The process of filling the dungeon with mobs wasn’t quite as complex as Graverra had feared… Or she’d missed something. Either felt plausible at this point.

It wasn’t the same as placing tiles or objects. Graverra really thought it would be, or at least would have made sense to her understanding of how a dungeon worked. Instead, it made it sense to her as a necromancer. And that worried her.

“Do you remember how Hecrux made the rat?” She asked Capo as she ran a finger down the list in her grimoire. These were components. There was no way around it. Why else would the System have them building these things nearly from scratch? And that definitely didn’t sound like something Hecrux would be into. “I guess you were with me when the spider happened, huh? What happened to her…”

“I wasn’t there for the rat, either. Boss summoned me and- well, he probably doesn’t want me saying what happened after that, and after that, he chucked me out into the dungeon.”

“Oh.” That didn’t help. And now she just felt bad for Hecrux all over again. He’d probably only tried summoning Capo because he felt lonely — and the System had told him too — and he’d probably only thrown the skull out because he’d gotten overwhelmed.

And then she started to feel bad for Capo. What if the dungeon had been placed and the skull had just been sitting there, all defenseless? Graverra had almost crushed him herself. “He knew you weren’t a mob, though, right?”

“How should I know what he knows?” The skull wobbled on the tabletop as his jaw moved. “You should though.”

“Hecrux doesn’t seem to like it when I ask questions now.” Graverra rest her chin in the palm of her hand as she kept flicking through the list of mob components with her other hand. They were thankfully organized into little recipes for the most common mobs—rats, bats, spiders, cats, dogs… They were currently limited in what the System would allow for a dungeon of their level and theme, of course. Still, it had to be an improvement on what Hecrux had been allowed before… right?

“Well, that shouldn’t matter. You’re a dungeon core now too, aren’t you?”

“Am I?” Graverra snapped back, even though she knew Capo couldn’t possibly know how quickly that had become a sore subject for her. “I’m not very good at it, apparently.”

“You only just started!” It was sweet how encouraging Capo was being, even if Graverra still felt entitled to a good sulk. “It couldn’t have been any worse than the boss’s start. You haven’t thrown me out. You did the opposite when you think about it.”

Graverra hummed. She wanted to remain doubtful, but Capo was right. She’d been a dungeon core for… some amount of hours, and had already improved the silly hallway and helped build and furnish a room. That should count for something. And she might just remind Hecrux as much when he was active again. Except…

“I told you, I made more work for him. And he’ll get overwhelmed again and- and what’s he going to do then? Kick me out in the hall? Then what? I don’t think dungeon cores get to revive and he won’t revive me and even if he would, he doesn’t know the first thing about necromancy anyway!”

“Sheesh. I don’t think he’s allowed to kick you out into the dungeon now, not when you’re all bound up together like you two.”

“Well, that’s good to know.” Graverra nearly felt better again, before she remembered who she was talking to. How did Capo know anything if he was banished to a hallway and then storage through most of this? “What else do you know about how cores work?”

Capo ground his teeth while he thought. “Admittedly, not a lot. I guess, all I know is you’re basically god- er, goddess of your dungeon, and you can’t kill a god, can you?”

“Well…” Gods had been banished before, in the lore, but that wasn’t quite the same as dying. And Hecrux had said he would lose everything if he ever truly got rid of her… And he couldn’t do that, unless he wanted to prove Estremon right. “Alright, so he might not throw me out, but I’d still rather not upset him any more than I have to right now. The opposite would be kind of nice. I brought in all this crafting stuff with me and he doesn’t get it and he’s all keyed up about being efficient.”

“I could be efficient,” The skull singsonged. “if you threw me a few bones. A lot of bones, probably.”

Graverra sighed. She had kind of promised him a body, hadn’t she? And if it did actually cost less…

“Oh. Hm.” She pulled up the two recipes that had caught her eye in that regard, then picked up the skull to allow him to read the resulting mobs’ stats.

‘Basic Skeleton’ - Cost 850 Mana
Type: Skeleton | Theme: Mindless Thrall
Damages Dealt: Physical | Resistance: None
Health: 150

‘Crawling Skeleton’ - Cost: 800
Type: Skeleton | Theme: Mindless Thrall
Damages Dealt: Physical | Resistance: None
Health: 100

“Even if your skull knocks off a few mana, skeletons seem awfully fragile. Undead at least get necrotic resistances, and a higher health.” Graverra didn’t want to disparage the skull, but he really wouldn’t be useful to them like that. “I’m not seeing the ability to arm anything either… It must be tied to a skill line or something.”

