The beginning of the dungeon had improved drastically, if Graverra did say so herself. Once she got back up there and sorted out the whole illusory ceiling thing, she could absolutely imagine the first stretch of hallway reading more like walking through a walled-off pathway into some grand estate.

Except that if this worked out the way she had just proposed to the dungeon core, she wouldn’t be allowed back to fix it. Or maybe she really would just die.

Graverra hugged her grimoire to her chest. She couldn’t just back out now; she had a point to prove. If she even could. Maybe that was why core combat wasn’t advisable at this tier… She didn’t know what skills of hers had carried over for a situation like this, if any at all.

As if on cue, Hecrux’s voice reverberated through the hall, “Graverra, stop this.”

“No.” She absolutely couldn’t now. Not if he thought he was commanding her to do so. Stomping her way down the passageway, arguing with the dungeon core… It felt like nothing had changed at all.

“This won’t work the way you think it will.”

“Well gosh, if only I had been told anything about how this worked…” Graverra paused at the top of the stairs. The ones she had suggested be made to go upwards instead of down.

Graverra scowled and opened her grimoire. She’d still had something of a stat sheet before…

Core 66.5 (SECONDARY)

Dungeon Core | Rank 147th

Location Undetermined | Dungeon Unnamed

Mana Reserves: 1,250 / 3,000 (7%/1 hr)

[You Cannot Manage Your Domain While Enemies Are Nearby]

!Warning - Core Combat Inadvisable At This Tier!

Graverra huffed and began flipping more pages. Maybe her old stat sheet was still in there, somewhere. If she had really caused some weird hybrid thing to happen, then there still had to be something.

“You could hardly defend yourself against fleshwarping before.” So now he was going to tell her how to run a dungeon?! It was just a modified sand trap, for Strexhin’s sake.

Graverra slammed her grimoire shut, dismissing it. She’d dealt with a modified sand trap or two before, and she hadn’t even had a class yet. Dodge-rolling wasn’t exactly advanced transmutation.

It felt like rolling over a tar trap, just wetter. Graverra full body shivered on the other side, but she stayed crouched even though she had avoided getting stuck. She summoned her grimoire again, flipping pages to find her old stat sheet. There had to be something.

Graverra Greame

Dungeon Core - Bride of the Dungeon Core

Level - 7̵͍̻͎̻̃͗̓ | EXP. - ♾️

Health: 400/400 | Stamina: 400/400 | Mana: 700/7̵͍̻͎̻̃͗̓0̷̻̇̔̔̚0̶͕͖̀̐0̶̬̭̒͝

Skills Slotted

Withering Blast | Death Shroud | Bone Fiend | Good Shepherd | [empty]

Equipment Slotted

[empty] | [empty] | [empty] | [empty]

Cryptmother’s Scythe (Necrotic)

“Ha!” Graverra jumped back to her feet and held out her hand to summon the scythe. Not her old one. She hoped that meant it was better. Her hand wasn’t filled with familiar polished black wood; instead, it was just one impressively long bone, the blade too, bound to each other by sinew.

“Oh, okay…” Graverra gave the scythe an experimental swing. It wasn’t weighted any differently than her own scythe. It certainly looked like it could do some damage. She couldn’t be too mad at that, especially since she hadn’t been sure she could even summon one anymore. It was just too bad the rest of her equipment wasn’t here too.

“You aren’t going to run your own dungeon. Alone.” Hecrux tried again.

“Yes, I am.”

“You’re going to go in there and slaughter the two dogs that you named?”

Graverra didn’t stop walking, but her face fell back down to a frown. “I’m not going to slaughter them.”

Of course she had dismembered plenty of other cute animals, but innocent most of them most certainly were not. Moggiard and Dralzekk had been built to kill, anyway. And she’d been the one to build them. It was different.

“And I thought you said the dungeon wouldn’t hurt its core, anyway.” Which would be a problem if she was going to clear the dungeon and regain her mana.

“The dungeon doesn’t know what you’re doing. Maybe you are a threat.”

That got Graverra to pause and look up, even if the looking part was pointless. “What does that mean?”

“If the primary core felt threatened, even by the secondary core, the dungeon would have to act accordingly.” It almost didn’t even sound like a threat. As if Hecrux was simply relaying the information. Where else would she get it?

Graverra’s grip around the scythe tightened, and she began to walk again.

