Aby watched as the final member of the last group to intrude was finally cut down, freeing the core from the hold on its own mana, something that was beginning to annoy the core about sapients. It relished the feeling, and was pleased that the next twelve hours would be its time to once more improve.

It intended to start the night by improving what it felt was a weak link: the fifth floor boss, the star, which had been slowly getting countered more and more as the days wore on.The more it thought of it, the more Aby needed a way to fix that. While it was still growing ever larger, nearly being ranked A- by this point, and each of its limbs was three and a half meters long, it wasn’t enough against groups. It could still make successful getaways, but they were getting harder to perform as time wore on.

Aby was upset at the loss of power it was seeing within the halls. The star was once the most powerful creature in the depths, and that title has been usurped time and time again. Aby decided to do something to the floor itself when it realized that the star was no longer considered a boss-level monster, instead of trying to find some way to simply increase the stars individual power.

As it once more flexed its control over the huge amounts of mana in the dungeon, it decided to populate the floor with more than just a single creature. Mustering up a large amount of mana, it created four Trench Stars, far away from anything else in the dungeon, and warning the rest to ensure it stays that way.

And just like the last time one was spawned, they went ballistic. Only this time, there were four of them, and each of them was flailing, thrashing, and churning. One of them turned its many limbs on another while Aby was working on forcibly adapting them, and before the core was able to stop it, all four had joined into some kind of mass, writhing with tentacles and teeth, as the thick black ichor that was their blood seeped into the waters. One of the stars couldn’t hold out long enough to even be forcibly adapted, within seconds the ravenous hunger of the other three wound up reducing it to shreds and limbs, twitching and squirming aimlessly, whilst the smaller pieces were recycled.

This was all in the span of seconds, too, they simply acted far too aggressively, and Aby was still entirely unused to having creatures it created acting outside of its instructions. It demanding them to cease only meant that they stopped attacking one another, and instead turned their sights on the dismembered pieces that remained.

Before too long, Aby had once more reasserted its will onto the creatures, using up an amount of mana it had not actually thought possible. In such numbers the creatures managed to consume the dungeons supply faster than the corals could produce it. Thankfully, the core was able to force their adaptations into Dungeon stars before more than half of its supply was eaten, and the core felt the ambient mana rush back into it, quickly filling the void that the stars had created.

The stars were in the throes of change swiftly, and all three of them were quite unlike the first, and from one another. In fact, the only similarity they had with one another was color, all were still just as unnaturally black as the first, blending in completely with the void around them. The first, most similar to the star it knew was five meters wide, with eight long nub tipped arms radiating from its center, rather than the cilia of the original. It moved around, and showed itself to be marginally slower than the brittle star, though its flexible limbs were still just as swift to lash out.

The second was thick, four meters wide and yet at least thrice the weight of the original, all eighteen of its arms were dense and solid, and while they weren’t nearly as flexible, they seemed to be saturated with power. Making the creature smash a limb into the wall as a test, this thought was confirmed by the veritable crater that was left behind. Unfortunately, the movement speed of the creature could be best described as “lumbering”. Rather than using its limbs themselves for locomotion, the underside seemed to be lined in tens of thousands of tiny foot-like cilia, and the beast could use only them for a slow propulsion forward.

The third appeared unchanged in all but color to its former self, with dozens of appendages seemingly tacked onto its body haphazardly. Some were long, others short; some thick, others thin. It was hard to put a measurement to the invertebrate, there was no uniform shape to it, and to the numerous limbs, no specific size. Covered in cilia, nubs, even scales, feathers, and teeth, the creature looked truly horrific, and yet truly dangerous. As it began to move, Aby found itself questioning the logistics that go into such a disgustingly intricate dance of limbs and tendrils. It made absolutely no sense to witness, sometimes it was flinging itself forward by waving and thrusting in limbs strange motions. Other times, it simply spasmed, flipping and rolling forward in an alien rhythm. And strangely, it was fast. Very quickly, the thing had departed from the fifth floor, and Aby had to instruct it to return. It begrudgingly stopped its otherworldly dance forward, with looks ranging from terror of the surrounding fish to borderline infatuation on Carmine, and then reversed direction, flailing its multitude of arms in a horrific mockery of a squid before crashing into a wall and skittering forth.

