Place ‘Mastiff (Undead)’ x2 for 2,300 Mana?

[Y] / N

Include Rabid Bite for 600 Mana

Monster Taming Skill Line Unlocked

One Point Allotted to Monster Taming

One Point Allotted to Necromancy

Place ‘Sloughed Slime’ for 1,500 Mana?

[Y] / N

“Well, that solves having too much mana.” Graverra sighed; the guard dogs had wiped her out completely. The slime was Hecrux’s idea though, so it only made sense he covered it. But she still rolled her eyes at the idea and mumbled, “As if.”

Graverra leaned in to squint down at the map. There was only so much zooming in she was able to do with her grimoire, although moving herself closer still didn’t have the desired effect.

“There’s really no way I can just look in there?”

“You just... do. You’re a dungeon core.”

Graverra grumbled to herself. She guessed she should have expected that answer. Instead of focusing on the map, like she did to move it around or zoom in, she focused on the dogs and their stat blocks, as if she meant to manage them from her head rather than use her grimoire. The stat block came easily, and that in itself felt like a victory, but the longer she focused and the worse her sense of vertigo got, a hazy vision of at least one mastiff filled her head.

The dogs trot along together over the gravel that filled the middle of the courtyard, occasionally sticking one of their mangled heads into clusters of plants to sniff around. Despite their zombified appearance, or maybe because of it, Graverra thought they looked awfully stoic. Until, seemingly at the end of their little patrol of the courtyard, one play bowed to the other and set off a game of chase.

Graverra laughed and let the vision fade. Maybe someday it could be a constant, back of her mind presence, the way it seemed to be for Hecrux, but for now it was too much to manage subconsciously.

“I can name them, right?” Graverra asked but didn’t wait for the answer. Since pulling their stat block up was so easy now...

“Only a dungeon boss needs a name.” Hecrux stated the furrowed his brow. “You do realize they’re going to be killed? Often.”

“Yes, I know that.” Graverra gave the dungeon core a flat look before returning to her work. “It’ll make things easier! If I give them names, we know which one I’m talking about.”

Rename ‘Mastiff (Undead) - 1’ to ‘Moggiard’

Rename ‘Mastiff (Undead) - 2’ to ‘Dralzek’

“Are we naming the slime, then?”

“No, because we will have no other slimes to confuse it with.”

“Until it splits.”

“What?”

“Nothing, dearest. What was it you wanted to show me after we’d spent more mana?”

“Right! If it works...”

Graverra pulled up the map of the primary core’s lair rather than the dungeon. Like managing the dungeon, though, she pulled up the list of pieces for dungeon construction. Within the core’s lair, they were first and foremost flesh-based and fractions of what a regular wall or floor piece should have cost. Keeping that up on the right page, Graverra manipulated the map on the left back to the dungeon and held her breath.

The list didn’t change.

Graverra sighed in relief. Now just so long as it let her place any of it...

Replace 15 ‘Desecrated Dungeon Segments’ with ‘Fleshwarped Segment’ for 250 Mana?

! Warning - Fleshwarped Segments may take damage!

! Warning - Core Combat is inadvisable at this dungeon’s current tier!

“Oh.” Graverra worried her bottom lip. That wasn’t something she had considered when concocting this little scheme. “But… Nobody hits dungeon walls. There’s no point.”

Hecrux growled in thought beside her, but he didn’t say no.

“I mean, we fought a little, and you’re clearly still okay. And seriously, nobody goes around hitting dungeons for no reason. I had to get all the way up into here to want to do that.” Graverra continued to talk herself into the idea. Hopefully the both of them. If this wasn’t a good one, then what did she have?

Replace 15 ‘Desecrated Dungeon Segments’ with ‘Fleshwarped Segment’ for 250 Mana?

! Warning - Fleshwarped Segments may take damage!

! Warning - Core Combat is inadvisable at this dungeon’s current tier!

[Y] / N

A wave of relief passed over Graverra after the tiles were replaced, but that was probably just the mana she’d gained back.

Secondary Core Mana Reserves: 600 (7.5% / 1hr)

Graverra looked up at Hecrux—he must have felt the whole mana thing too, didn’t he?—and waited for a response. Some further affirmation that she’d made the right choice. Even if she guessed he could just redo it all again...

“That is… good.” It sounded as though the realization was still dawning on him, but he’d said it. She did good. “And I suppose you would know the likelihood of our getting hit.”

“Really low.” Graverra nodded. She wished she could say it was absolutely none, but... There were some intense berserkers out there. “And it’s gross, and that’s like your thing, right? You are the dungeon.”