“But the primary core isn’t feeling threatened, is he?” She singsonged through gritted teeth. There wasn’t any reason for him to feel that way… Besides the fact that she had just threatened to leave him and take all her mana.

“The primary core wishes the secondary core would return to her chambers.”

“Well…” Graverra would have liked that too. She didn’t want to clear her own dungeon; she wanted to be involved in the building of one. “Is the primary core sorry for keeping things from the secondary core?”

“The primary core wasn’t keeping anything from you.” Hecrux dropped his matter-of-fact tone to add, quietly, “I’m taking care of you.”

Graverra stopped again, just before the threshold of the courtyard. That is what she wanted. It was a lot of what had swayed her to begin with… Along with not dying and control over her own little world. Which she couldn’t do if she cleared the dungeon…

“That’s really considerate of you,” Graverra said as she rested the butt end of the scythe on the ground to better lean on it. She hadn’t been thinking of it that way, but this was the second time — that she remembered —he’d brought it up. Maybe it was just one big misunderstanding. Maybe she really didn’t have to do this. “But you’re going to have to let me do things. Like the dungeon tutorial…”

“That isn’t necessary. I already did it once. You can just intuit my memories of it.”

Graverra could have screamed. At this rate, even if he didn’t think it was necessary, it would be easier for him to just let her do it and be done with it. “It doesn’t work like that for me, and you know it! You’re just being stubborn.”

“I’m not the one throwing a tantrum right now.” Hecrux growled.

“A tantrum?!” Graverra echoed. She stopped leaning on her scythe and stepped out into the courtyard. She could show him a tantrum. How come every time she was upset about something, it was a tantrum?

“Turn around now, Graverra.”

“No.” She circled the fountain slowly but threw a cautious glance to the planters too. “What happened to your awful slime?”

“I moved it to the wine cellar. You didn’t like it in the fountain.”

She didn’t like it in the fountain. She didn’t like it at all, but she had been trying to compromise, and after all this she certainly didn’t expect Hecrux to have paid any attention to how she actually felt about the thing. But…

“We have a wine cellar now?” Graverra had missed that, but the last thing she wanted right now was to be reminded of all the things he’d done and wanted to continue doing without her. She stepped away from the fountain and began moving towards the castle’s entrance. Even if they stopped fighting, she wanted to see it now that she had the chance. “This is exactly what I’m talking about! You didn’t even ask me if I wanted-”

“You did.”

“You can’t know that!”

“I can.”

Graverra scowled all the harder. What was that supposed to mean? He’d been reading her mind? For how long? And if he was, why wasn’t he any better at understanding what she actually wanted?!

“You’ve been-” She didn’t get a chance to finish asking; the planter to her right began to growl. Graverra gripped the scythe with both hands; she still wasn’t about to fight her own dogs. Hecrux had no reason to feel threatened right now, especially if he was reading her mind.

Another timid step forward, and the dogs pounced, both of them at once. Graverra shrieked, scrambling backwards until forced to pick a direction or run into the fountain. Graverra dove to the left, towards the crypt.

“Bad dogs!” She knew scolding them probably wouldn’t work even before she tried, but in the off chance they might still respond to the fact that she was still their dungeon core too, even if not the primary core… “Go home! Sit! Leave me alone!”

She didn’t stop until she’d thrown herself over the crypt’s threshold. The dogs couldn’t follow her in; it was out of their range, but Graverra still waited until the snarling, barking, and gnashing of teeth receded back to the courtyard.

“What was that for?!” Graverra howled as she moved deeper into the crypt, weaving between caskets.

Hecrux sighed. Was he getting tired of this too? “I told you that might happen.”

“You said it would only happen if you felt threatened. What exactly do you have to feel threatened about right now?!” Graverra dismissed the scythe. Whether they were going to continue arguing or not, she had decided her point was proven. She summoned her grimoire after the scythe was gone, pulling up the door to her chambers. Or she would have liked to.

You Cannot Manage Your Domain While Enemies Are Nearby

!Warning - Core Combat Inadvisable At This Tier!

Graverra growled. “Hecrux, you tell the dungeon I am not a threat right now, or-”

A back-breaking force knocked Graverra to the ground, disappearing her grimoire and forcing the air from her lungs. The homunculus. Right. Not that she had necessarily forgotten about it; Hecrux had made it for her after all, triggering this mess in the first place. Graverra just hadn’t planned on having to fight it. Ever.