Time passed. How much time was uncertain due to the constant beatings into unconsciousness and the otherwise lack of a need for sleep. In that time there were many fights against a variety of monsters which led to it learning several things. The most dreadful piece of information was that it could barely win against the weakest of the monsters in a fight. Its physical strength seemed to be less than that of an average human child even though it was larger than the average human adult.

Fighting against arachnae, manteae, faeries, wasps, bees, goblins, rats, zombies, skeletons, undead rats, all of their boss variants, and some kind of fox had resulted in winning only against a singular bee or rat. Of course, these were monster variations so even the bee was still the size of its head. The good news, and how it had eventually defeated a single rat, was that it seemed to have inexhaustible stamina. Other than the strangeness of the fox monster and itself, there was an obvious theme to the types of creatures here.

Traversing through the dungeon also allowed it to see some interesting things, such as the spawning sites where new monsters were automatically created/born or the various ways many of them spent their time when not following commands. Although it had not said a single word yet, and wasn't even sure if it could speak because of that, it noticed that many of what seemed to be the older monsters could and often did speak when not around the strange man.

As for the strange man, he had essentially locked himself in a lab like a mad scientist. After every fight the man would have it brought to the lab for more examinations until it was recovered. During these examinations the man talked almost continuously to either himself or whatever monster was closest, which both proved the man was mentally unstable and provided some much needed information.

About itself it learned that the man had somehow circumvented the system or the dungeon or something and actually created a whole new monster. It was supposed to be the ultimate being combined from parts of every being, monster or otherwise, that the man could find. Instead it was a 2 meter tall humanoid shadow that was incredibly weak and had no discernible abilities or traits. Other than the man and many of the rats and goblins, it was meant to be one of the few males in the dungeon as a prototype for the man's new body. This discovery led it to begin thinking of itself as he instead of it, which felt right. Maybe it...no, maybe he was a he in the before?

From the ramblings he also discovered that the madman had apparently had a choice at some point and chosen to be human, but now was dissatisfied with the choice and blamed the gods for tricking him into it. The madman wanted a new monster body because, in his own words, he "couldn't have a harem of monster girls like this". Apparently the limitations of his human body couldn't perform adequately since Allie was too big, the faeries were too small, and many others had similar problems. Although he had tried to use his dungeon master's authority to force it a few times already, it just didn't work as physically.

The good news was that his weakness seemed to be only temporary as he was apparently still stabilizing. The madman seemed to think that after enough time had passed that he would be able to actually start displaying some amount of strength and abilities since he was still an anomaly in the system for now. As the fighting tests had been concluded, though, the madman had one more experiment to conduct. Upon waking from being beaten into unconsciousness for the last time, he found himself bound to a table.

"Now here's the thing. I thought about it, you know. I realized that if I'm going to be remaking myself then I might as well do it right. Why should I have to go through the dungeon's authority every time I want to do something, right? So then, I should be the dungeon core itself as well. So before you fully stabilize, I figure I'll use a secondary core to merge you with and make sure you don't explode or something!"

As the man finished talking he slammed a tube about 10 cm in diameter straight down. The tube pierced his shadowy chest area and them man started fiddling with something on the other end of the tube. At first he thought that maybe the pain was dulled or nonexistent, but after a few moments he realized it was merely delayed. Just as he felt something being pushed into him through the tube and intense and unbearable pain assaulted him, causing him to black out before he could scream out or even move.

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The dungeon's layout was relatively simple. There was an entrance to the surface and at the end of each floor was a boss and ramp that lead down to the next. This continued all the until the room that looked similar to the core room where a secondary was usually placed so that if it were destroyed the dungeon could be considered defeated without losing the main core. Behind the fake core room was the hidden real core room. This was the normal path that those from the outside could use.

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Parallel to these floor was a connected set of hidden rooms that held various spawners for the monsters and treasures found throughout the main dungeon for each respective floor. Behind the lowest hidden spawn area for the arachnae was another hidden area, which is where the lab was built. The spawn areas also provided something of a secret passage to allow the monsters of the dungeon to quickly move from one floor to another if needed, which is how he had learned of them while traveling the floors to fight all the monsters.

It was while being carried by what seemed to be two fairly new arachne spawns out of the lab that he woke back up. There was about a second where he managed to look around before pain suddenly started assaulting his chest and all the monsters in the area seemed to freeze. He only had a moment to notice the how strange it was before a flood of messages filled his vision.

