***Lilith Archyson’s POV***

The former demon ran her fingers delicately down a cold metal wall. She gazed into her slightly distorted, silvery reflection with enraptured eyes. All four walls of her new living room were made of stainless steel. Her window sills were aluminum, the chairs were nickel, and the floor was cobalt. She even had a pure mithril metal decal of a mountain hung on the wall.

This room was like a treasure chest. As much as Lilith didn’t like Archimedes, she felt like she could understand his words a little better now. He could genuinely make her environment a paradise.

She leaned over an iron vase and stroked the oxidized copper and platinum flowers inside of it. Their workmanship was flawlessly imperfect; they looked like real flowers, only better because they were made of the fruit of the earth.

Lilith felt the dungeon’s attention shift away, apparently bored with her. That was fine. She wanted to take in her new home in peace.

There was no bedroom, kitchen, or bathroom in Lilith’s new home. The dungeon had apparently ignored those elements of her ideal design. Considering how long she had already gone without eating or sleeping, she could guess why. The living room was very comfortable though. There was even a couch with cushions made of metal so fine it had been woven into silk, then stacked thousands of times to make soft metal pillows with some give. Lilith went to lay on the couch and thought that she would have been happy with this alone.

The dungeon native discovered that she could sleep if she wanted to when she dozed off on the glittering upholstery.

***Archimedes’ POV***

Thesia and Alphio were standing around on the second floor, facing the cave wall that bordered it all, jumping in curious eagerness and begging to be let in, but Archimedes ignored them.

Beyond that wall was Lilith’s new house, sealed utterly except when he opened a passage himself, to prevent intru—guests from wandering in. He kept the monsters outside so that his new creation could appreciate her gift in peace. He was expecting a favorable contribution when she finished with her introspection.

Meanwhile, the books Archimedes had requested from Cherise arrived that morning: the ones about the history, culture, and topography of this world. He read them hungrily, and various things that he’d heard were suddenly put into context.

In this world, there were apparently many intelligent races. Those that were willing to communicate and cooperate with other races were those that were considered people, and they were titled “friends”. Aside from the three races Archimedes had seen, the rest of the intelligent races were “enemies”. They only cared about their own race and were aggressive toward all others. As such, they were isolated and usually lived in small settlements out in the wilderness. It seemed the most feared enemies were dragons.

In this book about the various intelligent races, the three friends were described at the front. Archimedes found that he knew most of the physiology detailed there from his own observations, but the cultural details were all new to him.

Demons had long lifespans and a tendency to fly into fits of emotion, losing control over their highly volatile mana. As a result, demons were carefully restricted to their own cities and thoroughly educated until they were a hundred and fifty years old. At that point, they were supposed to have learned self control and were free to go out and interact with the other peoples. They lived their lives on strict schedules, with designated work, play, and rest periods throughout the day. Deviating from the regimen was seen as irresponsible and childish.

The need to keep themselves focused on something besides their emotions led to high productivity in the demon race. They were good at calm and rational work like research, production, and management. Most of the magical and scientific advancements in this world were made by demons.

Very few demons knew how to fight. Their physical and magical training only covered enough to let them escape danger and not lose control over their mana under stressful situations. It seemed that it was common for demons to be managing guilds, and they were somewhat strong when they dueled others, but they were very rarely out on the front lines.

Aesthetically, the book described that demons universally liked the look and feel of metal, enjoyed cleanliness, and preferred living indoors, underground, or in cities. He had noticed that much himself. There was no melanin in their skin or hair, so they didn’t like to be out in the sun or among nature.

They were culturally monogamous when it came to love, and the nuclear family model was their standard. Both genders were treated equally in the home and in society at large.

Demons had a personal name and a family name, and they also had a middle name which was the same as the personal name of their same-gender parent.

Elves filled the next section. The book described them as adoring the natural world. He had noticed that too. Elves apparently developed depression if they stayed in demon cities for extended periods of time. Archimedes pondered that part. From what he had observed about elf and demon mana, he thought it was possible that simply being surrounded by the broken mana of demons for too long was what made those elves depressed.

He wanted to put an elf and a demon in a room together for a few months and see what happened. Well, he didn’t have the means for that at the moment, so he wouldn’t.

Reading on, the Elves liked bright colors, were avid hunters, fishers, cooks, and gardeners, and worshipped the sun and the moon as great spirits of nature. Elves only had a personal name, and they never married. They had a custom of growing a tree into a house with their magic when they came of age. When two elves had a child, the child would live with the parent who had the bigger treehouse, but they would be raised by both of their parents at their convenience.

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Except in larger cities where elves lived alongside other races, they cared nothing for security. Their homes and property were accessible to everyone. All elves saw each other as family, so they didn’t mind if another elf borrowed their things, within reason. They were very community-minded.

Elves cared even less about gender than demons. There were cases of elves in cities with more advanced magic and technology changing their genders or even facilitating offspring between same-gender parents.

