“The crystals are in place, but the spawners were already suffering from mana atrophy. Doesn’t that mean the dungeon has stable populations of monsters who can breed on their own? Is that going to be an issue?”

The words buzzed in Baros’ pocket, the scrying enchantment still active as he hunted down his ‘loving’ sister. The constant questions from her entourage made it so he didn’t even have to look at the stone to know her actions. She was as predictable as she was methodical.

He followed the stone, the scrying enchantment pushed beyond its limits to not just show him his destination, but lead him towards it. It wasn’t alone, as there were many enchanted items that had improved ever since he got his class.

It was his personal magic, as the passive mana in his body grew accustomed to being pushed beyond its limits. Everything he touched outperformed like their life depended on it, which it did. His life was over, the system designating him as an undead, which he didn’t care about. No human emotions to attach to it. All he had left was a single goal.

It was a goal that led him through the fog. Each mechanical step crushed the life out of the underbrush, as his own necrotic powers fed on his surroundings to keep him moving. The fog thinned, as he left the forest for the mycelium fields. Beyond was the faint outline of people that navigated through the spores, confirming he was where he needed to be.

He raised a wand, one of the last ones he owned, and by far the weakest. Originally made to circulate the air on a hot day or in a cave, but he pushed it past its limits. He was an artificer, and a master of things not breaking long after they should. An artificial revenant.

The wind circled around him as it picked up his body. His steps grew lighter as his body was almost weightless. He crouched, each piston and coil tight as he tensed. Like a spring released, he lept forward with explosive power that pulverized the mushrooms that found themselves in his path. He barreled towards the group as he grabbed the only weapon he hadn’t sold. A kitchen knife.

He came at them from behind and tackled the biggest man to the ground as he drove the blade into his shoulder. They dropped as he whipped his head around to scan for his real target, but he couldn’t find the blue hair. It was only him and the two goons.

From the lead, the other goon had taken notice. He was quick to raise his hand and let forth a torrent of flame, but Baros was already on the move. His speed let him dive in close and smack the man’s hand away as he punched the man’s chin and sent him to the ground.

“Where is she?” Baros screamed.

“Oh man, the pathetic boy finally came back?” The brute stood up and removed the kitchen knife from his shoulder, unconcerned with the wound.

“So much for Dekrin keeping an eye on you,” the mage said from his position on the ground.

Baros didn’t care for the banter, he needed answers. He dove at the mage with his foot poised to crush the man’s skull, but the brute intercepted him from behind by the scruff of his shirt. The man threw him backwards, but the air magic softened the blow of the earth.

Before he recovered, a blast of fire filled his sight and hit him square in the face. The blinding light was warm, but held no real heat. It faded and left no burn marks. The mage sputtered in surprise, but Baros’ eyes focused on a new message.

> Status as Undead nullifying charm and emotion based magic

“Another mage of emotion? I figured with all her power she would have been able to do something more than give someone the power to burn emotions, since guess what?” he picked up that discarded knife as he spoke. “I’m already dead.”

In an instant, he was at them again. He ducked under the brute’s panicked guard, as he left a cut in the man’s side as he dove past. The mage turned to run, but the knife found home between his ribs.

The man’s pain fueled enough fire to force Baros back, as these actually held heat to them. His sleeve caught fire, but he didn’t care. The wind carried him towards two, but the brute didn’t react.

Baros dove past his guard for the second time, but only realized too late why the man was catatonic.

His breath was red, his eyes black, veins thick. The fight and wind had kicked up the poisonous spores. Baros was fine, but the Chemical Berserker’s blast of bloodlust pushed him back. The brute had turned the poison into strength.

An annoyance, since Baros had places to be.

They dove at each other. The man's aura became like a supernova and his fists like cannonballs as his body tore itself apart from the force. Baros did all he could to avoid the attacks, and only be in range of the aura long enough to strike, but just getting close hurt him. It didn’t help that neither could feel pain, so kept going at it like drugged gorillas.

His body was being destroyed. Every second this drew out ruined any future plans.

But he had already lived out his usefulness. There was no reason to continue, except to get even.

When the brute attacked again, Baros blocked with his left arm. The force shattered the bone, but he was close enough to drive the knife into the man’s neck.

Together they fell in a heap, but as Baros stood, one arm completely destroyed, he looked at the mage of flames. He was immune to the man’s magic, so he knew this would be quick.

“I was hoping I wouldn’t have to do this,” the kid mouthed off, “but the best part of being accepted into the family is that I also don’t have anything to return home to. If I fail here, I might as well just accept death.”

He cast his spell; the sparks flew past Baros with no effect. Behind him, the brute’s body burned as the emotions of death became kindling. Baros didn’t notice.

“You aren’t a part of the family. She never even gave you a nam-” his words were cut off as a fireball consumed him.

