Garth  skimmed across the surface of the dungeon floor, not even bothering to move his legs, carried along by a column of mana as he shot down the tunnel. He snatched one of the ornate helmets for his brainmeats on the way out, settling it as he ripped through the air.

Hunters went down the southwest tunnel this morning, about six hours ago, so they should already have been on their way home.

After fifteen seconds of cruising down the halls at over a hundred miles per hour, Garth came to a halt in front of the panicked hunters, Alicia out in front. The wind following him sent a blast of small debris across them and sent several hide skirt flipping up.

Did they know I could fly? Garth thought to himself as the orc/corio hunters gawked at him. Whatever.

“If you could run like hell back to the village in an orderly fashion, that would be greaaat.” Garth motioned with his hand, and sent a pulse of nature mana down the tunnel, growing a thick ivory-colored coating of reinforcement all the way back to their little village. Hopefully with that, the tunnel wouldn’t collapse on them.

“You,” He said, singling out Alicia as the others rushed past him. “You’re coming with me. hop to.”

Garth began flying forward, checking behind him to see if she was following. Indeed. She was much better in the air since becoming the Apostle of Gorn. He could make out her curves over her shoulder as she flew behind him. Mmm.

Banging while flying? A giant boulder dislodged itself from the ceiling and dropped directly in front of him, forcing him to swerve around, navigating the tiny remaining space. Put a pin in it.

“What are those?” Alicia asked over the rush of wind.

“Huh?” When Garth glanced back at her, she was pointing at Halo.

“Its my most recent artifact. I’d put it above the Genocide blade, actually, on sheer utility. And I made it myself. Halo, meet Alicia, Alicia, meet Halo.”

Halo bobbed in midair as it followed him like a leaf in the wind, glowing slightly red and forming a heart.

“Haha, it’s got jokes,” Garth said. “And only fifteen minutes old. New record – Oshit!”

Garth looked back forward and swerved out of the way as he nearly splattered on a sharp turn in the tunnel ahead of him.

“What’s happening, and where are we going?” Alicia asked, flowing around the corner with arguably more grace. It might not be long before she was better than him in the air.

“Apostle problems, and we’re going to the Core!” Garth shouted back at her as they swerved around stone outcroppings and over fallen debris. The entire dungeon was falling apart at the seams.

Garth got a high-speed head start going toward the identity loss room, aiming for the opposite side.

The man was flying through the air, he didn’t know why he was flying through the air, or why he considered himself a man.

Wait, who am I?

Garth hit the floor on the other side, tumbling end over end for an instant before he remembered who he was and where he was going. He kicked the fly spell back into high gear and picked himself up.

He glanced behind him and Alicia didn’t give much more than a wobble before joining him on the other side. Her helmet was older than his.

Cheap helmets made in Junen, Garth thought, tapping the noggin protective gear that half-worked at best.

Improve the mind-protection of the hat, Halo.

Halo began to spin around his head like its name-sake.

The next room they went through, the helmet worked a lot better, preventing their thoughts from manifesting as strange eldritch creatures – waitaminute – Garth swooped up and snapped a strange blue crystal that looked like bubbles growing out of each other off the ceiling.

“Hold onto this and try not to think of anything!” Garth said, tossing the crystal over his shoulder as they flew.

They took a hard left turn and blasted through a wall of debris that had recently cut off the Core room. a few hundred meters further, Garth came to a halt at the deepest point of the reality-warping dungeon.

The indestructability Law of the room must have failed somehow. The giant rat-lion Boss of the dungeon was a bubbling mass of black goop, and the sphere was slowly turning dull grey and flaking away under an onslaught of black flames.

The core was letting out a kind of mental and physical shriek that resounded in his ears and gave him a headache as it slowly dissolved. Whatever this core was, it was special. Maybe even alive.

Not on my watch, buddy.

Garth held his hand out and used Beladia’s mana to wash away the corruption. The Core was pitted and damaged, suspended in the center of the room on a dwindling flow of mana.

Halo, resuscitate, and reprogram. This dungeon was my servant, always was, really.

Garth’s Marriage Rekindler.

Garth used his slapdash homebrew spell to quickly trawl through his own mind and eliminate any hostility toward the Core, highlighting memories and emotions related to when he had profited off the dungeon. Then he created a false narrative in his mind that the dungeon was his to command and always had been.

Halo began to spin around the core, imprinting and reinforcing Garth’s Purpose for it in a matter of seconds. It tore space, allowing more than one side of the individual gems to face the core at once, raising the already impressive speed of the Practice Effect from staggering to astronomical.

Oh yeah, and the dungeon’s core is totally immune to Woe channeled from Markus, the god of Woe.

The Dungeon’s core went from a dull, pitted core with an anemic spin in the center of the column of mana, to a healthy gold, smooth, and bobbing with vigor.

The black fire was being forced back by the wave of purple mana, followed by an invisible wall that radiated outward from the core, only noticeable via the black flames lapping against it. once the core took control of the situation, Garth held out his hand.

“Gem please.”

Alicia handed him the vaguely cauliflower shaped stone, and Garth snapped it in half over his knee, creating two halves. Garth took the bigger one in his right hand and stared at it.

Halo, if you would.

The gemstone in his hand turned into a spike even as Garth jammed it down into the Core with a grunt. The two stones incorporated into each other instantly, with Halo acting as the ultimate catalyst, allowing the spike to enter the top of the basketball sized orb without a wisp of resistance.

