Veronica Maxwell was seeing red. She couldn't help but laugh maniacally as she lost herself to her fantasies. With every day that passed, she could feel her humanity slipping away as she was overtaken by fantasies of killing. It was overwhelming at times, the desire to just lash out and attack others. However, only her poor, terrified dungeon [Monsters] dwelled in this place and it just wasn't satisfying to harm them. They weren't her enemies, they weren't the reason she was locked up like this.

Now, Veronica had always had anger issues. That had been a problem long before she had transmigrated to this world and became a Dungeon Master. So, she was quite familiar with all of the self-help advice given to individuals like her. However, screaming into a pillow, punching a sandbag, or going for a run just wasn't very satisfying. Sure, they were better in the long-run as they were less destructive. However, there was something that just felt so good about punching a wall, ripping up an essay she had worked hard on, or even throwing dishes and watching them shatter.

This feeling she had now was very similar. Veronica simply didn't feel anything if she lashed out at her gargoyles, goblins, will-o'-wisps, and brownies. Maybe she'd feel a bit guilty seeing one of the brownies cowering, but it also came with a feeling of irritation by the way their eyes watched her from across the room and the way they avoided her entirely. It wasn't even like she made it a habit of mistreating the creatures that she shared her dungeon with. They could just feel her anger brewing beneath the surface and the insanity that had a habit of bubbling to the surface.

The goblins were a bit more reasonable. They were used to acting violently and letting even their most minor of whims dictate their actions. She often sparred with them during her confinement until she found that they were simply too lacking to continue to be her opponents. Nowadays, she tended to train by herself or, on rare occasions, she'd fight her own boss [Monsters]. Practicing the basic longstaff techniques that Seraphina, her assigned Dungeon Diplomat, had taught her was good and all, but having actual combat experience was necessary as well.

Unfortunately, there wasn't much else for Veronica to do in her dungeon. Ever since she had grown tired of suffering at the hands of others and had tried to take back control by trying to destroy the dungeon core, she had been locked out of the system and the dungeon core room alike. The dungeon seemed to be locked for adventurers as well as it had been a long time since anyone had last entered the place. Without sleep, she also had to spend every moment aware of just how slowly time was passing by. Of course, she didn't actually know if it had been weeks, months, or years because she had no way of telling the time, but it didn't matter. It was still torture to remain awake for all of it.

Initially, she had been able to eat food and use the leftover pieces of paper and charcoal pencils to strategize ideas for the future. However, all of the fresh food quickly rotted and the dry food had slowly dwindled as well. Neither she nor anything else that called her dungeon home actually required food, but it had been a Human comfort that she had quite enjoyed while it was an option. Besides, since half of the dungeon was an inn and tavern space, she needed to ensure she remained familiar with the basics of cooking.

Her bond with the dungeon was supposed to enhance her memory and make it so she could never forget anything from this world or her last. However, she was having more and more difficulty concentrating lately. Since she couldn't focus, it was difficult to recall important knowledge. Besides, muscle memory was much different from book smarts. It was one thing to know all of the ingredients to make a recipe, it was another to have the dexterity and familiarity to know how to quickly fill and shape a wonton.

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Of course, she had also had other forms of entertainment that she had tried. There were the board games she once played with Elora and Eldrin, the two young Elves who had once been hired to help out in her inn. However, her brownies didn't quite understand the writing on everything while the goblins were too impatient and lacking in intelligence to sit still long enough to play. Without others to play them with, it was too boring, so she had long since given up altogether.

Then there were the times she'd simply lain in bed, staring up at the ceiling as she daydreamed. Sometimes she'd even pretend Seraphina or her parents were with her and she'd talk aloud, sharing her problems and burdens with them in the hopes that it would make her feel better. That had been fine, for a time, but things were more complicated nowadays. It always felt like there was a voice whispering violent thoughts in the back of her mind. She could never quite make out the words, but she was certain it was connected to her newfound bloodlust.

Veronica didn't care enough about playing nice with the people of this world to resist the allure of just giving in to her violent urges. Since the adventurers hadn't been kind to her, they were nothing more than a business opportunity and threats to her dungeon. She needed them if she wanted to continue to grow her dungeon and to continue to earn mana and dungeon points, but she also didn't have to care whether they lived or died.

There were also plenty of moments of darkness for her as well. In those moments, she had begged the dungeon core to forgive her, to let her go, or even to just let her die already. However, it never listened, it never even showed any signs of listening in the first place. On several occasions, she had even taken to harming herself. Any time she died, she'd just end up waking up alive and well on the other side of the dungeon core room with no signs anything had happened. As for whether she was respawning in the dungeon core room only to be kicked out before she could regain consciousness or if she was somehow respawning outside of the room altogether, she wasn't certain. However, all of this did suggest that the dungeon core was still functioning just fine, it just wasn't done punishing her.

Veronica wasn't sure how it had all come to this in the first place. Seraphina had never mentioned this was even a possibility. What little she knew of this world suggested that both the people and the dungeons themselves operated based on something known as the dungeon accords. The two main principles emphasized in them were that anyone and anything could challenge the dungeon, including the Dungeon Master, and that there was supposed to be no outside influence on the dungeon's growth.

The only real exception was if the dungeon core started to show signs of corruption. Then, Seraphina was supposed to step in and help her. That could be in the form of offering therapy, training her so she was more proficient at defending herself, or an investigation could be launched to see if there was a bigger problem that needed to be addressed. Since corruption was usually a slow process where there would be signs long before things hit a critical point, it was an effective method most of the time.

However, honestly, Veronica wasn't sure how the dungeon core could have been showing so little signs of corruption while her own mental health was struggling so much. Were most Dungeon Masters simply stronger mentally than she was? Otherwise, perhaps most of them were less likely to jump to drastic measures so quickly. It was hard to say, but there was no denying the fact that she had seen the dungeon core and it was still at less than 25% total corruption even on the day everything had fallen apart. As for how things were looking now, she had no way of knowing...