Dragonheart Core

I had plans upon plans, when the stars aligned well enough to allow me them. And with Nicau slumbering away in the Hungering Reefs, roasted rat warm in his stomach and mana slipping in to replace all that he'd lost, I had the time to enact them.

Not all of them, because I was crossing hope that Seros would bring me back schemas to accent my sixth floor before finishing, but I could dive down and claw out some of the myriad options I had created. An empire, built upon the pillars of destruction.

Perhaps I was feeling more pissed than normal. Gonçal's lovely little retreat gnawed at bones I didn't know I still had.

Was it the right decision? Debatable. I had my own Scholar, no matter the potential one of an Adventuring Guild had, and recruiting a thief powered by spite was not something that came without consequences. But Nicau had made a deal with someone who called herself wolf and wanted me to go along with it in terrible travesty, so along would I go. For now.

Distractions first—I peered back at my core, at the golden letters scrawled over the marbled surface. Three options for a lacecap's evolution; houndspore, magmacap, and tumbleshroom.

A hells of a debate, particularly so when pitted against the concept of mobility in the shadow-choked lands of the Scorchplains, but Gonçal's reappearance had rattled me. My creatures needed ways to defend themselves, to grow strong enough to never give nightmarketers a way to steal them. Magmacaps were stationary and too similar to my already-existing lava traps; tumbleshrooms offered unseen strikes but with only bile-covered stems.

I selected houndspore.

All over my Scorchplains, little pockets of light bloomed, the oases I'd made as the only water source gleaming under the power of evolution. All of them were well-fed by the hundreds of bug colonies I'd layered throughout the smoke, but the evolutions weren't necessarily made by that—just by being on my deepest floor, where mana reigned at its most dense. Few, if any creatures would stay unevolved down there, if they lived long enough to absorb it. That was the power of a dungeon. The power of me.

But for now, the lacecaps disappeared under silver glow, their fungal flesh already beginning to bulge and grow as they were remade. Hopefully soon, if how fast their first evolution had taken.

All around, the bounding deer charged, scorch hounds sniffing at the air as the mana changed. The floor wasn't done yet but was approaching it; a few more evolutions, a few more schemas, something to sharpen it to a dagger's edge. Either the scorch hounds or the magma salamanders, whichever came to power first, would be the hidden threat here, as soon as they pulled up the mana necessary to become one. I was quite content each way, either a leader for the pack of vicious canines or a molten beast of fire to consume invaders whole, but I wanted a roaming threat with size instead of numbers. Something with teeth to fit the smoke.

Later. Always later. I rarely finished floors before building the ones underneath, and my mind was consumed with half a dozen ideas for my eighth floor, all wildly incongruous and interchanging. As soon as Seros came back, I would start on that, content in all the mysteries I had to be prepared for. Finishing the Hungering Reefs, too, preparing to grant it to another deity who wanted to offer power.

The Hungering Reefs.

A point of awareness flicked up, looking over the sprawling floor—the paradise of desolation and all the dangers that came with it. The misery still untested but deeply powerful. My proudest creation, in a way.

Oh, I had a wonderfully petty idea.

Back up to the Hungering Reef I went, to the third room—second largest and deepest, formed of spiraling towers choked in capturing coral. Oddly enough, it was the least colourful of all my rooms, despite the coral's propensity for nabbing up any souls or hues that traveled near them. Unlike the schools of prismatic dartfish in the lagoon or twisting silver kraits, this room was colder, more empty. Just looming shadows of roughwater sharks and emerald-carapaced greater crabs.

Perhaps that had something to do with the enormous sea serpent prowling through the depths.

He'd grown well past his fledgling days into a proper beast, one not yet in his prime but wonderfully close. Gone were the pristine silver frills and unsullied fangs—now he was a tested thing, with scars and discolorations to prove his experience. Oh, eventually he would shed them, grow large enough that he didn't need battlescars to display, but for now, he wore his prizes like laurels. All victories, strung like jewels over his scales.

Though not quite all victories. For all I prevented him and Seros from killing each other, that didn't mean his larger size led to him winning. Seros' hydrokinesis meant he clawed wins more often than the brute strength of the sea serpent.

Dragons were superior. That was just how the world worked.

But here, deep in the sixth floor, the threats he faced were minimal. Ghasavâlk had made it to the Skylands before tucking tail and running, and that was as fucking far as I wanted anyone to get—so the sea serpent had to content himself on sharks and mock spars.

Unless I got him something to lord over.

Yes, I was still pissed at Gonçal, and Calarata overall. This was my way to express it.

I dove deep into my core, plucking through all the schemas I'd gathered—easy, to pull up wood and metal, and start to shape them. More work than inorganic stone and without a stable design to build off, but I had destroyed dozens in my previous life and I still remembered the Dread Pirate each time I looked away from my dungeon, standing on the prow, ink-black lance in hand. The bastard. The murderer.

So, in my Hungering Reefs, I constructed a shipwreck.

Petty as all hells. I loved it.

I set it up in the middle of the room, impaled around one coral-tower and sprawling like it had been sunk for centuries. The knowledge from my core, useless things that I was granted through mana, told me I was making a galley—a pirate's vessel for the high seas, the kind that had slain me, the kind that if I had but a moment more time I would have crushed to the bottom of the cove long ago. High decks, sprawling sails, rich lacquered wood—all sunk and broken. Like it deserved.

Calarata was a land of pirates. This was my intention towards their master.

The sea serpent dove from his lazy patrol down to inspect what I was doing, deep amber-gold eyes curious as he coiled around a nearby pillar to watch. Wood wove itself into existence, swelling and bursting with water, tossed like an avalanche's stone over the floor as I delighted myself in punching enormous hulls through a non-existent hull and snapping fences like bones.