The gemstone spike went all the way to the center of the core, then Garth laid his hand on it.

Garth uncorked his connection to Beladia, mentally removing every safety feature, everything meant to keep his mind and body safe. Until now he’d been using a squirt gun, now he was using a firehose.

Thankfully the goddess of fertility’s mana didn’t have a particularly harsh aftertaste. Had Alicia done the same thing, she’d probably have become a crispy bug on a zapper, but an overflow of Beladia’s mana felt like…

The easiest way to describe it was experiencing every biological function at once while high on acid. Not exactly pleasant to Garth’s many orifices, but tolerable.

Garth let out a scream as Beladia shot down his arm, into the gemstone and out into the Core, Halo making adjustments at the speed of light all the while to make this work rather than shatter everything into a million pieces and detonate half the planet.

“EEK!”

A brown skinned Beladia lookalike let out an alarmed squeak as she fell naked from the air, her generous bottom landing on the stone floor with a slap.

“What’s going on?” she asked, sitting up.

“Sorry for the brevity, but can you purge all the black fire that’s spreading everywhere?”

“Huh? Oh?” she frowned, looking at the black fire spreading from. “Sure.”

With a wave of her hand, the black fire was banished, dying where it stood, destroyed by precise jets of Beladia Mana from the very walls.

Muahahahah! Garth had to struggle to hold in his amusement.

“Make a viewscreen and get the more deadly rooms situated in places people won’t go.”

“Okay,” Beladia said, before cocking her head and glancing at Garth. “Why am I a dungeon right now, Garth?”

“Ehh,” Garth said, glancing over at the perfect sphere with a sliver of blue crystal merged with it’s top.

“Reasons?” He glanced over at Alicia, who was staring at the eight-foot tall goddess with wide eyes. He glanced down at her stomach and sighed in relief as he brushed moss and mushrooms off his skin and hair.

He was half afraid that he’d get an immaculate conception over there. It wasn’t off the table where his goddess was involved.

“I found a stone that makes avatars and figured you might like having another place of power, and if the inhabitants were going to worship the core as a god anyway, that might as well be directed toward you.”

“I can’t feel the rest of myself.”

Halo, can you fix that?

Halo spun around the core, and it’s shade changed to brown.

“Oh, there it is,” she said, her eyes flashing purple for an instant. She ran a hand through her green hair and leaves emerged from behind her to cover her breasts.

Aww.

“I haven’t had this much power in the mortal realm in ages,” She said, looking at her fingers in fascination. She glanced up.

“This place, it’s completely under my control.”

 “True.” Garth admitted, nodding his head.

“Let this be an extension of my divine realm, an example of my eternal reward made flesh.”

Her words shook the floor, and the ceiling flew away, expanding outward faster than an arrow. The tunnels widened as if eroded by millions of years in seconds, until the entire dungeon had become hollow, all the narrow restrictions a thing of the past.

Garth could even see the village a few miles distant. Its man-made sun rose up and became a real-looking sun as plants sprung up everywhere inside the newly created mega-dome.

“Cool, Cool, you’re missing one thing though.” Garth said, nodding as he surveyed what she’d done with the place. A perfect little utopia of nature and plenty. Exactly what he was hoping for when he’d established a connection to Beladia with the core. A permanent connection to a good natured deity was the perfect way to make sure that the core never turned evil.

“What is that?”

“The dungeon does whatever you say, and you do whatever I say.”

“What?” She asked, confused.

Garth adopted his pirate voice as Halo began to multiply itself, filling the very air with Practice Stones, “Batten down the hatches, stow the rum, grease up the wenches, untie the mooring and get this ship ready to sail…Yaarrrr!”

“Aye Aye!” the Beladia-connected avatar of the dungeon – designed to obey him –  saluted as the dungeon began to rumble around them.

Behind him a big purple and yellow flower emerged from the ground and spurted clear lubricant all over Alicia, the sheer force knocking her off of her feet.

Whoops. That part was a joke.

***

Dragus was sitting in front of Castavelle, reading the history of the archmage’s failures to demoralize him when Teranda’s meek knock came on Dragus’s door, transmitted all the way down into his sanctum.

“I can wait, if you’re busy.” Castavelle said, still sawing at the divine arrow penetrating his very soul.

Dargus’ eyes narrowed. He had specifically asked not to be disturbed. He set the book down and left the room, dismissing the lights with a thought before heading up to his room.

The stairs to his trophy room disappeared as he entered his meditation chamber, shunted away to another dimension and replaced with solid stone. No evidence of his ilicit storehouse remaining.

“Come in,” he said, suppressing his ire. He knew she didn’t particularly relish interrupting him, so it must be something important.

For her.

If it turned out not to be something important for him too, he would have to teach her the difference.

“You’re two weeks early. This better be important.”

Teranda practically withered under his stair. “Yes, umm… It’s about Terrafell.”

“Did the apprentice escape, then? That’s not worth my time. I already told you what I want done with him.”

“It’s not so much about Castavelle’s apprentice as it is about Terrafell dungeon itself.”

“Speak.”

“It’s gone.”

“Gone? This second-tier apprentice destroyed it? Do you expect me to believe that?”

“It wasn’t destroyed. It separated itself from the planet and…flew away.”

Dragus could swear he heard Castavelle’s laughter echoing in his mind.