Graverra groaned, sprawled out on the fleshy sticky floor of the dungeon core’s lair again. She hadn’t really expected to be anywhere else, but… Why’d the entire room have to be so gross? Clearly, the dungeon core had no experience with the necromancer stigmas she’d been fighting against.

“You could have just used a door again!” She howled as she got back to her feet and brushed herself off. Beside her, the bone spider rattled itself back to rights. She was relieved to have something else in there with her, besides Capo, who had been no help at all.

The core hung in the center of the room just the same as before, merely blinking once through her entire ordeal.

“It drains me to keep you here if you aren’t going to be part of the dungeon.” He said, voice smooth as ever, but the lack of obvious emotion immediately set Graverra on edge.

“Oh. Well, I’m sorry, but-” She wasn’t sorry. She summoned her scythe, just in case that had been a threat. “You know you didn’t have to keep making more things if it was really such an inconvenience for you.”

“I had hoped you would have killed the spider.”

The bone spider hissed. Graverra wondered if it was really intelligent enough to understand that or just aware that it had been mentioned. Her own Fiend couldn’t quite track a conversation, but she could follow basic commands.

Graverra kneeled down to pick up the bone spider. “Right, because then you’d get mana back and probably make something even bigger.”

“I don’t want to kill you, Graverra. I am, however, bound to certain rules. Adventurers can’t be left to loiter in dungeons. And I am physically restrained from building up my domain if you are present.”

“You can’t fast travel while enemies are nearby…” Graverra’s lip curled as she mocked the System message.

“What?”

“Nothing.” Though the response did leave her wondering again how a dungeon core could be so ignorant of things like that. “We don’t just fall into unfinished dungeons, you know? I’m really not trying to be here.”

“Correct. I think you are something of an exception.” The way the dungeon core’s lower lid lifted ever so slightly and the corners of his singular eye crinkled just a little, led Graverra to believe he might have been trying to smile at her if only he had a mouth.

She looked askance but smiled back, twirling one of her curls around her finger. Exception sounded a lot better than some other things she’d been called.

“You said you had questions first, before you could give me an answer.”

Right. Funny how she had nearly forgotten them again. It would probably be easier for both of them if she just said yes now… But Graverra still wanted to do this right, since she was doing it at all.

“If it’s not too much trouble…” She drawled, undecided if asking the dungeon core to expend much more of anything on herself was really in her best interest. While she very much enjoyed the idea of making him work for it, she still didn’t want to frustrate him to the point of just giving up and killing her.

“What would you like to know?”

Graverra bent down to release the bone spider back on the ground, but decides this might be a while and sits down herself. Once she’s seated, the floor shifted beneath her, calling to mind immediately the ordeal of nearly being smothered to death. Before she can quite aim a Withering Bolt at the core’s eye though, Graverra realized she’d been lifted into a chair made of bone and sinew, the cushioning made of patch worked leathers.

“Oh.” Graverra could help the relieved sigh she heaved, seeing that it wasn’t another tentacle. To recover, she smoothed down her skirt and crossed her legs. “Thank you, though I don’t really mean to cost you so much mana, you know?”

“It is less when it’s my own lair,” The core admitted. “And you had said something about wanting to be impressed.”

Graverra smiled coyly. So he had been listening…

“There you go,” Capo encouraged. “Ask your questions already, girlie.”

“Right. Well… ” Graverra fidgeted on her fleshy throne. For all her talk before, she really hadn’t been able to organize her thoughts much between the first time they’d been formally introduced. Maybe that was the place to start… “Is there something I can call you besides dungeon core?”

The dungeon core blinked, seeming to have to think on it for a moment. “I don’t think I have a name.”

Graverra perked up, gripping the edge of the seat as she leaned forward a little. “Can I name you?”

“Maybe hold off on that one, Boss.” Capo was quick to suggest.

“Hey!”

“Well, you see what she named me, don’t you? I may be just a basic skull, but I know what a bad pun is.”

The dungeon core’s eye squinted some as he chuckles. “I think I have to agree with… Capo? For the time being. Surely you have more pressing questions than that?”

“Of course I do.” Graverra sat back in the throne and crossed her arm. “I still don’t know how you intend for this to work. And don’t you have questions for me? I mean… I could be anyone. I could be crazy, or have really annoying habits that just-”

On second thought, maybe she didn’t need to remind him of that.

The dungeon core almost chuckled, but it sounded nervous and awkward. He cleared his non existent throat before focusing on her first question, “Your essence would merge with my core. I would have access to your levels of power and mana, among other things. You would have access to all that I have as a dungeon core.”

