I was surprised when instead of going to sleep the professor walked out of the room. A couple seconds later she had a hand pressed against my crystal. “I just wanted to thank you for setting up that room for me. Also I couldn’t help but notice that you had your goblins bringing me new samples. I even noticed that some things were just appearing near me. So I wanted to also thank you for helping me examine so many interesting things.” She said.

Something sounded a bit off about her thanking me though. Just a tiny bit disingenuous. “You're welcome. Although I’m curious why you are thanking me. I am your captor after all. You don’t seem to be the Stockholm syndrome type.” I said.

“I read somewhere that if you were ever kidnapped it was a good idea to establish a relationship with your captor. That way they see you as a person and are less likely to kill you. Or in this case other things.” The professor admitted nervously.

I couldn’t help but laugh. “You should stop worrying about that.” I said.

“Does that mean you decided not to… well you know?” The professor asked nervously. “As long as you keep up the good work I promise I won’t do anything to you.” I replied.

“Which means if I’m ever not useful to you then you will?” The professor said with a frown.

“No. I’m not going to betray you like that.” I said, trying to reassure her. I really had made the decision that I probably wasn’t going to do anything to her. I liked the professor. She was hard working and far braver than most people would be in her position.

Besides, the only reason I had been even considering the idea was because it seemed unlikely that I’d have a shot at any other women. Recently I had been coming up with some plans. With any luck after the sheriff returned in a few days I’d have everything ready. After that I was kind of hoping to get a shot at regaining some of my humanity. Now instead of raping the professor, I was considering the potential benefits of letting her go. I hadn’t decided on that yet so I didn’t tell her.

The professor looked like she was considering my words. “Okay I’ll do the best job I can. Do you have any goals or anything specific you want me to work on?” She asked fervently.

“For now you should get some rest. There is plenty of work to do but it can all wait until tomorrow.” I said.

The professor couldn’t help but yawn when I mentioned sleep. “Yeah I guess I am really tired. Can we talk some more tomorrow? I have a ton of questions I want to ask.”

“Of course. My avatar should respawn tomorrow. I’ll give you a tour of the entire dungeon and answer any questions you have.” I answered. The professor nodded but looked a bit nervous at the mention of my orc avatar. After that she quickly returned to her room. A few minutes later she was fast asleep.

I looked around my dungeon and realized I had accomplished a lot during the last day. Since a large part of this was due to the goblins I went ahead and let the current mining shift stop a couple hours early. I also had Chieftain Sharpstick announce that the next shift would start a couple hours later.

Of course the goblins decided this warranted a giant celebration. I quickly pulled my consciousness back from their area. Even the few glimpses I got of the party starting were enough to disturb me. Luckily with four rooms between me and where they slept I could no longer hear them.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

I spent the next few hours studying the blood and water magic books I had purchased. Finally during the middle of the night I noticed that my notification indicator was blinking. I eagerly selected it.

Congratulations your overall views ranking of 248,116 has earned you 16 points.

Congratulations your overall ratings ranking of 260,992 has earned you 16 points.

Congratulations your race views ranking of 61 has earned you 8 points.

Congratulations your race ratings ranking of 67 has earned you 8 points.

Congratulations Apocalypse’s ranking of 81,916,885,003 has earned you 4 points.

It looked like all the rankings were slightly better. However, the difference wasn’t enough to give me more points than I had received the night before. I wasn’t going to complain about receiving another fifty two points though.

I instantly bought a book about fire magic using ten of those points. Hot water was my first priority. I tried to convince myself that it was because I was missing taking a shower. After all, I had been a dungeon core for three days now. The truth though was that I couldn’t get the idea of the professor taking a bath out of my head.

Although that brought up another issue. It would be easy for me to watch her. In fact it would be nearly impossible for me not to watch her. It was nearly impossible to completely stop viewing an area of my dungeon. It took a conscious effort and the longer I kept myself from blocking information from part of my dungeon the more difficult it became. Even during the horrifying goblin parties I wasn’t able to block information for more than five minutes before I got blasted with information for a couple seconds.

Keeping that same mental discipline when there was something I did want to see was going to be impossible.

The problem was that at some point she was going to learn that I could see everything in my dungeon. I couldn’t imagine that she wouldn’t be angry with me. Then again what was the alternative? That she didn’t take showers or baths ever? Knowing the professor that would probably be her solution. At least for a few days. I suspected she would be perfectly happy spending the extra time studying everything in the dungeon.

For now she didn’t know that I could always see her. I wasn’t going to conceal the information but I wasn’t going to willingly tell her if she didn’t ask. I tried to justify my decision by remembering that it was easier to ask forgiveness than permission. Although deep down even I didn’t believe that was true in this case.

Getting the plumbing exactly right took me a few hours despite my ability to use magic. The hardest part was actually figuring out how to keep the heat steady. All my attempts to create a water heater ended in failure. I just wasn’t skilled enough with magic to design an enchantment that detected temperature and then turned on and off another spell that would heat the water. Which meant I’d have to heat the water myself.

In the end I settled on a tankless system. By linking the hot water faucet to the system the heating enchantment would turn on at the same time. It took half a minute to reach its top temperature. But once it did the temperature remained steady, provided that the hot water faucet was turned all the way on. If you started messing around with the faucet, controlling the temperature was difficult. Turning the hot water knob down ended up making the water that came out hotter since the enchantment was heating it for longer. Although if you had the cold water on at the same time then the overall temperature would drop a bit, just not at the expected rate. Overall the system worked for now, I’d have to improve on it later.

After that was done I considered what to do with my other forty two points. I finally decided on purchasing some shampoo and soap from the store. It wasn’t something that anyone had brought into the dungeon yet. Of course I also needed to purchase a towel, toothpaste, and a toothbrush. It was kind of surprising how every item I could think of was in the store somewhere.

That left me with thirty seven points. There were a bunch of other items that would be nice to have but none of them were essential. I’d save the rest of my points in case there were any items that were absolutely necessary.

There was still a little over an hour until morning so I practiced magic while I waited for everyone to start waking up. Eventually I noticed the professor starting to stir. A couple minutes later under my direction the shaman knocked.