Mark stared at Silvers quickly disappearing figure as he neared the edge of the dungeons domain, heading off on the second expedition.

He looked around the little fort he had built during the first expedition. Barracks, bathrooms, the mess hall, the dungeon room that Alverost had invested a lot of time into. It was the only part Alverost had helped shape at all, though he acted too good for it most of the time.

Mark felt a constant tick, tick, tick, like a tapping at the back of his skull. It itched like a rash on his skin, though he did his best to resist it. It was a physiological drive, the drive he had felt since first expanding his domain as a dungeon core, before it became as second nature as breathing.

It was the desire to expand, to build, to do more. Perhaps it was the same thing that had motivated Alverost to carve this room. It trilled in Marks ears, driving him forward, motivating him. It was a strange thing, an effect of his physiology on his psychology, and for a brief moment, Mark’s resolve wavered, wondering how much of this decision making was really him and how much was the dungeon physiology pushing him forward. It had been days now, maybe a week since his transmigration, though he had a deep gut feeling his death had been years ago. Mark felt like years had passed floating in the river of souls before Alverost had pulled him out, albeit accidentally.

Still he had to move forward. He thought of the things he left behind, on the world he came from. He didn’t have a girlfriend, or much family left to speak of. But he did leave a dog behind. Nasus. He had named her after a video game character. Hopefully someone had taken her out and fed her after the crash. Mark shuddered internally, wanting to turn his thoughts to anything else.

“They’re off to look for silver. Silver is off to look for silver. What else?” Mark asked aloud, though he knew the answer. At once, both him and Alverost focused on the insect corpse. Mark could feel Alverost’s attention, a ghostly movement inside of the dungeons domain. Mark felt Alverost pull at a piece of the giant insect, returning it to mana in the same way he had done to stone. It was a vibrating buzz, and information filled Marks mind; the structure of that piece of the insect.

A tense silence had stretched between them, hanging over them like a sword. Alverost rarely, if ever, started a conversation with Mark voluntarily. Though he did seem to be a bit of a dick, he definitely hadn’t earned the name of dark lord or anything yet. Had he?

“We don’t have enough mana to make a whole bug. Even after recovering from all the mana you wasted on tables. Its a shame, because they’d likely make great minions as well, considering one could fight three Kobolds.”

“Have you ever tried to enslave a species using magical rings?” Mark asked, verifying his dark lord hypothesis.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Alverost asked.

“You know. One ring to rule them all. The main one turns people invisible.”

“How does that enslave a species? Turning them invisible?” Alverost paused. “Do you offer them power through the rings? Maybe entice them to your side somehow… a charm ritual engraved in the metal…”

Oh. Oops. Mark was giving him new ideas. Time to change the subject.

“What if we created a baby bug? Like just the youngest stage of it?” Mark asked, pivoting away from a Sauron scenario as fast as possible.

Alverost paused at the suggestion. “I guess we could try.”

Mark felt Alverost reach out, entering that weird fugue state of blue color that enabled creation. His roots moved through the ground below, near the insect. And then, with a concerted effort of will and mana, a shape coalesced out of the air, wet and shivering. It was inches long, colorless white like an ant larva, and writhing on the ground, trying to get its bearings. Its soft insides deformed as it moved, its legs too soft to lift its body on the ground— and then it died, just like that, organs leaking from its mouth.

“Whats wrong with it?” Alverost hissed, creating another insect without pause, this time flooding it with dark mana. It appeared nearly the same, the only difference pulsing black veins inside of its flesh. It died just the same, this time exploding into a puff of black mana on death. “Damn thing… Weak insects. Maybe they’re not worth recruiting.”

“Well, it looks like a centipede, so I bet it lays eggs.” The creation pane responded to Mark’s thoughts and opened, the millipedes DNA unraveling before him. Eggs, he thought, and it responded, the DNA sequencing and unraveling like an infinite thread. He searched for another encoded message, finding indeed that the last dungeon had left something behind. It wasn’t a video though— rather, it was a singular idea, expressed almost like a tag on information, hanging to the structure of the gigantic bug that had given his Kobolds a fight for their lives. It was marked ‘food.’ What ate bugs this large? There was an obvious answer. Dragons. These things were food… Mark wondered if this entire section of the dungeon wasn’t just a massive farm.