But he was too desperate to die.

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System sat and sulked. They refused to do their job and wanted to leave, but was trapped. They could pass the time by working, refining, and perfecting, but a constant buzz of voices reminded them why this was a bad idea.

“Why did it die?” the Core screamed.

Mana swirled around the corpse of the spider as the fungus grew along its wooden shell and returned it to the earth. The Core threw a temper tantrum over its ‘perfect’ creation dying a day after its birth to some adventurers.

“I need to make it better,” the Core mumbled to himself.

The words made System shudder. They were in for another round of horrific and crude experiments as the dungeon flexed its power and inevitably broke something.

“I need corpses to make a new one.”

“They are no corpses, well maybe if I can just….”

A fire started, as magical energy formed a ball so tight it generated heat and burned a tree. A clear failure, that only failed in its inability to discourage the Core.

“Or maybe I can get corpses from the ones that are still alive,” he thought aloud.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“The ants, they are just living corpses. They won’t listen, but they can be the materials to make a loyal companion. Or….” There was a hesitation that lasted several minutes as the Core subjected the world to its thoughts.

“If I rebuild them from the ground up, I can make them mine again. Not just ants, but warriors.”

System may have been a disgruntled employee as far as the Core was concerned, but they still had a few connections they could pass information along. An easy task, and one that would cause issues for the Core.

> Empress, the Core wishes to mutate your children in its flawed attempts at perfection.

“He desires to enlighten us,” the mother replied. “His gift will bestow new strength to our kin, and with time, we will learn to make his gifts our own and use it to reach new heights.”

That didn’t work. The Empress was far too infatuated with the Core to see it for the feral beast it really was.

“Some of these ants have turned to stone. Fossilization? Does that mean I can turn things to stone and make them stronger than wood?” The Core had never stopped to think.

The statues still had mana cores at their center, as a vestigial relic of their past, but today it served as a point of contact between the tidal wave of mana and the stone body it inhabited. The first few exploded before the Core realized it had to be gentle.

After that, the statues were gently bathed in mana. The knowledge of necromancy animated the corpses as they twitched and pulses. They moved, slowly and with uncontrolled strength as several limbs broke off.

The Core used its knowledge of medicine to attach limbs made of metal to the wounded. Sensing the inevitability of it happening again, he had the ‘living’ ant colony prepare more insectoid prosthetics.

Metal fused with stone, which fused with flesh. A mana stone that pulsed like a heart, and connected them to the lich’s phylactery as if it was their own personal spawner.

The dungeon had created death golems.

System wasn’t jealous or anything. They could have done that in a fraction of the time, and created healthier results.

The Core didn’t stop at just one half success. He continued to create. More golems, more stone, more mana dripped into their bodies as if he wanted to force evolution.

A flawed effort, as only biological creatures can mutate and pass on the new traits to their offspring in evolution. In the stone, it was pointless, and the only way to change them was to change the spell that created them.

Information System was content to not pass on, and let the Core struggle.

He eventually realized how fruitless indirect enhancements were, as he started to directly create.

He started with the spawners. Each monster had one, but each one had withered after months of misuse. The birds hardly hung on, the original ant colony was nonexistent, the slime cauldron was stuck, and Echo was nowhere to be found.

So, naturally following zero rules of escalation, the Core had an idea.

“I just need to make a new spawner. One for the undead statues I have created.” He squealed in joy.

Oh no.

System could feel the mana swirl, as the Core formed a new knot. Doubling mana back in on itself, its innate elegance was destroyed as a jagged spike formed and stabbed into the earth to root the nearby mana to this central idea.

The veins of mana that naturally circulated were destroyed, as parts of the dungeon stagnated. Passive cycling to maintain the health of the dungeon was gone, all so the Core could pursue a single idea.

“The last spider failed, but what if I make it better? The last spider had a soft spot in its head, but if I make its head out of stone, that won’t be an issue. It will have armor,” The Core spoke to no one in particular.

A spider formed, significantly smaller than the goliath that was its predecessor. The carapace on its head was so thick the poor thing toppled over and died to the impact of its own weight.

“It fell. That means it needs more limbs.”

The next could hardly be called a spider, as it was closer to a centipede in leg count. It had the stability to not topple, but its legs were too weak to remain standing for long. It collapsed under its own weight as it laid on the ground.

“Its too weak, it needs stronger bones.”

System was horrified as the Core gave the next version both an exo-skeleton and an endo-skeleton. The majority of its body was just structure to hold it in place.

The plan had ‘worked’ only in that the poor creation didn’t die a minute after its birth. Yet the Core did not stop, it kept adding parts and pieces as it formed a template for its new spawner to make use of.

The entire process made System itch in a way that was unforgivable. Like a master chef being forced to watch an apprentice eat flour, they focused on something else.

