‘’I hope this doesn’t become a reoccurring theme…’’

The voice echoed throughout darkness, watching a lightshow, akin to fireworks on a pitch-black night, take its place in the distance. Gold and Crimson flashes would explode against a cyan-blue tide. While reminding him of the specter of magic emanated from his golems, it felt… ‘wrong’. Too dark almost.

Of course, said sphere of light was a certain Dungeon core, finding himself back in his mindscape. The gold and crimson energies, most likely, were the parting gifts the Old man and his fallen…

Darn, he had forgotten to ask what exactly their relation had been. Uncle Lucifer it is.

Giving himself a brief mental shake, would Allen focus upon the clashes of energy once more. Considering what had happened moments before he found himself in this place, Allen guessed that Dungeons were not suppose to go ‘up’, or ‘out’, for that matter, which had caused the system to throw a hissy-fit because of it.

Knowing that unlike the systems energy, the two remnants of his benefactors- energies would have a point of exhaustion, and that solving this issue now would probably help him (including not dying or turning into a mindless monster-generator…) Allen did what any self-respecting member of some branch from the ‘Engineer’ head-term would do, R&D.

Good thing was, he had plenty examples, unlike with his Dungeon work.

Better thing, Apparently he himself produced a similar substance to the blue tide, it was just that for every non-existing bucket of steel-grey colored energy he made, the cyan-tide came with 100

‘’I guess the old man’s warnings weren’t for nothing. I managed to beat that ‘envoy’ of the system, but itself is waaaay scarier…’’

Probabilities aside, the only reason that the energies from both Uncle and the Old man were even managing to pull-off a delay action was because of some home-field advantage.

As previously stated, time was a finite resource and thus began the testing.

This showed that his earlier comment on a ‘home-field advantage’ had some truth to it.

After ‘feeding’ some of his own steel-colored energy to both the Crimson and Golden energy-spheres, Allen also managed to find out that this particular battle had been going on since his first awakening on this strange world. Considering he could barely produce enough energy to keep both spheres tipped-off full, it showed how much energy Uncle and the Old man had to spend, battling this tide of cyan, keeping it from invading Earth and doing to it what it had done to a unknown amount of worlds before. Not a pleasant thought.

If anything, this served as a reminder for how low Allen actually sat on the totempole of… the universe? Whatever one wanted to call it. Even as a unliving core he began to feel a very human-like headache coming up again, the one that would surface whenever one started thinking too hard, on how the human brain named itself to name one example.

Atleast as a Dungeon core, he could simply do a little ‘end-program’ to stop any train of thought from spiraling out of control. Especially when Allen had spend quite a bit of time theorizing about how he could argue that a Dungeon Core was merely a hyper-advanced computer program, working with Mana instead of electricity.

Good times.

One of the next notable tests was where Allen would bundle up his energy in a compact sphere, before chucking it towards the blue tide, much like how the Crimson and Gold energies would fire projectiles of their own.

Lets just say that it ended in a flash of blinding (even though he couldn’t really ‘see’ right now) light and several seconds of silence before the tidal wave of blue came rushing back in.

‘’So, bundling up energy works like a tactical nuke, nice.’’

From what Allen could gather about this particular battlefield, compared to the ‘Soul’ ones, was that this functioned more akin to a Influence war. If ones soul was the ‘castle’, the energies were the borders of the nation. Without controlling a point of surface on any particularly-colored sphere, one could not instigate the ‘siege battle’ that the System-envoy had tried doing to him.

Then again, Allen mused that only god-like entities knew about this particular form of combat. Sure beats beating each other up for eons in some form of Anime-fashion.

To combat the current situation, what was required?

More energy; Calculations showed that even while continuously firing energy-nukes that at one point reserves will dry, the timing in between shots is not enough for the energy to replenish itself Automated defense; One can hardly stay here for time eternal. The Dungeon was unsupervised, he had to focus his attention elsewhere

The answers to both, lay in the explanation of 2.

