“He is under my care, because he is too old to care for himself. It is my responsibility to understand him and figure out how he got this old. With such a long life, he must have learned a lot, which is something he can teach me,” The Core thought to him-itself as it studied the adventurer that traversed the land.

The lone adventurer had a familiar face and name, despite it being his first time here. Gray hair, grizzled features full of scars, and the name of Bob. He had less spring in his step than the Robert that came the day before, but with it came a caution to avoid the worse fights.

There were a dozen differences that fascinated the Core, as it studied his every detail.

It watched him sleep. How he used his cane to navigate away from danger. The food he ate, how he stored it in his bag wrapped in cloth. The wear on his teeth from the side of his mouth he favored chewing. Every single detail, no matter how small, was under scrutiny.

The Core took it all in, not letting him have a single moment of privacy. It was the only way to care for this person who clearly needed help. The Core did this for him, even if he never knew of the consciousness that watched from a distance. At such an age, just a moment unsupervised would have been enough for him to die.

“I am almost human,” it thought to itself. “I have taken a soul. I have learned about compassion and culture. I have met hundreds of people, and fed an entire city. I am a good person, and I can evolve into more. I can evolve into a human if I just learn more about them.”

“I am so close,” it chanted to itself.

“So close, just a little more,” the mantra went.

“The more I learn, the better, the more human.” the Core repeated on loop.

“I can be just like you,” it- he- spoke to himself.

All the while, Bob never noticed the presence that peered deep into him. For days he wandered the mountains. Every time he faced a fight that he could not win- which was a majority of them- he would flicker through time to find himself where he stood an hour before.

The Core always peered over his shoulder, as it watched every action the delver took. The way the quill danced across paper as he mapped his travel, the way his tongue formed arcane words to activate skills that defied time. They were both magical beings, practically entwined in their similarities. They were like twins, identical in every way.

Perhaps that’s why the Core took a gender, to be more like its idol. To be more human… no longer ‘it’ but a man. He would be everything like his idol, because that was everything he needed to look up to. The more he learned about Bob, the more he felt human, the more he knew it would just take a little more effort. A few more details.

For his unwitting part, the delver never wavered in his task. It was another aspect he respected in the man. Diligently, the map expanded, every detail described in the paper. The work only stopped as he hid from a group of skeletons that wielded axes against the trees of the forest. Whatever their efforts were for, neither Core nor adventurer cared. Both were too worried about making sure the human survived.

As they passed through the mycelium fields, they noticed the undead that rove in packs. Each band had large bundles of cloth full of slimes and mushrooms, and were so preoccupied in their work, they passed by the several miserable hiding places. Bob, for his part, did everything he could to hide under logs and thick clouds of spores, even if he was half exposed each time.

With each attempt to run from the skeletons showed survival instincts that enamored the Core. “It is heroic to survive, and keep living,” he thought to himself. “It’s a tactic that benefits him the most, so of course he would hide. He has a smart plan, and later he can ambush them.”

The silent praise ended when a skeleton passed over the delver’s hiding place and stepped on him. His silent words of encouragement became silent screams to hurry, as arcane words formed on his tongue. A chant that defied time as his form flicked before he threw himself backwards.

With a sigh of relief, the delver found himself at the edge of the forest where it bordered the field. He stretched and stood tall, as throwing himself into the dirt had not been kind on his aged joints. His back turned, he took in the scenery of the rolling hills and mountain peaks beyond.

Unaware of the skeletons he had hid from an hour prior that stood right behind him. Axes in hand, a deep gouge cut into a tree, gravity about to steal it from the sky.

The air vibrated as the Core watched the scene unfold. No way of directly warning him, only vibrating the mana in the air. What he would have given to have the power to affect the terrain, but alas the Core only had power of monsters. Helpless, he was forced to watch the tactics of the skeleton, as they had caught the delver in their net and let a tree fall on him.

With a crack, the delver's bones were pulverized under its weight until he was nothing but a smear. Blood splattered against the other trees, where it dripped down and soaked into the soil. Crimson drops against the dark green moss that covered the ground. As the skeletons ignored him and continued to harvest their trees.