Large elf-only cities were described as amazing magical feats of nature, composed of trees as tall as mountains with brightly colored textiles decorating every branch. Perhaps it was an exaggeration, but the book claimed those cities would hold a festival on one street or another every day of the week.

At the end of the section was a note that demons and elves were mutually very uncomfortable in the others’ cities, as if that wasn’t obvious after reading this far.

The book changed topics again, this time transitioning to beast people, who were noted to have very short lifespans of only 600 years.

Archimedes has to stop reading and mentally take a deep breath. If 600 years is short enough to be pitied, how old do the rest of these creatures get? From what I remember, Humans only lived to about 80! He was very thankful to be in a cooperative relationship with these old and clever beings.

Reading on, beast people were often also pitied for their lack of magical ability. They made up for it with brute strength, though. There was a prominent note in the book in that passage that it was Yadh Nissa, a beast woman, who led the world in the fight against the foreign god Phegmehogal and dealt the final strike that caused him to flee from their world.

Beast people had a personal name and a family name, but they listed their family name first. Culturally, they divided themselves into clans by family name, and then gathered in settlements of several clans. There was only one large beast person city. Aside from that, they lived in mixed cities or smaller settlements.

Beast people were typically monogamous, but powerful and wealthy beast people would sometimes have many spouses. Also, unlike the other friendly races, beast people placed some importance on gender. The men were proud to father children and the women were proud to carry them. Diverging from the sort of coupling that saw nature as having devised was frowned upon, and so people with broader tastes were sometimes driven out of beast people settlements.

Archimedes was wondering if he would see humans listed among the enemies, perhaps under a different name, but they simply weren’t there. Despite there being dozens of intelligent humanoid races, humans weren’t among them. Archimedes finally wrapped his mind around the fact that his rivals for thousands of years didn’t exist in this world. It felt bittersweet.

“Hey, can you not read and listen at the same time?”

Archimedes pulled his focus away from his book and finally paid attention to Lilith. She had been calling out to him for a while while sitting on the metallic silk couch in her new house.

“Yes, I heard your pointless question. ‘Where did you learn how to talk,’ right? Does this seem like talking to you?”

Lilith rolled her eyes dramatically. Archimedes could sense in her thoughts that she had stopped feeling any confusion or pity when he made self-disparaging comments. There was only bored impatience.

“I mean how did you learn the local language? No matter how smart you are, you would need to hear a lot of the vocabulary in context before you could possibly make sense of it. But you’re too young for that. So, did somebody teach you?”

“I wasn’t taught, nor did I particularly learn. I habitually dig through the minds of any creature that wanders here and create a new translation method based on their language. I’ve dealt with thousands of different biological life forms, so I find them particularly easy to interpret.”

“Thousands?” Lilith frowned. “And where are all these creatures? I don’t see them.”

“Don’t be such a smartass. That was during my previous life, of course you can’t see them now.”

Archimedes suddenly sensed many sapient minds latch onto his thoughts in shock. Now that he considered it, he’d never mentioned his reincarnation aloud until now. For once, Archimedes couldn’t criticize his creations. He was equally shocked when he found himself reborn.

“If you know it’s that amazing, why didn’t you ever tell us?!” Merina stomped her feet from a gentle grassy hilltop on the second floor.

“Nothing would have changed if I told you earlier, and you know now. You’re welcome to be astonished without complaining to me.”

“Hey, papa, what was the other world like?” Thesia bounced excitedly, no longer looking for a way into Lilith’s house.

“Hm, well… like this?” Archimedes mentally projected some memories from his previous life that he thought summed things up well: memories of humans slaughtering waves of his monsters and being slaughtered in turn; of them sitting around talking about how much they were going to steal from his treasure chests and how much they would get for selling his core; of them abusing others of their kind where society couldn’t reach them; and of his endless, behemoth-filled, bloodstained halls.

His monsters were all shocked silent by the sight. They felt cold despite the artificial sunlight. Especially Theoria on the dimly lit first floor, comparing her own body to those of the monsters Archimedes used to produce en masse for slaughter, felt the chill of death through those memories.

“By Phegmehogal’s left foot, no wonder you’re such a bitter ass,” Lilith murmured. “How did you end up here?”

“A very powerful group of adventurers slaughtered all ten thousand floors of my defenses. I committed suicide before they could kill me, to rob them of the pleasure. They died in the collapse.” Briefly, Archimedes felt smug satisfaction due to the deaths of his conquerors. “When I found out I could be reborn, I accepted without a second thought. If I had known I was just going to be a dungeon again, I probably would have refused.”

“You don’t like being the god of your own little realm?” Lilith asked him snidely.

“You might as well call Deorsa the goddess of the second floor,” he scoffed. “Real gods exist, and I’m sure they aren’t as powerless as I am. I want nothing more than to move freely in the wider world.”

“What a coincidence,” Lilith huffed, before sinking into silence. “But this isn’t your old world. Why not bring the outside world to you?”

“It’s good to see you’re thinking outside the box, but no, I can’t. An acquaintance of mine tried that and failed in the worst way...”