It was time for battle. The worst one yet. She grit her teeth and crossed her fingers as her Boy’s stinger got stuck in their foe’s armor. The tortoise that made its way into the dungeon was in its shell, protecting itself from the scorpions. After a moment of Boy frustratedly yanking, Baby grabbed it around the middle with a large pincer and squeezed until it was shorn in half, and she cheered!
After that, it went limp, and the head was quickly removed as the newly named pair, Boy and Baby, tore into the remains, appearing to eat the corpse. She too appraised what was available to her. She selected the body and hoped for some grist.
Nothing. Just a measly fifteen Lime Ingredient and five Obsidian Ingredient. At this rate, she’d never unlock Stylez. She sat down, legs crossed, and looked at the research tree. Maybe the huge amount of grist required was a sign that it shouldn’t be first priority. Rooms could be useful. She looked at her Ingredient tracker.
> AI: 5
> LI: 27
> OI: 255
This wasn’t the first thing she’d killed. She had gotten ten Lime from a lizard that wandered in, and another two from a mouse, both of which she had immediately consumed for the Ingredients. But sitting here with nothing to do was getting boring. It seemed unlikely that people would just start wandering in at this point. It had been… a while. She needed to research clocks. She wished she could see what was outside, to see if there was any hope of anyone coming to die inside her.
It was an idea she still wasn’t super comfortable with.
Baby clacked its claws impatiently.
“Yeah, I know,” she said, looking back at the shell. It wasn’t like… particularly helpful to her as ingredient, or it wouldn’t be at least until she had things she could build.
Fine. Time to bite the bullet and give up on Stylez, cool “z” and all, at least for now. She tapped on Tier 1 Rooms. Nothing. Same story with traps, but it would give 4 grist to the treasure research. It wasn’t much, but it would be progress. But…
“What do you think, Boy?” she asked the other scorpion, finger hovering over the Decor option, “Should I check it out?”
She interpreted his seeming satisfaction with sitting in a dark corner as enthusiastic agreement, and pressed the button to find that turning the tortoise into grist for Decor would provide an entire twenty points of grist. Which, she had to admit, was more progress than on treasure. But was she really willing to spend twenty grist on something that wasn’t even going to be useful?
She proudly looked at her display, which now read:
Tier 1 Decor:
RG: 20/100
She could be happy with that. That was real progress. Ignoring, of course, that she hadn’t actually completed any research. Or improved her layout literally at all. She opened up her menu once more to look over her scant options, and when she did, a new message appeared.
> Transformation unlocked!
>
> Scorpion 2 “Baby”
> Shellhide Scorpion Hatchling
>
> Activate transformation?
>
> Yes
> No
Baby looked at her and snapped its claws. That looked like a yes. She pressed the button and with a small popping noise, Baby suddenly was… different. Rather than the tan from before, it was more primarily purple, and its carapace had the same pattern on it as the tortoise did, with little stars of tan and dark brown all over it. It also had little spikes all over its carapace.
“You look so dashing!” she said in celebration. She grabbed at its little claws and shook them with excitement. Baby looked so cool. Cooler than Boy, but she’d never tell him that. In fact… “We need to get you into a new room. It would be weird to have two different types of enemies in the same room. Right?”
The silent agreement was all she needed to start working on another hallway, and another room. She bent everything around so it had sort of a Z shape, and then she mentally grabbed Baby and moved it to the new room. The rush of creation flowed through her, and she giggled as she focused back on what she was starting to think of as “first person” mode.
So, the new enemy type had a new room, which was great, but without a second scorpion, this room was starting to feel… a little empty. She would kill for some decorations.
She supposed she would have to.
She placed another two scorpions, these ones looked a lot like Boy, but one had smaller claws, and the other one had red eyes. More little babies to name. She’d try to follow the convention of Boy and Baby, but she was really feeling Asmodeus for the red-eyed one.
Also, next to the option to place down a Sand Scorpion Hatchling was an option to place a Shellhide Scorpion hatchling. She was happy to know she wouldn’t have to commit tortoise murder every time she wanted a new minion for Baby.
