Walls, Advanced Walls, Ceilings - Visible and Invisible followed a similar pattern, although Graverra wasn’t half so excited to build walls—even of the supposedly advanced variety—as she was to be able to finally fix their ceiling. It hadn’t felt right down there. Not just too dark, not just too empty, but wrong. Unsettling. Even the system agreed.

An unfinished dungeon will not be placed. Although a dungeon may take on any number of shapes that a dungeon core might conceive of, all perimeter walls and ceilings must be closed off before placement. All weaknesses, cracks, or leaks in a dungeon’s perimeter must be addressed immediately. Failure to address such things within a reasonable amount of time may result in the dungeon’s closure and further action taken by the dungeon’s keeper.

“Huh.” Graverra’s brow raised. She hadn’t been expecting to find anything interesting in wall building, but that went and confirmed that Daeydark wizard’s thoughts on patches… kind of. And what did that mean about the way she had fallen in there in the first place? Was Hecrux in even more trouble because of her?

Please Enclose Your Basic Dungeon Tiles

Graverra traced her finger around the little room she had been working on. There were no options presented to her about how these walls would look, though. How long was she going to have to be patient about that? What if it was longer than they had now? The tutorial had just told her a chapter ago that they should have spent the first week building up all these basics...

Dungeon Will Be Placed In... [162:23:04]

The timer flashed in the mirror. Graverra had called it there, almost subconsciously, but she still recoiled at the sight of it.

“How long have I been doing this?!” Graverra looked back at the whole of the dungeon map. It hadn’t taken them that long, had it? Maybe the system would count them as unfinished without the dungeon tutorial, but Hecrux hadn’t been wrong about wanting to be able to multitask either. There had to be a way to speed this up. He’d managed to do it; Graverra would just have to find a way to as well.

Capo, still sitting off to the side, made a sound as if he had been startled awake. Graverra hadn’t realized the skull needed to sleep or go inactive. It wasn’t like he had anything he needed to regenerate. “I can’t access the timer like you can, mistress.”

While she hadn’t actually expected a response from him, Graverra frowned. It would have been nice to have someone who could pay attention to that for her… Graverra glanced around her bedroom. There wasn’t a clock; she would have remembered if there had been a clock… probably. Why wasn’t there a clock? Was that on purpose?

Graverra tried pulling up a furnishings list to fix that but was met with an infuriatingly familiar message from the system.

You Cannot Manage Your Domain While Enemies Are Nearby

Graverra screamed back at her grimoire. They couldn’t still be doing this! So maybe she didn’t need a clock in order to finish the dungeon tutorial, but still. She’d told Hecrux she loved him! He was the one who hadn’t said it back. He was keeping things from her too; that had to count for something!

“Now what’s it telling you?” Capo asked. “I can’t see so good from over here, mistress.”

“You cannot manage your domain while enemies are nearby.” Graverra said in her most mocking tone.

“System thinks so long as you’re still upset, you’re still in combat.”

“I’m not upset!” At that exact moment, fine, Graverra was upset. But it wasn’t the way the system was thinking. And she had lots of perfectly good reasons to be upset, anyway. “I told him I love him, and- And he tried to kill me!”

So that was a little out of order, and she had told Capo she didn’t really mean it when she had said it, but… This was still Hecrux’s fault. Telling him that clearly hadn’t had the desired effect.

“I wasn’t trying to kill you.” The sound of Hecrux’s voice burst into the room, as if he had been holding back for some time but that had been the final straw. “I only wanted to scare you.”

“Well, it wasn’t even fair.” Graverra sulked back without missing a beat. She certainly didn’t need him believing he had managed to scare her. Or that he could kill her. “You should have let me slot skills. And given me my armor back.”

“That green tutu was protecting you?” Capo asked but, beyond a withering glare from Graverra, was ignored.

“Next time.” The dungeon core almost sounded wistful. For a moment, Graverra even believed him, but he must have still been in her head because the next thing he did was laugh. “There’s not going to be a next time.”

Graverra opened her mouth to continue arguing, but even she didn’t really want a next time. She was still scrambling to fix this time.

“I know.” Her tone took on a small, miserable quality.

Their collective silence stretched on to the point Graverra began to wonder if she’d been left back to her own devices. If Hecrux had been back in her head, then he must have known how things were going… But that meant he must have heard the entire thing with Capo, or parts of it. He’d gone inactive, hadn’t he? After Estremon. And if he was listening now, then that meant he’d just heard her thinking about eavesdropping on him and Estremon. Great.

Graverra reached around behind herself and grabbed the pillow to smother herself with. It wouldn’t fix anything, but it felt like being able to hide from him, and that was what mattered.

Hecrux cleared his nonexistent throat. “How has your work on the tutorial been?”

