Valleria drifted between states of consciousness, struggling to keep her eyes open. Could she really sleep here, in this strange and alien territory?

It was too good to be true. This was the first time she could recall that her stomach was full. The first time since… she reflected over a long life in cramped tunnels and damp caves, skittering between a rotting city made of materials pulled from a river full of garbage. A life spent drudging the mud and trash for scraps that she could trade for food and rags that passed as clothing. This was the first time, the first time that she could remember having eaten her feel.

If it really was safe— then what? They were doing more than she could ever ask for— and she hadn’t asked. Not until after they clothed and fed her. What would she do after?

She would have to take her brother here, for one. Would they house him, even though he couldn’t work?

Could they fix him?

When she first awoke that morning, she thought this was some sort of afterlife, that she was long dead, cast quite literally into the pit of hell. But it was better here than even in her dreams. Eventually, she fell asleep dreaming of a new future.

“She definitely does have some… mutations. Thats true. But there are definitely advantages too…” Mark spoke to Alverost, looking through the creator pane. He had waited until Valleria fell asleep to inspect her genetic structure again. She slept deep and dreamlessly, not even moving.

Mark moved, the roots of the dungeon reaching out to Silver.

“This might tingle.” Mark said. Alverost observed in silence.

At once Mark was flooded with new information, his creation pane splitting down the middle; on one half, he could see Valleria, and on the other, Silvers. Silvers muscles were shrunken, though he had worked to unknot them, they were still changed fundamentally. His entire body was reworked and shrunken to reduce his metabolism. But even more, it seemed that Valleria’s own systems had problems. He wouldn’t be touching those, yet. Just editing the good parts out.

“Can’t you just edit the DNA manually? Why do you have to copy it?” Alverost asked.

“I can see it… and edit it. But its one of the most complex things to exist… ever.” Mark spoke, copying and editing Silvers muscle structure, his bone density, the fibers that connected his body together. “I still can’t just write to it raw right now. I would have to brute force my way through it. Seeing, understanding, and copying is simple enough, though.”

“What about giving them hard skin, like the insects? Or razor sharp claws.” Alverost asked.

“Probably possible, except that so called hard skin is really the bone structure of an insect. I would have to figure out how to have that, and the internal bones need to support non insectoid organisms. Little sections of exoskeleton might work better. Like… sharp bug fingers.”

As Mark and Alverost talked, he continued to work, switching Silver’s stomach out with an expanded one, sizing up his heart to support a bigger body.

“I guess we could try it.” Mark said, editing Silver’s right hand. Something simple— a few plates of chitin to cover his right hand, edited onto his code. He moved his roots away from Valleria, and they glided through the floor, to the small, juvenile insects in the courtyard. They had eaten more than their own weight in mushrooms inside of it and were growing rapidly, though for now, they were curled up and sleeping together, like a pack of very disturbing kittens.

He patched his roots into one of them, seeing the code that made their exoskeleton, and copying it on to Silver. Just small plates that would cover his fingers, ending in sharp claws where his nails would have been. They would make a great impromptu weapon or defense, and a good first test. Finally done, Mark withdrew his roots from Silver.

“There. Done.”

“He doesn’t look any different.”

“Of course. I edited his DNA, not him.” Mark said, before focusing on Silver. “You should feel the changes over the next few days.”

“Yes!” Silver spoke, rising to his feet. He wobbled for a second, before balancing. “I will sleep now!” Silver turned, leaving Mark and Alverost alone.

“It will take a few days to see the changes. But you can change Axel based on him. So. Whats our next move?”

“Now we start moving up.”

“How? Our domains spread has slowed to a crawl. Is there a way to accelerate it?”

“I must admit reluctantly that you possess some knowledge of the DNA, Mark, but when it comes to sorcery, I am unmatched.”

Mark felt the magical domain of their dungeon stop— it stopped expanding, stopped moving, and fell deadly still. It felt like he was holding his breath, the urge to reach out and breath compounding like the burn of lungs. And then as quickly as it stopped, it started again, spinning.

The heavy mana in the dungeons domain flowed towards them, but the domain wasn’t expanding, only spinning, and spinning, and spinning, and then it stretched, reaching for the ceiling, and the domain pressed against it, and up, and like a wall giving way, Mark felt the dungeons domain stretch into the ceiling.

“Wait, you can do that? Why didn’t you do that earlier!?” Mark asked, aghast. If they focused the dungeons expansion out, they could have explored faster.

“Its better to have a balanced domain. If we absorb too much nothing, we may disperse mana over an empty area, which would cause our processing to become irregular. Plus, expanding to the surface poses its own risks, like sentient races discovering us as a new dungeon. Dungeon cores are extremely valuable in their own right as a material, not to mention their usefulness in producing Arcana and other resources… but now that we’ve made the decision to contact the Kobolds above, we may as well move up. However… we should still prepare for dangers in contacting them. Monster races especially are typically distrustful of dungeons, as new born dungeons have a tendency to… experiment on them. Valleria didn’t seem to harbor those sentiments. However…”

“The other Kobolds might.” Mark finished Alverost’s thought. “So we will need to fortify our connection to the surface.”

“It wont be easy.”

“How would we defend it, anyway? We would have to practically build a spiral staircase straight up. You cant build spike straps on a spiral staircase.”

“Great for rolling boulders though.”

“That is the first thing you would think of. A classic for ancient, forbidden tombs.”

“If it works, it works. And don’t forget the snakes.”

Mark paused.

“Do you have movies, here?”

“Movies?”

“We don’t even have access to any snakes.”