Then the boredom set in. She entertained herself for a bit by playing with her new scorpions, trying to converse with them, trying to teach them games, staring into the light of her own core.
After what had to be at least days of doing nothing, she realized she was perfectly fine with the idea of people entering her and dying, as long as it meant sitting here wouldn’t be so goddamn boring. It was terrible, like an itch she couldn’t get out from under her skin. She wanted to create, to build, and she was stuck because there weren’t any intruders. She screamed, and the scorpions scuttled away from her. She guessed she could name the nameless one, but what did it matter? It’s not like anyone would know their names anyway. It was just for her, a little inside joke that she couldn’t share with anyone.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
She was alone. She was sitting in the dark, with no one to talk to, and nothing to do, and no one to kill.
“Is this part of the point?” she asks to no one, “Is it important to get this bored so that I’ll even accept killing as long as it’s not this?”
As if to answer her question, she heard footfalls in the stone halls coming toward the first room. She stood and looked, waiting for whatever or whoever was about to be her new victim.
They were smaller than she thought they’d be. Dressed in a cloak of light fabrics in various colors, what little skin that was exposed was sunburnt. They unwrapped their face, and they were pretty, in a sort of average way, but with big, pretty eyes. Milk-white skin and matching hair was revealed as more layers came off of their face and body, until they wore a tank top and shorts, with leg wraps and sandals. They pulled out a dagger and called, “Hello?”
“Hello,” She said back.
They didn’t seem to hear her, and they kept moving into the darkness, without even a light, but they moved uncertainly, and held the dagger poorly, like they weren’t sure what they were doing. Even in the darkness, though, as they approached the first room, they had no trouble spotting the scorpions. As they entered, Asmodeus charged right away, and went for a stab with her tail. They lept back with a screech, and blocked with their dagger, before tripping backward and getting stung in the ankle.
They shrieked and writhed, and with a flash of their dagger they sliced off Asmodeus’ venom bulb, leaving the stinger stuck inside of them, but severing their connection to the monster. She hissed in sympathetic pain at both injuries, and crossed her fingers, hoping that her sweeties wouldn’t be hurt too badly.
Asmodeus, however, pushed the attack, and closed a pincer around their leg. Boy ran in and stabbed them thrice in the chest and they screamed again in pain, kicking Asmodeus in her cute lil’ face and sending her sprawling. They grabbed Boy by his tail and drove their dagger through his torso three times, and a final one through his head, finishing him off.
The other new kid, with the small pincers, cowered in the corner. “Come on, dude, fight!”
Dude did not fight. Dude continued to cower. Asmodeus didn’t give up though, shaking off her disorientation and moving in for a kill, pincer to throat, as the intruder scrambled to their feet.
Their heel hit her hard between the eyes, and when she went to grab them, they pressed down, stepping on her with a meaty crack. They spun and landed straddling her back, before thrusting the dagger down and ending Asmodeus too.
She was beginning to question the wisdom of naming all of her monsters so early.
The intruder got up and stretched, before pulling the stinger out of their leg - like an amateur, that’ll make the blood drain faster - and fall to a knee with a pained grunt. They slowly haul themself up, and cautiously limp toward Dude, and, seeing as he isn’t reacting to their approach, they bring down their foot on his head again and again until he’s pasted on the floor.
They breathe a sigh of relief, and she wonders if this is it, if they’re going to kill Baby and then kill her. But instead they slumped against the wall, and sat on the floor, before unrolling a bedroll, and climbing on it, as they pulled out a set of bandages and began tending to their wounds.
A brief check at the entrance confirmed it was night.
Maybe the intruder didn’t even know this was a dungeon? Maybe… were they just looking for shelter? The scorpions began to turn to dust as they worked, and they sobbed once, rubbing their stomach.
She watched them prepare for bed, and fall asleep after a short meal, and as she did, she saw a new button on her HUD. She pressed it, and it pulled up a list of her guardians, Listing Baby at the top, and the other four at the bottom, greyed out slightly. Each one had their health, mana tax, and an empty space labeled “Drops”. They also had a greyed out button, each one labeled “Resurrect, 25 mana”.
