Toby was hanging around the neck of his acolyte, he had improvised to repair the necklace some time ago, his senses darting left and right in a dense sphere of blackness. Before he had time to panic, the black color faded away and the sight of a large room looking like some kind of cell opened up in front of him.

Toby looked around to see many stood in a circle around him, they seemed to be teleported along with him. There were Percy and Kiki naturally, as these two had been next to him, but to his surprise there was also a big black cat with golden stripes, the man Lara and Quin had been depicted with on that painting in Durkan, Irwen who he had been looking for and finally The fucker, the thing, the most despicable being of all, demon Gloin that had personally stuffed him into the dungeon core crystal.

"Welcome to The Lazurite Tower, I am Tertius Decimus Randolf Trudou Allenheim, but . . first things first." The man who was in a classic elven outfit teleported next to the demon in an instant and waved his hand, a bright light resembling a sword extending from his fingertips. The light quickly passed vertically through the demon, bisecting him before anyone else could move an inch. Actually there was someone who managed to move as quickly as him. The blackstorm tiger not far away from him crouched and bared its fangs in his direction.

"Good kitty." Randolf smiled, while scanning who else was present. "I have not expected a party like this, no worries your situation will be taken care of in a second. Do not be afraid, we have been after the demon, but he ended up being only a stray cat. After some formalities we will release you, I dare say your cooperation would smooth the whole process and is strongly advised. There can be even some compensation for your trouble. Now let's take care of you big boy."

The man disappeared along with the tiger, leaving them standing inside the cold cell, the walls of which were made of grey stone with no windows. The only opening was the door that looked like made of steel with tiny streams of little blue signs flashing on its surface from time to time.

It was certainly an enchantment.

The door Toby was staring at opened and three men in robes came in, one of them waved his hand causing some wooden chairs to materialize out of thin air.

"Let's sit down, shall we?" The old man who had conjured up the chairs said and sat on one of his chairs, the two remained standing at his side. Reluctantly, Toby, Percy, Kiki and Irwen sat down.

One of the robed henchmen of the man who had just spoken circled around them, tapping the backs of their heads lightly with his fingers. He would have not even noticed the action if he had not paid close attention. Nonetheless, Toby was sure it would be a bad move to resist and let the man tap the back of his acolyte's head when it was his turn.

His bad feeling had been verified when the eyes of the one who had been circling them from the back widened and he jumped back away from him.

* * * *

One hour later Toby was the only one left sitting in his chair, along with the three robed jailers, the two of them had long ago sat down as well, watching him like hawks. He could not believe the contents of the long talk and what the people of The Lazurite Tower wanted him to do.

Sadly, they had found out his little secret of him being a dungeon and he was completely at their mercy now. His only option was to follow their instructions and become their dungeon. Yes, they wanted him to become the first type of dungeons, because they had a notion for god knows what reason that he would get access to monsters with good loot in the future.

It turned out the drops from undead spawning dungeons were not completely useless.

So he was going to be fed the same way as The Depths of Zaraturk Ibn Fahlan, but his owner would be The Magic Guild, the most powerful organization he knew of.

"I am fucked!" Toby imagined himself slaughtering all the people they were going to feed him with and did not know whether to laugh or cry, especially when he remembered the fact that the whole operation would not work! He was in the process of explaining it to the dumb mage in front of him.

"I repeat for the tenth time, I cannot grow from killing people, only from saving them!" Toby wanted to keep the third way of gaining experience a secret if possible. Even though the people in front of him were knowledgeable, there was simply no need for any other dungeons to feed them through other dungeons via conquest, they should not expect that kind of solution to the problem. Not possessing status screens it should not strike them as obvious that killing and conquest were not the same.

"I have not expected to meet a pacifist dungeon trying to dissuade me from feeding it, but you are not the one giving orders here. I do not need to tell you that dungeons have no rights to want anything, meaning you either do what we want or we will make you do what we want." The mage was probably tired of the argument and stopped Toby from further claims.

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"Alright, you will see that I am telling the truth." Toby grumbled.

"We will see about that. Just follow us to a more suitable lair and we shall begin." Toby would swear he saw joy in the mage's face. Was it fine for a high ranking member of a honorable organization like The Magic Guild to act this way? People would be dying amass right? Or was the organization a bit different than he imagined?

"Wait, you have mentined other dungeons, do you have dealings with others? Are they intelligent?" Toby asked and the mage tilted his head to the side.

"Peculiar, most of the dungeons behave based on instincts, showing little capacity for thinking." The mage said more to himself than in reply to Toby's qustion and stood up.

Toby just followed them as it seemed the time of questions and answers was over.

He had been led down many stairs and ended up at the dead end of some narrow tunnel, the three people giving him a signal to start growing while watching him.

"Jeeez, this feels like if they brought a delegation to watch me shit, evaluating every aspect of the process." Toby felt unpleasant, but what could he do but comply?

He shook away the horrible feeling of being naked and started doing his thing, being careful to do everything in a significantly less efficient way compared to normal.

