“Hmn…” Shayma’s eyes snapped open and she jerked upright. “...I’m alive?”

She checked herself over, stretching and moving carefully to her feet. “And...just sore. And…” A grimace at the mess over her thighs. “Well, that was real enough.”

Shayma wiped herself off with the bedding and then, despite the fact that I was pretty sure she badly needed a shower, slipped her clothing back on, frowning at the twigs still tangled in her tail. “I don’t suppose you have a bath?” She said to the room at large, and by implication, to me.

Unfortunately I didn’t. There were water sources outside, though. I could hear a brook, faintly, with one of my outside ears, so I opened the door to the outside. Which seemed to startle her again, the tail and ears flicking. “...I’ll be back for that thing later,” she said, and padded out into the outside world. And soon enough, away from my sight.

I was sad to see her go, and not just because she was gorgeous. She’d actually addressed me, though what she thought she was talking to I didn’t know, but it had been nice to have even intermittently conscious company. The sex was pretty great too.

But I wasn’t going to keep her. I wasn’t that kind of person, or whatever I was, and given that she’d been toting an artifact for some reason she clearly had important things to do. And in fairness, I had somewhat less important things to do, like expanding in what ways I could, but I also wondered at Shayma’s request. Maybe I could do a bath.

It took a while to tap into the brook. It was further than I thought, and I didn’t want to expose myself too much. But with the boring beetles, it was much quicker than it would have been with roots.

I had to build a Monster Station to actually move the beetles out of my inventory into the real world, which sucked up half my biomass to make a large black cocoon in one of my spare rooms. The beetles themselves were exceedly simple to direct, since I could give them any point I could perceive and they’d go there, then dig how I wanted them. They did have to go back to the monster station now and again to, I assume, rest and to discharge what they’d accumulated from mining.

The boring beetles cut small passages through which I could run little crawlways, now that I’d leveled Architecture more. I put a Maw underneath the breach where the brook was pouring down, which sent water into my inventory. Perfect. I sent the boring beetles after the ore deposits I’d found while I began to experiment with my new resource.

A tub involved Altering stone enough that the skill raised itself, but filling it was another matter. I could export inventory contents into whatever room I wanted, but getting it to pour out of a spigot in a reasonable way took practice.

[Fluid Handling] learned

Fluid Handling Category unlocked.

150 Experience gained.

Ooh. That wasn’t as boring as it might have sounded. Pumps, inlets, outlets...you could do a lotwith moving water around and, just glancing through the architecture list, there were versions that were heat or corrosion resistant. Where someone might get such a thing as a corrosive liquid was left as an exercise to the reader, apparently. I had no ideas.

For heating the water, since a cold bath was just really underwhelming swimming, I put as many of my torches as I could cram into the space underneath, and Altered the stone there to be as thin as I could.

[Temperature Control 1] learned: Modify temperature of dungeon features and items.

150 Experience Gained.

So I could give Shayma a hot bath now, if she ever came back. Or a shower.

The boring beetles came back with their loads of ore, flooding my core with iron, copper, and magicite. The last one I could guess by the name alone, and sure enough I could reclaim it for mana. Fantastic. But...I still didn’t have anything I could do with any of that. Even my doorknobs were still stone or wood. But I could probably figure something out soon enough.