She tapped one of the resurrect buttons.
Resurrection unavailable while intruders present.
Ah.
More waiting.
Yay.
She wished that the intruder would have just moved on to Baby’s room, died and-
And suddenly, she could resurrect them. She looked at the intruder, and then back at the menu, and pressed each resurrect button. She felt suddenly drained, from her mana use, the mana tally slowly increasing. Very slowly, with all of her children back alive, each reducing her mana production rate.
Time to investigate the intruder. She tapped them, and a menu popped up.
> Human (Veil)(Dead)
>
> Body (60 LI, 5 RG)
> Dagger (40 AI, 20 SI)
> Medicine Satchel (10 LI, 5 SI)
> Bedroll (40 SI)
> Rations (10 LI, 5 RG)
> Traveler’s Rags (5 SI)
Her eyes widened. So, the person was dead? She looked closer at them, and… decided to not stare at a dead body. Distract herself by focusing on the loot. Yeah. The biggest thing that stood out was the new type of ingredient, represented with a light grey symbol. After a quick check to see if any of the items would give a surprising amount of RG, she decided to claim the rags for their ingredient value.
“Help?” she said again, and watched the menu pop up. Then, she navigated to the entry she wanted.
> User Input:
> Back
> ————————
> Introduction
> Construction
> Monsters
> Treasure
> Research
> First Steps
>
> User Input:
> Construction
> ————————
> Introduction
> Construction is the most basic and most important tool in your toolbox.
Yadda yadda yadda…
> Steel Ingredient(SI) - Represented by a steel-grey ingredient symbol, SI is used to create, and harvested from, anything equipable.
Hm! Okay, pretty useful. She could get a good amount of it from the dagger, but the dagger was worth a lot of research grist for treasure. The rations weren’t worth as much, but every little bit helps. The Medicine Satchel, however, gave a good 20 grist. Treasure now sat at 85/150, just over half done.
Next, the question of what to do with the body. It almost seemed like a waste to not use it for grist, but at the same time, it was so little grist, and only for Decor. The LI could be way more valuable. She stalled by breaking down the bedroll, and then decided to break down the body for LI, just in case. The menu closed, and a new pop up appeared, with the image of a tall statue with a hollowed out abdomen:
> New Trap Object Discovered!
>
> Statue of Cruel Motherhood
> Place treasure inside the statue’s abdomen. When removed, the statue will activate a trap!
>
> Unlock requirements met: Convert a pregnant corpse into Ingredients or Grist
She closed all the windows, and since she couldn’t close her eyes, she lay face down on the floor, instead.
----------------------------------------
Lash stretched and groaned on the cheap inn’s cheaper bed. They had reached the Dune Mausoleum, and had been going in every night to steal shit while the tourists were gone. So far they’ve made a good haul, but they wouldn’t be able to sell most of it until they made it to the next town. That was a rule they had, no matter what they stole, sell it at least a town away from where you got it. Avoided most little problems where you’d accidentally sell someone their own family’s heirloom.
It’s happened more than once. They stand and go over their wares. The biggest item was a golden urn. Solid gold, from the looks of things. They’d even shaved a bit off to see if it was just gold leaf, but no, the genuine article. It was beautiful, valuable, and fucking heavy. Hauling it from the Mausoleum to the inn was a chore. They’d have to offload it in Kaversee, it would be too big of a pain in the ass to transport after. The nearest town aside from the Mauseleum’s surrounding settlement was going to be a five day journey, and even on ivekback they didn’t want to deal with it.
There were also a number of good death masks, toys made of valuable materials, parts of mummified pets that could be sold as spell components, and some jewelry. The best find, by far, was a mechanical arm that had been strapped to some poor fool when they buried him, but their favorite was a garnet.
It was a long oval, as long as their thumb and slightly thicker. It wouldn’t be smart to turn it into jewelry and keep it. It was worth so much. A jeweler, or even a mage would pay top dollar for something like this.
But it was just so pretty. They could look at it for ages.
They could admit: they kinda had a thing for jewels. They wondered, as they packed, if dungeon cores are as pretty.