Expanding the dungeon would mean expanding (strangely enough it seemed that instead of drawing from the energy to build, it seemed that any left-over energy not being used would empower his soul) his reserves, expanding his reserves meant more ‘influence’ (For a lack of better term and considering it ‘fit’ quite well with the whole godly-theme, the strange energies were now dubbed ‘influence’.) which could combat the systems own. With his home-field advantage and the two automated-cannons donated by Uncle and the Old man should give him enough of a breathing room to atleast fight this battle to a stand-still.

With this solution came two new problems though.

Only ‘living’ creatures counted in increasing his dungeon. His golems, atleast these simple ones, did not. ‘knowing’ this information was quite weird, but Allen merely chucked it onto the heap of ‘Old-man influence’, imagining that for a normal-core, if they’d ever find out about all this at some point, a nifty and easy-to-read pop-up screen would tell them all this information.

Well, that and the two massive-glowing pillars linked towards his two ‘boss-monsters’ helped as well. As a matter of fact, they also seemed to give off influence, albeit he couldn’t quite see how much.

In any case, Turok counted, Neith counted but Jigi and Ozram did not.

So, to partially solve the issue, he just needed new members. One slight issue, Allen had a bit of trouble finding out how much energy was produced by his larger-then-average soul, and how much each member of his dungeon provided. Worst-case- and yet most likely-scenario, his soul powered almost all, and every member of the dungeon hardly did anything.

Then again, going by the snail-pace encroachment of the System-influence, he didn’t need that much more to at least halt it to a point where it’d take decades for it to reach him. Of course, it could take even longer for him to find enough creatures to serve…

Allen would give a mental sigh, allowing himself to sink out of the darkness and back into his ‘core’.

Upon which he would find a surprisingly very-worried Orcborg and Mechspider staring at his crystal.

Both (albeit in the latter’s case it was more of a downward-tilting motion) would sigh in relief, the spider scuttling off back towards her lair-… No, wait.

Allen had forgotten to give Neith a new part of his home… her old one having been turned into a office. Bugger.

Watching the Bear-sized spider tilt its entire body to glance at the golems patrolling inside the dungeon was somewhat amusing, almost like looking at a jumping-spider observing its surroundings.

’Eh, I suppose she can stay in the Core room for the time being’ Upon which would Allen watch his first companion calming walk up the wall, finding a corner and folding herself up.

A bear-sized spider trying to make itself as small as possible… don’t see that every day.

Turok, on the other hand, would visibly relax upon seeing the only other mentally-capable being in the dungeon return to its normal duties. No matter what his Patron might think, that spider had a weird gleam in its eyes… and nothing was going to convince him otherwise.

Putting the matters of potentially-evil giant spiders aside, would the former-orc drop onto a knee, bowing his head towards the core. ‘’It is good to see your return, Master Allen.’’

The Cyborc could feel a tinge of satisfaction through their reestablished bond as his Patron would take a moment to speak. ‘’How long have I been… ‘out’…?’’

Allowing the memories of the past to flow back into his mind, would Turok silently count the amount of times he’d done his ‘ritual’ of going outside.

‘’Fourteen day-cycles, Master.’’

A brief moment of silence, though Turok could detect a faint sliver of unhappiness.

‘’Have the other two returned?’’

Ouch. Yeah… his master was anything but happy… the Orc hoped that he wouldn’t be the victim of any form of punishment created by this sudden spit of anger.

‘’Not yet. Though it could take another set of fourteen cycles before they manage to even find a settlement. We orcs had been on the run for quite a while.’’

The only reply Turok received was mumbles laced with irritation and a mention about ‘’forgetting to install a communication-function’’, whatever that meant. The Cyborc knew that the late-shaman could create a form of long-range magical-message using a spectral-familiar, but he wasn’t a shaman. Turok didn’t even know if Jigi knew such a spell.

Hearing his master dismissing him, would the Orcborg walk outside, taking some time now that his master had returned to follow his recently-adapted patrol route, sticking to the spherical-influence of the two ‘Pylons’ as he’d let the last of the suns rays shine on his skin.