Outside the walls of my dungeon, Luka was pacing back and forth, chewing on one of his thumbs with an expression that seemed tense. I couldn’t tell if he wanted to scream or cry, to run back into my tunnels and try to navigate them in the dark, or to leave the ruins entirely. Watching him it seemed as if he could easily go any of those ways, the pent-up energy vibrating off of him to the point I could almost feel it despite the fact he was outside the dungeon. No matter what it was he was actually feeling it left him unable to stand still it seemed, and apparently unable to hear as well.

Despite the fact Yulia was positively chirping her little head off in an attempt to get his attention, Luka seemed none the wiser, even when she stomped her feet and tried to step into his way to get his attention he merely moved around her without even sparing her a single glance.

Nicol, who was apparently the youngest and the little sister of Leone from what I had gathered of their conversation after Leone had disappeared into the darkness of my tunnels, had ventured as close to the dungeon as Luka would allow her before he had seemingly lost his mind from worry. She sat on a fallen rock, what looked to be part of the wall before it collapsed, her knees drawn to her chest and her oddly grassy coloured eyes staring into the darkness of the dungeon as if she could actually see inside.

I knew she couldn’t, of course, but it was an intense stare all the same. Despite her chubby little cheeks she managed to look very serious. It felt somehow like she was challenging me, silently demanding that I produce her sister from my depths, safe and sound. If I could pick Leone and drop her back down in front of Nicol I would have gladly done so, but unfortunately grabbing living things in my tendrils was beyond me.

The humans were fascinating in a strange way I couldn’t even begin to describe. Even though they weren’t doing much now I found myself wanting to watch them to see what they would do next, to try to figure out how they might react to different stimuli. I would have loved to keep watching them for longer, but the fact of the matter was I needed to divert most of my attention to elsewhere.

Leone was making her way through the dungeon, slowly now that she was no longer being pursued, but my first floor wasn’t fully prepared yet and so there wouldn’t be too far for her to go before it became an issue. Because she hadn’t fallen for the left turn into a dead-end she was now on a straight path directly to my core, needless to say, it wasn’t good. I didn’t know what she might do once she reached the main room, and I couldn’t very well kill her to put a stop to her.

If she weren’t the first human in my halls, if she didn’t have people waiting on her, it might be a different story, but as things were I couldn’t rely on my last resort as my first option.

Leone held the glowing stone aloft with one hand, just ahead of herself and barely below the ceiling, illuminating the tunnel in a small circle around her. She walked with slow and measured steps, crouching slightly with her head bent, her other hand against one wall to steady herself. I could feel the heat and the mana radiating off of her fingers as they ran along my wall and also across me. It was a strange feeling, nothing like when my kobolds touched the walls or Sunflower burrowed into them. I could feel how weak she was, but also how strong she was compared to my core, and the endless potential she had to grow stronger than that.

There was a weird part of me that wanted to see just how strong she could get.

Overall it was a bizarre sensation, both somehow comforting and frightening all at once. It was strangely nice that she was here, despite the danger she posed. I understood now why other Dungeon Cores tried to lure humans inside. Was this really what it was supposed to feel like to have your mortal enemy invading? If so it was an oddly exhilarating feeling! I couldn’t say I hated it. It was scary, yes, but I was excited at the same time.

To add to the stack of strange emotions I was feeling, I found that I was also slightly disappointed with myself. For some reason, it was upsetting to me that I wasn’t finished with my floor layout, not because it left me vulnerable, but because I oddly found myself wanting to see what Leone would think of it. I wanted to see her get lost and wander about. I wanted to see what expression she would make as she figured out the proper path. I wanted to see how she would react to her first encounter with the kobolds.

I wanted her to fail and turn back, but I also wanted her to succeed and make her way to the chamber that held my core, just to see the awe on her face. I wanted her to be impressed with me, I found, whether that meant she ran from the dangers of my dungeon or she kept returning.

I didn’t know what to do with those feelings at all. Were they part of how a normal Dungeon Core would feel? Or was this because I was broken and strange? There was no real way of knowing without another Core to compare myself to, and since that wasn’t about to happen I needed to get ahold of myself and try to take charge of the situation.

Even if I was starting to feel oddly fond of the ugly little creature I couldn’t allow Leone to figure out what I was, not yet, at least not until I was ready to defend myself properly. I was vulnerable with only my kobolds to protect me, and I couldn’t very well send them against a lone human.