They were pretending to be apathetic. They had to be.

It was all too convenient. For the delver to jump back right into this point right as a tree fell. This was more than bad luck, it had to be. The skeletons planned this. They knew the Core wanted to evolve. They knew how to take that away. They had stopped him from becoming a human. Now he was cursed to forever be a rock.

> Understanding Increased: Paranoia - Unfounded worry and accusations that stem from status as a Broken Core unable to regulate emotions.

Nothing was unfounded, the skeletons had invaded and ruined his home. A wave of ill intent rolled off of his Core, as it gave the command to the nearby ants to breach the earth and take back the forest that was theirs. Only the few ants nearby did not move. They ignored the Core.

He followed their mana to see why, only to find another dungeon core inside his domain. One that exclusively makes undead. He knew it was the phylactery of the Empress, but her being missing was all too convenient. Her children didn’t know who the master was, and so followed their own direction.

The Core was losing control.

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He had to strike back, and fast. Paranoia was just caution, and there was danger everywhere, so he had to be smart. There was no way he would give anyone time to set another trap, or betray him. They needed to die first, or be crushed into submission before they got any ideas. It was the only way to be human…

> Understanding Increased: Obsession - The final form of focus that becomes a dedication that one can not leave alone.

> Notice: The Core is not human, and no amount of evolution will result in such a change.

Lies, they were all lies.

Everything wanted to betray him, so that he could never become human. The ants, the system, the undead that invaded…. he had to show them all.

So he pushed mana through the fractured Core and flooded the world. A deep fog that bubbled out of the hole in his crystalline surface, unrefined and with only a single purpose of ‘make better.’ It flooded the lair and spilled out of the bowels of the earth.

Mana so dense it blocked sight as it filled the air, and swirled and danced as he pushed it forward. Like a geyser it erupted in the center of the forest, where the mana clung to everything it could touch. The Core had purpose, but the mana he released did not. It swept past the trees and washed over the moss, like a sticky pollen it collected on everything it touched.

It was evolution without direction. System tried to fight it- tried to overrule with intelligent design, but it could do nothing against the sheer emotional weight that he had embedded.

> Warning: Emotional Cascade imminent: Reaching critical mass of unregulated emotions.

> Error: Mutations detected - result of primal urge instead of intelligence, results will not-

> Landscape Evolution: Crimson Forest has become the [Error, name not found]

> Giving Name - Shrouded Forest

> Paranoid Mana has reached critical mass in Paragon “Echo”

> New title gained, The One That Lurks-

> Error, unable to find paragon…

> Attempting to patch…

> Attempting…. Error

The Core didn’t understand what the system said. Echo wasn’t missing. He was right there, at the heart of the forest. Was System lying when it said it couldn’t see Echo? How deep did the lies and deception go?

He would have to be smart and not let them know he was on to them. He would play it cool and let them dig their own grave as he sent them to battle. If nothing else, he would let them bleed one last time for him as he kept an eye on their every action.

He was a Dungeon Core, broken and fractured, but he owned these mountains. He could directly control everything here, and he would just to ensure loyalty. Under his orders, the trees wrapped in the fog uprooted. They inched their way north as seeds sprouted leafless spikes that reached for the blocked out sky. They would not find the sun, but he fed them enough mana to guarantee their survival. It left in its wake a desolated forest without leaves, but that was not the concern.

The skeletons hiding in their fortress were. They hid their actions, but now he did as well. He would be the one to ambush them with an entire forest if he had to.

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

Mask had taken his ‘diplomatic’ leave the moment the others looked away long enough for him to book it. In his hurry to flee to a hidden corner of existence, he left behind his briefcase. The case itself was inconsequential to Joulo, who was preoccupied as she mused that the name ‘Mask’ was as much a lie as his ability to withstand the pressure of actual gods. The entire ordeal was odd enough that she was ready to move past it and focus on more important matters.

Unfortunately, Myriad was ever curious, and did not subscribe to such ideas.

The discarded briefcase was right there, and so they had to just see what was inside. With a soft click of its buckles, a hundred cards spilled out. The pictures of skeletons danced their way across the table, as they fluttered with mischievous joy to tamper with everything within reach.

