You have reached Sixth Level.

You may now choose an Attunement of Rare or below to increase to the next stage. Improved Attunements increase the chance of related evolutions appearing, and offer new benefits.

You may choose to receive an additional Schema Slot OR an expansion to your Mana pool OR The Great Wheel’s Whim (I).

[https://i.imgur.com/okCjs7y.png]

I was all but salivating over the prospect. For the first time in a long time, I entered into the decision-space, a great void full of drifting mists where possibilities exist in bubbles that show the potential of each path.

Only four now, the four Rare-grade attunements I had chosen in the past. My Legendary Attunement of Fortune floated alone above them, its surface gone gray and opaque so I couldn’t see within.

Down one route, by taking the Attunement of Disguise I could form a false core that would distract any attempts to divine my real core’s location. Unfortunately, much of its use was redundant with the Law of my first floor preventing divinations in their entirely.

If I improved my Attunement of Gleam, light within my Dungeon would begin forming into loyal wisps, a type of weak elemental. Gloom would provide shades, their dark counterpart.

But it was the Attunement of Jewels that spoke to me. Once improved the highest grade of gemstones would begin to produce not mere untyped Mana, but earthen Mana, the same stuff I had found in the elemental’s geode-nests. A powerful, potent substance I was sparingly experimenting with already.

I took it without hesitation, and after a moment’s thought, selected an additional Schema Slot as well. Memorizing a creature to a Schema allowed me so many more options in shaping its design, and I would need new creatures for my new second layer.

The decision-world faded out as I made my selections.

The battlefield above was settling, the losses on my side unfortunately severe. Still, they hadn’t made it past Cabochon.

It was a shame the last of the adventurers chose to go out the old fashioned way. I had so many new creations to try; my Field of Lament was flourishing. I had completed the luminous butterflies that would serve as a hypnotic trap, my sudden interest in deadly snails had yielded wonderful results-

All I needed was a living specimen to actually reach my second floor.

The bodies of the golem-armed man and his compatriots lay cooling around Cabochon, who bowed, sensing my attention.

I let waves of approval radiate out as I devoured the bodies, turning them into brief-lived flames of Mana. Some of those flames swirled into Cabochon, strengthening him. Since I had given him the Blessing of the Blade-Dancer he was already formidable, and would only continue to grow, at the cost of eating up some of the potential Mana from my first floor.

He was a new kind of creature, a Guardian. Even his missing leg had been restored.

I was curious about him now, in truth. The spellwork inscriptions around his soul were deeply complex, an ever-turning clockwork of golden diagrams writ in pure Mana-fire. Inscribed within them was a map of his being that could be used to restore him from nothing.

I would compare it to the way living potential was stored inside an egg, every portion of the yolk able to become an arm, a leg. Somehow the nascent body stored the complete memory of what was yet-to-be in every inch of its fabric.

This was the same, but inscribed directly into his soul.

Soul-inscription, magic. They were the same thing. Humans could work wonders because they had complex, powerful patterns of Mana radiating out from a central core, while my creatures were mutable and adaptable due to having simple constructions.

Why was I so fascinated with this?

Because I finally realized how to make creations that could work their own magic.

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Until now, I had only been able to evolve towards magical abilities, not build creations to have them from the start. This step forward would be an evolution for me.

I would need to give them a soul, and inscribe that in much the same way I would make a Shard; Shard-crafting could even be understood as granting a portion of my own consciousness, the weak byproduct of soul, to creatures within my Dungeon. This medium was a poor replacement, but enough for me to arm them with basic level inscriptions.

Inscriptions that would bring about true magic would be a new magnitude of difficulty.

Unfortunately, the only way I knew of getting a soul was to devour enough humans to trigger a Mana Overflow, and hope it delivered. The first part was easy enough. As I consumed the human corpses and the remains of my poor destroyed creations, I flooded towards Overflow.

You have created -

Blessing of Evolution

Grants a single burst of mutagenic potential, and slightly reduces the threshold to further evolutions.

[https://i.imgur.com/okCjs7y.png]

I could have sighed. Only incredibly useful. Not exactly what I wanted.

My attention returned to the second floor, pondering how to fix the first. I would need to both seal the breach, before more adventuring teams arrived, and to ensure a new one couldn’t be torn in my walls any time the humans decided to come calling.

Half of that was easy. My experiments with the earthen Mana pools left behind by the elementals had born out three results. One were the stone-tusk rats that did such good work fetching me lumps of quartz and gleaming opals.

Another was a new, improved mesmeric snake, a creature that could now only be called a Lesser Basilisk. Infused with the power of earth its gaze could paralyze a full-grown human.

But finally, I had the Stone-Spinner Spiders. A simple evolution of the nacre-spiders, they were bigger and clumsier but far better armored. Their thick, coagulating spit formed into a rocky substance as soon as it dried, enabling them to disguise themselves as standings boulders.

They would be perfect for repairing the breach, but I needed more than to simply cure the symptom. There was the underlying issue to be dealt with.

I began with a worm. A lowly creature, but vital to the soil. I rebuilt my specimen from the ground up; with digestive acids borrowed from my boring worm it would have the ability to tunnel through rock, with a parasitic lifecycle from a spider-wasp it would seek out larger creatures and lay its eggs inside of them. These would be companions to the stone-spinner spiders, living inside their shells and hatching from their flesh.

And in return?

I had one final gift to impart. The ability to spin out thin filaments of dark iron. The stuff was toxic to my creations, but the worms didn’t have to live for long. They would exist in short little candleflames of life, blind and earthbound their whole existence, burrowing through the stone as the spiders created it. In the process, consuming and excreting as they moved, they would layer webs of dark iron throughout, shielding the stone-spinner spiders against magecraft and proofing my walls against being torn open.

It was an ugly solution, requiring me to work with worms and parasites, creatures I would normally balk at. I did my best to pretty it up by giving the worms a faint blue color, but in the end it only felt hideously ironic. A worm the color of a sky it would never see.

Ironsky Worms

Short-lived due to the dark iron they excrete, these creatures live in a parasitic cycle with the stone-spinner spiders. While they could be classified as a pest, they dampen the excesses of mage intruders.

Hopefully that would resolve the problem. I had Argent carry a shard to one of the first stone-spinners, one I had just recently forged. It was a beauty of a tourmaline, half-green and half-yellow. Accordingly, it had been able to accomodate twin enchantments.

Dual Shard of Might and Fortitude

This twin-colored stone bears a dual enchantment, adding greatly to the bearers strength and constitution while granting intelligence. Creates a telepathic link to its creator, the Nameless Dungeon.

The beast was… less than pleased about my other gift, the parasitic worms. But there was a religious fervor in its mind for me, a desire to please, and it suffered in silence as they twined their way into its rocky shell. The goliath had a dull, broad mind, full of hungers and paranoid wariness. Even my Shard didn’t do much but sharpen those basic instincts.

But it would serve to lead its people up to the first floor, joining the strange array of spiders already there. I gave a simple mission, to repair the breach, and a promise; do this and I would grant it a name. It had been too long since Adamant died for me not to pass on the gift of a Name to a new and worthy bearer. This goliath spider, strong of leg and deadly in venom, was as worthy as any.

Now, I turned my attention away. I’d accumulated quite the haul of loot, and I sent Aurum’s little friend, the kobold, up to fetch it.

I had acquired the ability to create Blessings by consuming enchanted and magical gear, and it was high time I put that to use.