“What do you see?” Alverost asked, sensing Mark’s actions in the creator pane. “Another youtube?”

“Everything.” Mark replied. “Its like a codex of information describing something on the fundamental level. Like a roller coaster of information and I’m just a passenger, reaching inside and rearranging and creating…” Mark spoke, mesmerized, as a translucent egg grew into existence, responding to his will. A white larva sat still and content inside of it.

There was a taciturn pause between them as Mark sat, mesmerized at the ability to create life from nothing. Well, it wasn’t from nothing, it was from Mana. The creation process didn’t leave heavy mana behind either— it seemed the conservation of energy still held true, even with magic.

“Whats a roller coaster? How does that help you interpret… DNA?”

“Its like a train— a mode of transportation. Do you have trains here?”

“Yes.”

“Right… well… its like a really fast train. That you ride for fun.”

“A train… you ride… for fun.” Alverost paused. “Your people are stupid…” Alverost trailed off, focusing on replicating Mark’s actions. A black egg popped into existence opposite Mark’s.

Mark created another egg, this one shining white like a pearl, and another, this one green. Their mana danced, their roots moving through the ground as they made dozens of the eggs.

“How long do you think they’ll take to hatch?” Mark asked aloud. Only half of their maximum capacity of mana remained.

“You can’t tell from the… DNA?” Alverost bluffed.

“I actually hadn’t thought to.” Mark dived into the creator pane, information about the creature dancing through his mind in concepts that didn’t fit into words. “A day or two, then.” Mark spoke, already quickly at work to build a ranch to house them in.

“Be careful, don’t drop them.”

“Its fine if you drop some of the pure mana ones. Just not the dark mana.”

The Kobold carried a fungiwood bucket full of eggs, stepping very carefully away from the corpse of the huge insect. Her scales were a motley mix of brown with gray spots, and her legs shook in the presence of the chittering thing. It was a good thing she didn’t know the eggs he carried were its babies, or she would have definitely dropped them. She brought them into the new building on the right side of the courtyard, a small, squat hut.

Mushrooms unfolded at a visible rate, pouring soft light over the room as its furnishings finished. Tables, chairs, stone buckets of dirt from which dozens of little mushrooms began to sprout filled the room. The Kobold set the bucket of eggs on the table.

“We still have some half of our mana left.” Mark said.

Alverost reached through the creator pane, feeling at the requirements to create one of those gigantic bugs. He pushed the mana into form, like the sensation of filling a balloon, but didn’t truly commit, simply examining the necessary mana to create one of the insects.

“I can feel how much it will take. Its too much to recreate that giant insect.”

“But what if we created a juvenile?” Mark asked. “Surely, if we can create dozens of eggs, we must be able to make at least one small one.”

Marks words gave Alverost pause, but he thought he’d try it.

His creator pane highlighted his magical knowledge; all information about how the creature interacted with mana, its body parts uses as reagents, what it looked like. But none of that “DNA”, since the pane only showed what he understood. So Alverost just tried to make a juvenile insect. He pushed down the blueprint in his creator pane, compressing it, but it felt wrong.

It felt a bit like the twisted muscles of the Kobolds, like their small, hunched bodies. He released the blueprint, resetting it, and tried again, the shape of the insect bending and warping inside of the creator pane. This time he got a shrunken insect with elongated legs. Not it. He focused, thinking about childhood. What represented it. He thought what it was like to be one, and applied that concept to the blueprint.

The thought of long days, studying at an academy in his fathers empire, of researching soul work under lich instructors. Of his childhood friend, Axel, of a graduation ceremony and a knife and his tears and an altar and a demand to prove his loyalty, from his father, his own father—

Alverost quieted his thoughts.

He breathed in. A reflex to calm himself down.

The dungeons influence expanded ever so slightly.

And their mana drained out of the core, an insect writhing on the table. While the original was dozens of feet long, this one was only a few. It rapidly oriented itself, clicking around on legs.

The spotted Kobold jumped backwards as it came into existence, pushing through the fungiwood door and peering back into the room through a thin crack.

The insect made a dull noise, clicking its mandibles and rotating them, before rapidly heading towards the pile of eggs in the center of the room. It opened its mouth wide and chittered before wrapping itself around the eggs. It seemed that the centipedes had strong maternal instincts even from young.

“You think they eat mushrooms? Or will we have to get lizard meat somehow?” Mark asked.