Everyone watched as they crowded around the Invasion action card, and built their encampment around it. They marched into the forest, and destroyed the trees to create lumber, and captured slimes to make poisons. From the quarry, they laid foundations and built their fortress. Each time they gathered around the existing cards in the environment, it would mutate into something new.

The army of skeletons was industrious, but in the gods’ eyes… they were too busy being enamored by the cards that built themselves into a house of… cards. Foundations of stone, ribs of timber, as they themselves joined the structure to become a wall of bodies. A tower that reached towards ever upwards in their greedy ambitions to reach eye height of those that had gathered around.

Joulo wanted to smash them away- to topple the self constructing tower- but for the moment she let the others have their fun. It was a reprieve from everything, as she watched Trench and Myriad act like children as they chanted encouragement to the tower.

“Build, build, build, build”

It was a steady chant that drowned out the usual bustle of gods around them. One that Joulo used to drift away. Their words were almost rhythmic, only broken up by their cheers as construction finished and another started. They weren’t gods who built, but ones of the wilderness, so seeing buildings was a novel experience they rarely had. Doubly so, as few had ever seen a fortress built without the guidance of one of the many gods of architecture to oversee it all.

Where was the mastermind behind the skeletons? They moved with such order and precision that she could almost see the strings that they danced on. The only question is where those strings connected. She never hurt anyone, so why did everyone want to hurt her? What did she ever do to deserve everything that happened?

Her eyes returned to the table that held her domain, as every card in play was laid out for easy viewing. The forests had grown; the skeletons had dug into the earth, and so much more. It gave her a thought to look at the cards she held, each one just as changed. The dungeon core had split into two, the second far weaker than the first. Just as a deep fog of pure mana had swallowed the forest, with the tree at its center glowed as it evolved into a higher form. Not even the slimes were spared, as the undead were skinned for their membrane. Their guts left to fertilize the mushrooms they cared for, as they expanded rapidly without the maintenance.

The dungeon didn’t have a keystone species, but with every action the skeletons took there was a ripple. Mushrooms no longer kept in control by the slimes expanded. Their spores added to the density of the fog which killed off the young saplings.

The worst thing Joulo found was a new card. “Invasion” it read, a card created by a monster’s desire to spread and conquer. Ready to spread its wings and be free regardless of the consequences. She thumbed the card and reread it again and again, each time she hoped it would change. Her dungeon wanted to fight back, but she knew it would only hurt people.

‘Do I have the power to stop a war of the dungeon decides to fight back?’ she thought to herself. ‘War and dungeons are so far out of my domain I dont even know if it would listen to me if I tried.’

Her thoughts spiraled deeper and deeper in her isolation until she heard someone talking to her.

“I don’t know why you are looking at the cards like they are a murder weapon, but I promise it’s not that bad,” Tyliana broke the silence of Joulo’s thoughts. With a hand, she gestured towards the duo of godly children as they played peek-a-boo behind the tower of skeletons as she continued.

“Perhaps because of our relative age difference, their actions are so uncalled for, but perhaps I should cut them some slack since both came after the age of dragons.”

“Oh, umm, yeah,” Joulo mumbled back, too distracted by her thoughts. “Guess we are pretty young in the grand scheme of things.”

Despite her attempt to hide her thoughts, she couldn’t help but let the sadness slip into her voice. A thing Tyliana picked up on instantly.

“Are you that worried about the skeletons, or just worried they will mess up all our hard work?”

“He wasn’t a god,” Joulo whispered back, hoping it would answer the question.

With a sigh, she replied, “he wasn’t, but he had a boss, which means someone is powerful enough to give orders to someone on equal footing as us.”

“Why does it always come back to me?” Joulo half heartedly said to no one in particular, as she let the quiet part slip out. “What did I ever do to deserve this?”

“I don’t think it’s about you, but about the Joulo Mountain range. What happened all those years ago?”

“My sister? She died, and we never found her body… I inherited everything she owns, and that became my domain, and now we are here.”

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> Corruption of Core: 17%