A den of monsters sounded a lot worse than a den of snakes, and surely if she made it out of here alive she would send more humans in here to try to kill them. Sure, my kobolds were functionally immortal so long as my core was intact, but I still didn’t want to subject them to that. There was also the chance that they could destroy my core, or just avoid the area entirely after wiping my kobolds out, and those were both options that I couldn’t really live with.

Killing her also wasn’t an option when it came to protecting myself, though I had figured that out a good while ago. If Leone never came back out then surely Luka would go for help and I would find myself being shattered. Killing them all was certainly not an option either, not when it sounded like other humans would come looking for them if they never came back. I needed to avoid a situation that got me destroyed, so as easily as it would solve my current problem I had to avoid killing someone for as long as possible.

It seemed like my only option would be to try to hide what I was from her entirely, and I didn’t have very long to do it. At the rate she was moving I only had a couple of minutes until she might be able to hear my kobolds. I needed to avoid anything that would give me away.

“Cobble! Cobalt! Get up! We have an emergency!”

Even though I couldn’t actually yell I focused as much energy and urgency into my words as I could as I sent them down along the link that connected me to my monsters, and thankfully that seemed to have worked because the two of them jerked awake fairly quickly. Cobble sat upright with a groan, Cobalt rolling off of her and thunking his head on the ground, which in turn sent him getting up quickly as he scrambled to see what the emergency was.

They both looked ready to fight, and despite Cobalt making it to his feet first, Cobble seemed to become coherent before he did, her adorable face shifting into a snarl as she looked about the room. “Kor has emergency? I will protect. Where is emergency? Point me in the direction and I will the fight.”

“Shhh. Be quiet. No fighting, only hiding. I don’t want the human to figure out that I’m a dungeon.”

“Human?” Cobalt repeated, his fiery eyes widening as he looked around, almost as if he expected the human to already be in the room. “They have found us already? Are you sure you want to hide, Kor? Cobalt could scare them off easily. Cobalt can be very scary.” He kept his voice low, practically whispering in his effort to avoid being heard.

“No, no fighting and no showing yourselves. There are three other humans outside the dungeon waiting for their friend to come back out. If she reports she saw a monster then they’ll go back and get more humans. The best thing to do is hide. Trust me. I already considered the fighting options.”

That seemed to be a satisfactory answer because both kobolds nodded in agreement, determination written all over their adorable faces.

It took a bit of soft grumbling, but Cobble finally stood, grabbing the sheepskin off of the ground as she did so. “Cobalt, get Kor and go to entrance of tunnel there. I will use my camouflage to do the hiding of you two, yes?” She suggested, tilting her head in the direction of the room that held the red stones.

She shook out the sheepskin and laid it over the cooled remains of the fire, skin side up. It had picked up so much loose dirt from the floor that it almost looked like part of the ground laying like that. In dim lighting, it would appear that there was never a fire in the room at all. I had to restrain myself to keep my core from glowing any brighter, I was just that pleased with how clever Cobble was.

While she was setting that up, Cobalt scurried over to the wall where I was tucked away in my alcove, straining up on his tiptoes with his hands outstretched. “Kor, can you roll into Cobalt’s hands?” He asked, his tail twitching from side to side to keep his balance. Instead of replying I put my mana to use in doing as he asked, rocking myself off of the little shelf and into his grasp.

He was warm. So very warm. It almost felt like when I had run my tendrils through the fire, that was how warm he was. That comforting heat traveled right down into the very center of my core, carrying with it all of Cobalt’s feelings at the moment.

I could feel the tenderness and care that he held me with, how delicate he considered me to be, how absolutely holy he thought I was. It was like taking hold of a tiny god, easily crushed and destroyed yet also more powerful than he could begin to put into words. He looked down at me like I was his very world as if he couldn’t believe he had the power to break everything he ever loved, and the fear that came along with the thought of doing just that mingled with his respect for me into a slurry of emotions that made him tremble slightly.

I felt the respect he had for Cobble as he glanced her way again. If I was his world then she was his meaning in it. He had an emotion in his chest for her, something that was warm and soft, the kind of feeling that I wanted to roll myself in because of how fragile and gentle it felt. Love was the word that he associated with the feeling, and I found myself wanting it for myself.

It was easy to lose myself in Cobalt’s feelings, they were so much stronger than Cobble’s had been when she had picked me up before, but I forced myself to focus on the situation at hand.

“We don’t have much time. She’s coming. Quick.”

That was all the warning they needed, it seemed. Cobalt clutched me against the softer scales of his underbelly, cupped in both hands so there was no risk of me falling and cracking against the floor, and rushed for the entrance of the tunnel that led deeper to where the red stones were.