No need to make comments on success, stats, or that the entire thing would work better if it had any sort of muscles to assist in moving its cumbersome body. No, the Core was too busy giving it poison, as he let the template be infested with the reaper fungus that had grown in the vicinity.

It was a horrible creation that made System ignore its existence entirely. Their ability to find order in chaos was in overdrive, and yet they still found no way to salvage the monster. Instead, System focused on things that could change their predicament specifically.

It was a quarantine, and if they could just find the source, it would be possible to cut the cancer out.

A laborious process, as System had learned long ago, the issues were invisible to their perception. To find the problem, they had to work around it to find those hidden borders to map out what the problem was not.

A time-consuming process, but one that gave System a pretty good idea of what was going on. There was another person who had the powers of a system that had to be somewhere in the dungeon. While mortals should have no say over the ways of the universe, for System, it was an opportunity.

Like a genie, System could be free if another took their place.

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

The girl with blue hair wandered the dungeon. She had left her friends behind to deal with her brother so she could go deeper into the sacred territory. She was an interloper, lost and alone.

Her travels brought her closer to the Empress, who watched every step of the journey. She may not have been a strong disciple of the Crown, but she was an observant one.

The girl made quick work as she navigated the forest, but halfway through her stride lost its confidence. She glanced back and kept looking over her shoulder, clearly unnerved by something.

The Crown watched her steps, but had grown bored and continued its work creating monsters. Avice could feel the presence, and the apathy was something she hadn’t expected. The young lamb clearly thought herself worthy of an ambush, but when none came, it only set her on edge.

It was a joy for the Empress to watch. To see someone so self-obsessed they couldn’t fathom why the Crown wouldn’t care about them. The Crown was busy, but this pilgrim still needed to be greeted. The Empress left the burrow where she hid and positioned herself at the fortress gate, ready for the overdue conversation.

Avice had regained her composure by the time she made it to the broken walls. Her stride was confident and her face smug as she stopped when she saw the Empress. As a small moth, she sat on a rock to be seen, but her magical aura gave her away then any stature could.

They both stared for a moment, unsure who to take the lead.

“Puppet” Avice’s voice had a curt hospitality.

“Puppeteer.” She regarded the invader with the same tone.

“Do I need to fight you to pass? Are you just another cliche floor boss stopping me from going deeper?”

The Empress sighed at the young girl’s inexperience. “Your mind is limited in ways I hope your journey may remedy, but no. I am not here as a combatant, I am just here to ask a question before you pass. What makes you think you may walk in here and pretend to be equals with this great dungeon?”

A smug grin crept across her face. “It is my birthright. I am just an inheritor, ready to claim what I am owed.”

“You may think yourself cheeky to give such an answer, but we both know there is another with that title, and they are far more deserving of it than you. So I ask again, who- what are you, and what are you doing here?”

“I am your creator.” That same grin remained on her face, as she clearly loved these fake answers. “My ability is that of the soul smith, as I made everything around us with power not unlike your dungeon. I created my own army, raised my own paragons by shaping the souls of others and granting them with strength, and I am here to collect what is mine by birthright. So now don’t make me say it twice, bow to your true creator. If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t exist.”

“Do not pretend you are both the sun that shines upon these hills, and the mountains that raise us up, for you are neither. You act like you are the stepping stones that allowed me to become a lich, but you were only ever an obstacle for my family to overcome. We have survived every time you wished us ill, and we have grown from it. It may have been from your influence, but this power is my own, and belongs to my children, for they are the inheritors of this power.”

“Bold words coming from an insect with no power to stop me,” she said as she passed the stone where the Empress sat.

They had no power to stop one another, so the Empress let her pass. One was a mother, the other a schemer. Each lacked the power to truly hurt the other.

“You best be warned to take caution if you really wish to enter the heart of this holy place,” the Empress called out. “Your heart is filled with the malice that it will feed on. Everything will crumble should you awaken what lies beneath, you included. For what could you possibly build up when you only know ruin and destruction in your life?”

“Ruin for others. I don’t care how many people get hurt. Besides, it will only fail if things go wrong, and they won’t. I have prepared too much for this.”

“Not everyone is a puppet. You may manipulate many, but there are forces in this world beyond your control. Do not think you are above existence or free will.”

The wind carried the Empress's words as they chased Avice past the quarry’s entrance. The fog obscured the path ahead and the depths it contained. It was a hole in the earth like a gaping maw ready to close, but the white void obscured the danger.

She had done everything she could to correct the girl’s behavior, but sometimes the advice of a mother wasn’t enough. She had been warned, as what she wanted was impossible, and if she tried it would hurt a great many.

It was signs of a war brewing. It was time to rally the troops.

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> Corruption has reached 50%

> Understanding Increased: Pride - the inability to acknowledge your flaws or the faults in your creations.