Turns out, following a trend, Logan’s intuition had been right. Aseri’s second handjob produced less than a hundred mana, so there was either a cooldown or diminishing returns. They returned back to work.

“Shame we can’t just farm it,” Aseri said. “But I suppose that’d be way too strong. A thousand free mana’s already impressive, this early, and even if we can only do it once a day, that sets us ahead.”

Logan was still a bit flushed from having had Aseri milking him, but he moved past it. How can she treat it so nonchalantly? Though, maybe not completely … there had been a flush on her cheeks, too. She just hid it well.

They got back to work. The light was a long way off. Seriously, I could do without all the digging. He could intuit why getting ‘grunts’ as soon as possible was a high priority.

“After the spawning pool, what’s our goal?”

“More expansion. Specifically, the soul obelisk and the research altar. From there, the world’s our oyster. We’ll want to set up some traps, get a few encounter rooms going, then break through to the surface. Attract adventurers. This core might be … odder … than most, but topsiders are still going to be our primary mana farm.”

There was a lot to work through. He said as much. “One by one. Soul obelisk?”

“Found in pocket spaces. Harvests souls, so that we persist through death. Or anyone’s souls—adventurers too.”

The second part made him pause. “Even adventurers?”

“Makes good bartering material. Usually they’ll have friends who come and bargain for them back. Good way to get topsider materials.”

“If an adventurer dies in the dungeon, we keep their soul?” That simplifies things. His moral qualms, at least. The idea of hurting—much less killing, however temporary—a person still didn’t sit right with him … but if they knew what they were signing up for, entering a dungeon, and he could always revive them, then he guessed it wasn’t the worst thing in the world?

He’d have to think about it.

The other respawnings—monsters—made sense. Dungeons, in video games, were often completable multiple times, not a clear-once and be done deal. The obelisk would allow his … staff members … (he refused to say subjugates) to respawn.

“Yeah,” Aseri said. “Best possible outcome is having an adventurer work all the way through the dungeon, providing their passive mana, then to kill them at the end. Means we get the spike and the passive.”

They provide passive mana, simply by delving. A decent amount, by the sounds of it. “So a dungeon should become increasingly harder.” That was the standard in video games, and by Aseri’s implications, here too. “And preferably, they should be killed by the final boss.”

“Yep.” Aseri paused. “Which brings up an important question—is that you, or me?”

“Huh?”

“Some Avatars serve as the dungeon boss. Some don’t.”

“Why?”

“It’s risky. The Avatar should always be available to defend the core. Core goes down, we all do.”

“Then you can. If you think that’s better?”

Aseri gave him an odd look. “For now, I think so,” she said slowly. “You have some work to do before …”

“I’m not useless in a fight,” Logan said. “I agree. Maybe you could show me a thing or two.”

Aseri glanced at him. “Well, that’s refreshing,” she eventually said. She didn’t clarify what she meant. “Sure. When we have a chance.”

“Research altar,” Logan prompted.

“How we unlock new structures,” Aseri said. “And materials. And—well, all sorts of stuff. Crafting stations is what we’ll want first, and metal, as a material, so we can make equipment and weapons for our grunts. Assuming we get ones that need it.”

“What kinds are there?”

“Grunts? Lots. Seeing how we’re in demon territory, imps, skeletons, infernals, goblins, insects, lava slimes … I could go on.”

“Demon territory?”

She gestured at Logan, then herself.

“Right,” he laughed. He supposed he should have put that together himself. Wasn’t just a coincidence he’d spawned as a demon, and Aseri as an infernal. Speaking of—was that how it worked? “Are you always an infernal?”

An odd look. “Yes?”

“Just wondering if it changed, life to life.”

“No.” Aseri was getting used to his strange questions, but some still made her pause.

“What does being named mean?”

“Means I have more than a few brain cells bouncing around, this life.”

“Oh. Grunts are—?”

“Dumb? As animals. Or … not quite, but not fully there.”

“How does that work?”

“Grunts? Or getting a name?”

“Both?”

Aseri snorted. “Names, earning up enough cosmic karma to respawn with one.” She shrugged. “Or, hell if I know, maybe it’s random. Dunno. Ask the gods, not me.”

“And grunts? You’ve been one?”

“It’s not pleasant,” Aseri said, “but you’re also too stupid to worry about it. Like I said, not animals, but your brain is … foggy. Our personalities are still there. We can even talk, once we level up enough, become closer to how we should be. But you can’t be as … full … as when you have a name.”

Sounded disquieting. Aseri didn’t seem disturbed, though. Her nose was wrinkled, as if it was an unpleasant work assignment, something she was happy she’d escaped from, but which was a part of life. Exactly what it is for them, I guess. 

Still. The information was good to have. Even if these grunts—whatever form they took—weren’t going to be intelligent, there was a person lurking behind their eyes. Logan wouldn’t feel in the moral right to abuse them; they deserved time off, and equal distribution of work. Wages? He’d have to figure it out. He suspected this viewpoint wasn’t going to go over well with Aseri. Modern-day morals weren’t likely to line up to … hers. He’d broach it later.

They’d gone on a tangent again. “Research altar. Takes mana?”

“Yeah.”

“What do you mean, ‘unlock’?”

She shrugged. “You’re the Avatar. But it unlocks complex structures, new materials, all kinds of things.”

Well, it shouldn’t be hard to figure out. There’d yet to be something he should be able to do that instincts hadn’t guided him to accomplish. “And are the ‘complex structures’ related to the dungeon’s theme?”

“Yeah.” Aseri paused, realizing what Logan had implied. “Oh. Huh. I wonder what ‘erotic-themed’ traps will look like.”

Logan didn’t.

Or did he?

Mixed feelings. 

That summed up pretty much everything about this situation.