Graverra’s brow furrowed. She wanted to ask about what ‘other things’ might mean, or maybe go over the fact she wasn’t sure what an essence was either, technically speaking, but she’s pretty sure this boiled down to some kind of soul transference ritual, and that required the soul in question’s mortal vessel to be dead, but instead she started with, “What do you have access to as a dungeon core?”

The core’s eye lit up with pride. “I have little outside experience, but I don’t believe most adventurers or dungeon delvers are out there willing things into existence on quite the same scale as a dungeon core.”

“Probably not. But you don’t just become a dungeon core.” She’d never heard of it at any rate. Graverra had never been the type to read into these things. Neither had Branimir, but Valerae had the history and purposes of certain dungeons memorized. At the very least, when she’d talked Graverra’s ear off about them, it felt like a recitation.

Dungeons had always been a means to an end for Graverra - more EXP, more mana, more levels, more power. She guessed it might not be very different this way… Why be the first to clear a dungeon when you could just run the thing? It sounded to her like infinitely more right to brag.

And it beat being dead, obviously.

“They don’t just fall down into unfinished ones either, but here you are.”

“If you suck the soul out of me, or essence, or whatever, doesn’t that mean I die?” Graverra spoke quickly. As much as she needed the answer, she didn’t want to hear what she assumed it would be. Fine, nobody outside of the dungeon cared if she lived or died, but she still very much did. “Do I get to keep my body or are we going to have to share… that? I understand it’s very thematic for what I guess you were trying to go for here, but if I had to have one…”

“I don’t think you outright die.” The dungeon core took her moment of thought before he spoke, but even he didn’t sound particularly sure of himself. “You should keep your body, I believe. I’d really like for you to keep your body.”

Graverra wanted to feel flattered by that, but her smile still had an awkward tilt to it as she tried not to think too hard about why. For the moment, anyway.

“You’ll have to remain in here with me, though. Cores of my ranking tend to forego an avatar like that, partially for our own ease and budgeting of resources, but you humanoids seem so very frail…”

That sounded much less like a compliment. Graverra uncrossed her ankles and sat up straighter. Just because they were getting along now and maybe would continue to didn’t mean she was about to completely let her guard down. It still could have been a trap.

“Is seven a very good ranking for a dungeon?” She asked next, assuming that was some of the reason he wanted her. Besides the extra mana.

“Well, it’ll sure beat zero, huh boss?” Capo felt the need to interject. The core’s eye narrowed at the skull.

“Yes,” Somehow it sounded like the dungeon core was speaking through gritted teeth. “We do not use numbers for that, but it would certainly speed things along.”

“And you’re expecting me to keep grinding it out for you too? I mean, I hate grinding as much as the next person,” Graverra tried giving the dungeon core an empathetic look, but she wasn’t sure it worked. “But isn’t that kind of an exploit?”

Of course, Graverra didn’t know if dungeon cores suffered the same stigmas around things like that. For herself and anyone else with a class, anything considered an exploit was the dishonorable way out and usually wound up far more trouble than just earning the EXP in the first place. It didn’t help that necromancy itself tended to be looked at that way, but then, that was why Graverra felt she could be sympathetic to the idea now.

The dungeon core sighed. “Yes. But you can’t blame me. Why would I want to simply kill someone like you when I could spend the rest of eternity building something together?”

Graverra took to twirling a curl around her finger again as she thought about that. She guessed that was awfully considerate way to look at it, if they were both stuck like this… Maybe he was better at this wooing thing than she’d been giving him credit for.

“Forever?” She still had to ask. That would make her functionally immortal, wouldn’t it? People agreed to worse for less, she’d definitely heard about that. “You hardly know me.”

“What a wonderful way to get to know someone.”

“If it doesn’t kill me.” Graverra reminded, suddenly somber. “You didn’t sound very certain before.”

The room rumbled softly with the dungeon core’s frustrated growl. Some of the sinew holding the throne together threaded up and over Graverra’s wrists and around her ankles. She yelped, about to repeat their last interaction although without the cat to save her, but the dungeon core continued speaking.

“I think it will hurt an awful lot if you say no. I have to say, I’m curious now. I think I’d like to try, regardless.”

So maybe pumping him full of Withering Blasts again would just force the issue…

Graverra struggled against the bonds still, “I’m just trying to understand! I’ve never been a dungeon core before. I don’t know how this works!”

“Then let me teach you.” The dungeon core’s eye widened while the valves and muscles of his heart body pumped a little faster.

So that was probably it for Graverra.