Cobble was quick behind him, and as he reached the opening of the tunnel and began to bend she pushed him down and climbed onto him, covering as much of his body with her own as she could. Given that she was a good head taller than he was, she could easily manage length-wise, but he was also wider, which left her spreading across him as best as she could.

I could feel Cobalt’s heart pounding against me from where he had me clutched against himself, a wave of nervousness and excitement ricocheting through the connection that we shared thanks to the fact that he was physically holding my core. It felt bizarrely similar to how I felt about having Leone inside the dungeon.

Love. That was the word he supplied to how he felt about Cobble, and it was the emotion that was causing those feelings in him now from having her so close to him, her tail curled around his legs in an attempt to obscure them. If love was the feeling he had for her, that made him feel like that, then did that mean that it was what I was feeling as well?

Did I love Leone?

As much as I wanted to explore that train of thought there was simply no time for me to do so. I had to stay focused on the current emergency, no matter how curious I was about whatever love actually was.

Cobble had things under control for now, her scales shifting and changing as she activated her [Camouflage] skill so that she appeared to just be part of the floor, so I could relax a little bit. What little of Cobalt that could be seen from the angle that Leone would be entering the room from was a dark enough blue that it seemed almost like shadows, so she had succeeded in hiding him and me with him.

Together they looked like a rocky roadblock, something that would be awkward to step over, a little higher than would be comfortable for the human. I could only hope that Leone would see the lump of stone and rock that they appeared to be and avoid it, perhaps going another way entirely. I would have thought that they would hide deeper in the tunnel, but it looked like Cobble’s plan was to try to hide the red stones that were exposed further inside.

They had gone still just in time because no sooner had Cobble’s scales finally taken on the texture of the floor than Leone entered the room. The ceiling was slightly taller here, enough so that she could actually stand upright, which she did immediately. Letting out a relieved-sounding sigh she began to bend every which way, rolling her head as she stretched.

“Finally, a place to breathe.” Leone sounded absolutely exhausted, and I found myself instantly fretting over the fact that I had dug everything too small to accommodate her. It had been annoying before to think that I might have to redo all of my rooms just because humans turned out bigger than I expected, but now that I was looking at the face of an actual human and seeing how they fared with navigating? I couldn’t help but want to fix it for her.

Maybe this really was love?

Cobalt seemed awfully annoyed by the fact that she was here, however. He stopped paying attention to things like the sound of Cobble’s heartbeat to instead focus all of his energy on trying to hear where Leone was without opening his eyes. I wasn’t sure why he was so insistent on not looking, but it felt like he thought that his eyes would give him away somehow. Maybe the magic stone would reflect off of them? There was no way of knowing. I had never had a light in the dungeon before.

After her short break, leaning against the wall to stretch her back out and touching her toes, Leone began to move forward again. The light from the stone didn’t stretch all the way to the other side of the room, leaving the hide over the fire and Cobble’s body both obscured enough to blend into the rest of the dungeon.

Leone made the same kind of vibrating hum that Cobble often did, frowning as she looked around. What was she thinking? Was something wrong? Was the dungeon ugly to her, or was she just feeling tired still? Maybe she had gotten lost and was trying to remember which way was the proper way out?

My eagerness to know what she was thinking must have traveled along my connection to Cobalt because his hands tightened slightly around my core as if he was trying to keep me still, which alerted me to the fact I had actually started to wiggle a bit.

I was embarrassed enough that I mumbled a soft apology along our connection, but it didn’t stop me from watching Leone as she turned into the new tunnel that I had recently dug out. It was a dead-end, of course, with nothing much to look at aside from the strange shape of the room, so I was instantly disappointed again. What would she think of me? That I was some lazy, good-for-nothing, dungeon with no idea how to build anything?

This was starting to get stupid! I needed to snap myself out of this odd feeling and get back to focusing on what I needed to do to protect myself. Since the kobolds couldn’t defend me from anything without making more problems for me later I was left with only one other option in order to run Leone off.

“Basil! Sunflower! I need your help!”

I focused on the badgers as hard as I could, trying to project my voice with as much urgency as possible, and as it had with my kobolds my effort paid off. Basil made a bizarre noise as he jumped to his feet, stumbling about and snarling as he gnashed his teeth and bit at the air as if he were trying to attack whatever strange thing had woken him.

“It really is like having kids…” Sunflower let out a heavy sigh as she rolled to her feet and moved, shuffling over to Basil to bunt her head against his side. “Stop being such an embarrassment. It’s Kor. Our adopted cub. I’ll explain later, you oaf.”

