms on what the menu now called a ‘Grid Table’.
Simple, but he could use this with what he had. Tabbing through the build menu, he found the folder he had made for this, tucked in a ‘Decor’ subtab.
‘1/10th Scale Map Pieces’. Opening the tab, Chase snagged his first custom board piece, and dragged the mental impression onto the board.
The math was going to be off; his dungeon was on an ‘odd’ distribution because of his core, but he could use a fun little trick. Arranging four tables in a two by two layout effectively made one big 20 by 20 unit table. By carefully overlapping the middle columns and middle rows, he would end up with a nineteen by nineteen table, which let him work around his ‘odd’ layout issue.
But for now, a single table would work to get a proof of concept.
Tapping the impression to the corner of his new table closest to the core itself, Chase watched as a pile of gold energy spun into existence… and from it, a small gleaming white piece rose up, as if growing to fill the mold.
Pure salt formed a replica of his first pillar… now rounded and with tiny designs, the base squared off and with a tiny, ridge-like wall.
The core room.
“Five by five units to a marker, 100 markers to a table…” Sliding his finger from the edge of the ‘Core’ piece, Chase tapped the adjacent edges. “Nine tiles makes 45 units in these cardinal directions… which means this table should let me map a sweet two thousand and change units.” As he stared down at what was, in reality, just a grid map of his dungeon, Chase couldn’t help but grin. Scaling up to four tables, accounting for overlapping cardinal lines, would give him the ability to clear a foundation large enough to start some real defenses, just in scale alone.
“Let’s put those years of drawing grid paper battlemaps to use…”
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His God remained a step away, staring up with curiosity, as Chase dove into mapping out his next steps. The Scorpion remained in its new burrow, claws digging into sand and stone as it carved its own path.
Across the sky, under Chase’s God’s watchful gaze, the moon began a slow descent towards the edges of the sky.
But the god did not waver.
Even as the eyes of other Divinity scoured for him and his Champion, the white fire eyes of the newly born god turned their gaze away with his own connections to the fabric of reality.
These gods, even at a distance, were Defined. They Knew themselves.
But such independent power came at a cost… For all their strength, Chase’s God was closer to the weave of reality. A mere loose thread, not yet pulled and woven into a full being.
And who would ever notice such a loose, unassuming flaw?
‘Look elsewhere in the sand and clay. We are small and unseen, lost against similar dunes. Leave us be.’
Chase needed time. Time to heal, to experiment, to grow.
As the dungeon’s Patron God, how could he do anything but grant such a wish?