He rumbled something, deep and ocean-hungry. I pushed soothing thoughts through him, regaling him with fantasies of slumbering in the ruins, a den carved from victory, false though it was. I hadn't much talked with sea serpents in my previous life, considering we were more fond of ripping each other to shreds, but with their twisting bodies they didn't need as large of open space as sea-drakes for rest. I had seen plenty of their dens being in shipwrecks, a taunt to any who dared invade their territories. To sleep on those they conquered.

With a hiss, he swam closer, slipping through a shattered chasm through the main deck and into the maze below. I followed him, widening gaps and filling in loose segments with more pieces of wood and loose metal bolts, all to sell the image like a real shipwreck. My memory was unfortunately slightly more focused on my death, so I couldn't put any markings to indicate this was the Dread Pirate's ship, but I would know it was in my heart. Core.

The sea serpent seemed to appreciate it. His eyes gleamed.

And then, as I twisted some bloodline kelp around the mast like a throat of jewels, something thrummed in the floor below. Golden runes, scrawled over black-red. Words. Evolutions.

One part of my consciousness flicked down, preparing to shuffle more kobolds down to the sixth floor or elevate silverheads, when the location made me pause—the trail of mana went up and up and up, all the way to the Fungal Gardens, to the pit of stone I'd constructed in the far back. The one filled with bugs. The one glowing.

Oh. Oh!

Hells, it really was a day of new changes. Was my entire dungeon celebrating with the wolf-wisp's return? I couldn't see any other reason for so many evolutions; unless, ah. It had been some time since I'd last checked on the boiling pot of insects I'd left there, all fighting over scraps and feasting on corpses. Maybe they had eaten the mana long ago, me forgetting to replace it, and this was merely the result of their continued struggle against each other.

Terribly sorry. I wove half a point into a coalesced drop, humming with potential over the algae. Let the rest of the monsters make their way up for easier victory.

But these were battle-hardened, mana won from corpses alone, and I dove into them with a vigour—only two survivors, facing each other across a stone gladiator's ring, hemolymph and chitin scattered in their wake. One was tall and ridged, covered in six protruding legs and a jagged end. Its chitin was oddly cracked and rasping, like this was an aquatic creature lugging itself out of the depths for combat, which was always something I would appreciate. And the other was–

The other was–

Familiar. What?

Some inches long, earthen-brown, with a segmented body and wide, grasping pinchers. It wasn't Underranked, like so many of my other creatures, but instead one tier above—a groundbreaker ant, like the colonies I had down in the Jungle Labyrinth and Skylands. One of the soldier variants, built for defending the nest.

But here, so far from any others, fighting on my highest floor. Abandoned? A runt? Or had I just evolved it without looking closer, taking the option selected without guiding it down to others of its kind?

They were bugs, yes, but I was their master. I should have taken better care of them.

My mana pushed into their insectoid minds, soothing mercy and pulling them apart before they could gut each other, enough death already spread in their wake and potential needed instead. With these evolutions, I would give them a proper path forward.

The unfamiliar one first.

Your creature, a Dragonfly, is undergoing evolution!

Please select your desired path.

Edgewing Dragonfly (Common): Uncanny mobility and a hunger for prey creates danger. Its wings serve as blades as it flies through crowded canopies, drinking the blood of all those it cuts open in its wake.

A what fly?

Excuse me?

I had consumed this schema long ago and I dug through it now, ripping through the meat of what dared to call itself a dragon. My assumption had been correct that it was aquatic, this being the larval stage called a nymph, though with my mana flowing through the air it had managed to pull itself out and do combat with others for victory. Soon it would pupate, growing wings and a long, curling tail, with a mind that even now I could tell was sharp.

But not sharp enough. Why was it a dragonfly? It didn't even have scales.

I glared at it.

The groundbreaker ant next, smaller than what I remembered soldiers being, but perhaps that was because it had never made its way down to a colony, for something to protect. Just by itself, alone in the Fungal Gardens, stronger than others only in numbers it didn't have. Its mind shivered as I poked inside.

Your creature, a Groundbreaker Ant, is undergoing evolution!

Please select your desired path.

Farborne Ant (Common): A traveler of lands and valleys, it ventures into the wild on endless marches to find better territories for its colony. It can walk for weeks without rest and minimal food, guided by an innate understanding of direction that ensures it will never be lost.

Stoneshaper Termite (Uncommon): Strong of gullet, it builds from the earth around it into a palace. All its nutrients come from stone and are returned to it, creating elaborate tunnels and archways to house its ever-growing population.

Cleaver Ant (Common): Born from soldier ants separated from their colony, it lives a solitary and hungry life. Its namesake jaws cull all prey in its path as it devours more and more, searching for the power it needs to return to its queen.

Well. That last option was as clear of a damnation as I had ever heard. I had likely evolved this poor ant without ever looking closer, leaving it to try endlessly to fight its way down to a queen it didn't know the location of. Shit.

I did the mana's equivalent of wincing. Gods, how long had it been since I last truly checked it on here? The mana, empty, no prize for winning—no evolutions handled with care. How much faster could they have evolved if I had just given them the mana needed?

Terribly sorry. Even beings as great as me could make mistakes. I dropped half a dozen points of awareness in the ring so I would know immediately when it ran dry again.

But the option was clear, at least. While the first was interesting and the second blended well with Nenaigch's ever-changing tunnels, only the third matched what it was. I selected cleaver ant and edgewing dragonfly, letting both bugs fade away beneath the shimmering glow of evolution.

I had gotten my wolf-wisp back, and rejoiced in her. I would not neglect my other creatures.

Then–

Movement, far below. A mind, slotting back into mine, twisting through the Otherworld mana to spike into my awareness. The rasp of iridescent scales and thrum of deep power.

Seros.

And he wasn't alone.