He calmed fairly quickly after that, his expression turning back to the same oddly sweet face the badgers had when their mouths weren’t open. How they turned into such monsters with a single expression completely baffled me, yet also left me oddly impressed. He blinked slowly as he looked around, clearly trying to find me.

“You won’t be able to see me, sorry. I’ll help explain it all later, I promise, just right now I really need your help!”

“So polite,” was Basil’s response to my words, and then he visibly shook himself before puffing up. He seemed ready to fight whatever had sent me coming to them for help, despite the fact I had woken him up to do it. From what Sunflower had said before I had been able to figure out that badgers normally had huge families, so it seemed like maybe he wasn’t too surprised by the fact he had a bigger one than he had previously thought.

“Be glad Basil’s such a softie. Most males kill cubs that aren’t their own.”

Or my theory was completely wrong. I felt cold and bristly at those words, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. It wasn’t as though I would have just allowed the badger to kill me anyway.

“What is it you want? What’s the trouble?” Sunflower snorted, grunting and huffing with annoyance as her eyes swept the room for potential danger. Basil was already venturing into the tunnel, sniffing and snorting as he checked ahead to make sure his mate would be safe.

“There’s a human in my side of the dungeon.”

I might as well have told them I was going to kill them from the way they reacted. Instantly the badgers went from cute and cuddly to looking like absolute monsters, snouts wrinkling up as they snarled and showed off their fangs. Basil looked as if he might be able to break my core in half just by biting into it, a thought which had me shaking slightly in Cobalt’s grip.

“I don’t see anything. Humans are too big.” Basil calmed down faster than Sunflower did, settling back down, but he also wasn’t aware yet that his home was much larger than he previously thought.

“You know the wood on the right side of the tunnel on your way out? It’s hiding more tunnels, bigger tunnels, and that’s where she is.”

Sunflower pushed past Basil as he tried to figure out what to do with that new information, shoving her way to the door that I had mentioned, which she then swiped at with her claws as if she could open it. “You want us to run them off, so let me in! I’ll show them what for! Make them regret coming in here!” I had thought I would have to convince them more, but apparently, badgers hated the idea of humans in their homes. Either way, it worked out for me.

“Just don’t hurt them. I need humans in my half so I can eat, remember?”

Sunflower grunted and huffed, something that seemed to be an annoyed kind of agreement, and so I reluctantly used a bit of mana to open the door for her. Almost as soon as it began moving she pushed through and jumped down, barreling down the tunnel at full force, all of her fur puffed up.

She looked like the concept of death as an animal, a force of nature that couldn’t be stopped and sure as hell couldn’t be controlled. She was a flurry of fur and fangs, claws tearing into the floor from how fast her feet were hitting the ground, and I almost regretted recruiting the badger family to help defend the dungeon.

Basil, despite being larger, didn’t look nearly as scary as Sunflower did as he hurried after her, doing his best to keep up. Considering she was pregnant, I thought she would be slower, but apparently Sunflower was built for speed and anger. Nothing could stop her, and she charged ahead blindly, ready to attack anything that stepped into her path.

Unfortunately for Leone, she stepped back into the main room at just the wrong time.

The sound of snarling and angry badgers must have reached her before she fully entered the room because she was already looking around, her soil-coloured eyes darting from side to side as she tried to pinpoint the noise. As she turned to her right the light from the magic stone caught Sunflower’s eyes and glistened across her fangs, and that was all it really took for Leone to understand her situation.

For a breath Leone stood perfectly still, her skin draining of any colour that it had, her eyes widening, and then she let out a shriek so loud that it made my tendrils squirm in pain. She threw the stone at Sunflower with seemingly all the strength she had judging from how hard it hit my floor when it narrowly missed the badger. It took out a chunk of dirt, bouncing and rolling away, illuminating both Sunflower and Basil as it did.

The sight of two angry badgers coming at her must have been too much for Leone to handle. She turned away, thankfully towards the exit, and began to run for it as fast as she could manage at a crouch. She was surprisingly fast, though not nearly as fast as the badgers were. It was all too easy to imagine the damage that would happen if they caught up, so I decided to put an end to things before they got out of hand.

“Sunflower! Basil! Hey! Stop! She’s leaving! Don’t hurt her!”

As Leone continued to scramble for safety the badger family slowed, making a few more scary noises at the retreating human before they seemed to calm down enough to actually look around where they were.

“Hey, so… Now that you two are here… Do you want to meet the rest of the family?”