“Oof.” Capo seemed to agree. “And I’d rather not be mindless, if it’s all the same to everyone else.”

“It probably costs more to keep your personality intact…” Graverra grumbled to herself and went back to the list of components. They were for types of attack, damages, resistances, and the types of loot they might drop. She didn’t see anything that indicated it might change the mob’s theme. She wondered if that had to do more with their own theme, or specialization… Or whatever it was now.

Graverra flipped back to the dungeon’s stat sheet, curious if she could piece it together herself. That felt moderately impressive. She hoped.

Dungeon - Name Undecided ( Pewter - 7 )
Location: Undetermined
Theme: Undecided | Specialization: Undecided

Total Mana Reserves
7,000 (7% / hr)

Mobs: 0/7 [See Further Mobs Info]
Traps: 0/4 [See Further Traps Info]
Puzzles: [Unlocked at Copper Tier]
Questlines: [Unlocked at Gold Tier]
[See Dungeon Layout]

Dungeon Will Be Placed In… [342:15:42]

The timer jump scared her; a small flutter of panic that made Graverra press in on [See Further Mobs Info] all the faster. She couldn’t remember where it had been at before, but it had gone down and she didn’t feel like they’d accomplished much of anything in that time, and that was distressing. The fact that she felt so distressed over a timer at all was distressing—she hadn’t needed to deal with timed traps or puzzles terribly much before, they were adventurers in their teen levels.

Initial Training Recommended To Be Completed Before Dungeon Placement For Optimal Performance

“Oh,” Graverra had forgotten about that too. “For Strexhin’s sake.”

“Well hang on, why not?” Capo asked. “How’re you going to know how all this works if you don’t do any training?”

“Because!” Graverra snapped and again, knew it wasn’t the skull’s fault he’d missed all of that. “I should so just know how everything works. Hecrux doesn’t want to do it all again.”

“Just do it without him.”

Graverra blinked as if the idea had stunned her, then scrunched up her face as she considered it. No, she hadn’t thought about that before, why would she?

“Well, how long did it take him the first time? You were there for that right?”

“Ah. No. Not for most of it. I think he got to the chapter on me and then kinda flipped out. Not that I’m telling you that, of course.”

“No, of course not.” Graverra huffed as she pulled up the table of contents again. Just to look. Just to try and gauge how long that all might take. A couple of hours, maybe? She wanted to say it wouldn’t make sense to give a core so much work it cut into their allotted building time… but even if that was the point, to build what the System asked for, Graverra couldn’t say she’d put it past Estremon specifically to try to sabotage Hecrux like that. “How long do you think you were in the hall for?”

“No idea, mistress. Didn’t have a way to keep time with me.”

Graverra scowled a little harder as a new thought hit her. She really didn’t like this one. “But you know Hecrux finished whatever his version of dungeon training was, right?”

The skull wobbled in his shrugging motion. “There’s no real way for me to, if I was out in the hall for the rest of it. You think he’s lying?”

“No!” She didn’t want him to be. And she certainly didn’t appreciate how enthused Capo sounded at the idea. “I just want to know how long it might take, so if I did do it by myself…”

Graverra pulled up her personal mana reserves without the aid of her grimoire. That felt like a better gauge of time than trying to decipher the overall dungeon timer.

Secondary Core Mana Reserves: 2,460 (7.5% / 1hr)

“Oh! Ha! I told him that rock was worth it.” It probably meant Hecrux could be active again at any moment, if he’d been close earlier. “That’s… like two hours? I don’t think I can do much training in two hours…”

“Times funky when you’re a dungeon core, I think. Bossman’s sense of time never seemed right to me, anyway. Yours sure ain’t any better.”

“How long do you think it’s been? I mean, since I fell down here?” It didn’t matter anymore, but for some reason it calls to mind her ex-party; how long had it been for them? How long did they miss her or even look for her? What would they think of her now?

“Hey,” Capo startled her back to the present. “If you go all inactive on me, I’d rather you make it look like you’re sleeping. You look creepy with your eyes all glossed over, mistress.”

“Creepy’s what we’re aiming for, isn’t it?” Graverra smiled at the sue of her title. Because she had a title now. Valerae and Branimir could suck it. “I’m not going back to bed. If that’s how long reading about mobs took, then traps should kill the rest of our time…"