“I don’t know. You tell me.” Graverra grumbled through the pillow over her face.

“What was that? I can’t hear you through the pillow.”

Graverra slid the pillow down her face slowly, brow furrowed, until it uncovered her mouth. “I thought you might just… know.”

“I haven’t been able to hear your thoughts. The system still doesn’t appear to know what to do with you and won’t let me give you back your core privileges. I’ve been trying.”

Graverra fought not to be too warmed over by the fact that he had been trying to fix that for her. She was still mad at him. This was still his fault somehow. “Well. I’m not done with it yet.”

“Is it going well?”

“I don’t know.” She scowled harder, her confusion forcing her to sit up again. Couldn’t he see what she had been doing? “I’m not allowed to touch the actual dungeon anymore, so…”

Graverra didn’t want to say that. She wanted to be able to tell him that it was going wonderfully, that she had been right about everything actually, and that she was going to fix the whole thing all by herself. But she still didn’t even know half of what she was supposed to be fixing. He hadn’t told her. And she wasn’t sure how to bring it up if he wouldn’t first.

“Would you like to come in here and show me?”

That too was a fight not to be charmed by. Why did he sound so gentle all of a sudden? And patient; Hecrux should have been annoyed. He probably would be if Graverra did show him that all she had managed so far was the barest of layouts.

“No.” She said, speaking small again. She didn’t want to say that either. Maybe she shouldn’t have. Maybe things were different now that he’d defended her from Estremon. Maybe Graverra had managed to prove her point after all. She clutched at the pillow in her lap again. Maybe she needed to be smothered, actually. “It’s probably better if I just stay in bed for now. My health, you know?”

“I could… Could I come in there?”

“To do what? Hover ominously? You wouldn’t even fit in here.” If Graverra had been in a better mood, she knew this would have been a golden opportunity to drop less than subtle hints about the benefits of a more humanoid avatar. Or, if she could, pull up the core avatar section and see about making those changes for herself. It would only be fair after he’d done it once to her…

“Graverra…”

She bristled. His voice may still have been gentle, but it was the kind of gentle that meant he was about to gently chide her for something.

“I could just make the room bigger. Or remove the wall. Or-”

Graverra laughed. Maybe she shouldn’t have; she already knew he was sensitive to this sort of thing, but, “No, you can’t.”

Had he not tried to do anything since her attempted dungeon run?

“Of course I can, I’m the-”

Graverra folded her arms. She almost wished for the shared system messages again so that she could time it right with mocking the system. “You cannot manage your domain while enemies are nearby.”

“No.” Hecrux sounded more upset than she had anticipated, though. Veering on frantic the longer he seemed to try. “No. We aren’t fighting anymore. I should still- No!”

Graverra worried her bottom lip as she waited for Hecrux to calm down or throw an even worse tantrum; she wasn’t sure which was more likely. And still somehow it felt like her fault. She hadn’t wanted to be right about that. Fine, she might have been in the moment—if it had turned out that the entire time Graverra had been fussing with the basics, Hecrux had continued on with the real dungeon building without her, further proof that he didn’t need her—but it wouldn’t have wounded her half so much as it would him.

“You have to come in here. Now.”

Graverra uncrossed her arms, tempted to do exactly as he’d asked—commanded—but, “Why?”

“Now, Graverra.”

Graverra reached for her grimoire and hugged it to her chest, more out of force of habit than anything else. If Hecrux couldn’t do anything, then he probably couldn’t use flesh warping to reach in there and smother her either. Probably. “That kind of sounds like a threat...”

“Enough!” Hecrux roared. “I have been nothing but patient and accommodating! I haven’t asked you for anything beyond our initial arrangement, and I have not threatened you!”

“You are yelling, boss.” Capo at least thought enough not to speak loudly, but Graverra still threw the pillow over him for it. That was the last thing any of them needed.

“Now, will you please come in here and help me fix this!” He still sounded harried, but he had said please. He had asked for her help.

Graverra stood, still clutching her grimoire, compelled to listen even just to soothe his urgent panicking, but, “You’re going to let me help?”

“Yes!”

Graverra took a step towards the door between them, then stopped. “Really?”

“Graverra.”

She heard Capo mumble something from beneath the pillow. Probably she should have fixed that first, or at least shouldn’t have left him that way. But the skull would go and get her turned around about this, wouldn’t he? And she really might have something here…

“You have to promise that you’ll stop hiding things from me.” That sounded better than outing her own eavesdropping, for now. “I’m going to have to ask questions, probably, and you’re going to answer them completely, and you aren’t going to get upset at me for not knowing things and-”

“Yes, yes. Whatever you need. Now, please.”

Graverra fought a grin. Maybe her point had been proven after all.