“It would hurt you too this time.” Hecrux warned.

“Oh.” Graverra really hadn’t considered that. She still didn’t quite think of herself as being part of the dungeon. She couldn’t even do normal dungeon core things... “Well, then, I guess I better be right.”

✨ 💀 ✨

Even with what she had earned back by replacing the dungeon segments with fleshwarping, Graverra knew she hardly had enough to do anything more than set dressing. She closed the list of dungeon parts and let the map fill both pages of her open grimoire, then readjusted her place on her throw blanket to lay on her stomach with her chin in her hands.

“Your turn.” Graverra declared once she had settled.

Hecrux raised his nonexistent eyebrow. “You don’t want to finish?”

Graverra shook her head. It was funny to think six hundred mana used to be nearly her entire pool’s worth. Now only six hundred was enough to have her beginning to feel a bit fatigued... But when she kept thinking about it, Graverra had to concede she had just raised two whole dogs from the dead without having to scrounge around for their pieces first.

“I only have enough for little things now,” she explained. “Don’t you want to get started on another room? I mean, we’ve got trap right out front this one and three mobs inside; I think that’s pretty much done. Except a way in.”

“In to where? They’ll already be inside the dungeon.”

“The castle.” Graverra said it as if it were already a fact. He wasn’t the only one that could do that.

Hercux hummed like he was holding back further comment.

Graverra chose to ignore it. “And the ceiling, right? Six hundred probably isn’t enough for that.”

Still, Graverra navigated to where she thought that all might be, just to get mentally slapped with the System’s warning in her head.

Spell Craft Rank 5 required!

Graverra growled down at her grimoire. She needed to find a way to up their Spellcraft skill and fast.

Behind the spells list she could access, the dungeon’s map began to fill in. Graverra closed out of the list quickly, watching intently as Hecrux built two new rooms for them, one bigger than the other, branched off from opposite sides of the courtyard. The impression of System prompts filtered in with them, but they were easy to ignore since he wasn’t projecting them into her grimoire this time.

“What are you planning?”

“On the right, I’m not sure yet. On the left... castles have graveyards, don’t they?”

“Oh.” Graverra looked harder at the empty space, like she might be able to see his intent that way. A smile creeps up on her with the idea that he’s making an effort. “A crypt.”

Graverra sat up, suddenly not so tired after all. Undercrofts were cheap, even more so when she laced them with a little fleshwapring—nobody was going to take a swing or fire off a spell at the ceiling—and filling the proto-crypt with stone caskets gets her head spinning with even more ideas. They wouldn’t be able to fill every one of them with a mob; their limit was only seven, but someday maybe...

“Would you like to start working on your spellcraft?”

Graverra pursed her lips as she held back another reminder that she was in fact an entire necromancer and already quite familiar with how spells worked... Just not the way dungeon cores cast them, evidently. “How?”

“Try looking at the ones allowed to us, to start.”

Hecrux meant to be teasing, she felt, but Graverra still gives him a withering look before pulling up the spells list and scrolling back up to the spells allowed at their rank and her current amount of mana. They were almost all illusory, except a handful that might, in the first circumstances, do two or three points of damage.

Graverra selected two sensory effects that made sense to her being in the crypt: the sound of dripping water and the more complex sounds, sights, and smells of a swarm of bats.

Place ‘Sensory Effect - Dripping Water’ for 50 Mana?

Place ‘Sensory Effect - Swarm of Bats’ for 150 Mana?

[Y] / N

After confirming, two sigils penciled themselves onto the map, and Graverra was prompted to pick a more permanent spot.

“Oh!” Graverra recognized the whole ordeal better now. It was like setting a spell trap—not something she had been able to do yet, but she’d seen her fair share of them. Inside of dungeons, even. “That makes... too much sense.”

Hecrux moved as if to incline his head, but Graverra just shook her’s. She didn’t feel like explaining what Estremon had said about knowing the secrets of the universe, or whatever that was supposed to mean. And after the spell sigils were placed, that was the end of Graverra’s mana.

“Will the dogs wander down there?” She asked through a yawn.

“Not unless we tell them to.”

Graverra hummed her approval, then lay down again on her spiderweb blanket. “I’ll just nap here, if you don’t mind. Capo will ask what we’ve been doing, and I don’t have the energy for him.”

“You summoned him back.” Hecrux reminded, but it at least sounded good-humored.

“You made him like that in the first place.” But Graverra didn’t stay awake long enough to be concerned she’d offended him again.