[New dungeon master detected.]

[Warning: dungeon master position not available.]

[Error detected. Attempting corrections...]

[Core destruction required to resolve error.]

The command thought sent to him this time felt more robotic than when it had come from the man. He could only assume this time it was from the core itself. That didn't change a whole lot, though. He had no intention to commit suicide for no good reason he could discern and so, for the first time since his creation, he denied the order. Wanting to make sure his defiance of the order was clear he even pushed the thought back in the direction the command had come from.

[Warning: core overload in progress.]

[Warning: multiple errors detected. Dungeon break in progress.]

There were suddenly screams and screeches of rage and confusion coming from throughout the dungeon. He was suddenly worried about the two arachne girls still holding him as well as those nearby going insane. He wished fervently for them to stay sane and felt the thought leak out in a similar way to how he had pushed his defiant thought towards the core. This time it was less of a message and more of an instinctual thought or emotion, but it still seemed to have an effect. He felt some kind of connection form with the two carrying him and the three other nearest ones.

As the rest of the arachnae in the area started to tremble and scream out, the three that he had connected to that weren't carrying him suddenly moved closer as if to protect him. He wasn't exactly sure what was going on but he started to have hope that this new connection would help him stay safe until whatever was going on was finished. The next messages, however, promptly dashed those hopes.

[Warning: core overloaded.]

[Core destroyed.]

[Dungeon collapse in progress. Time until total collapse: 5:00:00:00]

Suddenly a slightly different message was displayed.

[C̷͚̎o̸̹͝n̸̡̉g̴̘̔r̴̼͆a̶͈͐t̴̟̃ǔ̶͚ḷ̴̽å̴̗ẗ̵̝́í̵͓o̴͖͛n̸̲͒s̴̥̊!̴̤̈ ̶̹̈ ̶̒͜Y̶͙̓ô̵͕u̷͌ͅ ̵̞̑h̷͔̏ä̸̫v̸͚̈́e̷̡̅ ̸̞̈́d̵̹̓e̴̡̚f̵̭̕ę̶͒a̴̘͌ẗ̷̖́ȅ̴͓d̸̝̕ ̶̡̀ẗ̴̰h̵̰̄ë̸̗ ̶̣̋S̸̯͝w̶̥̓ä̸͕́r̴̜̆m̵̨̾ ̴̘̔D̸̡̏u̴̜͆n̶̨͑g̸̗̈́ė̶̖o̵̮̒n̴̗̓!̸̘̈́]

The shaking of the entire area as if it were being struck by an earthquake explained better than any message that it was no longer safe to be here. He tried to start moving in the direction of the secret tunnels to head up and out of the dungeon, but being even weaker than he normally was made trying to convince the two arachnae carrying him to move physically was like trying to use a feather to shove them. Completely ineffective. Finally he tried to push the thought through the new link he had to all five of them.

They all looked at him for a moment before they finally seemed to understand and began to moved towards the next spawn area. The three not carrying him stayed nearby as if they were his personal guards. Soon some of the other arachnae in the area started running around as if crazed. Many ran towards the nearest exit to the areas, while the remaining few began fighting one another while screaming. For those whose nearest exit were in the same direction his little group were headed, the three guardian arachnae intercepted and fought.

It seemed that his link, luckily, provided some extra sanity or intelligence compared to the now insane monsters charging at them. His guards were able to fight off the various screaming chargers and berserkers in a calmer and more efficient manner. The two carrying him finally reached the ramp up to the next area and started to move up it. Unfortunately the ramp curved back on itself about halfway up and the three guards decided to stay halfway up the initial part to fight off the insane arachnae that were still coming.

He suddenly shouted in his mind at the two carrying him. If all the monsters in the dungeon were going crazy then it would probably be a bad idea to head up before they were all ready. He felt part of his link shudder a bit and trying to examine it revealed that he now only had four links left. It seems one of the guards had died, which means they might be getting overrun. He looked up the slope for a moment and decided that since he saw no monsters coming down that he would likely be safe for the moment.

The two carrying him nodded and let go of him so he could crawl over to the nearest wall while he waited. Then they turned around and head back down to help fight off the insane ones chasing them.