In the eyes of a mountain, the passage of time is irrelevant. In the eyes of a nearby town, two years is quite a long time for people to get comfortable and really feel out everything the dungeon had to offer.

They cultivated grain, fought monsters, harvested the forest for everything that didn’t kill them immediately, and so much more. Many did die, but not like *a lot* a lot, but even that was just because the dungeon is really bad at its job.

The years ticked by, and the dungeon had ployed countless tricks and upgrades that were all for not. Time continued to pass and many things changed, but few were notable. With the first thing of note being that some shady evil doers made their way into the dungeon to attack.

They were a squad of three. A mage that burned the forest, a tank that fought the ants while high on slime, and a lich that watched them die to the dungeon. He didn’t care, because they were goons, and he had important things to do, like fight Vault fresh off of his thirty chapter vacation.

It didn’t go well for the Lich that animated his body like a puppet, since Vault had secretly evolved in tandem with everything else in the dungeon. As a puppet with no knowledge of what Vault had become, the results were guaranteed before the two even classed. However, it didn’t matter because it was just a distraction.

No one knew it was a distraction, because Baros- or what remained of him- had made the plan. Scarred, beaten, malnourished, and on the verge of death after his run in with the dungeon years prior, he had made his return. He had snuck past the dungeon’s weakened defenses and made it to the Core room with a hammer in his hand.

Meanwhile the gods were having a riveting discussion about how to cure corruption and kill the demons that had infested the dungeon. That didn’t end well since someone tricked Joulo into drinking poison to selectively killing parts of herself. Had that plan worked… things might have turned out alright.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

But the plan failed, Baros failed to shatter the Core, and Joulo failed to finish the poisoned drink. Instead they were forced to pick themselves up from the brink of death.

While everyone was reeling from their failed plans, the dungeon- no, the Core- with a new sense of identity was able to flourish. It had eaten something new during the attack, and gained knowledge of Baros’ soul. It learned about compassion, love, and what it meant to be human.

In some odd sense, the Core had not just learned, but thought itself to be one of the humans.

A new aspect of the dungeon that System absolutely despised, because it was not a human, and thinking otherwise will have nothing good come of it. Unfortunately the Core was convinced it needed to use these new emotions to live a better life. It just had to start asking consent of its monsters, then everything would be perfect, right?

System knew these new emotions would fade in time as it went back to its non-human ways, but it had no idea how right it would be. During the attack, the Core had recieved damaged. So every day- every chapter- that mana flowed through it, it would slowly corrupt and become less itself.

But a slow corrupting of the Core was background noise. It was high on compassion and self discovery as it rebuilt everything from the ground up. It worked to bolster its defenses, but an army of skeletons had made come in to exploit its vulnerability.

While passive, they were not friendly. They cut down trees, killed birds, and quarried out a mountain. No one knows their exact goals, but the Empress thinks its to make a church. Afterall its clear the army is digging on holy soil, and they are clearly controlled by another lich.

Said lich was Avice, the queen in blue, cousin of the puppet, granddaughter of the only one to ever kill a god… and sister of Baros. She raised an army over the years and with Dekrin the blood puppet doing the heavy lifting of attacking the dungeon head on her army was able to set up camp before the dungeon was done rebuilding.

She has plans, ones that probably arent good.

Shame her brother still lives. Legs eaten by the dungeon, soul shattered from mana fever, and so much more. He has enlisted the help of some people in town to stitch his would-be-corpse together so he can seek vengeances. Afterall, he did kinda lose all compassion….