The core inspected all three closer, intent on understanding just how they were even considered the same species. Oddly, it found that they weren’t. Respectively, they were now Brisingida Dungeon Star, Abyssal Sunflower Star, and Chimeric Dungeon Star, and this only led to more questions than answers. The biggest two were, why was the brittle star so different between its Dungeon and Trench variants, and why did all of them change to something that was decidedly not a brittle star. The knowledge it had taken from the various divers in the past had taught it about the Trenches, and what they were, but nobody knew anything concrete about them, and much of their knowledge wasn’t even objective to begin with. The contradictory opinions, ideas, anecdotal experiences, beliefs, and legends were overwhelmingly more common than any actual empiracal fact, and the core disliked that. It wanted to learn more, especially when such a conundrum has popped up, and having so little to go on made it difficult or even counterproductive to rely on what it takes from fallen invaders.

Sadly, it was left with the mystery, at least for now. Moving on, Aby sent concept to the brittle star, telling it that the process was finished, and allowed the curious star to go familiarize itself with the newcomers. And familiarize itself it did. The resulting display had been so fascinatingly unusual to bear witness to that the core found it difficult to parse the information it witnessed. Countless limbs of all sizes and shapes wound, unwound, knotted and danced while the main bodies were rather disturbingly swung around by each other. They rolled and roiled along the ground, and scuttled and skulked along the walls in their strange interaction.

Eventually, the creatures broke off from one another, first the sunflower star sinking to the bottom, then the brisingida scampering off in a huff. When only the brittle and chimeric stars were left, the dance intensified, and the waters were disturbed all around. They battled to be on top of the other, yet struggled to stay underneath. It was intricately choreographed yet they lacked an audience beyond the core. Finally, when some unknown point was reached, the brittle star wrapped three of its arms around the chimera, and used the other two to brace against the wall, upon which it launched the apparent loser away from it at a scarily high velocity. A resounding thump could be heard, and the brittle star raised its all of its arms above its body and wiggled them in a strange dance, a soundless celebration at being truly the boss now.

By this point, what Aby had started simply to be the first item on a checklist had devolved into a deep interest in these strange creatures, an interest that Aby was not alone in feeling. Carmine had overheard the brittle star asserting dominance over the chimeric star, the reverberating thump had been felt quite a few floors both above and beneath. Not to mention, after seeing the new “face”, she had been on the way in the first place. She was able to see, or at least perceive, in the total blackness of these halls incredibly well, and when she looked upon the sight of four strange critters of the abyss she couldn’t contain her enthusiasm.

Fortunately, all five consciousnesses present were immune in some fashion to her Charm, as any casual listeners would no doubt find the sheer joy that suffused her Charm renders them into a state of vegetative bliss, and the hardier minded would likely have trouble shaking themselves out of the resulting stupor. The brittle star recognized her presence, and very quickly pulled itself over to her, enjoying her presence immensely. They exchanged greetings, a much tamer interaction compared to what the core had borne witness to not too long before, and then Carmine flitted off to inspect the new arrivals.

The brisingida star seemed rather impassive, even against carmines infectious enthusiasm, and simply continued about its own business, though it did use two of its free arms to pat her back noncommittally when it realized she was looking for some form of acknowledgement. The sunflower star simply sat there, much as it had done and likely would do a lot of the time. It batted at her hands lightly, seemingly trying to catch them then curl around them, but being too slow to do this to any meaningful degree.

The chimeric star had the strongest reaction though, at first it seemed enthused to have attention, and then suddenly tensing up in thought. After a second of reflection, it started shaking, then wound up rocketing into the distance in a stunning display of flexibility and disregard for walls along the way.

So shocked was she by the sudden switch in attitude, and the not-so-graceful departure, that her hand simply hovered where it was, stock still as she pieced together the series of motions the creature took to propel itself away, and after to failing to do so she simply gathered the brittle star and played with it, sitting nearby the sunflower star.

Seeing that the fifth floor had finally calmed down after what felt like the most surreal thirty minutes of Abys existence, the core withdrew most of its consciousness to the core room for a moment. It happily observed the sleeping form of Sela directly beside its pillar as it thought over all that had occurred that day. Aby felt that all of this had likely increased the capability for battle on the fifth floor, and so long as the brittle star could effectively teach the newcomers to fight even half as effectively as it, then they could likely reduce the number of under qualified invaders making it to Carmine’s level by a large amount. The core was curious to see how they would fight, though, and finally had something to look forward to about the invasions.

However, the core was stuck dwelling on what it felt more important. It had so many questions raised in regards to exactly what the Trenches were, and the creatures therein. The stars, the siren, even the kelpie all originate from there, and were all so wildly different from everything else it had encountered. It seemed to be a place that worked entirely differently than what it knew, and it wished to be able to learn more.