"Ah, yes, these are standard advanced skeleton warriors, this subject might really be worth something."

"True, even the robed undead are not the basic tier." The spectators watched his progress, captivated by him and his work.

"See how he stopped producing the workers already, there are clear signs of critical thinking."

"Of course there are morons!" Toby fumed inside, as he had completely fallen down to the role of an experimental subject, or object of value that had to be just nurtured and harvested as that was its whole reason for existence.

He started by summoning some acolytes and skeleton warriors, expanding the dead end of the tunnel to acommodate some tombs and when he had completed several of them and his number of skeletons had risen to ten, more of the mages appeared, leading two poeple in his direction.

"Ah, right. That was bright to solve it this way." The leading observer nodded and Toby realized when he focused at the two that the first fodder they were bringing him were Percy and Kiki.

"Just go with the sacrifices a bit closer and leave them." Percy and Kiki were being led to him, where they were left next to his skeletons. Their eyes looked like made of glass, clearly they had been drugged or controlled by some unconventional means. The mages were not even pretending this was not a sacrifice to a dungeon.

"Right, it is not like I can refuse to do it." Toby ordered his skeletons to make a circle around the pair of people and one of the skeletons stepped forth, positioned at Percy's back. Toby was about to order the murder, but he felt it was too hypocritical.

"No, he deserves at least that." Toby's consciousness transferred into the skeleton using his skill.

He will do it personally.

He willed and his skeletal hand lifted, the tip of his sword aimed at the back of Percy's head. He was more used to this first person mode now and the experience was not much different from him really being the skeleton. He hesitated for a second, but than pushed hard, he wanted to end it quickly. Toby's sword penetrated the weak back side of the skull with ease and went quickly in and back out, Percy's body fell to the ground with a dull sound.

"Next." Toby forced himself not to think, stepping to the side, he aimed his sword against the same spot on Kiki's skull. Seeing all the hair in the way, Toby reached out with his left hand and gently brushed her hair away, putting her long black mane over her shoulder to the front. He struggled to withdraw his hand, as hair got stuck in between the knuckles of his skeletal fingers. When he had finally managed to free his hand with just a few strands of torn out hair stuck to his hand, he gripped his sword with both hands and made the same movement as he did when executing Percy. There was much less blood than he had expected and her body fell to the ground with barely audible sound.

"Incredibly clean, have you seen it? The finesse!" Toby ignored the voices and noticed his bony pinkey started to tremble. He quickly left the body of the skeleton warrior, his mind reeling in shock of what he had done.

Honestly, Percy was not that bad, he had tried to kill him and he meant it, but he knew for a fact that Kiki was just a thief that had never killed anyone and she had never wronged him in any way.

She was completely innocent and he killed her like she was an insect.

He felt terrible, it was almost as if he had just killed a part of himself.

"Splendid, another one." Toby focused again on what was going on around him and watched as another sacrifice was walking in his direction, with the same glossy eyes as the previous two.

It was Irwen.

"This cannot continue. This cannot continue. . ." One sentence began to repeat in his mind, as all his rational thinking went out of the window.

* * * *

Randolf brushed away a few drops of sweat from his forehead. The blackstorm tiger mount had been a handful and he was glad that the animal had been returned to its owner without any serious accidents. The upside was that the emperor's debt to The Guild was growing, it was always useful to be able to call in some help, especially from the big players.

"Everything should be nicely taken care of." He hummed and had an idea that he could probably check on Faeldin, he had not had any official contact with the elf, but he seemed to be working in the same direction as Randolf. "At the same time, I can check how the hostage is recuperating."

Given his high level, just a single thought was enough to turn his whim into reality and soon, Randolf stood in the branch office of The Guild located in the elven forest.

He walked out of the facility that was housed in a huge tree and headed to a similar tree where the head of the Anshalla bloodline resided. The two places were pretty close and with luck, Fealdin would be there. Elven villages were not much different from ordinary forest, some visitors might even not notice they were in a small village if they were careless.

"Welcome in our forest, you must be Tertius Decimus Allenheim. " Faeldin's greeting was rather cold, he had not even bothered to introduce himself gazing through Randolf like he did not care about what he had to say at all.

"Hi, what about your niece, how is she?" Randolf asked and Faeldin froze, his white hair in a mess, his blue eyes focused at Randolf like he wanted to see into his brain through his eyes. If his demeanor had been rather cold a second ago, now it dropped to ice cold.

"How is she? How should I know, I have not seen her in weeks!" He spat out venomously, apparently thinking Randolf was teasing him.

"What?!" Randolf's eyes bulged in surprise, he had personally given the order to bring her here, she should have been here hours ago!

"I have not expected even The Guild is in cahoots with them. What do you want? Are the demons trapped in the mural that important? " Faeldin asked him, his right hand wandering to the hilt of his sword.

"No way!" Randolf was enveloped by a black sphere and vanished in a hurry, not noticing that Faeldin had thrown all caution out of the window and followed him into the portal before it had the time to close behind Randolf.